Windows Vista, How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count The Ways.

Actually, I only need to list one big reason right now. As it turns out, windows vista decided to install a major upgrade last night and in the process it destroyed all copies of everything created via Microsoft Word saved to my hard drive, including the article which would have been published this morning. As luck has it, most of the other files created yesterday were sent to associates via email and those copies are stored safely in my email client’s "sent" folder.

The lost article examined a Berlin Philharmonic microsite and although I’ll take some time later today to re-write the article, take a moment on your own to stop by the Berlin Philharmonic’s "Cello Challenge" and see if you think it successfully accomplishes some of the goals identified in an article about orchestral websites from 2/14/2008.

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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3 thoughts on “Windows Vista, How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count The Ways.”

  1. Wow, that sucks. How did it manage to destroy all of those documents? Did it corrupt the files, or delete them outright, or what?

    In the interest of Fair and Ballanced bashing, this reminds me of the first time I installed Apple’s QuickTime on my computer, back in 1998. It did a bunch of damage, including completely disabling my mouse. I tried lots of things, and eventually decided there was nothing left to do but reinstall the operating system (which was an adventure in itself, with no mouse.) But that didn’t work. Eventually I had to reinstall the OS in an entirely new directory to finally get my mouse functionality back. And quicktime remains an appalling piece of malware, totally hijacking my media settings every time I’m forced to use it for something.

    Don’t get me started on QuickTime either, it won’t even run on Vista for me, I have to load any QT files via Firefox. I have no idea how or why the files are all gone but it only seems to have impacted filed created yesterday. Any files created earlier that were edited yesterday were not impacted. As it turns out, the only things I lost were today’s blog post and a short project outline, both of which are entirely replaceable but the hassle is there nonetheless.

    At this point, I do have a USB hard drive and I’ll set it up to back-up all of my Office files at the end of every day. ~ Drew McManus

  2. Oh, GOD, Drew. Vista may just drive me to the Macintosh. And did you see this in last week’s Times? They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know.

    Thanks for that pointer Lisa, I had not seen that article. I’m not the least it surprised and although I would like to think that the MAC OS would be solve all of these frustrations I know that isn’t the case.
    As it is, the MAC solution would have ended up costing a good bit more and the friends of mine who use MACs for heavy daily business use have their own horror stories to tell (like Galen’s below).

    Sadly, I doubt consumers will see much improvement until things get considerably worse or the faulty OS bugs cause some sort of nationwide crisis. the military has an appropriate acronym for this anxiety: BOHICA (Google it). ~ Drew McManus

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