Journal mcgrew's Journal: Open Office Blues 20
My daughter Leila, with the properly spelled name and two eyes, neither of which is in the middle of her forehead (but otherwise looks a lot like Futurama's Leela), called a couple of days ago on behalf of her mother, Evil-X. "Dad, Mom's going back to school and needs a copy of Microsoft Office".
"I don't have one, Leila. I never did; I can't afford it. Office is about four hundred bucks. Tell her to download a copy of Open Office, it will read and write Microsoft files and it's free."
"Do you want her to call you?"
WTF? Evil-X is the last person on Earth I want to talk to. "No, just tell her to download Open Office."
As if I don't have problems enough - Charlie had left in a huff when she found out Annie was a prostitute, Annie went back to her boyfriend, some things that were very important to me turned up missing over the weekend and I threw Tami out, as her reaction showed beyond a shadow of a doubt she was the culprit, and that only leaves one tenant, Linda, whose boyfriend is paying her rent, and my adjustable rate mortgage has shot through the roof. And my damned ex-wife calls me at work.
"Do you have a copy of Office?"
Sigh. "No, I told Leila I didn't. It costs $400 and I never did have a copy."
"Well Corel isn't compatible," she said. Of course it isn't - her copy of Corel Office dates from the last century, before we moved into the big house on 7th street and before our divorce. I told her so.
"Like I told Leila, just download Open Office. It's free and will read and write MS Office files."
"Well," she said, "I did..." I doubted this but whatever "...and it was a ninety day trial version!"
"I don't know what you downloaded," I said, "but Open Office is free. Just go to..." I fired up a browser and googled. "Openoffice.org and click the tab that says 'download'. It's a full version and it's free."
"But... isn't downloading illegal?"
This, my friends, is why Linux and Open Office haven't taken over the desktop. The non-nerd media (and I daresay, quite a bit of the nerd media) have non-geeks thinking that "downloading is illegal".
"No, it's completely legal. You can download an open source operating system like Windows, only better, too. It's called Linux. Open Office is made by Sun Microsystems, they make big giant computers, and they make Star Office; that one's not free. With Open Office you get everything except a spell checker."
"But... I really NEED a spell checker!"
Indeed. Her spelling is horrible.
"Type it into Word Perfect, spell check it, and paste it into Open Office". I didn't think, but it's entirely likely that you can open a Word Perfect document with Open Office. "Then save it as a Word document".
"That sounds hard."
"Call Patty," our younger daughter, who's moved to Ohio with her fiancee. "She'll help you with it."
"Well... OK. Bye".
My copy of Open Office is ancient; I've seen no reason to upgrade, but I was just informed that the newer versions do, in fact, have spell check.
Charlie called this morning wanting to use my car. I told her to FOAD.
Tami just called wanting to know if I went home for lunch, she needed to talk to Linda. "My mamogram came back and... *sob*"
Update 10/22
I talked to Evil-X. She ordered MS Office from the school, paid $150 for it.
Which openoffice are you using? (Score:2)
Granted, I use it mostly in presentations, which in my case are full of acronyms that openoffice has never seen before, but I still see it find meaningful spelling errors as well.
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Although I suppose I used KOffice for a while in between, when I was still dual-booting to FreeBSD only on occasion. Now I dual-boot to MS Windows only on occasion and I don't remember what version of which office suite I use there...
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Leila just called and I told her to call her mom and tell her that Open Office had spell check.
"She said she ordered it."
Ordered it?
*sigh*
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"She said she ordered it."
I'm guessing that means your alimony payment just went to Microsoft?
My condolences.
As they say
Money talks, and mine says "goodbye"
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No, I had no alimony. In fact I didn't get off that badly on the divorce; Illinois law says that the part of my pension I earned while married was "marital property" and she got half, and that was when my salary (and what went to pension) was half what it is now. That's all she got.
She pretty much lost everything, including the kids. I only lost the house and van (it was a used one but really nice) because I couldn't afford the payments on them without her pay, especially since she'd not paid the bills for
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Hehe, I ran to openoffice.org just to see if there was an option to order it on CD (like Ubuntu does), but nope.
But OO can open up every document I've tried to open, including word perfect docs.
Anyways, why are you so pissed at Charlie? Tami I can understand, I'm honestly wondering if the mammogram dance is real or just a ploy...
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Sunday I was really down; that's when I discovered the thieft. Linda was off with her BF and I needed a friend badly. I called Charlie, who was busy, she said, digging post holes but "would be there when she could". Didn't seem to give two shits about my feelings at all; I felt really bad, betrayed by Tami.
Nary a word from Charlie until she called last night, didn't bother asking how I was, just wanted to use my car. And she was only wanting to put five bucks in it and it's on empty anyway. And acting as if
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Call me sexist if you want but, from my experiences and observations, most women tend to kind of suck really? Then again, most guys do too now that I think about it. Alright, maybe it is just as easily said that people suck.
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Women seem to be more selfish than men, at least it has seemed that way to me. My male friends are far more likely to pitch in and help with a problem than female friends, or to drop everything and bring a twelve pack if you're down.
Charlie called last night and said she rescheduled the appointment she needed the car for, and could she use it today? As I'd run completely out of gas and coasted up to the house I said "sure" and told her she'd have to bring gas when she came.
She brought a peace offering (said
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They have an option to order openoffice CDs, just not from them directly.
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I talked to Evil-X yesterday, she isn't sure WHAT she ordered, but as she ordered it from school I'm sure she's buying MS Office (she's paying $150). The school must be an MS only shop, as they said (incorrectly, of course) that Open Office wouldn't work with the school's software.
How can anyone with an MSCE consider themselves computer-literate? If all you know is Microsoft, you really don't know computers.
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That's a shame. I attend a fairly small university that happens to have a number of instructors who can't stand MS. 'Course, there are a few who love .NET, but the only ones I've found that were vehement about requiring MS office tended to be marketing profs (big surprise there). When I had to suffer through those, I generally just saved PDFs from OOo; if they asked what the pu
Oo (Score:2)
Thank goodness my X is computer phobic.. (Score:2)
I wrote the divorce decree myself from some boilerplate I got from my nice lawyer and saved some significant $$. She pissed off her lawyer so bad that he "fired" her so she wasn't represented at the end and signed off on my retirement benefits in return for getting the 8 year old Corvette and limited time maintenance (alimony). Thank God there wasn't any real estate involved and there was no question about the remaining minor child staying with me. I
EDU copy of MS Office for $150? (Score:2)
She got ripped off by paying more than a 50% surcharge! She could have had her EDU copy for only $99 shipped free [newegg.com], and that was with 30 seconds of searching. Prolly could have gotten it even cheaper (I got the full version for $65 a while back through some weird promotion at MS).
That $50 would have bought plenty of beer and a full tank of gas. I can see why you divorced her.
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It is.