another of those days at work

SES is supposed to be providing the wonderful new visitor registration system. to that end, they have given us a trial set consisting of some outstanding hardware. a xeon and 2GB of RAM for starters. and some other hardware that you probably don't need to know about. Thing is, the software sucks.

Read that again.

The software S-U-C-K-S.

Imagine something really complicated. nope. more. right. take that image and multiply it a hundredfold, and then some. then imagine trying to play the nutcracker waltz on the piano and the flight of the bumblebee on the tuba. simultaneously. with your image. blindfolded.

The software isn't user friendly at all. For the purposes of this, what we want = "type type click thank you sir next please". What we get = type type click click type type scan print oops can we try that again sir?". Non-intuitive, cumbersome, clumsy, non-user-friendly comes to mind. And they've had a month to improve on the software. there are not administrative front-end tools for database maintainence, so anything to do with modifying the current database has to be done at a very low level - mucking around with 1s and 0s in what can only be described as approximating assembly language. the turnover rate isn't something to write home about, and efficiency has dropped dramatically. tempers get shorter, on both sides of the glass/counter as "technology" improves our lives.

looks like we might not get this set after all. hey, i've asked for some improvements almost a month ago. 4 major updates and 7 revisions later, the items are still "in the works". Which interface forces the user to use scroll bars? bah.

did i mention i like my phone? Treo 600