Stupid Users

To distract myself from the poorly-handled show trial and execution down in Mesopotamia, and my incredible annoyance at the right-wing nuts who try and come up with non-technical excuses to disagree with the Lancet study just because they cannot get themselves to accept the results, let me describe an incident at work.

We're trying to set up database replication between a mainframe and a Unix system. These systems are managed by different teams, so you cannot just take the graphical tools and say "install". Instead, you let the tool generate SQL files and each team will run the SQL on their end of the system.

I had previously described the full process to the mainframe admin who wanted to run the graphical tool (and had trouble understanding why I wouldn't give just him global root and DBADM access to all our Unix machines). He'd been working with the graphical tool for the last week (it ought to take 5 minutes) and finally sent me my half.

Except he didn't send me the SQL file. Instead, he mailed me a screenshot of the graphical utility while it was generating the SQL file. And he did not mail me the screenshot as an image file - he sent me a Word document that contained nothing except the screenshot.

The mind boggles at how little people like him really understand computers, databases and how graphical tools interacts with the underlying system. Mind you, this is not a new hire in an outsourced location with just a runbook to follow - this is somebody with a US computer science degree and over five years of experience in his current role. Urgl.

Advice needed on apartment

I need some advice from people who've lived in various places with more or fewer amenities. It's about picking an apartment. I'm really torn between two places:

One is in a fancy neighborhood, close to the subway, has two bedrooms and a little nook where Heidi could keep her desk, has lots of closet space, has an elevator, a laundry room downstairs, and is at the top of our price range. It doesn't have a lot of natural light.

The other one is in a normal neighborhood, 20 minutes from the subway, has one bedroom but a huge living room and a den, is on a fifth-floor walk-up, has a laundry room but in a different building a hundred yards away, and is easily within our price range. It has crazy amounts of natural light.

My heart tells me to go for the second one. However, it is a fifth-floor walk-up, there's no elevator, and going outside to do the laundry would get really old quickly. I'm not sure how soon one gets tired of climbing up five floors and lugging the groceries up (delivery is an option for larger amounts of groceries, but not the day to day shopping). I have a bad knee and am already on heart meds at 37, so obviously the second place would not be good for the rest of my life - but it should be okay for 10-15 years.

How easily do you tire of climbing stairs? And how long do you regret not buying the apartment that you really love, and getting a safe but more boring place instead?