Jet Airways - Flying in India

When I went to India in January, I chose Jet Air as my domestic flight provider despite a few negative comments. I am glad that I made that decision (even if it was based on price) as it was a great experience.

Overall, my flights (Mumbai -> Hyderabad, and Hyderabad -> Delhi) were on time. A friend of mine flew Hyderabad -> Delhi on Spice Jet, and his flight was about 4 hours late. I've heard that SpiceJet is relatively cheap because all of the businessmen fly it on a regular basis, but that flights to Delhi in the evening are usually late due to compounded delays over the course of the day.

One of my favorite parts about Jet Air was the fact that we had hot meals both times, even though one of the trips was only about an hour. Each meal had a hot entree, bread (usually naan), and some sides. They were very filling! On each flight there was also the choice of juice or bottled water, and the meal came with hot tea.

The service seemed so much better than on US domestic flights. The meal was hot, in real dishes, and was free for even a short flight. In the US, you'd be happy just to get a pack of peanuts! Not to mention the fact that in the US you frequently are stuck with none of your flights offering a meal as you fly across the country (as I've mentioned before). Indians definitely have better comfort when it comes to flying on small planes. Granted, the seats are a bit cramped, but are equivalent to many US flights.

Marie Antoinette - Was there a Point?

Ever since I saw the first preview, I wanted to see Marie Antoinette. The preview convinced me that although it would be a movie filled with rich people having fun and wearing expensive clothes, it would still have an interesting story to tell about the title character.

However, I was sadly mistaken. Halfway through the movie I was ready for it to end; my roommate, who had seen it the night before, laughed that I didn't make it as far into the movie as she did. Luckily it was a rented DVD, so I just hit the fast forward button until it looked like they were talking or advancing the storyline. I contribute my ability to get to the end of the movie to the ability to fast forward at a designated speed.

Granted, I tend to get easily impatient with movies; I know a movie is good if I can manage to sit through it without constantly checking my watch for the last half. Or fast-forwarding, if it's rented. Much of Marie Antoinette was only reinforcing the fact that she was a spoiled woman, who did what she wanted and spent money she didn't have. So many facts about the real person were only barely noticeable, assuming the viewer was already aware of them (like the fact that she never wore the same dress twice). Much of the movie was just watching her lie around, or play games. Of course, the first third of the movie had the tension of whether or not she would convince her husband to consummate the marriage, but this part of the plot can only hold a viewer's attention for so long.

After they have a child is a good point to begin fast-forwarding until the end. The rest of the movie after this point is just Marie and her friends having fun. Much of the movie doesn't even have dialogue; although many movies can tell a great story without a large amount of dialogue (Amelie, anyone?), this one merely stagnates. There is an interesting love scene though, so if you want to see Kirsten Dunst without many clothes on this part of the movie will help you in that respect.

I did enjoy seeing all of the costumes designed for the movie, so if you are interested in old clothing then the movie will be fun throughout. Other than the exciting dresses, shoes, and hats (I wish I could wear a boat in my hair!), the last 30 minutes (maybe less?) has actual excitement as the French Revolution begins. If only more of the movie concentrated on this one part!

Another problem I have with the movie is the fact that Marie seems like a completely clueless but possibly extremely nice person. Her personality comes off as almost non-existent, except for the few times it seems that she enjoys thrills that save her from her "boring" life. Her husband seems like a dolt, but at least the character seems to have a little depth.

Why did I spent part of my Saturday evening watching this movie?

Microsoft Office 2007 - Don't try to right click without dual processors!!

I have used Office products since the late 90's, so I was very excited about the new Office 2007 suite. Granted, I am partially biased towards it since I was an SDET intern on Outlook before coming to grad school, but despite that fact I see some major flaws. In fact, if I hadn't acquired it at the student price I would probably be extremely annoyed.

It's always best to say the positive parts first (well, the positive parts with caveats): the suite as a whole is very well done, and I especially like the ribbon (the new controls in place of the old menu) most of the time. I am in love with the task bar in Outlook. I appreciate the slightly more elegant look to Excel charts, except that it takes the power of at least one full 1.6ghz processor to edit them, and editing chart titles is nearly impossible. I am entranced with the new Outlook calendar, although I'm still not impressed with the low details view.

I should probably expound on those caveats before I go on a tangent about memory usage, and details by application is probably the best. I haven't used the new Infopath, Access, OneNote, or Publisher yet, although I have all of them except OneNote, so that will be a different post probably far in the future. One should also note that I have an Intel Core Duo with 1GB RAM. So here goes it with the general products:

Excel

I can't remember ever having so many problems with right-clicking or scrolling in an Office product. The response time seems to be fine if the spreadsheet only contains data, but as soon as you add charts it's a whole new world. For a spreadsheet with only charts, scrolling down is nearly impossible. The best I've been able to do is continuously click the down arrow; otherwise, it seems to forget that I wanted it to scroll.

As far as right-clicking goes, don't do it on a chart unless it's on an axis. I've had Excel quit responding due to a right click, although to its merit it eventually recovers on its own and doesn't crash. But who wants to wait 10 minutes to do any editing after clicking on the area to edit? After a week of frustration I discovered that editing charts via the ribbon did not slow down the application at all, and it responded as quick as Excel 2003! As much as I love the ribbon, I find right-clicking to be easier because it doesn't require me to move my mouse away from the chart...and I do love the semblance of efficiency. However, since right-clicking is apparently prohibited in this new version, I began using the ribbon. At first it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to change my chart title and I nearly threw the computer across the room (the only thing that stopped me is the fact that it's a new laptop and I absolutely adore it, despite Office). Now that I've learned where some crucial buttons are though, I can use the ribbon relatively quickly. I still wish I had the choice of right-click; did no one bother to test that it was realistically possible to use? Seems like right-clicking locking up the application should have been a high priority ticket....someone really dropped the ball on that one.

Speaking of dropping the ball...are users expected to no longer what to edit their chart titles without overwriting the previous changes? If I click on the chart title twice to edit it, I get the cursor at the end as in previous versions of Excel. I can then proceed to erase the last few characters and type in new characters. However, if I press enter or click on the chart I will always lose the original text and only the changes will remain. If I instead click on the spreadsheet after making the changes as the first click outside of the title box, sometimes it will save the entire thing, but many times it still loses the original text. For example, if my title is Run2 but I click on it and erase the 2 and replace it with a 3, when I hit enter I will end up with '3' as my chart title instead of the expected 'Run3'. I have discovered that to ensure chart title editing works appropriately, the user should click on the chart title (or select it via the ribbon) and then type the entire desired title into the function bar near the bottom of the ribbon. Why would I want to use the ribbon just to edit a chart title? Who knows. Well, someone knows...and he/she is probably a SDE.

One thing I can't complain about though is the default colors for graphs. They are more subdued than the pure red/blue of versions before, and make them look much more elegant and closer to a Matlab creation.

Word

Word has been a relatively positive experience so far. I remember the Word ribbon from my SDET summer, although it has of course changed in the past 2 years. I've heard that it has a new equation editor, but since I use LaTeX for everything I haven't tried it out yet (although I'm tempted, at least). I did use Word to show off the ribbon to my Mac-using labmates, however, who were impressed. They didn't believe me when I told them that Microsoft had completely revamped the menu system (apparently they live in a dark hole), but Word was great for demonstrating the ribbon. My absolute favorite part about the ribbon in any application are the superscript/subscript buttons in Word. Finally, I don't have to use LaTeX just for easy superscript/subscript creation! (yes, I'm aware that keystrokes could be used previously)

Outlook



Oh, Outlook, how I worship you. Well, maybe not...but I do feel like it is one of the most successful of the new Office applications. The calendar is such a far cry from the old flat pastel one, any frequent user must be ecstatic. The fact that I can easily view my week's schedule in a reasonable format makes my heart flutter. The task pane allows me to finally be able to keep track of the days activities without having to constantly switch back to the calendar view, and I can finally keep up with my tasks without needing to switch to the task view. I use Outlook as my life management system (combined with my Treo, of course), so being able to stay organized efficiently makes my day that much better. Besides, how could anyone dislike the new pleasing aesthetic?

Unfortunately Outlook isn't perfect either, just like all other complex software systems. The "low details" view on the calendar seems relatively useless, whereas the "medium details" view seems like a good "low details" option. I think medium details might be better used to not display day long appointments since they crowd the space, and only display appointments with specific times. But I don't think I thought of that when I was testing the calendar...or did I? Only the work ticket system knows!

PowerPoint

I definitely like the new PowerPoint, although coping/pasting graphs from Excel is a time consuming task for no apparent reason. It is really nifty that they finally copy/paste graphs without a border and with a clear background by default though! I'm also impressed with the fact that if you have chart 1 on your slide and selected, and you try to paste chart 2, it will combine the data from the 2 charts to create a new one! I accidentally did this the first time, but it is such an awesome feature that I didn't mind! My quickly made slides for an afternoon presentation look so much better just because of the default graph quality, as well as the default font family (verdana, soooo much nicer than times new roman!!).