# I Finished My Charts: In which I relate the completion of yet another pointless task **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 24, 2005, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213 "2005-05-24T02:34:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/1 "2005-05-24T02:34:52Z")
“Do you have your charts done? Are your charts completed? Hey, how long until those charts are done? Are you using the new chart format? Remember, you need to use the new cover page.” This has been my life for the last two months; all of this work, tangling with the uncooperative software, dealing with stupid hardware and network problems, trying to acquire drawings and technical specifications for thirty-five year old equipment, et cetera…all so I can make “charts”, the only product of approximately 500 hours of labor. Some damn PowerPoint slides. Gee, pretty colors! Look, I made the borders of images with a double frame, just like you wanted. Yes, it’s all in 20 pt Ariel. What? Oh, yes, it’s the new format. Now take your damn slides and go away. I need a drink. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/2 "2005-05-24T13:08:58Z")
Yeah, but did you put the cover sheet on your TPS report? You know we’re putting cover sheets on them now. I’ll get you a copy of the memo. ---
**Author:** ![Campion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@Campion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Campion)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/3 "2005-05-24T14:28:36Z")
**Stranger** , I thought of you yesterday when I had to make My Very First PowerPoint. 😉 More specifically, I thought, “ **Stranger** is a very patient man. Because I am very close to killing the next person who walks into my office and _I’ve only been doing this for five minutes_!!!” ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/4 "2005-05-24T14:49:10Z")
Yeah, I never thought I’d be a Viewgraph Engineer, either. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/5 "2005-05-25T02:39:05Z")
The only thing worse than making a PowerPoint presentation is sitting through one. The only thing worse than that is to find out that the project for which you’ve spent months on overtime was cancelled two weeks ago. (Suspended, they say. Ha!, I reply. I know your vernacular, you inglorious bastards.) Guess what happened to me today. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Taters](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/taters/32/2845_2.png) [@Taters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taters)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/6 "2005-05-25T03:03:36Z")
Argh! I loathe PowerPoint. I hate, hate, hate making slides and it’s even worse when you must follow the “prescribed format” that includes background color, frame, font, font color and size for each succeeding bullet, etc. For pete’s sake, just let me do the damn slides and stay the hell out of my hair. ---
**Author:** ![Campion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@Campion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Campion)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/7 "2005-05-25T03:52:21Z")
> [@Stranger On A Train](#): > > Guess what happened to me today. Ooooh, oooh! I know! After you’ve killed yourself for the past x months, you find out that the project that you _knew_ was completely stupid and irrelevant **actually was**! I’m sorry to hear that, but I hope this means you finally get some free time. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/8 "2005-05-25T04:14:36Z")
It is a well known fact that Lite Pro’s never ever work when you start a presentation. No matter how many times you have rehearsed… ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/9 "2005-05-25T07:48:00Z")
> [@Campion](#): > > Ooooh, oooh! I know! After you’ve killed yourself for the past x months, you find out that the project that you _knew_ was completely stupid and irrelevant **actually was**! The saving grace, if there can be said to be such a situation, is that I called it exactly. For a month I’ve been telling collegues–only half-jokingly–that they were going to cancel the program right after this “tollgate”. I was also prescient on a few other pertinent issues; lamentedly, my seering abilities are not accounted for on my performance review; I was, however, particularly, ironically, singled out for the quality of my presentation slides and the effort I put into them. Er, okay. Thanks for, uh, noticing my “work”. The entire bag was a damn-fool exercise to begin with, and I’m at least in part pleased to see it disappear into the void; however, it remains that the only successful product I’ve worked on in the last decade are some no-brainer paint brush handles. And we wonder why the chicks don’t gush over me the way they do such luminaries as the comb-over king Donald Trump or the cheese of sleeze Larry Flint. > [@Campion](#): > > I’m sorry to hear that, but I hope this means you finally get some free time. Depending on how things cash out I may have more than I desire. Despite appearances, King George is not a great booster of the Military Industrial Complex of which I am a tiny little cog in the great clockworks, and once programs so overfunded that they were like a prime porker on slaughterday are now emaciated and skeletal, awaiting the circling buzzards to pick the rotting flesh from their bones. I shed not a tear, honestly, for the industry as a whole, but I will miss the steady cashflow to which I have, like a heroin addict, become unconscionably addicted. Ah well; I’ve enough for a few months sojourn in the sun, and afterward toss myself to the winds of fate, which all sounds so fantastic and peregrine until I realize that it means possibly living out of my car again, or worse, habitating under a freeway underpass like one of our more unfortunate members of society. Well, they always said I’d come to a bad end, and who am I to disappoint them. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Campion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@Campion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Campion)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/10 "2005-05-25T14:50:21Z")
We’ll just have to start calling you Cassandra, won’t we? 😉 I do hope that you get some time off, as in a vacation, not a job loss. You need it. But if you do end up with more time on your hands than you’d hoped, maybe this is your door opening to something new? As for being penniless, destitute, and living out of your car, my grandmother would tell you, “Don’t borrow trouble.” (My grandfather would tell you, “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes,” but then my grandmother would smack him, and he would pretend like we misheard him.) If and when that becomes your bridge, options will present themselves. Hang in there. ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-finished-my-charts-in-which-i-relate-the-completion-of-yet-another-pointless-task/305213/11 "2005-05-25T20:06:05Z")
Yesterday, one of my colleagues allowed as to how Clippy was telling him that he was putting too many words on his PowerPoint slides. I suggested that he change the “Audience Idiocy Settings” under Preferences.