And here comes the last part of my story so far.
After deploying the domain, configuring PCs, configuring the server, configuring the switch, installing software, checking that the correct settings have been applied, configuring MS Outlook (don't ask) and giving each and every user a d e t a i l e d tutorial on using the PC like a modern human and not as a Homo Erectus, I had to lock my door, put down my phone and disconnect the ship's announcement system's speaker in my room. The reasons?
- No one could use USB storage media, or any storage media. As per security policy I emailed and told them about.
- No one could use the ship's computers to connect to the internet. Again, as per policy.
- No one had any games on their Windows 10 Pro machines. As per policy.
- Everyone had to use a 10-character password, valid for 3 months, with certain restrictions. As per policy.
For reasons mentioned above, I had to (almost) blackmail the CO to draft an order enforcing those policies in writing (I know it's standard procedure for you, but for the military where I am it was a truly alien experience). Also, because I never trusted the users to actually backup their data locally, I had UrBackup clone their entire home folder, and a scheduled task execute a script storing them to the old online drive. Soon it became apparent why: (for every sysadmin this is routine, but this was my first experience)
- People kept deleting their files, whining to me to restore them
- People kept getting locked out because they kept entering their password WRONG for FIVE times IN a ROW because THEY had FORGOTTEN the CAPS lock KEY on. Had to enter three or four times during weekend for that.
- People kept whining about the no-USB policy, despite offering e-mail and shared folders.
The final straw was the updates. The CO insisted that I set the updates to manual because some PCs must not restart on their own. The problem is, some users barely ever checked. One particular user, when I asked him to check and do the updates, claimed he did that yesterday. Meanwhile, on the WSUS console: PC inactive for over 90 days.
I blocked the ship's phone when I got reassigned.
Phiew, finally I got all those off my chest! Thanks, guys. All of the rants so far remind me of one quote from Dave Barry:

Sister = bee ( who isn't a stranger to Ubuntu)
Me = Cee

Bee: can I use your laptop?
Cee : why ? Use yours ,it's works fine.
Bee : no I want to use yours and I need to work with windows.
Cee: 🤯
Bee : my work can only be done using windows.
Cee : fine do whatever ( doesn't want to argue )
* Le bee opens MS word, and starts her work *
Cee : 😤😤Seriously?
Bee : I don't like libre
Cee : 😑😑😑^∞
* Few moments later *
Bee : my work is done ,you can have your laptop,btw it's updating.
Cee : 😑😑😑😑😑
* 2000 years later *
*Opens Ubuntu *
*Getting a weird bug*
*Tried to fix *
*Can't open OS files * 👏👏👏🎆
* Windows not shutdown properly *
* Opens windows *
* Not able to login via pin *
* Password ? not accepted *
* Changes outlook password *
* Please chose a password you haven't chosen before *
* Logs in *
* types old pin to change pin *
*You've entered wrong pin too many times *
*System hanging a lot *
* Removes pin *
* Gets huge mcAfee restart system popups , every 10 sec *
* Just shutdown , feels irritated for the rest of the day*

* Regrets dual booting, shd have wiped the windows partition 😫😫*

*Wonders,what the hell did my sister even do to my laptop ?*

Forget about Internet explorer compatibility, EMAIL TEMPLATES are the actual worst. Outlook uses the same html rendering engine as MS WORD. It's sooo painful. All the bad practices you had to do 15 years ago, you have to do when you write email templates.

YOU WILL NOT KNOW PAIN until you have to make an email template, that works in Gmail, Yahoo Mail, OUTLOOK, outlook.com, outlook for mac, MOBILE, Android, the gmail app, IOS, apple mail, and so on. And after you make an unholy abomination of table garbage, then having to make it responsive/mobile friendly after all that!

If something is broken in one client, fixing it will break something in a different client! And then having to take a stab in the dark to try to fix it and then sending yet another test email (which costs $ per test)

I must have slashed decades off my life having to build email templates. It really is horrendous. There are frameworks like Zurb for email that at least let you feel like you're using a modern workflow. But things break just as often.

Honestly if you have the option, use a wysiwyg editor for building emails. At least when it does break (and they all will) you can at least blame the software.

Which is better than spending 4 hours on why that table cell doesn't line up correctly in outlook.

Working on a project where the coordinator is insisting on using OneDrive. Lost the link he sent out in an email so decided to:

- Google "OneDrive": Eventually brought me to "office.live.com/...." with a view of my settings and apps ... no OneDrive.

- Spent a while using a bit of logic to click around and find it, forgot logic doesn't work well with MS products and ended up on Outlook instead.

- Spent a while searching for the original email with the link, found it, brings me to "...sharepoint.com/....".

- Inside sharepoint (OneDrive?) the banner says "Office 365".

- But the browser tab says OneDrive.

Are Microsoft just afraid of consistency at this point? I mean seriously, pick a name and use it everywhere. Why is that so hard? why is that so complicated?

OFFICE 365 IS FUCKIN DOGSHIT, I CAN’T EVEN LOGIN TO FUCKING OUTLOOK BECAUSE MS WAY OF GIVING ME THE 2FA WAS SO VAGUE AND RANDOM

I FUCKING HATE MS TEAMS

I FUCKING HATE AZURE DEVOPS

I FUCKING HATE MSSQL

I FUCKING MS

Supporting outlook in your mail templates.. On a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being writing code in sublime/eclipse to 10 being writing code in MS Word, how difficult is it??

Remember my rant about having to write a newsletter which works with MS Outlook?

Remember that rant by @EclipseMain about teachers teaching how to build a website in MS word?

Well. The two just became united. I had finished the fking newsletter and was waiting for approval. They kept on introducing last minute changes, a commata here and there and whatnot. I literally was waiting for 2 weeks to send that shit out.
My boss gets the glorious idea that if I complain so much about Outlook and Microsoft, lets have the secretary design the newsletter from scratch, literally copying my design, in ms word... argument: one can send an html email out from word.
...
Then they ask me which one should be send out. I say I can apply the design suggestions to my newsletter but if we sent theirs, with all the weird fonts and being even less responsive then my suggestion, it would be even worse.
What the fuck.
Also: they let me waste a lot of time on this thing to tell me later oh we have money left lets hire a designer. Why not do that from the start? Ffs... <.<

Never thought I'd say this but...I wish IE6 was back for Outlook.

//After Outlook 2003, Microsoft decided that MS Word was a better renderer for emails than IE6 was, what the hell Microsoft?! Get it together man.

The interface for time input in outlook Web on mobile is driving me crazy!! It's not as if there was a built in control that is well supported in all modern browsers.... Right

1. You can't tap on an hour to select it
2. You can only select by scrolling
3. The scrolling is "smooth scrolling". So you have N O fucking chance to select the time slot you wanted. After too much time has passed you just give up and accept that your meeting will be at 09:57
4. In order to go up in time you constantly activate the"pull to refresh" feature of Chrome.

I'm definitely no mindless MS hater but this I cannot tolerate.

When you are reading job requirements for a dev job and they put a shit ton emphasis on MS Office. I remember a phone interview where they asked skill level for Word, Excel and Outlook.

I actually found a use for Outlook's scummy default behaviour to open links in Edge and not the default browser.

On my company laptop I mainly use Librewolf because it allows installing plug-ins despite group policy. I only use Edge for Azure DevOps and company portals because MS SSO doesn't work with Librewolf for some reason.

Because Outlook disregards the OS settings and uses Edge by default, MS software forms a sort of bubble, and I can freely set Librewolf as my default browser.

A mandatory update (for security) for MS Outlook has just broken the badge indicator for new emails 🤡

MS outlook is a piece of shit!! i can never find contacts in the address book, it to the first 10 contacts! you have to know their exact name sometimes. what a fucking piece of shit. this is just one of many complaints i have on it.

AHHHHHHHH

SOOO last monday I got a new MS Office and Outlook in my office. It's ugly as fuck and not as functionable as the old one we got here, and I cannot install Thunderbird or so...

But at least NIGHT THEME WUUUU

I fucking hate the modern tech stacks that are forcing to use their products and workflows. Fucking Microsoft. Used to be good but now it's shit.

I had to email the written homework. After finishing it, I attached it and sent it to my professor via email (Outlook on Web). I did not pay much attention.

5 hours later he replies to me saying that he cannot accept this form of submission. I was confused because he mentioned that he wanted it only as attachment via email.

Turns out, Outlook did not attach the PDF. Instead, uploaded it on OneDrive, and embedded a private link on the body. It was 11:55 PM, I was working for 10 hours straight with that assignment and didn't pay attention at all before sending. Fuck this. He was generous enough to accept the submission after the deadline.

I am glad that I went away from Windows 5 years ago. I don't want to touch any MS product anymore. Hopefully they do not fuck up GitHub and implement it with their other half-assed products.

Not sure if it should be a joke or a rant, but something rather funny (at least to me) happened today.

TL;DR; Someone's outlook was crippled by 100k+ of warning notifications

So we have developed a server that has an internal database that wraps around an elastic search instance, that is managed by a POS vault/storage solution, that we have to use for legal reasons. The elastic search is "provided" by the software, but we keep this internal database just to be sure and totally not because it's unreliable POS.

Anyways, they take data integrity very seriously, so every warning our server produces is emailed to someone in charge to review it and if necessary forward it to us. This will be important later on.

Couple of days ago we got error forward when trying to write an entry into the POS software we get an error, because an object we tried to write already existed. After some investigation we concluded an entry was missing when the internal database was created, so we asked them to repopulate elastic search to solve this problem.

When start the server we always sync the internal database to the elastic search and emit a warning when an entry is missing in internal database or vice versa. And well... almost all of them were missing, which caused our server to emit ~40 warnings/ms. Poor outlook. Still investigating for the cause, but damn, I never expected I'd take down someone email account by accident

Styling Newsletters is like time travel..time travel in a retarded past that doesnt knew what beauty modern css is, also fuck your sincerly MS Outlook for being a propritary cunt.

display:block will not work for MS Outlook, cause, well reasons.

-Be Friday morning
-Be me sleeping, I have my vacation.
-Got SMS from secretary that her office (MS office 2013 pro) not working Word, Excel, Outlook.
-Ignored, still sleeping
-After hour received call from her. Answered say I will be after half a hour.
Got shower, breakfast and went there.
-an old error appeared again. Can't open any of programs, same error, can't remember error codes. But it's update or something breaks it, tried reinstalling, but it will shows up again. Quicker fix is repair.
-turned off updates cuz I don't want to deal with this everyday.

Anyway. Fuck Microsoft monkeys for not testing their shit before releasing

outlook 2016 is so buggy and always show you have unread emails when there is none and no unread box as usual to be. the theme and layout xan mass up by itself, good job MS office team, u finally did a good job to show native app can be as buggy and ugly as web version of outlook. if you have not upgrade please DON'T

I finally got the clarity on my relationship.

Atleast I think I did.

I am officially done with Microsoft. I mean the only useful and sensible products left are Outlook and Excel.

Funnily both the products have hit their maturity stage and now MS is trying to bloat them. But still to a reasonable extent.

What other MS products are worth touching? Wait.. I legit can't think of any now.

Next on tagret, Google and Apple. Lol

Perhaps only Apple product I ever want to interact with will be (future tense) Apple Music (well because lossless and the fact that that the product is the reason for existence of the company).

NGL Steve had the right vision on Music. They tagged things right in their iTunes catalogue. But then MTV happened.

And now Spotify is the new MTV. Fuck me in ass someone.

So only Google? Well I have already sold my soul to them. What's more remaining?

Outlook irritates the heck out of me with its distracting notification bar that's recently begun popping up almost every time I start the god damn shitty application. What's worse, there doesn't seem to be any way to disable this annoying crap. Our support technicians are unable to solve it, so I wrote feedback to Microsoft. I don't think they are ever going to answer, though. They haven't even responded to another problem with Outlook that I reported nine months ago! Microsoft are reallly inconsistent, to say the least. Some of their products, like Visual Studio, VS Code and Microsoft Flight Simulator, are excellent! But, more mainstream software, like MS Office and Outlook, suck. Windows (I'm using Windows 10) is so so. It works alright if you know your ways with the registry editor. The same goes for the support. If you're lucky, you can get hold of a real, flesh-and-blood person who patiently guides you through the cumbersome process of, for example purchasing and installing Minecraft (believe me, it isn't easy, took almost an hour for the support person to solve. Creds to him). Sometimes, like when activating an old Windows license, you get to talk to a bot and that, surprisingly, works very well too. However, if you report any bug or feedback to Microsoft through an application's help section, you 'll never hear from them. They just ignore it.

Then I spent 2 days trying to make outlook 2010 work again on a user's desktop. Just to find out the "run in compatible mode" was on (even after removing the office completely from the reg manually)...

And I still don't know why the *%×& the compatible mode was preventing outlook from loading the user's profile 😣