Macking 16

Collapsing Calculator
You already know about WindowShade. It's a nifty feature of System 7.5.x that lets you collapse a window into its title bar by double-clicking (configurable in its control panel) on the title bar. All that remains of your window is the title bar, which is a great way to conserve space when you need to keep a lot of windows open. If you're working on a document that requires you keep your calculator open and ready to go, WindowShade it.
Now you can copy equations (example: 33+7-10/3) from your document and paste onto the calculator's title bar, wait a sec, and copy the end result and paste back into your document. You don't even have to open the calculator and watch it think. Cool. (From TipWorld, subscriptions available on request.)

Buy some RAM!
Memory has never been cheaper. At this writing, I have been installing 16-meg DIMMs for clients that cost only $92 each! A 32-meg SIMM costs under $200. These things were near a thousand dollars less than a year ago. Note: SIMMs, or Single In-Line Memory Modules (The D in DIMMs stands for Dual) are for all except the most recent PowerMacs, which require DIMMs. NuBus PowerMacs require that they be installed in pairs, but PCI PowerMacs don't require it but can make faster use of them by a process known as interleaving. Only the 7200s are lacking the interleaving feature; the 6200 and 6300 series Macs have just one slot for RAM so buy as much memory as you think you will ever need because you will have to take out what you buy now if you need to upgrade later. This price is from the Chip Merchant, phone (800) 808-2447 ext. 3. These people sell three times as much RAM as their next nearest competitor and no one sells for less. Before you buy anywhere else, including local outlets or from Apple or Power Computing, call the Chip Merchant for a quote. The only disadvantage to buying from them is that you may have to send it back; sometimes RAM will arrive dead on arrival. It has happened to me only once, for all the clients I install for, but being a commodity, things can happen. That fact alone makes it worth having RAM pre-installed in a new machine, but ask yourself how much more you want to pay for this convenience.

Inside the Scream, Part II
Well the spray is really flying from my column in last monthÕs issue about Stream. And, as one could predict, I have learned even more details about the inner workings of this most awful of companies, possibly the worst high-tech place to work in Oregon.
(Note: I received a well-reasoned response from a friend who works there, who contradicts most of the charges cited here and in last month's column. I stand by both columns, except for some minor rewrites here that mistakenly gave the impression that the problem was with the employees and not the management. Read the response as well as this column, but remember that everything I have written was given to me by sources from within and without Stream, and I continue to get mail thanking me for the exposé.)
This hell for workers is a kind of company written about in cyberpunk nightmare novels of the '80s, where machines watch your every move, and you can be fired for the slightest misdeed, if not mere capricious and arbitrary whim.
All your calls are monitored by a Big Brother system called "Aspect," with every call time-tracked and result-coded.
Starting with the upper management of the Beaverton branch (if not the entire corporation), the entire structure is set up to create fear, uncertainty and insecurity in the workers. The "Aspect" system tracks the login in the morning to the logout in the evening. One is docked and punished for tardiness, even down to the merest handful of seconds. The user logs in and the phone says "8:30." But the time is tracked in seconds by the server, so if one logs in on time, it may really be 8:30:46 and that is counted as a tardy! Accumulate a dozen or two of these, along with a few late signins with legitimate reason and advance notice (which are held against you anyway) and you are subject to immediate termination.
I heard one example of the company wasting three man-hours for a 45-minute meeting to berate one employee for being tardy a total of 24 minutes time over 12 instances. Is this nuts? Do the math. It's not Aspect's fault; it is reputed to be a good logging and tracking system. The fault is all with management: if you scrutinize people's every move you don't get better performance, you just make people paranoid.
Have a side business, a wife, kids, or just a life? Want to make a local phone call for personal or business reasons during your break on the company phone? Forget it. Verboten. Someone is monitoring the system at all times, or at least the logs later in the day. You could get fired for that. Furthermore, until recently, there was no public phone in the lunchroom! You had to leave the site, walk over to a public phone at a market, make your call and walk back, all in your 15-minute break. Oh, and don't be tardy. Stream employees have taken to carrying cell phones in order to transact personal needs, and many have been harassed for that, even though they use them on their breaks and at lunch, and there is no official corporate policy on cell phones so people are being harassed for violating a nonexistent rule.
I think that they would replace the entire staff with robots, if only someone would build them. People have lives, dagnabbit! (I would feel bad if Stream officially took away the cell-phone privilege as a result of my writing about it here, but if that happens just ask yourself just how petty can a company be?) A lot of these idiot measures were instituted at the Murray site; older ex-employees say things were less oppressive at Gemini.
Since the column ran I received email from people defending Stream because they feel their jobs are in jeopardy, but none of them denied the charges (except, see above). Well, this has been going on since well before I wrote anything about it. Their jobs are in jeopardy, all right, and it is because the management has them so afraid that they can't realize what is happening to them. But I have also received more email and furtive phone calls (I'm listed) with additional gory details and inside information.
Some of the callers have wondered what I accomplished by revealing who Stream's contracts are. I revealed this info specifically to help Mackers reading this column to know exactly where they might wind up when they call for tech support, and what obstacles they face when trying to get it. In the spirit of that, here is how to get the best support possible for your problems:
First, do some of your own testing! If you get crashes or strange behavior, turn off all unnecessary extensions and see if the problem persists. If it goes away, then the problem is not with the crashing product, but its interaction with something else. This is useful info for tech support. The more work you can do to isolate the problem, the quicker it can be solved.
Then, whenever you call a company for support, first ask the tech straight out, "Do you work for the company that makes (this product), or do you work for Stream?" This is the only circumstance under which they may admit the truth without risk of termination. Then tell them immediately your level of expertise and the tests you have done to resolve your problem. This will help them get past the stock answers they are required to give you and they can get down to really helping you.
Pay close attention to every question they ask and suggestion given. You might be talking to an untrained temp or beginner, or someone called in to fill an empty chair. It is important not to go in with a hostile attitude, though, because nothing will be solved and it can take longer to handle your problem. If you determine that you are more knowlegable than they are, ask to talk to a supervisor. Then tell the supervisor that you were treated courteously and competently by the previous tech but that you need to be transferred to a Level II technician. Don't give the supervisor any reason to give that worker a black mark because they don't need much of an excuse. (Unless, of course, you get a bad egg and you want that person reprimanded or fired.) Ask each tech at each level if they are under time constraints or if they can take the time to help you now. This will let them off the hook if the call is recorded and later reviewed and s/he has to explain why it took 20 minutes instead of the three they are normally allotted.
If you call for tech support and in fact do not get Stream, then these precautions are also useful. Always do as much pre-investigation of your problem as you are capable and make notes as you go. You learn more that way, anyway; your goal as a computer user should be to enhance your skills as much as possible so you can be comfortable doing whatever you need to do, and less insecure when things go out of whack.
Stream's attitude toward their employees probably goes back to their headquarters in Canton ("Shit flows downstream," after all). They were originally called Corporate Software, which later acquired 1-800 Software, a company providing similar 3rd-party tech support, and then they merged with RR Donnelly, becoming a subdivision. But Stream's upper management is, according to my contacts, pretty uniformly clueless both in technical skills and people issues. I also got mail from a former employee of 800-Software, who was surprised to hear of the acquisition, but who noted that many of his former cronies are now Stream managers. He said that the operation is underfunded and sorely lacking in equipment; many times the techs are not able to test and support their contract products adequately, if at all.
Note to Penny Hanham (the Beaverton office general manager): As an outsider who has never worked there but been given these stories about what goes on under your watch, the best thing you can do is completely change your hostile, inhuman attitude or resign your post, with a public recommendation that Stream make every effort to treat employees in such a manner that they bore their friends telling them what a great place they work. Then maybe your precious proprietary secrets wouldn't be leaking like juice from a rotten cantalope. Oh, in case you have forgotten, the "Good Times" virus is an urban legend.

Ghosts in your documents
This info is for users of PageMaker (both Mac and Wintel versions) only. Quark handles empty text blocks differently.
Have you ever clicked on a paragraph on your page and find that you cannot select the desired text? Have you opened an old document and found it asking for a font that you know you did not use, and that you cannot locate? Your page may be covered with the ghosts of partly deleted and moved text blocks, some of which are overlaying the columns you want to edit, preventing you from selecting text underneath.
To locate and delete these beasts, first zoom out to the Show Entire Pasteboard view, click on the selection tool (arrow cursor) and then choose Cmd-A (Select All). You will see every story element and placed graphic become highlighted. You may also see a number of other items as well (See illustration).

Item #1 is a complete story, containing 20K of text. It is completely invisible until selected, and so small that you would not find it by just clicking around on the pasteboard. Items #2 and #3 are also concealed stories, but containing only a few words. Item #3 is visible only because you happen to have this page open; since part of it is touching the page, it disappears when you move to another page.
Item #4 is a text block containing only a couple of Returns, making it invisible. It is sitting on top of the column of text so you wind up clicking in it instead. Worse, the block is formatted in 36-point Zapf Dingbats, which leads to an interesting surprise if you just click in and start typing without paying attention.
Getting rid of these haunting nuisances is a step-by-step process, unfortunately. You can draw a selection rectangle around a large portion of the pasteboard and hit delete if there is nothing within that you want to save, but if you click anywhere on screen after doing a Select All, you lose track of where all the invisible ghosts are. So make use of the Zoom capability by moving the cursor over the offending item and then command-clicking on it, which zooms you in and places the item in the middle of your screen. When you know exactly where the ghost is you can deselect all and then re-select the specific item and delete. Next, command-click and zoom out, type Cmd-A and look for the next one.
After you have cleared off the pasteboard and your two open pages, go to the next page (or pair of pages) and do another Select All to find any ghosts that are specific to those pages. When finished do a Save As and watch your document shrink noticably.

Microsoft Bash of the Month
Oh, I could rant about how they are using their ActiveX technology to force an advantage for their Internet Exploiter over Netscape Navigator that could give them control over the entire World Wide Web, but why bother. Besides, MS and Apple are all kissyface right now and just maybe Microsoft really believes it is in their own interest to keep Apple alive and vital, which helps us Mackers maintain our favorite platform. So I won't waste any more space on this than I already have (but I still won't use any of their products).

URL of the Month
Teresita Dabrieo writes in a letter to MacWay:
"One of the requests I see from time to time (just had a new bunch) is for Credit Card Processing/Merchant Account software. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that this doesn't exist on Macintosh, I'd love for the EvangeList to share this with their entreprenuer friends:
"(All disclaimers apply, blah blah blah) MacAuthorize, by Tellan software, is incredibly beautiful credit card processing software. Unlike its ugly DOS competitors, it is easy to use, gives great output, and doesn't cause your machine to crash. We have been using it for 8 months and I *love* it!
"Pass this URL on to your friends: http://www.tellan.com when they tell you they can't use a Mac for credit card processing."

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No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.

email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)