Well, not that I would actually do that (I like the dual NEC 1830’s too much), but boy, right now I sure feel like it.

Since the beginning of writing Pocket PC Network Programming, I have been using Word 2002. I’ve always found Word to be pretty reliable, especially for it’s tracking features. In addition, Addison Wesley has some nice templates set up to properly format the chapters content.

Now, earlier this week, I started editing. The copy editor I’ve been working with (who is excellent, btw), has been using Word 97 on them. When I opened up the documents after being re-saved in Word 97’s .DOC format, all of my style formats are gone. Yup, gone. Kaput. Completely missing. After going back and forth for a few days, we finally figured out that if she saved them in RTF format, I would be able to open them up, view edits, etc., without losing my styles. Everything seemed to be resolved.

Until today. I’m reviewing edits, making changes, etc. Now, it seems the files have some perverse pleasure in randomly crashing Word while saving changes. And best part of all, besides experiencing not only countless hours of lost work and data corruption, i’ve seemed to have developed temporary tourette’s syndrome. Each time Word crashes, I get louder than the last time. I yell more more and more obscene things at it. Clippy would be offended. In fact, right now, I hope Clippy shoves himself in a light socket.

Total number of times i’ve crashed Word 2002 today: 17.

In fact I just lost all of my edits on Chapter 4. Nice. I’m done for the night.