Yes, I'm still very excited. Not only is there the promise of Income in my future, the daily process of just having a job is proving to be interesting. Working is so educational!

The main thing I have learned so far?

Windows Vista. Sucks.

Or maybe it's just Word & Excel 97, I can't be certain because this computer has all of them and I haven't worked with any of them before.

But I'm assuming it's Vista. Which sucks. To a degree that's really just inexcusable, unless we assume that Microsoft, tired of everyone dissing them after they made using a computer easy for even the most clueless Luddite, decided to get their revenge.

In place of the simple, user-friendly menu bar, they've created a "ribbon." Which means nothing except that they renamed everything, moved it all around, and then hid it all behind rollover code. The only time-efficient way to find anything is to use the "help" function constantly--but watch out. When it tells you where to look for a function, it doesn't always use the same keywords that the menu items use.

If you're more generous than me, feel free to decide that Microsoft thought we'd all enjoy a treasure hunt through a new and impenetrable menu system.

I spent 10 minutes today cursing and searching every place I could find for a way to "strikeover" text in Excel. Three times, in fact, because even once I found it, it was so counterintuitive that I instantly forgot it.

And then there's Internet Explorer. Again, not my computer, it's a loaner laptop, so it's hard to figure out what's an annoying or badly designed feature and what's just garbage that the laptop's owner has either installed deliberately or has never bothered to remove.

As I recall, once upon a time I downloaded the latest incarnation of Explorer and then uninstalled it 10 minutes later because it was such a mess. I'm not enjoying being forced to work with it again, even temporarily. Computerwise, I'm a minimalist. I slice my customizable menu bars down to the bare minimum I need to do 90% of my normal tasks. I turn off every screen-hogging program I can turn off. My IE is set to open to a blank page when I start it up. When it comes to computers, I'm all about decluttering.

Using this laptop (although it's an expensive beast, I can tell) is driving me bonkers.

On the plus side, they came and set up my "new" PC today--the relic of some departed employee. I don't care that it's not "new" though. They tell me it has XP on it, and that's enough to make me happy. (I'd almost forgotten that monitors that aren't flat-screen were still in use. I spent some time staring at the stegosaurus-sized doorstop today, before I realized I should get back to work.)

Sadly, I turned back to the laptop. Because, you see, I'm not allowed to use the PC. I don't know what kind of pitfalls and perils await me, but I was told I'd have to attend two four-hour training sessions next week, and I'm not allowed to use "my" computer until I've finished the first one. Promises to be exciting, no?

I mean, how can someone need four hours of training and orientation before they're allowed to turn their computer on? But she told me it's SOP, so I'll have to put up with it. My one hope is that since (as far as I know) I'm the only one in the "training session" we'll be able to move faster than she anticipates.

The people are uniformly pleasant, even friendly. I haven't figured out anyone's name, except the one guy who helped me with my HR paperwork. It doesn't help that the office was full of visitors today and will be full of another set tomorrow.

Still. My job consists 90% of sitting at my own computer working on the franchises' ad programs, so there's no rush for me to learn anything but the software I need.

Don't let the whining fool you--I'm having fun.