Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes is an industrial disease afflicting office workers in particularly backward companies. The infection is caused by a series of organisms on one's computer operating in loose formation to slowly clog and destroy all internal communication.

The disease is carried by spirochetes in blue suits, who invade the system carrying briefcases and promising freedom from having to play Blue Screen of Death with one's email. The second disease is, however, actually worse than the first.

To set your signature, open a New Memo, then find the Tools menu, then load the Preferences database, then log back into Domino, then single-click — not double-click — the button that doesn't look like a button, then hit Roaming Preferences, then select your environment, then type your suicide note. You may only use 255 characters with no formatting.

Progress of disease

Primary Notes

Primary Notes is typically acquired via direct business contact with the infectious marketing materials of an IBM account manager. Approximately 10–90 days after the initial exposure (average 21 days), a lesion appears on the user's desktop. This lesion, called a "Notes Client," is an initially only mildly painful system ulceration localized at the point of initial exposure, typically the email and meeting systems.

Secondary Notes

Secondary Notes typically manifests six to eight weeks after the primary infection. Manifestations include banging the forehead against the screen when some random Notes process has crashed, yelling "WHY DEAR GOD WHY?" when the patient finds out the ridiculous things one has to do to get web pages to open in Firefox and mental blue-screening when trying to comprehend why "out of office" notices are sent at the end of the day rather than when you first try to email the person. Other symptoms include inflamed tear ducts and a croaking voice from hours on the phone to IT support.

All of these lesions are infectious and harbor active Notes organisms. A patient with Notes is most contagious when he or she has secondary Notes. Other symptoms common at this stage include fever, sore throat, malaise, weight loss, headache and a nostalgic yearning for the days of only having to sit waiting for the Exchange server to respond.

Tertiary Notes

Tertiary Notes usually manifests within a few years of the initial infection. This stage is characterized by a chronic inflammatory state in the brain of the sufferer.

Neurological complications at this stage can be diverse. In some patients, manifestations include personality changes, a fatalistic attitude, flattened emotional affect and automatic "sleep-working." Patients may reflexively schedule meetings with no other people in nonexistent meeting rooms in order to be able to put the agenda into the Notes database.

The disease may be fatal at this stage, often when the tertiary Notes sufferer tells a sufferer of secondary Notes the fifteen simple steps, including a reboot and a mere one-hour call to IT support, needed to do the obvious thing they were just lamenting at being unable to do.

Symptoms

• Over 10% of Notes users lose hair by the handful and punch walls.
• Over 1% let out a blood-curdling scream that chills the blood of over 50% of co-workers.
• Over 0.1% let out several blood-curdling screams that clear the building of all other co-workers not also suffering from Notes.
• Over 0.01% go postal in a really big way.
• Over 0.001% are IBM employees who will regale you at length with how much better Domino is than Exchange, as if that makes the Notes client suck any less.

Treatment

You know you always wanted to be a lumberjack really.

External links

• Interface Hall of Shame: Lotus Notes (iArchitect)