I have a theory about microsoft office products. Do you remember the Batman movie that had Jim Carey as the Riddler? That character built a device that sucked the brain power out of people and transferred it to the Riddler. I think that's what MS Office products do - they transfer your brain power to Redmond. I can't for the life of me figure out what Gates is doing with all the brain power. I do know that I come away from an hour of power point feeling several IQ points dumber. Ugh!
Another observation about .ppt phenomenology. So I'm putting a briefing together that includes top-level discussions of some work other people are doing. I'm summarizing and tying it all together. So I take slides those other folks did and put them in my presentation ... only I changed the color. Didn't change any text, didn't change any meaning... just the color. Oh and I changed some squares to ovals. Then I asked the original authors to review the relevant parts of my briefing. OMG! They wrote back huge opuses about how much incorrect and misleading information was on my slides. I had to call them up and laugh and say, "Whatever you say, *you* wrote those slides!"
It reminds me very much of teaching. Physics and Chemistry are all word problems - the crazy thing is that you can change a single word but keep the essential problem the same and students freak out. ie, the classic "ladder leaning against a wall" problem from physics. You're supposed to calculate the force exerted on the ground and on the wall. Change the ladder to a board and holey moley and it's a whole new problem that no one knows how to solve.
Powerpoint is the bane of life. It is pure evil.
This Visio stuff isn't too bad because I'm generating it programatically from a database of railroad track. It's been haunting my dreams all week but is Pretty Darn Cool, actually, and I designed the implementation so it's fun.