and things went downhill from there

I've been staring blankly at the screen for a good part of this morning, trying to figure out how to retrofit some asinine change requests into the prototype of this project.  It's not like I'm running on a tight deadline, but the desired change runs almost completely contrary to the original design specifications, and I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to shoehorn it in without making everything else break.  Mind you, it could always be worse.

Some of the dumbest design changes I ever received were from a person who - I think - no longer works here.  I don't know if he quit, retired, or if his own brain gnawed its way out through the back of his skull in a desperate attempt to escape.  Anyway...  I ran a one-shot report for him a few years back, and sent him the details in a large text file.  I'd asked him in advance if that was okay, and he readily acquiesced.

The next day he mailed me back, asking if I could put it into an Excel spreadsheet for him so that he could manipulate the data.  I was mildly miffed, but it wasn't the most onerous request I'd ever received, so I imported the data into an Excel spreadsheet and sent him the results.

Two hours later he contacted me again, and asked if I could move around a few of the columns.  I gave him the benefit of the doubt because some people are a bit sketchy when it comes to using cut & paste.

A short time later he asked if I could sort the data on two of the columns.  ...!  Well, sorting can be tricky.  I sorted the two columns and send him the latest spreadsheet.  A few nanoseconds after it hit his in-box...

He contacted me again, and asked if I could change the colour of the numbers in the third column to green, and the fifth column to red.  At this point I finally snapped.  I changed the colours, and then tersely informed him that any further requests would have to be directed through an obtuse co-worker who would, in effect, run passive blocking for me.

It worked, but.... great belching anus of Anubis!  What kind of manipulation had he planned to do with the numbers in Excel when he couldn't even figure out something as simple as changing the colour of text?

The latest Semagic has become an unstable piece of excrement under Win2K. I'm going to see if I have an older version that I can roll back to, but right now I'm dead in the water. =/

Has anyone else had problems with the later versions? Does anyone else out there use Semagic?

[Edit: I found an older version kicking around and it runs just fine, so until further notice I'm going to keep using version 1.5.1.5U.]