ping
Merry Christmas!
ok, I’m a little woozy from trying out my new shiatsu heated back massager for too long, I see that you didn’t write this. I still agree with it totally.
Our TV stereo system’s on/off button says “Standby”.
The first thing I do when I get a thick instruction manual is grab a razor knife and slice out all the sections that aren’t in English. Turns a 1” thick manual into a 1/4” (or less) pamphlet.
There is a solution. If you want one with all the bells and whistles you have to learn how to ring the bells and blow the whistles. Otherwise you are wasting your money.
Damn Luddites...
Make sure to have a kid available at all times.
While I am very comfortable with computer technology and teach online classes, I am baffled by my cellphone. I do not want to use my phone as a mediocre camera. I have no need for idiotic ring tones and do not see my phone as an entertainment device. I do not want to use microscopic keys to send moronic text messages. I simply want a phone to take and make telephone calls. However, trying to find a cellphone that is just a phone is very near impossible.
A big part of this is simply ego. I work in IT, and have done so since 1987. I started in software, and eventually moved into hardware, and have done mostly support since then. At this point, I'm in network administration. Anyway, I see my #1 job as a person who allows other people to do their jobs. They're NOT IT experts. In a lot of cases, they're lucky if they are able to turn on the computer. So when they call me, I attempt to figure out and fix the problem using THEIR language when possible. On the other hand, some of the guys I work with are a lot like SNL's "Nick Burns," who have an attitude.
Now I have to admit that I'm amazed at the poor quality of first line tech support the guys who are on the "help desk." At my last job, if a problem was escalated to me, I knew that the problem was serious, and the front line techs had eliminated all the simple problems. At this job, I have to start over from the beginning, since I can't trust these help desk script monkeys to have checked little things like indicator lights on the routers (even to the point that a router was powered off!), or even checking to see if a cable's been kicked loose. But I don't make an issue of it... However my coworkers insist on making a big deal of it... For instance, when someone who needs an account password changed, but only uses that account for email, sends a request for an "email password change," I respond with "password changed and tested." On the other hand, my coworker responds with "email enabled active directory user account password changed." Is his description more accurate than mine? In a technical sense, yes. Does it matter? No. The effect is the same. I know that I changed the AD user account password, since I did it through the ADUC utility. Does the user need to know this? No. It's just my coworker's need to show superiority over the "great unwashed."
Mark
My mother just got a big screen tv and home theater system. It will probably take me two years to explain to her how to work the remote control. I think she bought the thing just so she’d have an excuse to call and nag me.
Photobucket won’t work for me to use pix on FR anymore. Their instructions on correcting the problem were full of computer terms I’ve never even heard of, and I’ve had computers for 25 years and am self taught. Anybody know of another storage place for my pix?
Thomas - I just turn the gadgets over to my fourteen-year-old and she does it for me!
Actually quite proud of myself this Christmas: I got a MacBook as a Christmas present for me and managed to get on-line all by myself! But it’s weird going to the Mac world after so long on a PC....
bump
The manual explains this as an "ice warning". Now, that might be desirable in California or Georgia, but I live in Buffalo. The temperature here is within 5 degrees of freezing for 6 months of the year.
I got in the habit of stuffing the damned thing under a sofa cushion for most of the Winter.
Nowhere in the instructions are you told how to turn the "feature" off. Finally, just last week, I stumbled on a tiny paragraph explaining that when the unit's set to Channel 1 (default), the ice warning will sound. Aha! You've got to set it to another channel (no simple task).
Why didn't they just tell me?
Personally, I'm not a big fan of the guy, but it's exactly what Steve Jobs to resurrect Apple, with the iPod & the iPhone.
And, prior to that, it was what Bill Gates did at MSFT, with WINWORD.EXE & EXCEL.EXE [and beyond that, Windows 95 & Windows NT 4.0]: Simple, straightforward, dumbed-down products which any moron can get up and running in about 60 seconds flat.
What would Thomas Sowell want to watch on TV?
This is some sort of generational thing.
My dad was just like this. If he needed to use the DVD player, he would call me and I would walk him through the process of pressing the red button, then hit the video in button on the TV remote until the DVD player showed up on the TV.
I’ve never had any problem with any technology. It all just clicks for me.
Technology is like a foreign language. If you understand it, it is crystal clear, but if you don’t, it is like being dropped into a foreign country with nothing but the Monty Python English-Hungarian phrasebook.
As one fellow graduate student said about a lab instrument with a lot
of needless “bell and whistles” and an ANTI-intuitive control panel:
“So useful, it’s almost useless!”