On 01/25/2019 10:24 AM, Harvard Horvath wrote:
[Default] On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 08:57:01 -0800, The Real Bev
wrote this crap:

On 01/25/2019 06:10 AM, Harvard Horvath wrote:
[Default] On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 10:10:37 -0800, The Real Bev
wrote this crap:


I'm glad I bought a cheap one. The result is fine technically but sucks
artistically. It claims to be phone-controllable, but whenever I try to
link them up the android app crashes. I need to phone Wasp, but I dread
talking to helpdroids. One of these days.

(This needs a new thread.)

Did you read the directions? Did you interpret them properly? In our
engineering classes at MIT we learned the most likely cause of error
is not following the directions.

Indeed. I followed the directions (pretty simple, actually) repeatedly.

Another problem is following the directions too literally. I hate it
when voice mail answers, "Are you calling about, something? Please
answer 'Yes or no,'" and I say, "Yes or no." And she says. "I'm
sorry, I didn't get that, please answer, 'Yes or no.'" And I say,
"Yes or no.'" And the whole thing starts again.

A good system will then ask you to wait for a representative...

A problem with directions is that the writers occasionally make
errors, or that the directions apply to an earlier version of the
hardware and are no longer applicable. I'm willing to believe that I'm
screwing up in some way, I just dread talking to helpdroids.

A major problem is that the directions are written by the people who
designed the product in their own language. But it's translated by
someone who's never seen the product, and doesn't understand how it
works.

Long ago I worked for McD in the division that made computer-controlled
lathes (when they were NEW!). Somebody gave me some instructions to
edit. I actually thought about what the user would be expected to do as
I was typing and found some substantive errors -- things that would have
been impossible. You'd think that people who make stuff for a profit
would hand the documentation off to a random literate person for
sanity-checking, but NOOOOOO!

I've often thought that anything as complex as a toaster needs a full
instruction manual.

Long ago, when he was writing cross-assemblers for single-purpose
microprocessors, my husband prophesied that one day there would be
chips even in TOASTERS!

I would kill for an LCD display on a toaster. A little picture of the
brownness of the toast, a countdown timer, and a pause button. How
many times have you been making breakfast and you're waiting for your
toast to pop, and you're wondering if you got time to open another
beer? Especially when the timer on the oven dings, and you have to
take out your eggs Florentine before they get rubbery. A damn pause
button would come in handy.

What's needed is a memory. You put in a slice, assign a number and push
a button. Then you have to toast it, checking frequently for the degree
of toastedness desired, and then push a SAVE button. Minor initial
nuisance, but how many different kinds of bread to you use? Main
variable is the amount of sugar.

I want a microwave freezer. I want a faster microwave -- a minute to
heat a cup of coffee is too long. I want to figure out how to soften
butter quickly (under 10 seconds) without melting it.

A while back one particular model claimed to have a Bread Brain.

But the bean counters won't allow that. So why
not have a CD with the full manual on it? The cost of the CD is about
ten cents. Or at least a website with the instruction manual on it,
in the form of a pfd for printing out.

Websites with .pdf files are fine. Preferable actually, as long as the
.pdfs offered are searchable. Some are not :-( I no longer want the

I put down, "pdf" but the spellchecker changed it. And the fonts on
the spellchecker are so small that I didn't catch it. (Another faulty
design. I've tried to make them larger.)

As a descriptor it doesn't need the period. In my opinion. (I'm
watching The Good Wife again.)

Use Thunderbird in 'text' mode. Just let it SHOW you the oddities, but
fix them yourself. Come on, you know now to spell, you don't need a
checker to tell you the right way, it just needs to signal you when you
were careless.

People who have no access to an information device don't need one.

That's ridiculous. It's like saying that people who don't have a car
don't need to leave their house.

Not quite. That skips a step. People who don't have a car don't need a
manual.

--
Cheers, Bev
"If you watch TV news, you know less about the world than
if you just drank gin straight from the bottle."
- Garrison Keillor