Thread: motion sickness
View Single Post
  #14  
Old January 25th 19, 06:24 PM posted to rec.skiing.alpine
Harvard Horvath
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 287
Default Directions

[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 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hardware and are no longer applicable.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.

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.

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.)

nice factory repair manual (I'm done fixing cars; I know a guy who's
good at it and I can afford him), but I put my car's 250-page user
manual on my phone as well as my computer. The radio has its own
manual. Life was a lot simpler when there were just a few buttons to push.

I like the idea of a CD because you can put advertising on it and make
it pay for itself. How about advertising aspirin for the headache you
get trying to get the product to work? Or beer advertising? for when
you finally get it to work the way you want.


:-) Storage problems. HD space is cheap. We even have spare 8TB
drives in case the ones we're using die. I've never had an HD die, but
**** happens.

Then they tell you, "What if someone doesn't have a computer." If you
can afford a toaster, then you can afford electricity, and you most
likely have a computer. And if you STILL don't have a computer, you
probably have access to one in the form of a friend, neighbor,
relative, public library, Kinkos, etc. After all, if Trunky can have
a computer, anyone can have one.


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.

-------------------------------------------------------------

This signature is now the ultimate power in the Universe


Horvath

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---
Ads