The Unreasonable Man

New rules!

• When I recommend something, if you ignore that advice you cannot come back and moan. Like when I say “don’t use Outlook”, you are NOT allowed to come ask me for help with your inevitable Outlook problems later.
• When I teach, you should listen. Not “ignore and then complain that your results aren’t right”. Yes, that is because you ignored. When I say “Do A”, do not come to me saying “I did B and I had problems C and D”. Yes, that is why I said “do A”.
• Google stuff before you ask me. If you ask me “How to do this thing in that application”, I will have to Google that too. Why make me do the work? Do it yourself. Go to WWW.GOOGLE.COM, then type in your question, then work through the links until you find one that answers your questions. That is exactly what I will need to do. Yes, it takes time. Yes, I know you want instant answers in 3 seconds. No, that is not the way it works.

I spent about 30 years learning about computers and IT. Why is it that ignorant people want it, and think they can have it, all in 5 minutes?

Here’s the thing. I spent decades learning all this. There is no way to learn all that in 5 minutes. “Yes, but I want it to be simple and quick” Guess what. The universe does not care what you want.

If you want to learn to fly a Boeing 747, you WILL spend a good few years in pilot school. Whether you like it or not.

Do you have to listen to me? Of course not! But then you cannot ask me questions either.

My hit of the day - I love discovering new stuff. Old, no doubt, but new for me. “Zion land” by Ras Michael and the sons of  Negus. Haunting. Beautiful. Isn’t life great.

Install Frostwire - download - ten minutes.

Or You tube it here [link].

….we will hit the road Tuesday, to drive to Texas for a few days. I am looking forward to getting there, though perhaps not to spending two days each way on America’s dangerous US highways.

Things falling out of trucks, people joining without looking, tyre debris, people falling asleep, 34-wheelers doing 20 over the limit: I have never had more emergency stops on the road than on US trips.

Everyone, listen up.

When you are the object of a sentence, you are “me”. Not “I”. Bugbear… I cannot stand to hear people say “and then they invited Mary and I to the party”.

ME, everyone. ME. Not “I”. Remove Mary and see how it sounds now.. “and then they invited I to the party”. Right.

Rant done.

Two to start with.

1. To not let me minimise apps like Lightroom. I hate that decision, Adobe. If I want to minimise (not quit) an application, I am the bloody boss. I am the decider. It’s my bloody PC!
2. And to have to choose full screen or a floating screen with no background in Photoshop: dumb. Yeah yeah, others like it, yada yada. I don’t care. I am not others. Having to look at all my desktop icons while I edit is dumb. A dumbcision.

Dumb:

• On my Mercedes, the cruise control is a stick. To turn it on (i.e. drive forward), you pull back. To turn it off, i.e. to hold back, you push forward. I will never learn this if I live another 100 years. Who is responsible for this nonsense? German engineers? Whoever it is is clueless with respect to good user interfaces.
• Why is there no GPS app for my iPhone that does not need me to be online and buy bits? I.e. Garmin for iPhone or TomTom for iPhone? Yeah, the rumour mill says it’s “coming”… well, that will be too late. Afraid of cannibalisation are they?

Ah. So let’s send some good words, too.

I tried once more with Rogers.

And lo and behold, this time (fourth? fifth? call) I spoke with a nice agent (as opposed to this morning’s moron)  who DID have a manager to put me through to. And even better, a manager (named Cathie, in case Rogers is reading) who was human, nice, understanding. And who checked with her manager.

And amazingly: who helped in a real way. Cathie told me to go buy the phone anywhere (i.e. the Apple store, which had them in stock) and she would refund the $500 price difference.

And now even better. This is good:

Cathie credited my account with $500 without seeing the invoice; in fact even before I had bought the new phone. She called to tell me she had done this the moment I was at the Apple store about to buy it. “We trust you”, she said.

How cool is that? That is great customer service - the service that keeps me as a customer. Because of this lady, I stay, and I write this. COmpliments, and Cathie deserves to do something better at Rogers. Nice!

Four dumbcisions for you today:

1. So when I rename my iPhone, when I reconnect it on my other Mac, it does a whole new backup. DUMB. Use the MAC address to determine it’s the same machine.
2. When I cancel a print job on my Canon 9500 printer using the manual feed path, it also ejects the paper I just spent three minutes loading. DUMB. Leave the paper. If you feel strongly, warn me.
3. To design Bluetooth so that you need a degree to operate it. DUMB. Send the miscreants who designed Bluetooth to a re-education camp.
4. To design USB connectors so there is a 50% chance that you will try to insert the connecor wrong. Dumbdumbdumbdumb.

So much dumbidity around us…

Or moronics.

• Why is the RIAA having a woman pay $1.9m for downloading 24 songs? Story here - RIAA is to be hated, despised. As are the courts. Contempt of court - why, is there any other feeling that fits?
• Why are all words on my built-in Mercedes GPS all CAPITALS? WHEN IS THE LAST TIME COMPUTERS WERE IN ALL CAPS? 1982? WELL, IN GERMANY/JAPAN, THEY STILL ARE.

Many more to come. Moronics all around me.

Just watching CNN, where a woman whom I would describe as a fascist and a woman I would describe as a liberal are arguing about whether Guantanamo prisoners should be brought back”to the homeland”, as is now happening.

The CNN presenter took a break and said that “after the break, we will try to find common ground between you”.

This makes me think. The reasonable thing to do is to find common ground - or you get wars. Sure. But if I were the liberal there I would say “absolutely not”. The neocon lady seemed to me almost as fascist (and worse, as ignorant) as Hitler, and surely it would be unwise to find common ground with Herr Hitler? if I were across the table with a racist antisemite fascist, would I be well advised to find nice common ground, or should I be as forceful as I can in saying “no - you are utterly wrong”?

Nice, a complicated problem.

My answer: I think I would look for facts, and I would concentrate on those. Your mileage may vary.