What?

Here are two messages I see on equipment I use regularly, and if this doesn't define MLS, I don't know what does.

1. Warming up from preheat mode


2. Preparing to standby

Geoff Pullum of Language Log had an experience like this and wrote about it in his inimicable style. (He's my favourite Language Logger.) Whose side are you on, indeed?

AOL Hell - Holy Flurking Snit!

Read this, then listen to this.

I had one of these experiences in the early 90s, trying to cancel my AOL account when there wasn't even much of an alternative. I was on hold for 35 minutes, being picked up and dropped off and batted around like a ping pong ball. In the end my conversation was remarkably similar to the one suffered by Mr. Ferrari, but I didn't have to get quite so irate.

My New Hero

Joel Spolsky has worked on UI problems for a long time, and he is better at stating the normal problems than I am. The thing I like about it is, he takes things we see in everyday life and looks at them through their interface (traffic lights, an assembly line, etc.), then he relates them back to the Windows and Mac UIs.

I love his main point: to design a good UI, you have to have respect for the user. Most programmers think users are idiots because they can't follow simple instructions. Here's the thing: if you won't simplify your interface, you don't have respect for the user's time. The user is not an expert in clicking through a brilliantly conceived hierarchy of options. They're an expert in accounting, or hospital administration, or, maybe, testing software. If you slow them down, They will be distracted and frustrated. They won't like you. They'll begin to count how many times in a day he has to click here, then there, then type that word, then click "go", because YOU didn't take the time to make it easy.

I love another of his main points: a) Users won't read the manual. b) Users won't read anything.

I was leaving the building the other day when I got stopped: the door was locked. I pushed the handle. Nothing. I bodily pressed on the door while pushing the handle. Nothing. My friend pointed out the huge orange sign that said "PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR". It was right in front of my face, taped onto the glass. Now, I'm no idiot. The 4 or 5 other people I've seen make the same mistake, they aren't idiots either. The fact that that same door has been dodgy for weeks , and that we should remember that fact, doesn't mean we're idiots. It means that WE DON'T CARE THAT THE DOOR IS BROKEN. We won't think about it, we won't remember it. We have too much going on in our lives to add that to the list of things to worry about. The only effective way I've seen to handle the situation is to put a giant black garbage bag over the handle. Make it tactile, and put it where our hand actually goes, and we'll be able to pay attention. If you're sitting there laughing at our stupidity, I'd like to know if you've ever done that before. Never? Not once? You're too smart? You read all the signs?

Liar.

For a clear example of what I'm referring to, check this out. Thanks to incandragon for the link.

Defensive shutdown

I recently read an excellent book called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time about a teenage boy with autism. This isn't a book review, but I thought that the novel highlighted things about Modern Living Syndrome that most people might not see without stepping outside their own worldview for a moment.

One thing that distinguishes autistic people from neurotypical folks is that autistic people do not have the filters that allow most people to function in everyday life by stripping away nonessential information. One scene in the book has Chris, the teenage narrator, venturing on his own for the first time outside the bounds of his own neighbourhood. He's OK at home and at school, he explains, because he's seen everything there before. He already knows how many tiles are on the bathroom floor, so when he goes back he only has to notice the things that have changed. He doesn't have the option, as most of us do, of not seeing those things. Inside the train station, he's bombarded with signs, billboards, adverts, newspaper headlines, people rushing about in disorder. It's too much. He stands still for two hours, trying to process everything, until eventually a concerned policeman approaches him.

I don't have autism, so I can rely on my filters to get me through crowds, to home in on the part of the webpage that contains the answer to my search question, to ignore adverts and hear announcements that pertain to me. But it's getting harder and harder. Sometimes it takes a few moments for the filters to switch on. Today, I went for lunch with a friend from work to a restaurant where the whole back section is devoted to game machines. The restroom is skilfully situated at the very back of this section, so I might be tempted out of a few quarters between entrée and dessert. When I stepped from the bar section to the game section, I had to stand for a few seconds and actively put up the filters, shore up my defenses, choose one thing to listen to (the music on the PA) and one thing to look at (the neon sign reading 'ladies'). During those few seconds, I felt exposed, disorientated, resentful.

Advertisers, email spammers and scammers, telemarketers, solicitors, junk mailers all spend fortunes developing ways to bypass my filters, to come up with ways of tricking me into thinking that their message is for me. I wish my brain browser came with a pop-up blocker.

It's harder and harder to find the balance. You probably have a spam filter on your email, maybe of the sort that keeps spam on your server rather than sending it to your client; you might not even have a 'junk' folder where you can sort through, looking for false-positives. Sometimes someone calls you up asking why you never respond to email, and you realise that their messages were filtered as spam and never reached your eyeballs. I really would rather miss out on a hundred great deals if it meant never having to deal with this again, if it meant I could have my brain back.

On the other hand, perhaps this is why every day there is someone who stands in front of the fax machine, in front of the sign where I have posted detailed instructions on how to use the fax machine, and asks me whether or not they have to press 9.

For God's Sake

LOSE THE CAR ANALOGY!!!
MM

Neat new (useless) feature on the MSN page

This might go better in a comment about web redesign in general, but I don't want to get into that just yet. I have a special mass of vitriol to give to that particular discussion.

I just had a flareup of Modern Living Syndrome:

• Go here
• On the very very top of the frame, click on the "Instant X" link (as I write this, it's "Instant Conversion: Miles in a 10k?"
• It will bring up a search for "10 km to miles" using MSN's search engine
  
• What appears is a bewildering array of search results, none of which appears to address the number of miles in "a" 10k

Now, when you speak about "a" 10k, you're referring to a footrace, right? Probably?? Here are my search results:

• Santorini, Greece - ... in Greece in 1,650 B.C. was one of the largest ( VEI=6 ) in the last 10,000 years . About 7 cubic miles (30 cubic km) of rhyodacite magma was erupted. The plinian column during the initial phase of the ...
• Recent Earthquakes - Map for 120-39 - ... Other Sites that Host these Maps Real-time Shaking Maps Other Maps: Recent earthquakes with fault and topographic information Click on an earthquake on the above map for more information. Did you feel it ...
  
• RunTex, The Runner's Store - Actual: 1500 Meters 1 mile 3000 Meters 2 miles 3 miles 5 Km 8 Km 5 miles 10 Km 15 Km 10 miles 20 Km Half Marathon 25 Km 30 Km Marathon 50 Km New Distance Hours Mins Secs Pace (min) Pace (sec) Predicted: 1500 Meters 1 ...
  
• Event Timing and Management: Race Headquarters - Race Headquarters is an event timing company based in Port Coquitlam BC Race Headquarters Race ... We are a Coquitlam based company, that specializes in event timing and results ...
  

Yes. Some of those have something to do with racing. Not one of them tells you how many miles are in a 10k. On the second page of search results, I see this:

• 27th Living History Farms 10 Km - 6.214 miles - Urbandale, Iowa Nov. 19, 2005 40 degrees and Cloudy Results by Cal Murdock Quick Summary Age Groups Overall 10K Coed Teams 1 Mile Use the Find option of your Web ...

Ok, so I might be able to assume that 10 km = 6.214 miles. Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call this "instant", nor would I call it a "conversion". It happened to do a search which, on the 11th result, happened to contain someone's manual calculation in the header of the web page.

If you click through to any of the first 4 links, there's not one place where the conversion is performed for you. The RunTex link provides a calculator, which you have to fill in yourself, before you can get the answer.

Here's why I love Google, and why I think they're going to be valuable in the fight against MLS.

Click here

Now that's an instant answer. Microsoft has just sold me on using Google more, and they've given me the syntax to be able to do it right. Thanks, M$!

Another example:

• "Instant Answer: Where is Torino?" - Now this gives you a dictionary definition: "Turin (Italian Torino), city, northwestern Italy, capital of Turin Province and of Piedmont Region (Piemonte), at the confluence of the Po and Dora ... - but I clicked several times on this link, and that instant answer didn't always show up. Now see what Google gives you.

Astounding.

"Instant" means instant. Google understands that.

Ok, MLS moment over. Glad to get that out of my system.
MM

Thanks a lot, Whirlpool

You bastards.

My Whirlpool oven has a locking feature. All self-cleaning ovens I've ever had have had a lock - you swivel the handle over, lock the door, and it turns on the kiln. It's great. Why is there a lock? Well, yes, probably because people are stupid. But more accurately, it's for children. Children can usually reach the locking handle, but the locking handle is itself locked until you press the "latch release" button.

Genius. Fantastic. There's a child-proof mechanism built right in to the product.

Now let's look at my oven.

"With this computerized panel, we won't have to put any controls within the kid's reach, so we'll be able to control the entire mechanizm from there. That way parents won't have to remember to hit that latch release to deactivate the lock."

"Great, Jenkins. Ship it!"

...And on the 8th day, there was absolutely no way to lock the oven when it wasn't in self-clean mode.

Aren't computers great? They take care of the little things for us.

So, we've bought 3 separate oven-proofing latches and installed them all. For the first two, the kid pulled on the door, it resisted a little, and then shot open with much more force than normal. It was more dangerous. The third one showed more promise... it had a mechanism that was made of metal. Daddy couldn't even open it. Enter Alex. Tug, tug, tug, and he just ripped the adhesive right off. He's a strong kid, but he's no Hulk.

Why do I have to go through all this? Why didn't they just allow me to hit a button to activate the feature that's already f--ing there?!

The clincher? The thing that makes my chest tighten just sitting here thinking about it? There's a little icon on the Start button - a little padlock with the label "2 seconds". I was so happy! I pushed it, held it for two seconds... and... it locked the keypad on the computer panel. Wonderful. You have to be over 5 feet in order to reach the thing in the first place.

I'm sure someone from Whirlpool would be able to explain to me why this decision was made. Much better to invent an explanation after people start asking for it than risk litigation when someone's kid gets burned. Get me? There is a REAL RISK that my kid could get burned here, becuase I can't use a feature that's already there, and because no other oven latch works.

Yeah, this means I have to do it the old fashioned way, with good parenting and constant supervision--that's fine. I'm delighted. But you people stop telling me you've got my problems solved. I don't believe you any more. I'm going to do a lot of things the old fashioned way because you jackasses aren't smart enough to toast bread.

Like I said, that's fine. But pretty soon you're going to stop getting my money on the promise alone.

...and it's only 7:20 am...

I don't know what to call this... except funny

I just noticed that when you go to Slate, you get popup ads.

1. Microsoft Makes Internet Explorer
2. Microsoft owns Slate
3. Slate has popup ads
4. Internet Explorer blocks popup ads

ergo: Microsoft is blocking its own popup ads

If it were me, having a primary source of revenue blocked by my own boss, I think I'd write some sort of pithy, satirical essay about it. If only there were a venue, say, on the web, say, where folks loved to poke fun at things and wrote pithy, satirical essays about them...

A cell phone with (gasp) FEWER features!

I saw a commercial the other day. A man is standing at a counter, shouting into the void: "Why can't I get a phone that does more than just make phone calls?!"

I've done a little searching. Not much, because I'm too busy trying to format number fields in Excel. But I've been trying to find this mythical phone that just makes phone calls. I have the opposite problem this jackass is complaining about. I WANT A PHONE THAT JUST MAKES PHONE CALLS. I don't want games. I don't need email access. I don't want text messages. I don't want 6,000 ring tones.

I don't want a camera, a web browser, or a voice recorder. I don't want iTunes. I don't want a speaker phone. I don't even want a color display, if I'm honest with myself.

Why don't I want it? Because I never use any of it, even though I've paid for all of it. The speaker phone is the most useful of the features I've mentioned, but after the first week, I stop using even that.

Here's what I want:

• Nationwide long-distance. While we're at it, let's make that worldwide.
• Pay-per-minute service that I don't have to buy in advance, which isn't outrageously expensive.
• A display with 3 or 4 lines of text that is readable in room light, but which has an optional amber, green, or iPod blue backlight.
• A directory that holds some number of entries. Personally, I don't see why it couldn't be thousands, but I only need 50 or so, so choose some number between 50 and thousands.
• Call waiting
• Caller ID
• I don't care much about flip phone vs non-flip phone. I've had both and both are fine - with the following caveats: a) flip phones MUST HAVE a little window that displays the clock or the caller ID # when the phone is closed, and b) the non-flip phone must have a one-key locking mechanism that is easy to enable/disable

...and that is all. I want to pay about $30 for a phone, then pay about $20 per month to use it. Right now, I pay $85 a month for two phones, we NEVER use all the minutes we're alloted, and the phones, after rebate, cost about $100 and have way too many features. The only reason we keep them is that we got rid of our land-line phone. Land-lines are such a shitstorm of ineffeciency, magical fees, debilitating taxes, and overpriced long distance, we chose the lesser of the evils.

Are you listening, you jackass Wireless companies? I'm prepared to go without a cell phone until this kind of thing is offered. I'll bet you'd find a lot of customers (like my father) who don't have a cell phone at all, who would get one if you offered this. You wouldn't lose money on it. Your margin would be slightly smaller, yes, but look at this article. It is possible to offer something for a "lower-class" customer and still make money.

If none of this works out, I may just make a dream of mine come true: that nobody can reach me, ever, except through my work phone or email. Those are easier to screen anyway.

Of course, I could always go back to the can with the strings attached. Alex likes that well enough... why shouldn't I?