im grumpy this morning from dealing with a particular person at work.
the person has a shortcut on their desktop. i inspected the shortcut myself, it looks proper. sometimes it works. sometimes it prompts for a login and password. sometimes it brings up a “link locate browser” dialog box, which i’m not sure i’ve seen before.
when i got back to my desk, i took a small brain vacation and explored HCI, something i am interested in.
you know, i am really getting sick of computers.
in microsoft windows, if you click on the desktop and do a ctrl-f, nothing happens. if you click in an email and do a ctrl-f, it forwards the message. if you click in a web page in internet explorer and do a ctrl-f, it brings up a searh dialog box.
it’s completely ludicrous how much more consistent apple’s operating system interface is. there’s something to be said for wanting to do something like find (a file, an email, a word on a page) and knowing the key sequence to do it.
something else that’s really be getting on my nerves: customer service. i just moved to a new place. i ordered adsl internet service on a dry pair (meaning it’s not going over a carrier signal on a standard phone line. pacbell got an order to install the line.
first off, i live in a 4 or 5 year old building that’s very well connected and wired. to give you an idea, in my unit, all rooms have multiple ports which all go to a connection panel in the closet — how wired is that?
in any case, i got an email confirm from covad. they stated pacbell will be running the line on the 28th. and they don’t schedule for a particular time that day. in fact, the customer may or may not see or hear from a pacbell tech on the scheduled day.
considering how wired the building is and assuming the previous tennant had a phone line and/or internet service, i’m wondering what will happen on the 28th. i’m forced to stay home and available for an entire day (what hours, exactly?) so i may or may not be needed to run a line that is very likely to already be run.
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the second annoyance this month has been direct tv. we placed an initial order for the receiver-tivo combination unit, which wasn’t properly placed. luckily, we can get our initial service first on a special deal, then get another discount to upgrade to the tivo unit as a “current customer”. the tech came at the end of the time window on the scheduled day. his orders were to install our 3 room service.
we live in a building with multiple direct tv customers. instead if having multiple dishes on the roof that all point in the same direction, one might imagine there’s one dish and everybody’s lines are split off that one source. this is the case. in fact, in our unit we have a line coming from the satellite and goes into a splitter, so multiple rooms can access the signal. so far, this is not rocket science.
the tech sized up our premises and refused to install more than one receiver. his reasoning was he couldn’t install multiple units coming from a split signal (perhaps by policy). the signal coming into our unit is already split once, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. the order paper, a copy of which he gave us, stated we ordered a 3 room system. that didn’t matter.
now i’m no satellite tv technician. but i do imagine that if people want to subscribe to the service from the same satellite source, they can share a satellite dish. i happen to know, by observation alone, that the receivers have some sort of customer identification built into them, so it doesn’t really matter where the signal is coming from. the receiver will only allow access to the proper channels.
sometimes it feels like such a burden. such a stretch of procedure and habbit. please, just think and reason with me. things like, if you get people used to hitting a particular button to get a particular feature, don’t release other tools that use the same button in a different way. things like, if i’m obviously getting service from a split signal, don’t refuse to fill a documented and agreed-upon order because the signal is split.
i am not a HCI engineer. i am not a telepone line installer. i am not a satellite television technician. but i do think of myself as a thinker.
