5:25 PM Thursday, September 08, 2011
I forget sometimes how exacting and time-consuming it can be to type a
single sentence. The busy work, the paperwork (I still call it paperwork
even with the absence of paper) seemingly never ends. I wrote and re-wrote
a short piece for one of my web sites yesterday, then went back to add a
few paragraphs, only to find that somehow the changes I thought I’d made
in yesterday’s last edits never made it in to the final version. How does
this happen? Well, laziness and ineptitude happens. Unsaved files and
unintentional overwrites happen. It is just so annoying to read back
through a piece and find all the errors I know I fixed somehow magically
unfixed. Software is somehow to blame, I am certain of it, not that I
absolve myself of any ineptitude.
Another story, less substantive but long-planned, came along a little more
quickly, and was posted without incident… that is, until I go back and
read it tomorrow. I may find stupid spelling errors and discontinuances in
seemingly directionful sentences…
I think that a lot of the typos grammar gaffes on the Intertubes could be
blamed on the abundance of editing interfaces people must switch among in
a day. Maybe I write a few paragraphs in MS Word, but to post it to the
web I probably have to copy and paste it into a content management system.
More likely I will have to copy and paste it from Word and into a plain
text editor before dumping it into the content managements system.
Inevitably I find myself editing things in the content management system
while the “original” Word version becomes out of date.
But that’s not the scenario I meant. What I meant was, in a regular day I
find myself editing in Word, in PINE (which uses PICO) in Notepad, in
other text-only editors — and then, should I try to comment on a news
story or in a message board I am probably going to confront an edit box
that I’ve never seen before, replete with its unique idiosyncracies that
can (and do) cause lengthy and meaningful postings to disappear. The only
way to salvage content like that, swallowed by software editors and
web-based hiccups, is to have a keystroke logger, which is not on my list
of self-imposed surveillance techniques that I need in my life. and,
getting back to my original point, the alien editing box that is distinct
virtually every single news and comment board is a magnet for
distraction-induced spelling errors and typos.
So much text matter simply disappears, unrecoverably. Like when a
background software process tries to force itself into the foreground,
demanding your attention, but unable to do so because the software you are
focused on is set to “Always on Top”. The focus goes to the invisible
background application anyway, and all the words you think you are typing
go nowhere. Down the traphole of software maldesign.
And that’s saying nothing about the continuous and seemingly unfixable
computer interface problem of dialog windows popping up unexpectedly and
then instantly disappearing when the unexpecting computer user hits the
enter key or the “OK” button and the fleeting dialog box disappears, going
off to perform some unknown task. How many times have I asked “What did I
just do? To what software request did I just say ‘OK’?”
…..
I had a bad feeling about a pari of sunglasses I bought and paid for at
Lenscrafters a few weeks ago. The sales process and everything around it
seemed somewhat chaotic, with lots of miscommunication among the sales
folk and the optometrists. I have never had a bad experience with
Lenscrafters but it is starting to look like this will be the first one.
Nearly a month later I have not heard from them. The sunglasses appear not
to have been ordered or produced, and I am waiting for a call right now, a
call that I fear will never come, from the Lenscrafters on 5th Avenue,
just to get some notion of what is going on here. They got my $500 so I
guess they’re in charge now.
I really do need the damn sunglasses, too. Last week I felt like light
sabers were slashing at my cornea.
…..
If this is not the most boring pile of text matter I’ve ever assembled
then I don’t know what is. I guess the creative energies go toward other
things this day.
