Appropriate responses to error codes

[bunn]

I absolutely love this XKCD cartoon - about what to do if you are frustrated by a computer constantly throwing a mysterious and unhelpful error.  
http://xkcd-rss.livejournal.com/257968.html

This is up there with a number of Dilberts cartoons in my 'Advice to Live By' list. 

(My life took an enormous turn for the better when I read Dilbert, and realised that, yes, it wasn't that I was incompetent, with bosses with mysterious objectives that I could not understand, but instead, everyone was as confused as I was, and the people in charge had basically mostly got there through a combination of luck and random motion. Some were incompetent, some were malevolent,  and all were making it up as they went along.  This gave me the confidence to start up on my own.  I believe Dilbert should be required reading in schools... )

While I've got my technology tag out, I shall just make a note here that our telephone exchange was upgraded this week, which I *think* means that we may be able to get high speed fibreoptic broadband services in future.   Hurray for EU funding for obscure backward areas?  (I am not thinking today about whether this is really the best application of the funding out of all the possible applications. That is Someone Else's Problem)

Comments

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"EU funding" is a bit of a myth since the UK contributes more than we get back. So it's really taxpayer funding that could be somewhat more if we didn't have to spend it subsidising French peasants with their shiny tractors and Greeks who don't pay taxes...

So I don't feel guilty about this at all. Still, I'll wait and see what speed we're capable of getting. I suspect it'll still be less than we'd get if we were in a town, and townies get all sorts of taxpayer subsidies that we don't get.

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant. I like that book, too. (I write computer manuals, so maybe I should take a few leaves out of it ;-)

I used to be freelance, so I had the Dilbert experience simultaneously on multiple channels, so to speak. What makes me laugh is when they come back from their MBA courses with the same latest bullshit, so convinced that everything that's ever been done before is wrong and has to be chucked out, and that their new way is the right and only way. And I just smile & think, "Yeah, until the next load of bullshit comes along."

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

I do think, though, that if the EU wasn't prodding, there would be even more robbing of the poor to give to the rich ;-)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I've designated it Somebody Else's Problem, so I'm not feeling guilty either. EU funding for things is so complicated, I feel that if I have some spare guilt to allocate, there are many more clear-cut applications to use it for.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I'm freelance (well, I run a tiny-tiny company of me and a 1/5 of philmophlegm) but thankfully I mostly deal with owner-managed businesses which I think tend to score rather lower on the crap-o-meter ratings. Though I think it is still helpful to hold in ones mind the realisation that because someone is a Managing Director, it doesn't mean they know how to hold a pissup in a brewery!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Pellinor, too, has taken a recent XKCD cartoon as Advice to Live By. Sadly, his is "if unsure what to so, intone 'So it has come to this.'"

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, from where I'm sat there seems to be rather too much in the other direction!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I think I like mine better. :-D