A Full Tuesday Torrent

So, several things today, none of which are enough for a full post (and don't tell me other people do short blog posts, I can't help their problems).




1. The technology rant.

I often get called a Luddite by those who love me. There is certainly some truth in the fact that technology often frustrates me, and I give up on it. Obviously I deal with some of it very well, look, here I am writing a blog post. But it has to work well for me, or I haven't got the patience.

What happens usually is that if it takes LONGER to do something using technology than it does to do it the old way I get frustrated and then refuse to do it the slower way. For example, it is often MUCH faster to write a note with a pen and paper than it is to print it out having typed it. Sometimes if I'm at my desk working anyway, I'll type and print. But more often than not, I don't even then. My desk is covered in handwritten notes.

And if it was something I had to do on my phone, there's even less chance. Right now my phone (an Android) is in its death throes. It's 3 years old (because I do not replace things that still work). Several weeks ago it decided it had run out of memory. Despite deleting everything but the bare bones it still has no memory. It rejects incoming texts, and refuses to send any either. It is therefore effectively useless. I really should buy another one but I have just not bothered. I'm annoyed that a 3-year-old phone should behave like this. Other people have trigabytes of music on their phones, I have always been a minimalist, and I get memory issues? GRUMP.

And I'm managing just fine without a phone, because I wasn't using it much anyway. Texts and notifications, pretty much. Now, this was partly because I had a pathetic data plan which didn't really allow me to do much on it, but also because I found it too frustrating, with an itty bitty screen and itty bitty keys. Essentially, I hated using it. So now I can't, in a way I'm happy. I think at some subconscious level I'm not buying a new one on purpose, because then I'd have to use it.

I like technology when it does what I want. Not when it doesn't. I get frustrated and have temper tantrums because I feel helpless. I can't make things work the way they should, they way they are supposed to, because I can't get past the operating system or whatever. And once this happens, I swear and shout, and demand other people fix it...ask my kids.

"THE FUCKING PRINTER ISN'T WORKING AGAIN!!!!"

And Michael tells me to calm down and he'll fix it. And he finds out what's wrong, and all is well again. But I still can't get Chrome to print things out full size, and it's been months. Why? Why does something suddenly change? One minute it works, it prints things out at the normal size, then suddenly WHAM it's gone miniature.

And....I do this speech. As stand up.

I like shovels. I really like shovels. You know where you are with a shovel. It is always there for you. You pick it up, you plunge it down, it digs. Just you and the shovel. No rules. No instruction manual in broken English. No warming up time. No fuel required. No "out of range of receiver". No choice of cycles. No suddenly flat batteries. It never has a paper jam. It never has a software conflict. You don't need a fucking license. You don't need to remember yet another fucking password. Its screen doesn't break if you drop it. It doesn't disappear forevever if you accidentally hit the wrong key combination. It never says "not available in your country". All you have to do is remember where you put it, and....................WHERE'S MY FUCKING SHOVEL?

Trust me, it's funnier in person. But you get the point.

It's NOT that I'm a Luddite, I just hate obstacles to functionality.






2. Couldn't Mick have bailed her out?

He must have plenty of money.





3. I learned yesterday that we are all idiots. 

I'm taking a psychology course called "Introduction to Irrational Behaviour". I get so much pleasure out of learning all sorts of things, but stuff about human behaviour fascinates me the most. And I'm learning about how we are manipulated because we allow ourselves to be. We're dumb. This stuff is almost (ALMOST) obvious but we just go along with it.

I'm not going to give you examples, take your own damn course. I'm going to use it in my business to make more money. So there.

But I'm going to give you one tip. It has been conclusively proven that to get people do things they don't want to do the carrot really does work better than the stick. We tend to know this, well, some of us do, but the data is in. This is no longer a theory or philosophy, it's a fact.

We don't need conspiracy theories. Seriously. People are just so easy to trick.

Oh and by the way, on that topic....





4. You are safe.

If they can lose an entire plane full of people, you can hide from your government. So stop worrying.





5. How to pack a cat.

6. And finally....never leave cameras unattended