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Upgrades and Armageddon

17 Feb

I try to be a positive, optimistic kind of guy – but, however I try to put a positive spin on them – there are words that immediately raise my blood pressure: “Welcome to the NEW INTERFACE we’ve created. Now, we’re better, and more intuitive than ever!” What they fail to mention is that the individual for whom they are ‘more intuitive’ is Rube Goldberg (look it up, I don’t have time to explain…)
I have spent, literally, 90 minutes trying to find a way to do with my ‘convenient new interface’ what I’ve been doing for the last 7 years on the old, apparently inconvenient interface, which had a big button that said: “Click here to post a new banner, stupid!” or words to that effect. So, deducing that the command was directed at me, I’d push the button and ‘BINGO’ it did what I wanted!
Now, there is no “Click this button, Stupid’ button. There’s no button at all. And there are no convenient little balloons that wake up when you hover over them and tell you what to do next. And – there’s no human being on the ‘Support’ page. There’s a list of FAQs (for the uninitiated, that means Frustrating Abstract Qomments) from people who don’t have the same problem you have, and will actually take the time to tell you they don’t have an answer to your problem, and you need to submit a ticket.
This is a convenient 47-step process designed to:
A. Take so long that you: 
i. forget about it.
ii. die
B. Take so long for anyone to respond to that your computer will be outdated so they can say, “Oh, our MS (Magnificent Software) doesn’t work on that old system anymore. (Chortle), You need to update your OS – which means Ossified and Superannuated Contraption. (The ‘C’ is silent). 
C. Drive you completely insane.
Nine years ago, I had a heart attack. By this time, I’m about to have another one. On the bright side, I’ll probably die of old age first.
I scroll to the bottom of the page and there – in print about the size of a Qubit (not Q-Tip, nor a cubit, which are entirely different things. Look ‘it up), is a word that, I think, says Contact. Contact what, exactly, it didn’t say. I remember a movie Jodie Foster was in that was called ‘Contact’, or something like that. It turns out what she was contacting was an alien civilization.
Despite my fear that that’s exactly what would happen if I clicked the button, I clicked it. Jodie Foster would have felt right at home on the resulting screen which – though clearly captioned ‘Contact Us’ in 36-point letters at the top of the page – had nothing on it suggestive of the answer to the question: How?
A block of text said that my “question had already probably been answered, Stupid” (or words to that effect) on their helpful FAQ (Fatuous And Querulous) page, to which they provided a link. I wished to respond that I had already spent the greater part of my allotted three-score and ten there – along with some other observations of which the preceding is but a passing whiff – but there was nowhere to make such a comment.
On the Contact Us page.
I was just about to . . . Hey. Wait a minute! Did you see the movie where the guy was abandoned on Mars? I think I see him over there on the next dune. . . gotta go!

 
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Posted by on February 17, 2017 in Alibi-Folio

 

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