God The Father to God The Son:
"You look beat!"
Son: "I've been playing racquetball with The Spirit."
Father: "I know. I'm both omniscient and omnipresent, either one of
which would have been sufficient to ..."
Son: [interrupting] "Yeah, I get it. But Jesus!" [Father casts a
disapproving sideways glance]
Son: "I mean, but Me! That dude's freaking crazy! Tongues of fire darting
all over the court. Constant stream of unintelligible gibberish.
Wore me out!"
Father: "I don't play with him anymore."
Son: "More like he doesn't play with you. Not such fun when your opponent's
omnipotent."
Father: "Whatever. Why don't you take a load off? Can I get you a drink?"
Son: "Nah, I'll get it. I'm thinking something refreshing, like maybe a
Chardonnay on the rocks with a twist."
Father: "Good thing I created grapes."
Son: "Amen to that!" [both briefly bow their heads, eyes closed]
Son: "On second thought, maybe I'll go down to the lounge and
hang out with the Saints. Wonder what they have on tap?"
Father: [furrowing brow in concentration] "They have ..."
Son: [interrupting] "That was rhetorical! I want it to be a surprise. "
Father: "As you wish."
Son: "Want to come with?"
Father: "I'm already there."
Son: "Ok, then, see you there."
Father: "I may as well tag along. Don't have a choice anyway."
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Pleasing Me
I have a friend who never misses an opportunity to point out that others are under no obligation to please me. It's a good thing, too, because my friend clearly understands that I don't understand, and am in frequent need of reminding. Nobody else reminds me quite so reliably.
The other day I was lamenting—my friend would say complaining—Microsoft's impending unification of the user interface across its platforms, from mobile to desktop.
My friend said, "You know, it isn't Microsoft's job to please you."
Well, at some level it actually is, but that was not my point.
I certainly understand why Microsoft thinks it needs to make this move, and it may even be right. But because the desktop user interface can't be pushed down to mobile devices, in a grand unification the mobile user interface has to be pulled up to the desktop. This amounts to settling on the lowest common denominator of functionality, and that's a big step backward for desktop users. It will be painful for people who do a lot of work on the desktop. I'm hardly the first person to have noted this.
Around the same time we were clarifying Microsoft's lack of obligation to me, I mentioned my delight at finding an online seller of precut mat boards. My find was good timing, because I'd been thinking about printing and framing some of my photography.
The seller's web site has a "viewer" page (which didn't work with the Firefox browser when I checked) where you can select different sizes and colors of mat board, including two-layered arrangements. The viewer is intended to give some indication of what the cut board will look like, especially allowing you to try different color schemes. The board's interior cutout in the viewer is correctly proportioned but empty.
I noted—my friend would say complained—that the viewer could benefit from some obvious improvements. For one, it's more than a little clunky to have to chose colors by name from a drop-down menu; choosing directly from a color palette would be far better.
And allowing the user to insert his own image into the empty cutout opening in the viewer would be a nice and very useful touch, making it much easier to try different colors in combination with the image they're intended to complement; that would give the best possible sense of the final result.
"You know," said my friend, "it isn't their job to please you."
But of course it is their job to please me, at least if "please" means providing appropriately powerful visual tools for selecting their product, and thus facilitating the sale.
And of course I understand that there are all kinds of resource constraints that dictate what can and can't be readily done in practice, and when. Noting that a thing would be "better" says nothing at all about the ease of accomplishing it.
But that was not my point.
As a former information technology professional who has spent his entire career thinking about user interfaces, it comes naturally and instinctively to me to critique specific user interfaces I encounter. My former colleagues and I did this all the time.
By noting what a vendor's web site does well, and also where it could be improved, one is able to think better about how best to design one's own site. It's like a writer instinctively noting and critiquing language in other peoples' writing. It happens automatically. It goes with the territory.
I'm retired now and no longer in the user interface business, but this impulse to notice and enhance is always at the front of my brain, and probably always will be.
Professional foibles aside, my friend's useful role in setting me straight is a recurrent theme in our relationship that goes back almost to the beginning.
Two or three decades ago we were at a street-side bagel shop in California, when the man behind the counter greeted me with a dark and glowering scowl. Probably I didn't know how to properly order a bagel. I'm a yokel from Kansas, after all; what do I know from bagels? Or maybe I was taking too long figuring out my ordering options. I'd never ordered a bagel before.
But the glare was so intense and unhappy that I wouldn't have been more surprised if the guy had punched me. Taken aback, I expressed surprise at the rude treatment.
"You know," said my friend, "he doesn't have to be polite to you."
"Have" to be? As in, he wasn't breaking any laws?
Well yes, in some sense he does have to be, to the extent that treating your customers discourtelously is bad for business. So say the MBAs, and I believe them.
But that was not my point.
I was merely expressing my surprise and discomfort at being treated so rudely. It was unexpected and disconcerting, and I was just reacting with a bit of (quite natural, I think) hurt.
My friend, being my friend, might have faked a bit of sympathy: "Yeah, what was that about?" Or even just an acknowledging grunt of "uh huh." If my friend saw some need to defend the fellow, one tack might have been to suggest that perhaps the guy was having a bad day.
What I got was better than all that.
My friend, exercising a rather unique talent, saw that what we had before us was a teachable moment (this was before the expression "teachable moment" came into vogue), and it should not be squandered. In that instance I needed to know I had no reasonable expectation of bored indifference, let alone politeness, and I'm sure I'm better off for having learned the lesson.
As I say, that was a very long time ago. More recently my friend said it would be nice if a certain company would report on its web site some particular statistical data about its operations. (No need to get into the details here.) As an enthusiastic imbiber of all kinds of information myself, I could readily agree that the desired data would indeed be interesting, though probably not to a large number of individuals. It might easily end up being a somewhat esoteric service to the few curious souls who cared about that sort of thing.
And, yes, I might have suggested that it was not the company's job to please my friend.
But I didn't. Why would I?
The other day I was lamenting—my friend would say complaining—Microsoft's impending unification of the user interface across its platforms, from mobile to desktop.
My friend said, "You know, it isn't Microsoft's job to please you."
Well, at some level it actually is, but that was not my point.
I certainly understand why Microsoft thinks it needs to make this move, and it may even be right. But because the desktop user interface can't be pushed down to mobile devices, in a grand unification the mobile user interface has to be pulled up to the desktop. This amounts to settling on the lowest common denominator of functionality, and that's a big step backward for desktop users. It will be painful for people who do a lot of work on the desktop. I'm hardly the first person to have noted this.
Around the same time we were clarifying Microsoft's lack of obligation to me, I mentioned my delight at finding an online seller of precut mat boards. My find was good timing, because I'd been thinking about printing and framing some of my photography.
The seller's web site has a "viewer" page (which didn't work with the Firefox browser when I checked) where you can select different sizes and colors of mat board, including two-layered arrangements. The viewer is intended to give some indication of what the cut board will look like, especially allowing you to try different color schemes. The board's interior cutout in the viewer is correctly proportioned but empty.
I noted—my friend would say complained—that the viewer could benefit from some obvious improvements. For one, it's more than a little clunky to have to chose colors by name from a drop-down menu; choosing directly from a color palette would be far better.
And allowing the user to insert his own image into the empty cutout opening in the viewer would be a nice and very useful touch, making it much easier to try different colors in combination with the image they're intended to complement; that would give the best possible sense of the final result.
"You know," said my friend, "it isn't their job to please you."
But of course it is their job to please me, at least if "please" means providing appropriately powerful visual tools for selecting their product, and thus facilitating the sale.
And of course I understand that there are all kinds of resource constraints that dictate what can and can't be readily done in practice, and when. Noting that a thing would be "better" says nothing at all about the ease of accomplishing it.
But that was not my point.
As a former information technology professional who has spent his entire career thinking about user interfaces, it comes naturally and instinctively to me to critique specific user interfaces I encounter. My former colleagues and I did this all the time.
By noting what a vendor's web site does well, and also where it could be improved, one is able to think better about how best to design one's own site. It's like a writer instinctively noting and critiquing language in other peoples' writing. It happens automatically. It goes with the territory.
I'm retired now and no longer in the user interface business, but this impulse to notice and enhance is always at the front of my brain, and probably always will be.
Professional foibles aside, my friend's useful role in setting me straight is a recurrent theme in our relationship that goes back almost to the beginning.
Two or three decades ago we were at a street-side bagel shop in California, when the man behind the counter greeted me with a dark and glowering scowl. Probably I didn't know how to properly order a bagel. I'm a yokel from Kansas, after all; what do I know from bagels? Or maybe I was taking too long figuring out my ordering options. I'd never ordered a bagel before.
But the glare was so intense and unhappy that I wouldn't have been more surprised if the guy had punched me. Taken aback, I expressed surprise at the rude treatment.
"You know," said my friend, "he doesn't have to be polite to you."
"Have" to be? As in, he wasn't breaking any laws?
Well yes, in some sense he does have to be, to the extent that treating your customers discourtelously is bad for business. So say the MBAs, and I believe them.
But that was not my point.
I was merely expressing my surprise and discomfort at being treated so rudely. It was unexpected and disconcerting, and I was just reacting with a bit of (quite natural, I think) hurt.
My friend, being my friend, might have faked a bit of sympathy: "Yeah, what was that about?" Or even just an acknowledging grunt of "uh huh." If my friend saw some need to defend the fellow, one tack might have been to suggest that perhaps the guy was having a bad day.
What I got was better than all that.
My friend, exercising a rather unique talent, saw that what we had before us was a teachable moment (this was before the expression "teachable moment" came into vogue), and it should not be squandered. In that instance I needed to know I had no reasonable expectation of bored indifference, let alone politeness, and I'm sure I'm better off for having learned the lesson.
As I say, that was a very long time ago. More recently my friend said it would be nice if a certain company would report on its web site some particular statistical data about its operations. (No need to get into the details here.) As an enthusiastic imbiber of all kinds of information myself, I could readily agree that the desired data would indeed be interesting, though probably not to a large number of individuals. It might easily end up being a somewhat esoteric service to the few curious souls who cared about that sort of thing.
And, yes, I might have suggested that it was not the company's job to please my friend.
But I didn't. Why would I?
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