Iron Fist

I remember once my physics lab partner pointed me to a site that was a compilation of “stupid user” anecdotes. I remember that at the head of the page was a quote from Charles Babbage, proto-computer scientist:

On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

The machine he makes reference to is his famous Difference Engine. I always found this hysterical, because it meant that what we in the biz kindly refer to as “user error” actually predated the invention of the computer.

Still, most of the time, most people I know are fairly capable when it comes to using computers, especially once I allow for the fact that not everyone is a computer scientist or is otherwise a complete nerd. Then every once in a while someone has to come along and remind me that those users are still out there.

As I was trying to leave work last Saturday (Christmas eve) one of my coworkers flagged me down to make an announcement. “I bought my fiancé one of those new Nanoos!”

I thought this might have been some obscure reference to Mork and Mindy, but then I remembered that he wasn’t that sophisticated. “A what?”

“One of those iPods, man, the little ones. The Nanoos. She’s been bugging me about getting her one for months.”

“Er…you mean the Nano?”

“Yeah, whatever it’s called, Nanoo, Nano. I finally got her one.”

This was interesting. Even the lesser of the two Nanos will still put you back $200, and this was the same coworker who had hit me up to borrow money the week before. Somehow in the last six days he’d not only managed to buy an iPod, but was also looking at putting a down payment on a wedding ring. I started to wonder if this would be a good time to ask for my two dollars back.

Besides the issue of how he had the money to buy one of these trendy toys, I was also curious as to how he intended to use it. I’d seen his computer before, and it was an aging Pentium-class desktop running Windows 98 — and just barely, at that. I don’t know if it even had USB ports. I was not curious enough to ask him about it, though, since this would probably draw me into a frustrating conversation and delay me from what I was really looking forward to: going home from work. So I wandered off as soon as he became distracted so that I could wrap up my paperwork and get the hell out of there.

No such luck. He tracked me down to where I was working, and asked, “So how do I get this to work with my computer? I want to get this Nano thing going for my lady.”

“Umm…I’m not really sure if it will work with your computer or not. Aren’t you still running Windows 98?”

“Yeah, the guys at the Mac Store told me I’d need Windows XP or 2000 to get it to work.”

I refrained from asking the obvious question, then why the hell did you go ahead and buy it? “Yeah, that sounds about right to me, dude.”

“Well, can’t I get a special cable or something, so it’ll work with my computer?”

“No,” I said, rubbing at my eyes, “that’s not going to cut it. It’s not a matter of being able to plug into your box or not -”

“What about those computers at school? She goes to PSU, don’t all those computers use Windows 2000 or something?”

“Yeah, they all run XP at the school, but that’s not going to help you any-”

“There’s no way she can do it at school? Just plug it in real fast or put the disc in to get it going or whatever? What about your computer? Can I use that to set it up?”

Wow. “Dude, I don’t know how else to explain this to you: you can’t just walk by a computer that’s running Windows XP and wave your iPod in front of it and magically cause music to appear on it and get it working. You need to be able to run iTunes on your computer, to manage your music and port it onto your iPod. And you can’t just go install this software on one of the library computers. If you can’t run iTunes at home, you can’t use your iPod. Sorry.”

He looked at me through narrowed eyes. “So you’re saying there’s no way I can get this thing working with my computer? You’re sure there’s no cable?”

Fucking amazing. “Nope. Sorry, buddy. Hope you kept your receipt.”

“Well, I’ll figure out someway to get it to work, maybe they’ve got a cable at the Mac Store that will solve this for me.” Just in case, you know, I didn’t know what I was talking about. I love this part, where people will come to me with some vaguely described problem with their computer, like they were installing something and a little box with a red ‘X’ popped up with a message in it. I’ll ask what the message said, and they don’t know, but they’re sure there was a red ‘X.’ Wow, really? A red X in a Windows dialog box? Astonishing. Shut up. Or else they’re having printer issues, and I tell them I’m not familiar with their printer or what they’re describing, and they ask if I don’t go to school for this sort of thing.

Confusion of ideas, indeed.