Technology thoughts

I've been working hard preparing for classes, and teaching classes (and working on an article-in-progress), so I haven't been blogging much, or following other blogs. I didn't realize that Free Range Librarian had asked for ideas on netbooks and other technology purchases. What would have been my advice? My Samsung NC10, how I love it! Lightweight, portable, friendly - did I mention that her name is Harriet Jones? (All of our computers and peripherals are named after Doctor Who characters.) But Free Range is waiting for Windows 7, and has her eye on an Acer. I think that was on our short list; we just preferred the Samsung.

I got a great error message from Firefox this week: "Well, this is embarrassing. Firefox is having trouble" doing what I wanted it to do. I have never seen a Microsoft product indicate that it was embarrassed (although as a friend pointed out to me on Facebook, maybe it wasn't Firefox that was supposed to be embarrassed.) It's still one of my favorite error messages.

My Own Travel 2.0

So next week (I hope), I'm off on vacation. Since spouse works for an airline, we fly "standby." This is not my idea of a good time, but he prefers to take advantage of this perk. I'm crossing my fingers, and toes, and anything else I can cross without being a safety hazard.

But in the spirit of 2.0, I revisited my Travel 2.0 posting. The Travel 2.0 blog reminded me that airlines charge fees for a lot these days, including bags (I don't think we stand-byers have to do that, but this may have changed.) I still haven't decided if I'm taking my new netbook, or we'll be bringing a couple to share for the family (it will depend on how much carry-on weight/bulk I want to deal with), but I probably won't be keeping a travel journal on Mapness. I think it would take away quality time from La Famille. I hope to be on Facebook, though, so I'll still keep a hand in the 2.0 world. So far the ratings on TripAdvisor for our hotel are positive, so once we get there, we should be fine.

I have a new error message to add to my collection. Yesterday I was trying to get into our content management system to update some web pages, and I got this friendly error: "Several Java Virtual Machines running in the same process caused an error." Yeah, well, what does that mean? There's too much going on somewhere, I get that part. Does that mean it's on my computer, at the other end, or somewhere in between? And what should I do about it? What process were they involved in, and is it legal in all 50 states? In the end, the brower crashed, so all the windows I had in that brower disappeared (at least it wasn't ALL of my browser sessions.) Will the new Millennium eventually bring error messages that make sense to non-techs? I'm not holding my breath on that.

Snowed Under

We had several inches of snow yesterday, PLUS I got a last-minute request to teach a class next week, so "snowed under" is how I feel. But I can share a few tidbits:

• A counterpoint to the "Facebook, I Quit!" article I linked to last week: "Why Facebook is for Old Fogies" from Time Magazine (especially "Facebook is about finding people you've lost track of... son, we've lost track of more people than you've ever met.")
• My husband was out of town during yesterday's snowstorm and expected back last night. I missed his call to my cell phone (I was shoveling out my car) and only got his voicemail message much later. He said, "But I changed my Facebook status!"
• I got my first File 404 error message from the new administration the other day:
  "The page you requested wasn't found at this location. The Obama Administration has created a brand new White House website, and it's possible that the page you were looking for has been moved. Please take a moment to explore our new site, learn more about President Obama and his team, and read about their plan to bring about the change America needs."
  
  

Error 2.0

I've been writing lately about Millennials as well as Library 2.0, and it occurred to me that there's one area in Computerland that really needs some 2.0 attention. You know it, I know it, we all know it. It's those Dreaded Messages from Computers. You know what I mean. "You are low on disk space." "Memory error." "Error in line 27." "Mistake in line 9." "Illegal operation."

"Illegal operation" is a good one. So, I think. I've committed an illegal operation. What law have I broken? Are you sending the Computer Police to get me? Do I have the right to remain computing? Or was this a surgical operation I've unwittingly committed? Are we talkin' the American Medical Association here?

How about some helpful error messages? I wanted to call this post "Help 2.0," although I have to admit that online and network help has gotten better in the last few years. I can often find what I need to know in the help, local or on the internet (although it's sometimes under a heading that would never occur to me.) I still make notes in my computer books when I find the answer, because sometimes it takes awhile to find it (or, in the case of our reference desk computer, it gets re-imaged every so often, and I have to change all of the Microsoft-preferred or My-Place-of-Work-preferred defaults and settings back to the Marianne-preferred settings. There's nothing like having your own name underlined because Microsoft thinks it's misspelled.)

What would a helpful error message be like? It would not only tell you what you did, but either what you should do to fix it, or how you can do better next time. What do you think of these reflections on what I think recent error messages have been trying to tell me?

• Oh, you silly! Don't you know you can't have that many tabs open? It's really more than this poor program (or machine, or whatever) can handle. I know that YOU, with your superior human brain, can deal with this, but your poor, benighted computer really can't cope. So next time, no more than six or seven tabs at a time, ok? Especially if you're going to be playing music, downloading pdfs, and all of that other fancy stuff.
• Oh, bother. I've run out of memory again. No, really, it's me, it's not your fault. How were you to know my true limitations? Even I can't admit them all. So please, could you shut me down for a bit, and try again a little slower? I'd really appreciate the rest.
• Oops! Um, I don't know how to break this to you, but there's a new version of this program available, at it can handle more things than I can. I know, there's no way that you'd know this. If I could, I would have told you. Really. I wish they'd set me up to do that. But I only hear about it after the fact. So if you go to the Help and look under "New Stuff That No One's Told You," they'll have the answers there.
• Owie! Oh, I really blew that one, didn't I? I've been doing fine all this time, and you had no reason to suspect I would fail you this time. So sorry. I'll try not to let it happen again. So if you sneak around the back and save what you were doing, you should be fine.

My favorite help message of all time (in response to an acutual error) was on our old mainframe network, back at the Dawn of Time. "You have invoked Help," it began. Well, duh, I thought (although it may have been back before "duh" came into the common language.) If you think I need to be told that I'm asking for help, our relationship isn't starting off on a good footing, is it? Like the washing machine repairman who asked my mother, awash in suds, if she was sure that the machine was plugged in.

On this Halloween, let's see if we can invoke some helpful Help and error messages.