Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - Going paperless, Ald. Dale Hodges and the series of tubes

jammies · 09-05-2008, 01:59 PM

Hodges sounds like this guy that used to work at one of my clients - first off, he had to be the slowest typist in history, as it took him about 2 minutes to type in an email address. Actual emails, all of 2 to 3 lines, were works of a half to full hour of typing, using the "two fingers but completely forget which letters are where and have to scan the keyboard every time for them" method.

Then, he was unable to comprehend that if you typed in the email address wrong (which, at 1/2 a word per minute you'd think would be hard to do), the message would not go to the person you intended, and would come back as a failure. He would always call me and ask if the email system was down every time it happened: "Geez jammies I sent a message and I got this weird message back saying some gibberish about "not finding the recipient". Is the email down?" Once I asked him to forward me the message and he managed to type MY email address wrong (which was even harder, considering it was a generic email address at the company called "Bell") and got another error, which of course confirmed his suspicions that the whole system was falling apart and that technology was way over-rated.

Anyway, he was a nice enough guy, and not really dumb, but he just annoyed the living hell out of me because when I gently suggested I could hook him up with a program to help him learn to type, his response was "I don't have time for that, I'm a busy man." Really? You have time to spend an hour (and I'm not exaggerating, I actually watched him type a three sentence email in over an hour while I was by his desk installing a new computer for someone else) for each short email you write, but you don't have time to learn to cut that down to maybe a couple minutes?

This smacks of the same blindness to sense - as CMPunk said, he can always print out his own copy on his own paper if he is that addicted to it. Otherwise, he should realize that it's the same data either way, and if he's carrying "piles of paper" that only fit in his trunk, a decent laptop is going to be lighter and just as portable.

09-05-2008, 01:59 PM	#22
jammies Basement Chicken Choker Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: In a land without pants, or war, or want. But mostly we care about the pants. Exp:	Hodges sounds like this guy that used to work at one of my clients - first off, he had to be the slowest typist in history, as it took him about 2 minutes to type in an email address. Actual emails, all of 2 to 3 lines, were works of a half to full hour of typing, using the "two fingers but completely forget which letters are where and have to scan the keyboard every time for them" method. Then, he was unable to comprehend that if you typed in the email address wrong (which, at 1/2 a word per minute you'd think would be hard to do), the message would not go to the person you intended, and would come back as a failure. He would always call me and ask if the email system was down every time it happened: "Geez jammies I sent a message and I got this weird message back saying some gibberish about "not finding the recipient". Is the email down?" Once I asked him to forward me the message and he managed to type MY email address wrong (which was even harder, considering it was a generic email address at the company called "Bell") and got another error, which of course confirmed his suspicions that the whole system was falling apart and that technology was way over-rated. Anyway, he was a nice enough guy, and not really dumb, but he just annoyed the living hell out of me because when I gently suggested I could hook him up with a program to help him learn to type, his response was "I don't have time for that, I'm a busy man." Really? You have time to spend an hour (and I'm not exaggerating, I actually watched him type a three sentence email in over an hour while I was by his desk installing a new computer for someone else) for each short email you write, but you don't have time to learn to cut that down to maybe a couple minutes? This smacks of the same blindness to sense - as CMPunk said, he can always print out his own copy on his own paper if he is that addicted to it. Otherwise, he should realize that it's the same data either way, and if he's carrying "piles of paper" that only fit in his trunk, a decent laptop is going to be lighter and just as portable. __________________ Better educated sadness than oblivious joy.