I love new toys, and am always delighted to play experiment with new software or hardware that might improve my life. This holiday season, however, once again taught me a cruel truth: Even very cool technology that “just works” can’t save you from being an idiot user.
- Example 1: Leopard.  I got this for Christmas from A, and installed it on New Year’s day. It took 3 tries, and, along the way, taught me the joys of booting from a Firewire backup. (Yay for backups!) The problem? My failure to realize that 5 is a smaller number than 7. (In my defense, math is hard.) De-gunking my hard drive cleared the necessary space, and all was shiny and new.
- Example 2: HeadBlade. I got this because it seems stupid to pay $15 every 3 weeks for a clipper job, especially since, during the semester, finding the time for such a haircut is a pain in the ass. Using it really is fun, and The Little Man loves looking at the razor, so all-in-all it seems like a win. Having said that, it would have been a clever thing to actually *get* a haircut before first use, rather than just scraping away at 3 weeks’ worth of head-stubble. Stoopid Jason.
- Example 3: My new work coffee pot. My other main holiday gift: A very simple coffee pot/hot water brewer for my office, since there’s no *especially* convenient coffee on my end of campus. No problems here at all: The first time I made coffee, it saved me the 10 minutes (round trip) of walking to various other locales, and, more important, saved the temptation of buying non-coffee products. Excellent–not even I could screw this up.
And a bonus theory related to those non-coffee products: Ordering pastry at Dunkin Donuts is slightly akin to shopping for pornography in public or playing Truth/Dare: There’s a small range of generally accepted variation in one’s order (glazed, chocolate, jelly . . . ), which you waver from at your peril. Ordering, say, a vanilla frosted donut with sprinkles in front of a colleague provides excellent fodder for raillery or outright derision.