Category: Humility

Time For Me To Get To Work

I write in this blog about different aspects of technology and different ways of looking at how to use technology. I post links to other sites, about technology, which interest me.

Honestly, I could have done that in a diary and skipped the whole process of setting up a website. Using pencil and paper to record thoughts is pretty old technology. It’s definitely stood the test of time.

I started a blog, which has multiple steps, to learn more about how to set up websites in the current year. I’ve decided it’s time to remember that and get back to work.

There’s lots of sources, I think it’s more important to pick one and get started. So I’m going to try Khan Academy. I took a look at their basic courses on websites the other day. It’s under the heading “Computer Programming,” which I didn’t expect. They advocate learning JS before learning HTML and CSS. I didn’t expect that. I’ll start there, and see how it goes.

Technology Won’t Get Someone To A Goal They Haven’t Defined

I created this blog to be about how a person can make their technology work for them. Personally, I like technology, gadgets, and tools.

However, I often talk to friends who want help with some piece of technology. “I just want it to work” is a common statement. In my opinion, they are working for their technology more than it is working for them.

Some of the biggest difficulties I’ve seen people have with technology is they haven’t decided what they’re aiming for. They don’t know how their steps today will get them to a place they want to be in the future.

A Simple Example

As a very simple example, one restaurant I frequent has a loyalty program. The loyalty program requires installing an app on a smartphone. I sympathize with why the restaurant wants their customers to install an app. There’s customer profiles, direct to customer messages, tracking trend with regular customers, detailed data on what dishes are doing well. But why would I, the customer, want to download the app?

There are some rewards for the loyalty program, discounts on dishes or next visit or something-or-other. I read through the apps list of what information it tracks, and honestly it was more than I wanted to share with a restaurant app.

Data harvesting aside, each app on my smartphone and each program on my computer is a place for trouble to start. It’s a place for a conflict with other programs or with the operating system to arise. It’s something to potentially eat up my computer’s or smartphone’s processor cycles or memory space.

Is there anything so important about a restaurant loyalty app that it’s worth all that hassle? No, not for me.

The Existence of Something Does Not Obligate Me To Buy It.

Too often when my friends ask me about helping them with some piece of technology, they never stopped to wonder why they got it in the first place. Yes, there might have been an end goal of more money, less worry, more time, a task being easier to accomplish. This piece of technology was presented to them, and there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of thought about “Will this thing in front of me get me to the goals I want to achieve?”

Many times, there wasn’t a goal set at all. Someone told them it was a good idea or a recommended idea for something-or-other, and now there’s this piece of technology that they are working for.

Perspective: The Last 20% Which Is 50% of the Entire Project, Part II — Ongoing Projects

Last week I wrote about the last 20% of a project which usually takes 50% or more of a project.

What if it’s a situation like this blog? This blog doesn’t have a set end date or a defined end goal. What then?

My experience is it will be entirely too easy to get caught up in details. I’ve thought about it, read about it, listened to podcasts about it. After all that, I’ve come to the conclusion an ongoing project can’t be treated as an ongoing project. It has to be treated as a succession of a number of set goals with set timelines.

The purpose of the goals and timelines isn’t to create an impossible amount of work, and to then beat myself or someone else over the head with failure to meet that impossible standard. Rather, the purpose of the goals and timelines is to have a strategic plan. This is the only way I can see to avoid being caught in endless rounds of minutiae that is the end details of any project.

Perspective: The Last 20% Which Is 50% of the Entire Project, Part I

How Most Projects Start and Progress

Almost every project has a final portion which feels — not planned out or calculated, but rough ballpark estimate — like “about” 20% of the project. It’s the small details at the end.

A big idea was conceived, prototypes were tried, a plan was made. The plan was followed, somewhat. There were mistakes and do-overs. Unexpected obstacles came up and were dealt with. The end is in sight! Most of what remains is small fiddly stuff.

That Last Fiddly 20%

That small fiddly stuff, in most projects, solo and group, hobby and professional, “feels” like “about” 20% of the project. That’s the same impression and discussion I hear from almost everyone else I’ve talked to about this phenomena. It’s not even a quarter of the project, not even 25%. It’s probably only 20%.

And that 20% — the quilting and binding on a quilt, the editing and spell checking and format checking and fact checking on a document, the sanding and finishing and possibly staining on woodwork, the documentation and environmental testing and agency approvals on an electronic device, and a million other examples — will actually take about 50% of the time and energy of the entire project.

That last detailed portion will take about 50% because it is so detailed. Some parts can be automated, a bit. I can use spellcheck on a document, but I shouldn’t rely on it, I’ll still need to check again. There are powered sanders for wood, but I see most woodworkers use touch or sight for one last check. I know of no ways to automate weaving in yarn ends at the end of a crochet project.

I almost wrote about changing formatting in a document, but that would take a whole post in itself because Microsoft Word is so ubiquitous and so unhelpful. It’s unhelpful when I’ve tried to change document-wide formatting after a document is done. It’s unhelpful when I’m trying to tell it whether a list should be treated as a formal ordered or unordered list. Fighting with overly helpful word processors often takes an amazing amount of time.

Avoiding This (Maybe)

It’s better to budget the time for the end of the project, at the start. Saying “oh, it’s probably about 20% of the project” and then finding out it’s 50% is stressful for everyone involved.

Why Is This “Part I?”

Avoiding this is difficult enough when the project has a definite end in sight.

But when it’s a blog, like this, which is ongoing? Does the tendency to mentally assign 20% to details still occur? Even for someone like me, who tends to be more focused and tolerant of the fiddly details for most? I’m finding that yes, it does. I’ll write about that more in Part II.

Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast

Computers and Software

I’ve had computers where I could hit six key combinations in quick succession. And then I could watch it all be executed smoothly — and correctly! — over the next twenty seconds.

I’ve also had computers where I had to watch the monitor after every single key press. I wouldn’t like the results if I got too far ahead of what the computer was doing,

Hardware devices with lots of buttons tend to fall into the second category: get too far ahead and it will take me longer than if I’d gone the device’s speed to start with. Most remotely hosted services seems to fall into this second category too. And most smart phones are in this second category.

Business Practices

Then there are other mental processes where rushing makes things slower in the end. The classic phrase “I’m writing you a long letter because I didn’t have time to write a short one” is an example of this. There are legions of corporate memos sent in haste, legal documents filed in haste, emails addressed and sent in haste, where time-consuming mistakes were made which probably could have been avoided if there had been less haste.

Hand Crafts

My last set of examples today is hands-on processes like sewing, welding, woodworking, and dozens of other hand crafts. “Measure twice, cut once” is a common statement in almost all of them for the same reasons I wrote about above. Measuring twice takes much less time than buying more fabric or wood or metal or whatever else I was using.

Why Am I Writing This?

Mostly, I write this blog for myself, but I write about the problems I see people have with technology. I write about the recurring themes I hear in what people say and in what they ask me for help with. I write this blog for everyone who says “I just want it to work.” Part of making it work, and this goes for all types of its, is knowing the speed of the technology and respecting that. Fixing something broken is almost always slower than slowing down enough to not mess up in the first place.

Error 79 on HP Laserjet M251nw. I changed the document scaling.

Spoiler to the story is in the title.

I’m not going to tell a three-page story full of angst, drama, and existential musings, when my solution was “I changed the document scaling and it printed.”

I am going to rant a bit about what happened before I found that solution.

The beginning of the story

More formally, the full name on the printer is “HP LaserJet Pro 200 color M251nw”. I bought this one used several years ago. The previous owner did not like how much the toner cost.

I was printing out a multipage document. I saw error code 79, firmware error. This sounded bad. The printer said to turn it off, turn it back on, try to reprint the document. I did. I still got error 79.

Multiple websites later, most of them recommended power cycling and trying to print again. I had already tried that.

The red herring: A surge suppressor???

At least one website said to disconnect it from any surge suppressor and plug it directly into the wall outlet. I was dubious, thinking that 1) I cannot see any way there would be enough line drop, current limitations, change to voltage waveform, change to line characteristics, or anything else I could think of which a surge suppressor would create which would prevent a previously functioning laser printer from continuing to function, and 2) if for some reason the circuitry is so tender and so balanced on knife’s edge that a surge suppressor does prevent it from functioning, and it got through HP’s design, design review, and QA teams like that and was still released, I would doubt all HP products forever after.

No, the surge suppressor had nothing to do with it. I have no reason to doubt HP’s products. I have no idea why that website said a surge suppressor could the cause of the firmware error.

What no one suggested (no one I saw, anyway)

After more troubleshooting, none of which I saw recommended on any of the sites I looked at, I narrowed the problems down to one page. It was one page, out of dozens, which caused the error 79 to show up when I tried to print it.

It was a PDF page, original scale 8.5″ x 11″. The page was a scan of an older document printed before laser printers existed. I had set my PDF reader to automatically scale to page margins or printer margins or something like that. It came up with a scale percentage around 99%. I changed to a custom scale, and reduced it to 97%. Then it printed fine. No errors, no problems.

I fixed the error, in that document, on my printer, by changing the document scaling. I have no idea if that will work for anyone else.

Great Power Brings Great Responsibility

Yes, it’s trite. It’s also true.

Not having to do repetitive routine tasks by hand is one of the benefits of technology.

An obvious example is using a spreadsheet program to create and calculate spreadsheet numbers, instead of having to write everything by hand. And then not having to rewrite everything by hand because one of the starting number changed.

A less obvious example is being able to model unsolvable math problems. Back in the 1990s I was told there were heat transfer problems which engineers and mathematicians had not been able to solve with calculus. Those same problems could be solved by a computer program modeling heat transfer over thousands and millions of small volumes.

However, with great power comes great responsibility.

That same computer will do other things we ask it to do, like delete every file we have. There was an article in The Register, “Automation is great. Until it breaks and nobody gets paid.” It was published on April 14, 2023 and written by Simon Sharwood. It is part of The Register‘s ongoing “On Call” series where readers write in with stories of tech problems they’ve had to fix.

Even more enlightening than the story was the comments section. There were quite a few comments in there about former co-workers who had written something “simple” which had very not-simple repercussions.

Technology is great and saves a lot of time, but only if it’s used responsibly and wisely.

Slowing Down to Speed Up, Writing Edition

I listen to some small business and entrepreneur podcasts. One of the phrases I frequently hear is “slow down to speed up.”

I’ll be honest, I typically hear that right before the host explains why they fought that idea when they first heard it, before having to learn it the hard way. And by “hard way,” I mean by repeated painful experience. Anyway, I’ll get back on topic.

Slowing down to speed up also applies to writing. I used to wonder why there were so many different types of notebooks and stationery. For that matter, why were there so many different types of accounting ledger books?

In both cases, writing something down and then rewriting it somewhere else in a different way helps focus the mind.

For writing, I’ve seen guidelines which say there is a creative mode which runs fast and often a bit too free, then there is the editing mode. These are different parts of the brain, and trying to switch in and out of editing mode while ostensibly being in creating mode doesn’t work that well.

I’ve tried that with writing and it does work. I’m still not fully in the habit. But each time I get a little bit better are remembering to let it flow first and then go back and correct later.

I’m also finding it helps to do that with money. I don’t write down every cent of every transaction, but I’m starting to create a list of regular expenses, pulling the information from multiple other places it’s recorded. And it is helping me focus on what I want to keep and what I’m fine letting go.

Why am I writing this on a blog about making technology work for you?

Technology has created so many time-saving services, it’s erased the friction which used to exist. So we all, myself included, want to let the apps and programs and whatever do it all for us. When we do that, we convince ourselves we’re going faster and faster. But we’re planning and considering less and less.

A re-read and rewriting of a good idea is better than writing it hurriedly fifteen times. And it will be fifteen times because we’re moving so fast we forgot what we already wrote.

An inventory and accounting of what classes and guides and books have already been purchased is better than purchasing more variations of the same thing. But it’s faster and feels faster to just buy more of what has already been purchases.

Slowing down to go faster is a real thing.

TAS: Tool Acquisition Syndrome. The Struggle Is Real.

I heard the term Tool Acquisition Syndrome on some welding or woodworking podcast. It’s witty and descriptive. “Shiny Object Syndrome” is a similar term I’ve heard in entrepreneur and small business podcasts.

Both terms describe the tendency to buy more tools. Usually this ends up delaying a project: the tool must be bought, arrive, be unpacked, the manual read, and so on.

I’ve found one of the counters to TAS is to look through all the things which can be done by the tools I already own. Many electronic devices can do a surprising number of things.

Once in a great while there will be a great sale on a tool I don’t actually need. I’ve purchased some really interesting tools that way. But generally, I don’t need to buy new tools, I already have what I need.

The Easy Way Is Usually Mined

Last week I wrote about human-machine interfaces and how difficult it is to make an interface which is intuitive to use.

One of the promises of modern software, smart devices, and development, and software frameworks is how much easier it will make things.

But does it really?

One examples I run into a few times a year is a scoring program for a kids’ competition. The competition is archery, there are multiple age brackets, types of bow, and clubs. Each round generates anywhere from 20 to 40 scores per competitor who competed that round. There are two software programs I’ve heard of which are written to keep track of all this for competitors (and more importantly, competitors’ parents and coaches).

One program is an Excel spreadsheet with a bit of macros and VBA programming. The other is a tablet-based app.

Hot and New

The tablet-based program is “simpler” and “easier” and its fans describe it as simpler and easier. I have not looked at it closely, but questioning people who have used it or been present at matches where it has been used, I’ve found out a bit about how it works. The tablet-based app won’t work without an internet connection. So some major part of it’s functioning does not take place on the tablets.

An internet connection with multiple devices requires a router. All routers have a finite amount of connections they can handle at one time. How the router handles more devices talking to it than it has channels to talk depends on the router and the devices.

In addition, because the tablet-based app is “simpler” and “easier,” and unspoken is the always present belief that technology is magic and always makes things better, paper scorecards are not used. Score are entered on the tablets. I don’t know the exact interface for the competitor to confirm yes, that is their score. But I have heard from multiple parents and coaches that scores can be lost if a judge or competitor presses the wrong button on the screen. I’ve even heard that multiple competitors’ scores can be lost if a wrong button is pressed on the screen.

Assuming all goes well, the score will be sent to wherever it is processed. Entered scores can be accessed via the internet with anyone with an internet connection. So people present at the match can look up scores on their smart phone.

Old and Busted

Now I will discuss the old, difficult, outdated Excel spreadsheet method. Scores are written down by judges on paper scoresheets. The competitors get to see their scores and agree to them before the scores are sent to the scorekeeper.

The scorekeeper must have a Windows PC with Microsoft Excel running on it. The scores are entered by hand. The Excel spreadsheet does have an option to compute what has been entered. When it does so, it creates a page in the spreadsheet which is formatted to be printed on 8-1/2″ x 11″ inch paper. The paper gets posted when a new copy with new scores is printed.

If Microsoft Excel is running locally on the Windows PC, then no internet connection is required. It is not possible to lose all scores for a competitors’ round by hitting the wrong button on a screen; the paper scorecard still exists, regardless of how many buttons are pressed on which screens.

“We started telling our kids to keep track of their own scores”

A parent in this sport told me their club started telling competitors to keep their own copies of their scores. They said this at matches where the newer, simpler tablet-based app was being used. They said this because there were so many problems with the tablet-based app losing scores. And once a score was lost, it was unrecoverable because there was no paper copy.

Technology is not magic. “There’s an app for that” is not the answer to everything. The easy way is usually mined.