Another oldie. I saved them all for some reason.
Adventures in Skimming
Saturday August 11, 2001Why are people always telling me to follow instructions. I skim, isn’t that enough? You don’t mean you expect me to actually read all of that stuff on my screen?
I know some people who really do read all the instructions cover to cover before they begin anything. I tried that in school but now I’m over it. I use common sense, logic and rely on the good luck of the Irish to see me through. Its worked out so far, most of the time. When something really gets screwed up I can either blab my way through or find some way to work around it.
Besides, its more of an adventure if you don’t quite know what you’re doing. If you start with all the answers you might miss an opportunity to learn from the struggle of screwing up… umm I mean, trying it yourself, your own unique way.
Anyway, I just don’t like someone telling me what to do. That sort of thing. Most of the time it all works out just great. I’ve had all kinds of adventures since getting started with computers. I dig into my registry for those stragglers of files I deleted. My husband just cringes each time I restart my computer. But, it always restarts.
Well, there was that one time but it wasn’t my dabbling in the registry it was a new program I loaded that just didn’t like me or my computer. Turns out it didn’t like anyone. When I reformatted the computer and got back online I discovered the program had some major bugs. It was killing everyone’s computer, not just mine. So, it wasn’t just because I didn’t read the instructions. I did, momentarily, wish I had taken those reviews on the site seriously. But, that would have meant reading all of them, not just skimming the first couple. Oh well, it all worked out in the end. I learned how to reformat my hard drive. Yet another adventure!
The internet itself is full of adventures. At times I’ve wished there was more than email, newsgroups and the web. I know there are MUDs on telnet and those other fading sections of the net. I’ve never been able to get any telnet client to fully function. Maybe, someday, I will read the instructions. Maybe, not likely.
Anyway, there is so much just on the web itself. I can start on a weblog and end up reading about the ultimate destruction of Yahoo, why aliens are green, how Canadians are plotting their own world dominance, or someone’s personal life struggles. There is nothing like a weblog, the next best thing is a personal website. People find the most amazing things to link to.
Well, looks like I’ve lost my focus yet again. Seems to happen to me all the time. I just start writing about one thing and ten other topics hijack my brain. So, what did I start writing about… Oh well, to find out I’d have to go back to the top and read all that stuff I already wrote. I’ll skim it when I finish downloading that new tetris freeware.