Why I use a Mac, anno 2006 3724

On Thu, 08 Jun 2006 13:01:15 -0500 in alt.folklore.computers, Charles

Aarrgh! Useless error messages. I hate 'em with a vengeance! When I run across them, I replace them with something that tells the poor sucker what happened, where, why, and what action they (or support staff) might usefully be able to take.

I once took this to a ridiculous extreme in a script at one PPoE, where some night shift operators were too dumb to understand the pretty explicit messages from the backup package (what to do with unlabelled or labelled tapes, which had or had not expired: write label, accept, unload-replace), and called me every night in the early hours with similar dumb questions. The script told them what had happened, why, what it was doing about it, and what they had to do about it (only if necessary: load a scratch monkey!) The messages from the script were as nauseously polite and verbose as I could make them: no one ever commented on them, even the smart operators. Lack of available drives prevented lights out backups, where I could have checked out the tapes myself beforehand and dealt with the rare real problems the next day.

-- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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