Gary T: It’s very true that you can render your computer completely inoperable and delete all the data on it while you’re sitting at your desk. On the other hand, it would require going into regions of the interface you usually have no reason to explore.
Cheesesteak: “Frame off restoration” sounds like zeroing out the hard drive and installing a new OS from the partition table on up. I admit that even after all my experience, I get a little nervous every time I have to modify a partition table.
Digital Stimulus: You’ve probably given the best response. It’s a big help to be able to grasp things and move them around and so on, and see instantly when something just can’t work because it isn’t even connected.
What I would like is a proper dashboard, as in actual fucking gauges - I want to know the actual fluid levels, pressures and temperatures. Not an array of non-informative-it’s-too-late-arggghhh-“warning”-lights.
My car does not terrify me, but there is irritation at times with an ongoing problem or too. But the current ride is very well behaved.
I did that once…just once. Cloud of smoke, sparks flying, burnt plastic smell, and me propelling my chair backwards as quickly as possible. And that’s all it took to actually pay attention to where I’m putting the wires…
Cars have been in their current form for many years now, with very standardized controls. It would be more interesting to compare today’s reaction to computers to the prevailing reaction to cars thirty years after they became mainstream. Older people today grew up around cars, but not computers. I think we’ll see the fear diminish dramatically over the years.
Also, compared to standardized cars, computers really do suck, although I do think it is something that gets better with time. The things you do on a day to day basis on a computer are less intuitive, more abstract, and rely on the user interface models of many different competing software companies, some of which are much worse than others at designing user interfaces. If you add the prevalence of spyware and viruses to the mix I can easily understand why some people find computers scary.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. If I make a user error with my computer, the worst thing that happens is I lose my voluminous porn collection. If I make a user error with my car, they end up using footage of my violent decapitation in driver’s ed. classes.
But the real difference between how people relate to cars, and how people relate to computer is this: there’s virtually no one alive today who didn’t grow up around cars. On the other hand, the vast majority of the population remembers what the world was like before the PC revolution. If you went back to the 1930s, I expect you’d find a lot of similar attitudes towards cars. And if you went forward to 2075, you’ll probably find that the attitude has all but vanished.
In the event that you weren’t joking, it does except when it doesn’t. Look for a picture of a windshield, or a windshield with a fountain. Also most are not completely empty when they require fluid so look for the container containing blue/bluish green fluid. The cap is on top. The frustrating thing is, as I sat here thinking about it, except for older GM cars it might just be about anywhere under the hood. In the case of those GMs I mentioned, it right up there by the windshield.
I was absolutely not joking. Not wanting sparking things closer than Philadelphia was a wish I know is unrealistic, but I’d be happy if I could get it.
Under the hood of my car, there is a black box called an “engine”. I know there is windshield wiper fluid somewhere in it that needs to be replaced periodically. I ask the people who change my oil (which I know is also located somewhere in the engine) to do this. I’m so non-mechanically-inclined, I wouldn’t know where to begin to learn what’s under the hood of my car. I figure I’m better off earning money doing something I’m actually good at and paying people who are good at working on cars to work on mine. Specialization is the foundation of civilization.
This attitude serves me well in IT. I understand when people don’t want to learn how to fix their own computer- I have no particular interest in learning to fix my car, either.
I hate those nonverbal labels. I usually guess wrong when I try to figure out what is pictured in them.
Here’s a site that might help you (see below–I’m no good at coding links). It has a picture of the symbol you’re looking for. This is a truly simple task that might help demistify all the stuff under the hood.
For what it’s worth, the fluid doesn’t go in the engine. There is usually a white plastic tank somewhere along the inside edges of the engine compartment.
I figured there was a specific hole somewhere under the hood that it goes into.
Ahh, the Internet is a wonderful thing for people like me who haven’t managed to pick up how to do things like this from watching other people do them. I might even be able to figure it out from that. I’d still rather pay someone else to do it, though, and I still wouldn’t try to do anything under the hood of my car except in a real emergency.
My attitude towards my current car is “Ehhh…” I don’t love it, I don’t hate it, and I’m not especially afraid of, or intimidated by, it. It’s just another complex machine; when it breaks, I call a mechanic.
Now my first car, a beat to shit old turquoise-and-white 1974 Ford LTD, known to me and my friends as the mighty “Scrap Iron”, was a CAR, baby. It was like an old friend. With the exception of a couple of VW Beetles, it was probably the last car I could actually work on; look under the hood and you knew exactly what you were seeing. Air cleaner, carburator, fuel filter, fuel pump, distributer, alternator…it was all where it should be. When I look under the hood of my 2005 PT Cruiser I see something that looks vaguely reminiscent of an octopus having carnal knowledge of a printing press.
This may be why I have very little patience with users who don’t want to learn how to run their computers (as a IT person myself)–I’m the kind of person who, while I respect the “no user serviceable parts inside” labels, will attempt to do anything the manual says I should be able to do. Last big one was teaching myself to change the headlamps in a 2003 Neon (which there is either a trick to that I’m missing or the manual lies about it being easy).
While specialization is the foundation of modern civilization, I figure the manual writer had a pretty good grasp on what nonspecialist me should or shouldn’t be able to do under the hood.
If my computer does run on gasoline, the electric company handles that end of things (I suspect most of our power comes from coal, though). I don’t think you’re supposed to put gasoline in the computer.
I admit that even after all my experience, I get a little nervous every time I have to modify a partition table.