There are two kinds of people in this world...

...those who understand computers, and those who don't. I, as I'm sure you've already guessed, am one of the latter. I had been pondering blogging about this topic before, but something this weekend brought the matter home.

One of my e-mail providers (yes, it does bother me that I have more than one) announced some time ago that it was "improving" its service by making it more intuitive. "No!" I yelled (yes, I actually yelled out loud), "I'm not intuitive."

When I was thirteen, I took the Myers-Briggs personality typing test as part of a graduate student's research. My score was INTJ. Ten years later, I took it again (the study observed if there was a change in me & the other test subjects, in an attempt to determine when one's type is set), and I was an ISTJ. My only change was from borderline intuitive to borderline sensing. In effect, I am not strong in either intuiting or sensing. Ergo, when the webmail changed, it became less useful to me.

My major complaint against anything by Microsoft (sorry, new subject) is that their software is designed to do certain things or operate a certain way, whether you want it to or not. Nine times out of ten, it's not what I want, and I end up cursing Microsoft and everyone that has fallen prey to them, including my employer and client, who both say, "Thou shalt use Excel and Word and Internet Explorer whether thou likest them or nay."

You would think that, as a very linear, logical person, I would adapt well to computers. After all, they follow commands they are told to follow. Ah, there's the rub. It's the people who program them that don't think the way I do.

Some time back, I clued in that, every time Worker Bee would try to train me how to do something new on a computer, we'd end up getting aggravated, and he'd say, "I'm better off doing it myself." I realized that he could anticipate and guess what to do (he liked experimenting and trying new programs), but I would stick with step-by-step procedures (if it doesn't come with instructions, don't give it to me).

This weekend, I was trying to follow his written instructions (it's a miracle that he even wrote them down) for how to enter a weekly report on our company's intranet, and I got stuck early on. He launched into a twenty-minute explanation of why we were doing it before I could get a word in edgewise and say my issue was with the instructions, not with the purpose. Thankfully, Thing One was there to moderate, and with her help, I realized that Worker Bee had assumed that anyone reading his instructions would make the same jumps that he had, and Worker Bee realized that someone learning a task for the first time needs a lot more detail than he who had been doing the task every week for more than five years.

You might have noticed an unusual statement I made earlier. Don't succumb to a stereotype and say, "Oh my gosh! He's a man, but he actually reads the instructions!" Instead, remember that I'm a person who loves to read.

Now give me the damn manual for life already.