You know, maybe my grandparents had it right.
It is weird that computers give so little sensory feedback for what they’re doing. Flashlights go click. Cassette decks go clack-vrrrr. Whiteboards go squeek-squeek. Screen sharing goes… nothing, just a small mostly white rectangle on top of my much bigger rectangle until a disembodied, 4 kHz-wide simulacrum of someone’s voice from halfway around the world says “yeah we see your screen”. Unnatural is what it is.
They used to give more feedback inadvertently, loud floopy drives, modem noises, all that. Then they got earily quiet and still.
Then Apple spent many millions restoring haptic feedback to their trackpad to create the illusion it was still mechanical when it is not.
I leave the conclusion here as an exercise for the reader.
Darmok and jalad at tanagra
Shaka, when the walls fell
Your mom, when I finally text her back.
It’ll get shortened to “lemmy” like “god be with you” became “goodbye”
And also with you, please be seated
And so say we all.
We get clients that send us screenshots but they use their phone to photograph their laptop
A curse for you: A crooked scan of a printout of a cell phone picture of someone’s screen, embedded in the first top left cell in an otherwise empty Excel document, attached to an email, with read receipts turned on. Marked urgent.
I actually once had a client do the image embedded in an Excel document thing. You know how people use Excel for absolutely everything, even when they shouldn’t? Yeah. Some people really live their lives that way. I pointed out that they could have just attached the picture by itself to the email, but did not receive a response. You can’t help some people.
I had one that took a screen shot, printed it, scanned it back in as a pdf, and emailed it to me.
Not as traumatic as yours, but still a head scratcher once you realize why the quality of the image is so crappy.
Someone sent me code snippets that I needed by putting a screenshot of the code in a word document and sending me that by email.
At least it wasn’t a screenshot of the code
“Screenshots”
Me when I need to send a screenshot on discord on my phone and I’m playing on my steam deck…
I’ve done that when I need to send something quickly from an airgapped system.
Let me share my screen to you
And also with you
You cannot see my screen?
Can you hear me? My fucking headset again…
I think you’re on mute
And also with your spirit.
When they want to say “I don’t understand” they say “You’re not on mute but I still can’t hear you”
“Damnit my airpods have paired with my phone instead of my laptop again.”
“I… n’t receive… doc from… until yester… will repl… … rry the batteries in… pods dying… rejoin call on my phone.”
Fucking airpods. I hate them and I’ve never even owned any.
If that sort of thing entertains you, you should check out Time Bandits (it’s from Apple TV originally I think but can be found on the high seas no drama), and one of the story threads deals with a girl of early secondary school age, left in a prehistoric time - and she ascends to being a leader, educating her tribe with her 2020’s saaarh laaahndan banter.
When they head back to find her, the tribe are all conversing like a mob of youths outside a McDonald’s on a Saturday afternoon. It’s absolutely brilliantly written and well worth a watch.
They remade Time Bandits? I gotta screen this for my dad, he loved the original.
Pass. I could write my historical knowledge of television shows on an ant’s cock in black marker. Best to check first!
President Bonifyyd Johnson addresses the crowd
“My fellow Americans. I can hear you. Can you hear me?”
