@Pantheist oh- also that knife I just bought here. Not knowing how the kecker lock worked led to the bloody mess I posted on the knife thread. Still, less painful than the bulb.
I always read the manual now, but I broke something or injured myself several times. Worse though was a desk chair I had. For years, it would just keep slipping lower and lower and I’d have to raise it up again. Finally hunted down the manual online (original had been thrown out before I even set up the chair) and found it was a single screw I’d not known to tighten. Years of built-up rage suddenly transforming to shame and embarrassment—it is a horrible feeling.
@simplersimon When I used to supervise an office full of techies, I found that most problems were not with the furniture, or the manuals, but with the loose screws in the chairs.
“There’s nothing left of the thing but a smoking crater and my scars” - seems to always happen with everything I touch no matter if I read the manual or not.
@TheCO2 For every task attempted there is a force, seen our unseen, attempting to interfere with that task. Of course that force is itself attempting a task and is subject to interference. That’s why some things actually get done.
I can’t be the only one that has noticed that the polls recycle . . . there are slight deviations, but the themes of the main questions / topics are similar enough to be the same - and it almost seems cyclic, although intermittent (I’d have to build a spreadsheet and compare them individually to absolutely prove my postulate, which is waaaaay too much of an investment [hell, the five a’s in waaaaay was too much of an investment]) . . .
I’ve had some major screw-ups, but they haven’t really been related to the manual. I guess maybe one time I was simulcasting a special on our station and a sister station in another city. So they’d have a clean transition to the special and not catch the last second of whatever we were airing before, I decided to fit 1 second of black in before the special, which is kind of a best practice thing. So I put 1 second of black on the playlist between the previous show and the special. I told my supervisor and my department head what I was doing, and they agreed it was a good idea. Time for the special rolled around, and we went to black as scheduled, then just stayed in black. I could see the playlist had moved on and the server was playing, so I hot punched it on-air, but management was not happy. What one of the other engineers then realized and explained was that the switcher couldn’t handle a source change from the automation unless there were at least 2 seconds between the commands (black is a different source than the server). Since there was only one second, it missed the command to switch back to the server, so it just sat in black. I suppose if I’d read the switcher’s manual I might’ve known that and come up with an alternate method, but two other people who I know had (or should’ve) read the manual didn’t catch the flaw in my plan. I think the main reason I was let go a few months later when layoffs came had to do with me being about to hit 5 years with the company, and thus about to receive a lot more benefits, but I’ve always figured doing that in front of the station GM and the program director didn’t help.
@jqubed Your engineer was a dumbass or totally fucking with you. The 2 second 2-pop rule is drilled in so damn hard from day one that (even with no tone needed) on a direct-to-air streamer the engineer should have immediately recognized you’d need 2 seconds of black in queue or that you’d have to punch it manually. Maybe they just assumed you were going to hit it at mark. (?)
And I can almost guarantee you that your 5 year HR investiture mark had everything to do with getting swept up in layoffs. Pretty standard practice for the industry.
@Pavlov I think they just assumed I would hit it or knew about the requirement. I’d only been in master control 2 years, though, and that was the first I’d heard of a 2 second requirement. And that was a brand new master control (basically rebuilding the station at that point) that we’d only been in for a couple months. If I had to do it again I’d just record 1 second of black into the server so there was no changing of sources. Really just needed to get them to stop sending show clips with no black on either side; it looks so much better to not have commercials butted directly up against your show. Put a half-second or more in there to let the show breathe!
@Pavlov And yet I’m the bad guy when I tell the producer we can’t kill a minute of advertising because they timed the show wrong and we only have 15 seconds left in show when we come back from break.
Hmm… then there was the manual to put together shelves I bought at Target. 4 sets of shelves later I developed a system that worked far better than the directions that came with (which were primarily pictures, had few words and the words that were there likely were translated via whatever worst internet is out there and then translated from Chinese into several intermediate languages prior to the translation into English), further my way didn’t require 2 people to do it and was easier and faster. Posted my new, improved directions in the review section for the product.
We joke in our house that we are not smart enough to UTFM (understand). About 15 years ago there was a DIY manual for building your own protein skimmer (300 gal saltwater fish tank) that called itself the “idiot’s guide to building your own…” Since I’m somewhat adequate of a handiperson and generally read manuals for mechanical builds, and he’s very tech and not only RTFM most times but also reads websites so he can do hacks and upgrades to tech, we figured easy. An entire weekend and we finally gave up and declared ourselves not bright enough to be idiot. Half the Home Depot parts now had Superglue so couldn’t be returned: we were out the ~$30 for the parts and still had to go buy the ~$400 professional skimmer.
I keyed in a density value way over-spec into my cyclotron and opened a portal into a neighbouring dimension. So far, only a few really odd insects and a suspicious green ooze have come over from their side. Mostly, I have been using it for garbage disposal. Still, I can still hear screams from time to time…
@PocketBrain One mans trash is another mans treasure. I keep finding weird stuff in my house. And, I live in the desert southwest; lots of weird insects. And, even though my neighbors have their septic tank sucked every couple years, I’ve never needed mine done. Do you, by chance, have any portal waypoint coordinates? I’m thinking we might have a problem.
I broke the screen protector on a Samsung phone, but the LCD was fine. It was an easy fix, just remove the broken part and slap on the replacement thing. I didn’t care much for the instructions and I ended up breaking the LCD ruining the phone. Had to settle for some POS sprint burner for a few months.
I didn’t lay the screws down on the instruction manual to compare length to the actual size picture. I put the longer screw where the shorter screw should have gone. Why would you have some screws 1/8" longer than other screws? All the hinges on the door now have little sharp screw points sticking out. I have, and continue to bleed periodically from this RTFM fail.
I got a Virtual Boy. It was doomed to be a disappointment anyway, but I sped up the process. While trying to set the thing up, I managed to break the clip that held the Virtual Boy itself to its stand. This rendered it almost completely unplayable unless I were to lay on my back with the Virtual Boy on my face.
@sanspoint Well, at least then you’d already be lying down when the inevitable Virtual Boy headache kicked in (about half a game into Mario’s Tennis, likely).
@brhfl Oh, the best part of the Virtual Boy is that the 3D effect never worked for me, so I never got a headache. I basically don’t see out of my left eye, so I have no depth perception. Then again, it was also such a pain in the ass to play, maybe I never played long enough for it to matter. (Red Alarm was the game I played most, though.)
@sanspoint I always figured maybe 50% of the headache was due to the stereoscopic effect, and 50% was just that bright red light being right up against your face. The displays were 50hz (I think) which should be sufficiently smooth, but I feel like the mirrors that rotated to make the displays scan weren’t quite precise enough or something… something felt off about the way the displays scanned/refreshed.
@PlacidPenguin I think everyone should experience it once. At the time it was an underwhelming disappointment, though still kind of neat for what it was. Now it’s just this one of these bizarre tech relics that could only have existed when it did and nothing today really feels like it evolved from it.
@PlacidPenguin I think some time around autumn of '96 was the perfect time to pick one up. They were discontinued early in the year and I remember them just getting cheaper… and cheaper… and cheaper at Toys ‘r’ Us until they dropped to something like $20 and then they probably just buried the rest in Alamogordo.
@PlacidPenguin I remember trying one in Blockbuster and it was cool for the couple minutes I used it. Just get a 3DS instead; no glasses or goggles needed and it seriously has a 3-D depth to it. It’s pretty crazy, really.
I believe the biggest RTFM fail has cost billions of dollars in lost productivity. This is the failure to learn how to properly utilize email at work. Or more generally, every employee having a computer or terminal at their workstation but having no f’n idea how to use the damn thing correctly. Software is preloaded and absolutely no instructions on how to use it.
Seems to me that you can generally tell when you need to RTFM and when you don’t. Bought a BBQ with a million pieces and you have to assemble yourself? RTFM.
Bought a new Lawn mower? Fill it with gas, check the oil and mow.
Usually the RTFM moment for me comes when I’m trying to use something new and I don’t have a clue how to do something.
For example, yesterday I had to go to page 44 of 172 of a manual for a Blood Pressure Monitor in order to figure out how to delete old readings that were being kept in memory.
I still pull the manual out of my glove box to find part numbers for burned out bulbs or weird messages from my car’s message screen.
I had to write a manual as high school homework. It was not fun. I was supposed to assume the reader had no knowledge of the product. It took forever to try to figure out what words to use and how simple to make it.
In general I skim the stupid thing. Depending on the complexity, I turn back and follow them or wing it.
Where’s the “tried to follow the manual, but it fried my brain” option?
A few years ago I bought a workbench setup for the garage, with a wood top, drawers, pegboard, work light, and bells/whistles galore. It was made in China, and came with a manual in Chinese and English. The English part appeared to have been translated by someone who did not speak Chinese. Or English. The write-up was surreal, and I gave up trying to read it and just decided to follow the diagrams. So I laid out the parts and found that I was missing two that were on the diagram, but had acquired three more that were not. The three additions in no way resembled the missing ones, and about one in ten of the parts did not have the same numbers as the ones on the diagram.
At that point I did the only logical thing: put the manual through the shredder and just looked at the parts logically. Surprisingly, they all fit together into something that looked exactly like the picture on the website, and was quite sturdy. I still have it. I attribute my success to all of the Ikea furniture I managed to get together even though there was always at least one missing thingamajig and various extra doohickies in the box.
This wasn’t a disaster per se, but a few weeks ago I was embarrassed when I was unable to figure out how to use a headboard-mounted reading light until I read the manual.
Read the manual. But inept at mechanic-ing. Adjusted the valves on my old Virago 180º out of phase. Took ok running bike right to “not running”. Mechanic told me that I was no longer allowed to use tools that didn’t have visa logos on them.
When I was young [and was kinda normal, mebbe, perhaps in theory, hypothetically speaking, in my dreams] my various horses came used and had no manuals. So they stepped on my feet plenty. And perhaps tried to kick me a few times. And I got dumped on my head kinda often, like a lot. No helmets - no one wore those.
Wife # 1 . . .
'nuff said.
@Pavlov
She was the crazy bitch? Or you?
@f00l Yes.
Wired a ballast wrong. 860 watt ceramic metal halide bulb exploded. Ow.
@Pantheist oh- also that knife I just bought here. Not knowing how the kecker lock worked led to the bloody mess I posted on the knife thread. Still, less painful than the bulb.
I always read the manual now, but I broke something or injured myself several times. Worse though was a desk chair I had. For years, it would just keep slipping lower and lower and I’d have to raise it up again. Finally hunted down the manual online (original had been thrown out before I even set up the chair) and found it was a single screw I’d not known to tighten. Years of built-up rage suddenly transforming to shame and embarrassment—it is a horrible feeling.
@simplersimon That reminds me of my favorite Gary Snyder haiku:
After weeks of watching the roof leak. I fixed it tonight
by moving a single board.
@simplersimon When I used to supervise an office full of techies, I found that most problems were not with the furniture, or the manuals, but with the loose screws in the chairs.
I’m reading manuals right now. Hard to stay awake, but a lot of the time you find out cool stuff you never would have known.
“There’s nothing left of the thing but a smoking crater and my scars” - seems to always happen with everything I touch no matter if I read the manual or not.
A real man would never admit to reading a users manual.
@TheCO2 I’ve been paid to read user manuals before.
@jqubed There are exceptions to every rule.
@TheCO2 . . . and rules for every exception.
@TheCO2
Rule #1 of the English language: every rule has exceptions.
Rule #2: there are exceptions to Rule #1.
@DVDBZN @Pavlov Rules are also made to be broken, so that must mean the exceptions can be broken, as well.
Or maybe the whole system is broken.
@jqubed I’ve been paid to write the english version.
@TheCO2 For every task attempted there is a force, seen our unseen, attempting to interfere with that task. Of course that force is itself attempting a task and is subject to interference. That’s why some things actually get done.
@Boiler3k I hate it when outside forces do my job for me.
I can’t be the only one that has noticed that the polls recycle . . . there are slight deviations, but the themes of the main questions / topics are similar enough to be the same - and it almost seems cyclic, although intermittent (I’d have to build a spreadsheet and compare them individually to absolutely prove my postulate, which is waaaaay too much of an investment [hell, the five a’s in waaaaay was too much of an investment]) . . .
Meh.
Might just be the drugs I’m on.
@Pavlov This sounds like it needs a million dollar research project.
@Pavlov and here I though we were supposed to recycle? Well you could always start a thread to give them ideas for new, improved polls…
I’ve had some major screw-ups, but they haven’t really been related to the manual. I guess maybe one time I was simulcasting a special on our station and a sister station in another city. So they’d have a clean transition to the special and not catch the last second of whatever we were airing before, I decided to fit 1 second of black in before the special, which is kind of a best practice thing. So I put 1 second of black on the playlist between the previous show and the special. I told my supervisor and my department head what I was doing, and they agreed it was a good idea. Time for the special rolled around, and we went to black as scheduled, then just stayed in black. I could see the playlist had moved on and the server was playing, so I hot punched it on-air, but management was not happy. What one of the other engineers then realized and explained was that the switcher couldn’t handle a source change from the automation unless there were at least 2 seconds between the commands (black is a different source than the server). Since there was only one second, it missed the command to switch back to the server, so it just sat in black. I suppose if I’d read the switcher’s manual I might’ve known that and come up with an alternate method, but two other people who I know had (or should’ve) read the manual didn’t catch the flaw in my plan. I think the main reason I was let go a few months later when layoffs came had to do with me being about to hit 5 years with the company, and thus about to receive a lot more benefits, but I’ve always figured doing that in front of the station GM and the program director didn’t help.
@jqubed Your engineer was a dumbass or totally fucking with you. The 2 second 2-pop rule is drilled in so damn hard from day one that (even with no tone needed) on a direct-to-air streamer the engineer should have immediately recognized you’d need 2 seconds of black in queue or that you’d have to punch it manually. Maybe they just assumed you were going to hit it at mark. (?)
And I can almost guarantee you that your 5 year HR investiture mark had everything to do with getting swept up in layoffs. Pretty standard practice for the industry.
@Pavlov I think they just assumed I would hit it or knew about the requirement. I’d only been in master control 2 years, though, and that was the first I’d heard of a 2 second requirement. And that was a brand new master control (basically rebuilding the station at that point) that we’d only been in for a couple months. If I had to do it again I’d just record 1 second of black into the server so there was no changing of sources. Really just needed to get them to stop sending show clips with no black on either side; it looks so much better to not have commercials butted directly up against your show. Put a half-second or more in there to let the show breathe!
@jqubed Those precious seconds can be filled by advertisers!! Why waste them on aesthetic when they could be generating revenue!
@Pavlov
Yeah why waste those coulda-been-sold 1/2 seconds when all it costs are all those eyeballs who leave tv and don’t come back?
@Pavlov And yet I’m the bad guy when I tell the producer we can’t kill a minute of advertising because they timed the show wrong and we only have 15 seconds left in show when we come back from break.
Hearst? Scripps? Tribune? God help you it wasn’t Meredith was it?
I’m sure we could swap horror stories . . .
I bought an exercise bike and put the arms on backwards. I had to reeeeeach to use the handles. Oh well, more exercise for me.
Hmm… then there was the manual to put together shelves I bought at Target. 4 sets of shelves later I developed a system that worked far better than the directions that came with (which were primarily pictures, had few words and the words that were there likely were translated via whatever worst internet is out there and then translated from Chinese into several intermediate languages prior to the translation into English), further my way didn’t require 2 people to do it and was easier and faster. Posted my new, improved directions in the review section for the product.
@Kidsandliz
Super-angel-evil-genius-everything.
We joke in our house that we are not smart enough to UTFM (understand). About 15 years ago there was a DIY manual for building your own protein skimmer (300 gal saltwater fish tank) that called itself the “idiot’s guide to building your own…” Since I’m somewhat adequate of a handiperson and generally read manuals for mechanical builds, and he’s very tech and not only RTFM most times but also reads websites so he can do hacks and upgrades to tech, we figured easy. An entire weekend and we finally gave up and declared ourselves not bright enough to be idiot. Half the Home Depot parts now had Superglue so couldn’t be returned: we were out the ~$30 for the parts and still had to go buy the ~$400 professional skimmer.
I keyed in a density value way over-spec into my cyclotron and opened a portal into a neighbouring dimension. So far, only a few really odd insects and a suspicious green ooze have come over from their side. Mostly, I have been using it for garbage disposal. Still, I can still hear screams from time to time…
@PocketBrain One mans trash is another mans treasure. I keep finding weird stuff in my house. And, I live in the desert southwest; lots of weird insects. And, even though my neighbors have their septic tank sucked every couple years, I’ve never needed mine done. Do you, by chance, have any portal waypoint coordinates? I’m thinking we might have a problem.
I broke the screen protector on a Samsung phone, but the LCD was fine. It was an easy fix, just remove the broken part and slap on the replacement thing. I didn’t care much for the instructions and I ended up breaking the LCD ruining the phone. Had to settle for some POS sprint burner for a few months.
@Kevin how do you get old screen protectors off? The one I had on mine had air bubbles and so has cracked around the air bubbles.
@Kidsandliz you use a heat gun or an air dryer to soften the glue attaching the screen to the LCD
@Kevin Thanks for the info!
I didn’t lay the screws down on the instruction manual to compare length to the actual size picture. I put the longer screw where the shorter screw should have gone. Why would you have some screws 1/8" longer than other screws? All the hinges on the door now have little sharp screw points sticking out. I have, and continue to bleed periodically from this RTFM fail.
Christmas 1995.
I got a Virtual Boy. It was doomed to be a disappointment anyway, but I sped up the process. While trying to set the thing up, I managed to break the clip that held the Virtual Boy itself to its stand. This rendered it almost completely unplayable unless I were to lay on my back with the Virtual Boy on my face.
@sanspoint Well, at least then you’d already be lying down when the inevitable Virtual Boy headache kicked in (about half a game into Mario’s Tennis, likely).
@brhfl Oh, the best part of the Virtual Boy is that the 3D effect never worked for me, so I never got a headache. I basically don’t see out of my left eye, so I have no depth perception. Then again, it was also such a pain in the ass to play, maybe I never played long enough for it to matter. (Red Alarm was the game I played most, though.)
@sanspoint
Never tried it out. I still want to though.
@PlacidPenguin It’s… not worth it.
@sanspoint I always figured maybe 50% of the headache was due to the stereoscopic effect, and 50% was just that bright red light being right up against your face. The displays were 50hz (I think) which should be sufficiently smooth, but I feel like the mirrors that rotated to make the displays scan weren’t quite precise enough or something… something felt off about the way the displays scanned/refreshed.
@PlacidPenguin I think everyone should experience it once. At the time it was an underwhelming disappointment, though still kind of neat for what it was. Now it’s just this one of these bizarre tech relics that could only have existed when it did and nothing today really feels like it evolved from it.
@brhfl @sanspoint
It came out in 95, and I was slightly young at the time so I didn’t really care for it until early 2000s.
I’ve been waiting over a decade to try it. I don’t care if it’s not worth it.
@PlacidPenguin I think some time around autumn of '96 was the perfect time to pick one up. They were discontinued early in the year and I remember them just getting cheaper… and cheaper… and cheaper at Toys ‘r’ Us until they dropped to something like $20 and then they probably just buried the rest in Alamogordo.
@PlacidPenguin I remember trying one in Blockbuster and it was cool for the couple minutes I used it. Just get a 3DS instead; no glasses or goggles needed and it seriously has a 3-D depth to it. It’s pretty crazy, really.
@jqubed
I’m not interested in playing 3D games really, I’m just interesting in finally trying Virtual Boy out.
I believe the biggest RTFM fail has cost billions of dollars in lost productivity. This is the failure to learn how to properly utilize email at work. Or more generally, every employee having a computer or terminal at their workstation but having no f’n idea how to use the damn thing correctly. Software is preloaded and absolutely no instructions on how to use it.
It takes time to save time.
Seems to me that you can generally tell when you need to RTFM and when you don’t. Bought a BBQ with a million pieces and you have to assemble yourself? RTFM.
Bought a new Lawn mower? Fill it with gas, check the oil and mow.
The sad part is, this wasn’t supposed to be a bed of nails.
Usually the RTFM moment for me comes when I’m trying to use something new and I don’t have a clue how to do something.
For example, yesterday I had to go to page 44 of 172 of a manual for a Blood Pressure Monitor in order to figure out how to delete old readings that were being kept in memory.
I still pull the manual out of my glove box to find part numbers for burned out bulbs or weird messages from my car’s message screen.
I had to write a manual as high school homework. It was not fun. I was supposed to assume the reader had no knowledge of the product. It took forever to try to figure out what words to use and how simple to make it.
In general I skim the stupid thing. Depending on the complexity, I turn back and follow them or wing it.
@speediedelivery
What was the product?
@PlacidPenguin A power supply that I built in class.
Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe.
@PlacidPenguin I’m a big fan of “Up goer five.”
“Never had one: I always read the manual”
It would be interesting to have this one split by gender and birth order.
Where’s the “tried to follow the manual, but it fried my brain” option?
A few years ago I bought a workbench setup for the garage, with a wood top, drawers, pegboard, work light, and bells/whistles galore. It was made in China, and came with a manual in Chinese and English. The English part appeared to have been translated by someone who did not speak Chinese. Or English. The write-up was surreal, and I gave up trying to read it and just decided to follow the diagrams. So I laid out the parts and found that I was missing two that were on the diagram, but had acquired three more that were not. The three additions in no way resembled the missing ones, and about one in ten of the parts did not have the same numbers as the ones on the diagram.
At that point I did the only logical thing: put the manual through the shredder and just looked at the parts logically. Surprisingly, they all fit together into something that looked exactly like the picture on the website, and was quite sturdy. I still have it. I attribute my success to all of the Ikea furniture I managed to get together even though there was always at least one missing thingamajig and various extra doohickies in the box.
This wasn’t a disaster per se, but a few weeks ago I was embarrassed when I was unable to figure out how to use a headboard-mounted reading light until I read the manual.
@darksaber99999 I can’t attach anything to the headboard here, aside from temporarily affixing @MrsPavlov from time to time.
@Pavlov
Read the manual. But inept at mechanic-ing. Adjusted the valves on my old Virago 180º out of phase. Took ok running bike right to “not running”. Mechanic told me that I was no longer allowed to use tools that didn’t have visa logos on them.
When I was young [and was kinda normal, mebbe, perhaps in theory, hypothetically speaking, in my dreams] my various horses came used and had no manuals. So they stepped on my feet plenty. And perhaps tried to kick me a few times. And I got dumped on my head kinda often, like a lot. No helmets - no one wore those.
No harm no foul tho.
@f00l Explains so much.