Coming Up To Speed
Since I left California in the early 1990s I have avoided the ‘leading edge’ in technology. It was interesting when people were paying me to evaluate new equipment and software, but I wanted reliability when I moved to Florida, because the computer resources needed to try new things weren’t available on the Panhandle. That is behind my reluctance to send text messages from my cell phone, but circumstances changed.
I sent my first text message today. I did it in spite of the ‘assistance’ of ‘predictive typing’. T9 is even more annoying than Clippy. I’m still trying to figure out how to disable it. I can’t decide whether the individual who was responsible for the word list was a pervert, or just clueless. In a bit of a coincidence, a nephew mentioned that the version on his iPhone substituted ‘okey-dokey’ for OK, which led to a problem with the last text he had sent. My problem was trying to enter my first name and ending up with ‘Bran’, and insisting I meant ‘mistress’ when I mistyped ‘mattress’ with a single ‘t’. I bought the phone I currently have in part because it has a slide out QWERTY keyboard. but that isn’t helping to defeat the tyranny of T9.
Help me – don’t help me.
3 comments
T9 is even more annoying than Clippy.
wow, that would be pretty annoying. otoh, I do occasionally get a real kick out of reading damn you autocorrect.
not in the least related, really, but
http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-%E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%E2%80%9Ccomputergirls%E2%80%9D
It’s funny until it costs you a job, or is the basis for breaking a contract. A spelling checker would be nice, but the tyranny of T9 is just too annoying.
The article was interesting to me because the military programmers have tended to go the other way. You take the test and if you have scores high enough in the field, you get sent to the tech school. The military treated it as a clerical position, and with the ‘combat exclusions’ it was available.
It was dead on about including requirements to exclude people. I don’t ever remember using calculus to program, but it was a requirement in many IT degrees, including the business oriented programs. It was just to limit the number of people in the program.