Tuesday, July 28, 2009
"And it isn't long, my pretty -- it isn't long!"
Kevin Kittredge
Grrr! is an occasional rant about things that don't work very well.
Recent columns
"And it isn't long, my pretty -- it isn't long!"
Had the Wicked Witch of the West only lived in the computer age, Dorothy could have laughed in her face. Because the hourglass is no longer a symbol of time running out.
No -- it's a symbol for eternity.
Can you imagine the old hag saying, "OK, kiddo, I'll come back when that hourglass finally disappears and your computer comes unstuck -- and then your grandchildren are really going to get it!" That would have taken a lot of the drama out of Dorothy's plight.
I remember when that hourglass first began appearing on computer screens. I think it was originally supposed to mean that the computer was, you know, working on something -- and that it would be done in just a few.
Ha!
Now when that hourglass appears, it usually means an error has occurred. And you can stare at it from now until doomsday, but nothing's likely to change. You might as well just shut that computer down right now, in fact, and then fire it up again. And get ready to stay late at the office, too, because whatever you were working on is toast.
Not all computers use the dreaded hourglass icon. Macs and some newer PCs have their own version -- a little wheel that turns. My editor, Kathy Lu, who uses a Mac at home, calls it "the spinning wheel of death."
Hey -- the old witch might have liked that!
Grrr! mailbag
Time to let our readers rant. We'll begin with Roanoke's Dan Reichel.
Razor blades rub Dan the wrong way. He says Gillette's Atra Plus razor blades become unusable after just a couple of weeks, so customers are forced to buy new ones. Dan thinks the Gillette folks changed the design on purpose some years ago to make the blades wear out faster.
His solution: He buys the old-style Atra blades on eBay. The trick, he says, is to find blades without the special added "Lubrastrip," which wears out. As he gets about half a year's use out of each of those old-style blades, and they're cheaper, too, he figures he's saving between $50 and $100 a year. Not too shabby, Dan.
And Grrr! fan Georgia Chapman has a rant about a certain kind of driver:
"People who pull out in front of you when they can see that there are no other cars behind you, and then go 20 miles per hour under the speed limit, drive me crazy," she says. "And it's a short trip."
-- Kevin Kittredge
Can you think of something that really ought to work better? Let us know. Kevin.kittredge@roanoke.com; 981-3323.
