I'm only dreamin'

• Would you, if you could? by Philip Brownell, 5/20/97
  
  

Sure, let me dream .... hmmmm ... well, my wish would be for a brain scanning device that took my thoughts and entered them directly on the screen. Hey, now I can write that draft in half the time!

Seriously, I think that I would be happy if somehow, some way, new devices would just plug and play. I got a color scanner for my PC and thought it would be easy to install (after all, I have six computers, 3 PCs and 3 Macs, and have a scanner on one of the Macs, so how tough could it be?). It took me 2 1/2 hours! Instructions that were so confusing that I had to read them a dozen times. And then, when it finally worked once, and I shut down the system for the night, it didn't work again when I booted the computer in the morning. It took another half hour to figure out that I needed a SCSI terminator on the scanner -- even though the instructions made it clear (sic) that I didn't need one. URGGGGGGHHHHHHH.

And now, my optical character recognition program has decided to stop working. Probably needs to be terminated, too .

So, what would you like for Christmas, Virginia?

lr

• Well Santa, since you asked... by Virginia, 5/28/97