🚀 go-pugleaf

nob...@example.org (Scott) writes:

> In a sense I think tech's complexity has outpaced my ability to keep
> up with it. 

You are not alone.

> The 6809 assembly handbook was about this >-< thick,
> something you could leaf through in a few hours and get the gist of
> it, if not all the details. The 8086 book was maybe twice as thick, or
> a bit less. Then the 286, 386, 486, 32 then 64 bits, on and on until I
> though I was back in the AS/400 lab with its entire wall covered in
> books. It gets to the point that sane people back away and adapt to
> using prefab tools that digest all this arcana and present it in neat,
> usable, pre-digested libraries.

Even people who might be expected to know how something works are
content to whap a software package into a server and never know
exactly what it's doing or what they've done.

When the ISP from which I get my dialup service changed the company
that provided them which actual physical service -- servers, data
lines and so on -- the new guys just whapped in (presumably
recognized, well-known) software packages.  This broke both the
existing password database and the PPP authentication protocol.  After
breaking through the "restart Windoes" stupidity of the front-line
support, talking to the putative techies who actually ran the servers,
I was never able to learn from them what the problems were.  Some
inadvertent remarks from them and a lot of my own time reading arcane
crap allowed *me* to fix or work around their problem.

Wrfhf, I'm an artist, a blacksmith and gardener but the alleged pros
are now so far removed from basics that I have to reconstruct  what
they should know from scratch and deduce what they should think of
effortlessly.  Shpx.


Okay, it's a minirant.  'Cause I'm presently engaged in yet another
such encounter with Inter.net & Fibernetics.  Their telecom line is
broken so I should reboot my computer. Grumble.

-- 
Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada