Ha! The truth is, this coffee grinder (from Mr. Coffee, a brand name that never fails to amuse me) actually is a little trickier to use than the average model, but I found the manual’s instructions of little use in figuring it out. I guess I’m more a learn-by-doing-if-at-all kind of guy.

Finally! Victoria repeats two things about me: (1) I have no common sense, and (2) I don’t believe anything unless I read it.

It’s the manual I’ve been waiting for my whole life. (And all these years I thought it was “Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel”! Damn hymnal.)

You’re hardly alone… I’m off to Costa Rica in a few hours… with a stop off at Mom’s to help her with her computer!

The problem here is that without a decent understanding of the machines we rely on, we get stuck any time something goes wrong, with no idea of how to deal with even minor problems. Not knowing, e.g., when it is or isn’t appropriate to power-cycle a computer, just leads to more and more problems over time. Let alone issues like resisting phishing and trojan attacks from spammers….

Well, more power to you! Uh, so to speak.

I am almost one of those techno-peasants myself!

I like this analysis.

Now you need to go find such a robot, Dave.

It’s not just the simplicity of these suggestions, of course, but the ingenuous way in which they’re presented that makes them funny — as if someone would notice that the power had gone out, but would need the this checklist to tell him to wait for it to be restored. (Me, I’ll fire up a generator. You don’t simply sit around and wait when you’re a coffee addict!)