I just heard that joke the other day, but as a blonde joke. It's funnier as a Bush joke.
A lot of blonde jokes work better as George Bush jokes. Hey, why does George Bush wear shoulder pads? What's the first thing George Bush does in the morning?
I think that for home use, the Dock would probably be better. I think the Dock's fatal flaw is that it behaves differently if an application is closed, than if all the application's windows are closed. And if an application is open without any windows, the command to bring up a window is always different -- sometimes Command-N, sometimes Opt-Command-N, sometimes Command-1, blah blah blah.
I also liked this joke I found in boingboing:
3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7108914...
There! There's your tendency to make everything rational! =D
I kinda do it a little, too, though.
Hrmm. I guess....I could have just left it at "the Dock feels icky", but I don't feel that much worse for being able to explain *why* it feels icky.
I remember hearing someone who wrote a book on ITConversations talking about how people's preferences change when they have to explain themselves. If you tell a bunch of kids to pick a poster to take home, they'll gravitate towards certain ones. If you tell them that they'll have to show you which one they picked and tell you what they like about it, they'll pick different ones.
That podcast started out talking about those premium task chairs, and his take on New Coke.
I was referring more to the fact that you didn't much like Ksenia's way of organizing her desktop, which got followed up by expressing your way of ordering things in a "rational" way. Incidentally, though, after examining it a little more, you came to appreciate a certain "rationale" behind a system/method created by some software designer.
So something good came out of it, but I'm not referring to the conclusion about the Dock. . .I'm referring more to an inclination of trying to "impose" the "rational" onto the world. In person, I doesn't feel like you do, but through written text, I feel like I can see that attempt to "impose" more.
If that makes sense. . .
Lex, well, whatever. I think though Ksenia recognized a slight downsize to having unused icons on the dock, but she just liked how the whole array looked as it was. But it's not like I got pushy or anything, I just reminded her of the option. (Reminding non-techies of options is a funny thing. 1/4 of the time they resent it but often they're kind of grateful)
I'm just pointing out examples, as you asked me to do, of your tendency to try make things as rational is possible, is all.
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound defensive about it. I guess I was hoping for a super-deep example.
Well, you did warn me that you would get defensive about it. . ..
As for the deep stuff. . .that's kind of the funny thing, I find, in my own try to make things rational. . .they usually begin small, but they kinda fester and grow bigger and bigger. At least, for me.
I'm not sure I know what you mean by "make things rational", at least in a fester-able kind of way. For me, it mostly involves trying to understand feelings and instincts I and others have, not just take them for granteed. Usually it seems pretty harmless, though it's that feedback loop I'm worried about.
Maybe I'm reacting more to the approach that you might've taken with the Dock situation. I guess instead of, say offering to fix something, I would ideally approach it by saying, "Huh. . .that's not how I do it. How does that work for you?" Then again, I'm sometimes known for taking very roundabout approaches to addressing situations in which I want to make a suggestion to someone and people can get impatient with it.
I guess I might take something of a "linguistic/cognitive" approach. The way we write and talk is indicative of the way we think.
But. . .I'm also interested in what you mean by feedback loop in this situation.
Well, I wasn't judgemental about it (for one thing, technically I couldn't say "I don't do it that way" 'cause I don't have a mac...) The approach was "did you know you had these other options"...which can be unwelcomely "helpful" in some cases.
The feedback loop is what I mentioned on the Sep 30 entry...I have a "raw" emotion, I analyze it, and my "rational" interpretation modifies or deadens the original emotion, and possibly pre-emptively changes the landscape new emotions will occur in.
Oh, btw Nick...yeah, the whole "application running but with no windows" is counter-intuitive to me, though I see the reasoning behind it...but it meant my mental map where "triangle means windows open" was wrong, confusing me as I went to close out of the "terminal"
And I guess the "I don't do it that way" would probably be pretty annoying, too. Honestly, I like your approach better. =D
Oh, the social science problem, kinda, of the observer changing the results of the experiment by influencing the test subjects, except that your emotions and reactions are the "test subjects," in a sense. From my persective, there's nothing wrong with "modifying" or putting into context/perspective an emotion. I would worry about the deadening aspect, though.
Do you try to express your emotions to other people, at least the good ones, when you have them?
Hmm, not enough, possibly.
I'd say give it a shot.
Well, it's good advice but (as always) things aren't always that easy.
Sometimes it feels as if I feel few positive emotions simply...I always see the negative and flip-side of things, and generally ambivalence isn't what people want to hear.