is there no end to maladaptive helpfulness?

Today I've been partly transferring things from a system where they have been kept in directories to one where the individual files hold metadata. There's a web page tangled up in it and several different versions of versioning. But at least people are agreed on one thing:

We can't go on like this

This is awkward because of course there is no dedicated person resource to put on this. That's normal now. As the joke goes, the person holding the old systems while we are waiting for the new systems to be ready for transfer is never out of work. But at some stage their workloads slide into overflow, and then they really need another system to help them manage the unmanageable build-up of systems. A system system, if you like. Which I probably won't? But one thing is certain: 

There are too many wizards playing with my expectations

Never mind though, because there are a whole raft of wellfullness and mindbeing tasks to perform to keep my panic on the even side of my keel. Some of them can be turned off, others are easier to simply live with. My CBT app, for example, stopped being helpful some time ago. But I find myself feeling awkward about turning it off. I know in the abstract that it's just a set of decision trees that frequently repeat, a non-intelligent-conversational-generator if you like. But it still feels like an inappropriately harsh rejection, to delete. But I probably will. Hm, tomorrow.

can I get to open window zero?

So here I am, frantically closing windows because the working day ended about an hour and twenty minutes ago.  I have too many windows. Too many tasks. Just one more thing. But then there always comes the point at which the working day meets a vanishing point even though the tasks won't, couldn't, wouldn't, and maybe even shouldn't.

References:

XKCD Standards - Print out this comic giant size and tape it to the table under your brainstorm.

Wikipedia's System of Systems page - Currently, systems of systems is a critical research discipline for which frames of reference, thought processes, quantitative analysis, tools, and design methods are incomplete.

Download Woebot App  - Life changes, and so do we, with the help of a non-intelligent database-driven interaction toy

VANISHING POINT: The Curation and Preservation of Virtual Reality - A lecture from the Digital Preservation Coalition at St Martin's College, with lunch and refreshments. Past event, you missed it.

and then the menus went blank

Mystery meat navigation underwent a whole new world of strangeness as I opened my seldom-used video programme in order to do a fairly normal bit of video editing. I use an old version of Premiere Elements (like many large workplaces we have a long process of license acquisition, safety checking, application virtualisation etc.) which isn't great but I don't need anything very clever, of course.

Except that today, the menus had mostly not loaded.

I've been using computer programmes for long enough that I can take a rough guess at where a menu item might be and basically click in the dark. So I edited and published. vaguely aware of a weird prickle of nostalgia.

I was also around for the early web, before the rise of usability, back when menus and navigation were seen as spaces for creativity and challenge rather than user coddling/tweaking/poking/peeping/pumping. People got cross about that, as I recall, but I always quite liked a nice slice of mystery meat navigation - menus that flickered in and out of existence, changed into strange things, crawled around the screen, and so on.

Well, I'd better like it, as that's what I've got now. After two afternoons of fix-reinstall cycles, deleting local and global profiles, and after I briefly showed a proper programme load on a fresh machine, an entire machine swap-out... it can't be fixed.

So while I'm waiting for a new version of Premiere to work through the approval and virtualization process, I'm back to stabbing in the dark.

Click, click, click.

the spam filter falls out of sync with online registration requirements

Today's message is brought to you by the colour grey and the letters f, m and s,

Dear [Redacted]

I'm assuming what I am responding to is an automated marketing email that gets sent when someone has started the process of looking at a report but not registered. So I'm not especially expecting a response. However, I do in this circumstance have a thing to say, so I'm going to say it, even though I might be howling into the empty void of a shared inbox in an abandoned marketing department (though the individual name was a nice touch, [Redacted]).

Straightforwardly, I AM interested in looking at your reports. I was slightly disappointed to discover that I have to register my details to do so, but understand that information is often transactional; and be reassured that, though my password lists now run to eight pages, like most adults working in the sector I've grown hardened to this. So here I am, trying to register on your website right now, but it's not going well. Not because I'm unwilling to register (although I am, a little - if's cheeky to call something free when the cost is actually registration and consent to be marketed to) but because though I've certainly started the registration process, I really can't complete it.

The problem occurring is that your verification code emails aren't getting through our spam filters. Yes, yes, yes. I know. Check my spam folder. But in common with many large organisations nowadays, we don't have "spam folders" as such to check (well, I do, but let's leave that aside for now, your verification email won't be in it). Instead, emails considered to be potentially spam are quarantined at server and sent on at midnight for me to review and release if non-suspicious the following morning. It stops about half my spam and quarantines about the same amount of legitimate mail, which is annoying enough that I've put in a service call about it, but tolerable enough that when I was told there was nothing that could be done I accepted it, shrugged and carried on.

But it's just starting to quarantine verification emails, sometimes, now. You're the second site it's done it for. I did a thing for the last site, but for you, I've just let it sit for now. I'll come back to the problem tomorrow. 

If your verification links don't expire, I can just click it tomorrow morning. That would be pretty poor security practice though, and I would expect better of you, [Redacted], even though this bit of your service is barely more than an email-harvest to allow access to faully anonymised content. There's no help available, either specific to registration and log-on, or generally on the site, so any solution would need to be mine, and mine alone. I did, as you always do, that quick time cost vs. information benefit calculation and decided to shelve fixing it until tomorrow and then decide if I wanted to activate a workaround.

Then your email plopped into my inbox, offering to help me realise how many reports you had and how valuable they were, and how I really should register. Trying to win my heart, this with superlatives and oily with salestalk. I only say this, [Redacted] because you are a Marketing Manager, and salestalk is what you do. I mean no criticim. But you see, the trouble is, this spam thing I'm using, it's not something odd or boutique. It's one of the major, major solutions in use in big organisations. What I'm saying, [Redacted], is that it won't just be me. It's going to be lots of people, and this mail is going to go to all those people.

So please, check your stats. Revisit your registration story. And for heaven's sake, rein in or differentiate the follow-up emails. The user isn't always saying f*** this. Sometimes they are saying this is f***ed.

Sincerely,

[insert standard sig here]