Somehow I still don't think of myself as technically minded. I have read
a lot of instructions and failed to understand them too. What seems to
set me apart is that while others fail to understand they seem to not
know why they fail to understand and when I don't understand
instructions I think I can see why I don't understand. The reason is
that whoever writes the instructions assumes a prior knowledge on the
part of the reader that is not necessarily there. I will admit that I
have gotten better at understanding these things though. The more I have
learned the easier it is to learn more. What I have seen all too much
of, though, is that someone will ask a really broad question on an email
list that shows a complete lack of familiarity with the subject. Often
the only way to answer such a question is to start teaching the
questioner from square one and gradually build up to answering the broad
question. That kind of thing is really difficult to do on an email list.
If the person has at least read the instructions or manual even without
much understanding then that person can ask more specific questions that
can be answered succinctly. Then once one little bit of information has
been learned then one can go back to those instructions and at least
part of it will make some amount of sense and will likely cause other
parts of it to make sense. As someone who started with a computer that I
did not know how to use and with absolutely no available help I am well
aware that one cannot just absorb everything all at once. I am also very
aware that there are still a lot of things that I probably could do with
my computer, but that not only do I not know how, but that I don't even
know can be done. Without doubt it is a gradual thing, but also without
doubt the more you learn about any particular subject the easier further
learning about it is. If having learned makes one technically minded
then all of us have the potential to be technically minded. As an aside,
I can point to one of my current incompetancies that has been a
continuing incompetancy. When I first got on the Internet. I kept coming
across links labeled PDF. I had no idea what that was. I just found out
that if I clicked such a link my computer would stop talking and I
couldn't do anything else until I shut down the computer manually by
cutting power to it and then turning it back on manually. At that time I
also did not know that doing that was really hard on the hard drive. I
learned that I should never ever click any link labeled PDF. I now
realize that my computer was probably not freezing up like I thought it
was, but was probably slowly downloading a PDF document and if I had had
patience it would have eventually said something. Nevertheless, I still
feel a fear of the letters PDF and I still have never learned how to
handle them. I keep telling myself that I am going to have to get around
to learning something about them, but I dread it. With a reaction to PDF
like that, though, I would feel like a complete fake if I had the
temerity to call myself technically minded and when someone else calls
me that I can't help but to feel like they have no idea what an
ignoramus I really am.
On 6/3/2016 9:32 AM, Alice Dampman Humel wrote:
But Roger, advice and remarks like these are what made me say at one point that you are more technically-minded than many of us. I read all that stuff, and I might as well be reading ancient Phoenician. I don’t understand what they are talking about, and when I try to follow the directions, somewhere along the line, I get hopelessly stuck. And I think other people have the same problem. I can follow extremely complicated knitting or cooking instructions, I can follow directions how to put something together, it’s not that I can’t follow directions. But this website and a lot of other computer stuff escapes me. Of course everyone’s favorite is also mine: an error of type and then a string of a zillion numbers, has occurred, then an OK button…so you click OK, and then what?
On Jun 2, 2016, at 8:50 PM, Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
I don't know which email program you are using, but just set it up to receive messages from your Gmail address the same way you set it up to receive the email from your other address and then use it just like you have been using your email all along. It would be good, though, to log into your account at mail.google.com <http://mail.google.com> and poke around adjusting settings until you have it configured the way you want it. I suppose you will be saying that you don't have a clue how to do that either. Here is the advice that I give everyone who is visiting a web site that they are planning to make regular use of. Put your screen reader on continuous read and read the entire home page from top to bottom including any navigation headings and footers. While you are doing that take note of any links labeled FAQ, about us or other links that promise to give you information about the site. Then click on each of those links and read the pages you are taken to from top to bottom too. If there are instructions then follow them. Once you do that and familiarize yourself with the web site you will be in a much better position to ask intelligent questions if you still do not understand something. There are so many people who have not bothered to take these steps to familiarize themselves with a web site they are going to use and then get on email lists and ask questions so broad that even an expert on that site will have a hard time knowing where to start to answer them.
On 6/2/2016 6:52 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Have an account, but don't have a clue how to use it.
Miriam
