Save your document every five minutes. Put all the files on your desktop into a folder, and move it to your hard disk. Now you can back up in the Cloud. Bookmark all your tabs and close your tabs. Curate your Facebook feed. Those are not "straight quotes", they are inch and foot marks. Set Word to use curly quotes. Now automate your job out of existence... There'll be a youtube video – or ask @Grok!
PROBLEM BETWEEN CHAIR AND DESK
Someone on Twitter complained about red lines in Word tell him that "color" is wrong. I told him he can select a UK dictionary.
Gen X survived “Microsoft Word has encountered an error and needs to close” as we watched our term papers vanish into thin air at 1 am. (Save every 5 minus.)
Bloody power went out just as I was saving. Lost the whole story. (@Gnerphk. Save every 5 mins. Save in the Cloud.)
In my first sales position, my manager was the Chief Revenue Officer. He didn’t know how to use Powerpoint, barely understood Gmail, and spent most of his day materializing behind other people to ask them what they were doing. (@cartoonshateher. She’s good on jobs where you have a highfalutin’ title but no actual function.)
I don’t think there should be an ‘algorithm.’ People should follow what they want and see what they get. (@FischerKing6. And could we have a chronological timeline?)
It’s 2025 and Matt Walsh has just discovered the Mute button in Twitter!
It’s January 2025 and I’ve just told someone how to block words on Twitter.
It’s February 2025 and I’ve just told someone to switch to “Following” if they want to pick what they see and see only that.
Just found the unsubscribe button on emails – changed my life. (@Rylan)
(Many replies saying “Wow! Where is it?”)
My phone pings all the time so I don’t bother to look at it.
(Turn notifications off. I have turned them off and now people moan that I’m unavailable.)
Them: But I don’t see the POINT of Twitter. Can you explain it?
Us: [We explain Twitter at great length.]
Them: But I don’t see the POINT of Twitter.
Them: But you can do all that with the mouse!
Me: But it's quicker to use keyboard shortcuts – if you can touchtype.
The wife of a cranky poet who lives in the Midwest contacted me to ask if I would write a letter to her husband since he disdains email. Obviously the wife takes care of everything that is required to live in 2025 while the husband saunters along cheerfully in a bygone era knowing that his spouse will protect him. (@JoyceCarolOates. Another complained that their inlaws never got any kind of computer and now can’t do anything. Somebody has to order their food for them and make their medical appointments.)
Rubio orders State Dept to remove Colibri and revert to Times New Roman. Latter being far more legible and economical, it’s the wisest policy so far by Trump admin. (@leemakiyama)
My recollection at DoD is that the default Word font changed to Calibri around 2021, so everyone just started using that. It wasn’t a conscious choice. (@Brett_327)
[A long thread follows claiming that Times is harder to read than Calibri for dyslexics and the visually impaired. The Republicans just want to be cruel – it’s their entire policy! The font is Calibri, the cigarette lighter Colibri.]
I was sent on a shorthand course in 1993 so guys could dictate their emails for me to type. (@Enilorac999)
Had [a job where I did nothing] for about 3 years and it was heaven until someone on high finally decided to crunch numbers...they just moved me over a department and now I have to maintain a few dashboards and lead a quarterly meeting. Still not a real job but I'll take their money. (@coluim_mael)
Someone on Twitter: I’m not seeing anything from people I follow!
Me: Switch to “Following”.
Him: Thanks, I’ll try that.
Someone asked how he could access my blog. The link was after my signature on every email.
If you feel like you're bad at your job and it's making you depressed, just consider that, as the investigation of the recent heist revealed, the password to access the Louvre's videosurveillance system was "Louvre". (@phl43)
The entire Louvre security camera system was protected by the password “Louvre”. The museum was also running software from 2003 that hadn’t received security updates for years. (@visegrad24)
I had a job that was basically filling out seven massive spreadsheets with data that was 85% common between all the spreadsheets. I created a linked spreadsheet and input the data once and cut the job time down to pretty much nothing. I didn't tell anyone and eventually left due to boredom. The person who took the job over went back to the "old way" because they couldn't figure out how to maintain my linked spreadsheet. (@Abe_Froman2)
Yup. I got hired as a 'secretary' by a non profit. The main task was managing the database and sending out membership renewal packages. The lady before me edited the letter, membership card, and sticker for the envelope individually. The first day there I set up a mailing list, set up an export to excel from the database, and had her full-time job down to 1 hour of work a week (stuffing envelopes). AND I saved them money by using envelopes with a window and just formatting the letter so the address field would show. I did that job for 2 years. Pay wasn't great, boss was a jerk, but I was basically doing nothing. Answering the phone was easy, and pretending to work while my boss was in the office. I ended up quitting because the boss had started to blame me for her own screw-ups and it was only a matter of time before she killed a computer and fired me for it. (@Librarycat77)
My friend got hired to work from home for a company that was transitioning from some ancient business software that hadn't been supported in years to a newer system. They had previously been doing this manually, record by record and assumed that she would do the same. They'd send her enough records to keep her busy for a week doing them manually. She did it manually for a couple of weeks, then she automated the process and a week's worth of records was completed in less than 30 seconds on Monday morning with the results uploaded Friday afternoon. She did NOT inform her employer who was super happy with her accurate and timely work. She worked ~2 minutes/week for a full-time salary because she automated her job. (@DLS3141)
I’ve sent three emails in my life, and my wife, Barbara, has typed two of them. (Ringo Starr)
In the past, some managers had all their emails printed, organized and put into binders to read and review. (@fvntsplssvn)
When a publication I worked for acquired Macs instead of terminals, some staff thought they were terminals and didn’t know you could save stuff locally and use them as your own personal computer. And when we got email they “replied all” instead of just “replying” for about a week, creating a terrible tangle of furious miscommunication.
An innovation joins our lives. Most people pick it up and use it and find it more and more useful. About 10 years in, a group of middle class parents get all guilty about it, and try to reduce their and their children’s screen time, and write jeremiads in the paper and online about how evil it is. Even whole books! And of course it “rewires our children’s brains”.
“TV is evil and destroys your children’s eyesight” has morphed seamlessly into “Peppa Pig gives your children dopamine hits and they get addicted and it’s just passive entertainment”. Like books? I used to get told off for reading all the time.
And if you find spam emails waste time, mark them as spam. Unsubscribe from any firm you've bought anything from – and which now bombards you with marketing emails. If you don't know how to do any of this, you could hire somebody to filter your emails and select the ones you need to see. You could call them a "secretary".
TECHNOLOGY – DONCHA LOVE IT?
This also comes under "overdigitisation".
Struggled with this wireless mouse for months before it occurred to me to change the tracking speed...
It's nearly 2026 and printers are still requiring the colour cartridges to be available to print in black only. What the hell? (@jaseeey)
I once went to a Chipotle who told me at the register that they could
only accept orders via the app, I guess because the register was
broken? They could not accept any cash or payment from me in person, I
needed to step aside, download the app, then order with it. I just left. (@JasonKPargin)
They
had those checkerboard code menus. I’m a 76-year-old man. I’m trying to
eat a cheeseburger while I have time left on this earth, not deal with
that nonsense.
I once broke a bank receptionist's
brain because i showed up for an appointment and couldn't check in for
it with the qr code because my phone's camera was shattered. he didn't
know what to do. i asked him to just go let the lady know i was there.
he said that wasn't possible. (@veanimator)
I consider myself a pretty reasonable person but whoever invented the feature that opens Outlook when you click on an email address in your web browser needs to be sent to mow lawns on the Sun. (@VeryBadLlama)
Afternoon spent as predicted on the phone to Companies House: I finally got through to learn that no, they don't really know how their new software works, they can't get into it, the Post Office probably cocked up our identity verification but they're not sure, and we need to do it again, at a cost of £35 each via a law firm. I phoned a firm in Bristol and they confirmed that they are, in fact, making a small fortune dealing with people who have failed to get through the government's software. (LW)
I have just got a new copy of Word and if I change the view or the type size in ONE document it makes the same change in ALL OF THEM. Every time I open a doc I have to adjust the size and view. Searched for an override, no such luck. (2025. And I can’t “tile” pages, it shows them in a line.)
There was a tipping point where everything was now maximised for phones, not laptops or heaven forbid desktops. Now the thing doesn't work on the laptop – or you have to break off and take a picture of yourself on your phone and transmit it to the app you're not using and... Looking at you, lexulous.com.
Why does my phone's ring tone start quietly? Takes several rings for me to hear it. Then I have to unzip the pocket in my handbag and take the phone out without hanging up by mistake. And then the other party hangs up. Apparently you can deselect Ascending or Crescendo but I can’t see how.
My clock radio does the same. If I set it so I wake up with the news I just hear whisper whisper burble burble Donald Trump mumble...
And another thing about clock radios. Every one I've had. The numbers gradually fade - to black. And I have to turn on the radio to see the time. Grok says that the numbers just age. So you have to throw out a perfectly good working clock just to get one whose numbers you can see.
Q How do you take a screenshot on the new iPhones without home buttons short answer?
A Press the Side button and the Volume Up button at the same time.
“These are our default settings. You may change them at any time if you spend 400 hours looking through our Baroque menu system.” (@Klassical_Kat)
I have just wandered round St Alban’s in the dark looking for the station. Thank you for the map, Google Maps, but WHERE AM I? It thinks I am a car which is infuriating. (You twiddle a setting NOT IN THE ACTUAL APP but in “Apps”.)
At the moment, aircon can’t be installed in new buildings because “not everybody can afford it”. (Though they use more pompous language.)
Why is everyone using WhatsApp when Android phones have a perfectly good texting service? Perhaps because in WA they can have group chats.
When Google and other search engines arose, we were promised "Ask it anything in natural language".
To get any meaningful results you had to use Boolean logic. My idea of fun, but not most people's. Now we have Grok - what Google was billed to be 20 or 30 years ago. (And some are convinced Grok is part of a conspiracy to spread fake news.)
The outrage and foot-dragging when people got home answering machines was... typically British. Mine used to say "Please leave your number SLOWLY" and people would enunciate their number and then sneer "Was that slow enough?" Usually: Call me at gabble mumble mumble gabble, drops voice.
More here and links to the rest.
