Buttons and loops

Citation

Evans, S. (2010), "Buttons and loops", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 23 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/aaaj.2010.05923daa.001

Buttons and loops

Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 23, Issue 4

I recently purchased a notebook computer for my daughter who is starting high school. It’s a PC because the school has a PC-only policy, but that’s another issue. Trying to get it connected to the internet was a vale of furrowed brows and muttered oaths, if not actual tears. The whole process proved instructive, though not necessarily flattering to my problem-solving skills.

In the short interval before her school began for the year, the PC seemed to do everything that was expected of it except talk to the internet. There was clearly a connection to our existing wireless modem – a tidy little diagram on screen showed us this was so – but the gateway said we could go no further. The shy little thing and the tantalising outside world with its Big Bad Web remained obstinately unacquainted.

The computer’s warranty service sheet says the distribution company has a telephone help facility, but its office hours for queuing to speak to a human being in real time are very limited, and don’t include weekends. There is also an online service allowing customers to log a query, and which promises that someone will telephone back within four hours, but not on weekends. This was a weekend.

Since the PC could not access the internet, I fired up one of our Macs and checked the company’s help page. It advised that to use either the phone or online help service, one has to register the product online. There is, indeed, a link for that purpose. I entered the product details and all sorts of personal information that will probably ensure I receive exciting offers to spend large sums of money on computer warranty extensions for the rest of my life. I pressed “submit” and waited. A few seconds later, the company’s web site told me that the computer purchase had been registered previously, which was a bit of a surprise as this is not the kind of thing I do by accident or in my sleep. The web site invited me to return to the help page to log my query. You can see where this is going – it is called “round and round”, or a loop.

Since it was the weekend I had little option but to spend several unhappy hours trawling the internet looking for information that might break this stalemate. The impasse had nothing to do with our having Mac equipment (I had queried the salesman on that at the time of purchase, anyway) or with some other compatibility issue. In the end, it was my good wife who solved the problem.

On Macs, one starts up the computer by pressing a button, selects an internet browser icon on the desktop and that’s it – the internet opens its doors. The new PC also starts at the press of a button, but there is another step before one can usefully look for a browser icon. A discreet switch is positioned on the thin leading edge of the computer, and without flicking that switch, you ain’t goin’ nowhere.

It is a bit like the latest vogue in expensive cars for having a big button marked “Start” that has to be pressed after turning on the ignition with a key. I think this has something to do with the macho-glamour of firing up racing cars or jet fighter engines, but why complicate matters this way on a computer? Was I supposed to feel like I was setting out on an adrenaline-charged adventure? There may be a technological reason for the switch, but not all computers need it, so I won’t hold my breath waiting for an explanation.

I’m feeling defensive and my ego may never recover. The big thing is that I failed to discover the button, let alone its purpose, until I’d wasted hours grumping around the Web. When I did return to the PC’s handbook, I found there actually was a brief note about the wireless connection button on page 8 that I had missed. Do I read computer handbooks closely? As a rule, yes, despite their lack of a decent plot, but this time, no.

What have I learned? Next time, I will make sure to ask my wife’s help. In the meantime, I have put her on sleepwalk patrol, in case I get up in the middle of the night and begin registering other defenceless household products online.

The creative content in this issue comes from regular contributors, Dianne Dean and Lee Parker. Dianne Dean’s short story of high-tech spy adventure may be a taste of the future – or is it with us already? In his first poem, Lee Parker ponders writer’s block and the opportunity to deliver a report with a stark difference, and in the second, takes us straight to the more familiar purgatory of business jargon.

Please keep sending in your creative material, and keep a look out for those buttons.

Acknowledgements

AAAJ welcomes submissions of both research papers and creative writing. Creative writing in the form of poetry and short prose pieces is edited for the Literature and Insights Section only and does not undergo the refereeing procedures required for all research papers published in the main body of AAAJ.

Steve EvansLiterary Editor