On Error Messages (A Rant)

         I’m going to deviate from my typical formula and go on a bit of a sidebar here.  
         In an earlier post (see fancy link here), I discussed how I am considered to be a bit of a geek, and how a number of friends seek (and/or ignore) my counsel when it comes to fixing things.  I am also contacted - usually via IM or incomplete text message - whenever programs or devices do not function as expected.
         These are commonly known as “errors.”
         The problem with errors lies not in the fact that they exist (almost always for a reason), but that the majority of times when they occur, the user is not paying attention to what the error is saying.
         Here’s a summary of roughly 92% of initial conversations where an error is involved:

                   User:  I’m getting an error message when I __________.
                   Support:  What did the error say?
                   User:  I don’t know.

         Error messages do not exist solely to piss the user off, contrary to popular belief.  They exist for a reason.  The primary reason for an error is to prevent the user from doing something they’re not supposed to do, such as load legal paper into the letter tray of a printer or dividing by zero.  Most error messages will even tell you what the problem is, if one were to merely pay attention.  It never fails to amaze me how some people are astounded at the way “computer people” are able to fix most errors in any given program without having even seen the program before.  I’m going to let you in on two little secrets that most computer people use:

Secret #1:

Read the damn error message.

         That’s it.  That’s the first secret.  Ready for the next one?

Secret #2:

Type the error into Google.

         Whew!  That was stressful.  Now that I haven’t been assassinated by the elite corps of tech ninja assassins for revealing our “magical secrets,” I can continue.  
         Recently, I went to help someone out (who shall remain nameless, and although I doubt they read this column, you know who you are) who was fit to be tied over a certain website being a “lousy [string of expletives]” because it would not allow them to complete an order and kept providing an error.  Finally, I went over, and had the problem licked in four seconds flat by using Secret #1.
         The error message read ZIP Code Must Be 5 Digits.
         They’d left a digit off when typing in their information.  Of course that would have been bad.  
         Even if the error message itself doesn’t make sense - or provides a “code” - odds are likely someone else has been in the exact same boat as you are right then and has searched for a solution on the internet.  Almost every time I start typing an error message into Google, it finishes filling it out for me before I’ve gotten even close to halfway there.  And within the first two links, there’s usually a step-by-step solution for how to fix it - or, in some cases, an explanation of why “fixing it” would be a bad idea.
         So the next time you go to ask your resident Computer Person about a problem you’re having, be sure you’ve read the message so you can tell them what it says when they ask.  Also be sure to mention if the error includes the words “fatal,” “critical,” or occurs on a bright blue screen, first.  That’s like telling the cashier at McDonald’s you have a coupon before you order and saves everybody a lot of hassle.
         Thank you for your time.  You may now return to your regularly scheduled time-wasting.

On Chicken Plumage

       I can’t help but notice that more and more food products these days are proudly packaged with a label saying “Made with White Chicken.”
       Personally, I find this to be a bit of a conundrum.
       On the first hand, I can honestly say that I’m not a chicken racist.  I can also honestly say that I have never in all the chickens I’ve consumed noticed a significant difference between any chicken based solely on the color of its plumage.
       Which leads me to wonder, what is the big deal with products being made with white chickens?
       I’ve seen it advertised everywhere from cheap-o Banquet frozen “meals” up through the higher-calibre frozen entrees, to Lunchables (read: Snackables) and even so far as so called “high class” restaurant menus.  “Made with white chicken,” they all proclaim.  If they were pointing out that the dish was made with chicken breasts or wing meat, then I could understand.  But here they are, proudly proclaiming that they did not use any brown, black, yellow, mottled, or cow-printed chickens.
       Come to think of it, the fact that they’re advertising that it’s only made with white-feathered chickens sounds pretty chicken-ist, to me.
       Furthermore, this makes me wonder if the sudden prevalence is not, in fact, a clever marketing ploy to feed (pun intended) upon the average consumer’s tendency to exhibit selective reading and assume the manufacturer had originally meant to say “made with breast meat.”  After all, there’d be a rather glaring legal loophole to exploit, wouldn’t there?  Proving a chicken nugget is not breast meat is a relatively easy task.. however, proving that the chicken(s) in any given nugget had, at one point, been plumed strictly with white feathers (prior to being decapitated, plucked, drained, and having their corpses pulled apart by robots to be pressed into nugget-shape by other robots and breaded by still more robots before finally being bagged and packed by even more robots before being stocked on a shelf by people and purchased and cooked and eaten by [hopefully] people) would be an entirely different challenge.  
       Of course, any single company exhibiting such a dreadful ploy would be taking a very high risk for a very small percentage of the population that purchases robotically-terrorized poultry products and actually cares about whether the meat in question is breast meat or leg/thigh meat.  I can’t conceive of multiple companies engaging in such a risk-to-reward gamble, on the off chance one of them does get caught and exposed.  Then again, the gambit could be bulletproof enough to the point where there is no feasible risk without PETA and Greenpeace joining up to form.. uh.. mash them together.. carry the R, add the Y, divide by Z... “Pecan Eager Pete.”
       Yeah, that doesn’t sound intimidating enough to rattle the cages of the deceivers of chicken feathers.
       Although, one would hope that someone might actually sit down and question, “if everybody is only using white-feathered chickens, what about all the other colors of chicken feathers?  Where are those chickens going?”
       But that would assume someone would actually be bored enough to sit down and think of such useless prattle when there are clearly far, far better bidders for one’s attention - like the new season of Lost.  Or worse yet, write about it, or even take action against those who would blatantly proclaim such acts that are clearly biased against a certain creed, color, religious affiliation, gender, or sexual orientation of chicken.
       .....oh, right.  I just did. At least I’m too lazy to picket the behavior, or something.