20 Jun 2010 4 comments
You learn something new every day.
Today I learned that “The best laid plans of mice and men…” derives from a 1785 poem by Robert Burns, “To a Mouse.”
Yesterday I learned about trailer loading. And not loading.
One of the owners at the barn was taking her horse to the chiropractor/massage person and I was tagging along. As it happens, things were running a little late when it was finally time to load the horse. We led her up to the trailer and she marched right along right up to the point where she… didn’t.
It soon become clear that we were not going to make the appointment. We moved the truck and trailer so that it wouldn’t be in anyone’s way and settled down to the day’s new task: teaching the mare that she was, in fact, going to load. With the appointment rescheduled, we had all day to work on this.
Enter Awesome Bystander.
If you have any doubt about the state of humanity, allow me to disperse just a little of it.
Understand: we’re in Texas. It’s 90 degrees and wicked sunny. Awesome Bystander offered to help anyway.
She quickly and fairly established a few rules: mare would stay lined up straight with the trailer and not swing her rump around. Mare would step forward once when asked. Mare would stop when asked. Mare would back when asked.
Everything would go really well until mare was at the trailer (it was a step up); she’d walk right up to the trailer but didn’t want to put a foot in. Awesome Bystander kept lightly asking her to step up by tapping just behind the girth with a dressage stick, and rewarding the smallest positive movements from the mare. Every once in a while they backed away from the trailer, reestablished go/halt/back, and tried again. This allowed her to reposition the mare (who sometimes got too close to the trailer to lift her front legs without banging them against the floor) and to relax the mare (hey, here was a task that she absolutely understood and could do correctly!).
No beating, no punishment, just calm, patient insistence and a reward as soon as the mare thought about stepping on the trailer. Best of all, Awesome Bystander explained what she was doing and why each step of the way and made a few recommendations to the owner as well. And, eventually, the mare loaded. It was pretty much that anti-climactic.
Awesome Bystander then unloaded the mare. She and the owner talked for a few minutes, and she drove off into
the sunset the Texas midday sun. The owner is, believe me, planning a suitable thank-you gift for her.
The owner then loaded the mare back up. It took a few minutes, but only a few. We shut the trailer and went for a drive around the property, unloaded the horse, and let her graze for a while. Then I loaded her in the trailer—the key here being that we 1) wanted her to load several times and 2) wanted her to load for different people.
I know the owner intends to work on loading intensively for the next little while to be sure the mare is solid on it. The chiropractor/massage appointment has been rescheduled for later this week and hopefully I’ll still be able to tag along (I’ve never been to one, so it should be fascinating).
I apologize for the lack of funny, but I thought it was beyond awesome that someone would spend an hour in the middle of a Texas summer day and help with a loading issue.
Filed: Progress of Sorts, Training the Rider, Training the Horse
4 comments
16 Jun 2010 5 comments
Imagine that you have been told to write a user guide on how to use a vending machine.
You sit down and you provide some background information on what vending machines are, why they are useful, and the sort of business need they fulfill for the company. Then you explain about coins, how to tell a quarter from a nickel, and how to find out how much money is available to put in the vending machine.
Then you explain how to find the item you want to buy and its cost, how to put the money in the machine, and how to make your selection. You even explain how to get your product out of the machine.
It’s a good user guide. It’s not going to take the world by storm, but it does its job.
The vending machine goes out into the world, and your user guide goes with it.
From previous experience, you know that 50% of users will not even think about reading the user guide, but it’s ok because they’re mostly intelligent and will figure things out eventually, possibly after inserting a coin or two into the electric socket just to see what happens. 25% of the users will not read the user guide and will need help, but they’ll ask their friends. This will lead to some isolated incidents where people try to use Canadian quarters because Bob said they could, but a couple rounds of stern memos from upper management will sort that out. None of this is your fault: these scenarios are all covered in the user guide they didn’t read.
10% of users will print out the user guide and place it on their desk. They aren’t going to read it, but upper management might be watching. They are keen, these users. Visibly keen.
Another 10% of users will be seen to pass by the vending machine on a regular basis. They’ll even be seen to stare at it thoughtfully, as if considering a purchase. They don’t actually intend to use the vending machine, because there’s a rain barrel right outside the back door that was good enough for their grandfathers and so it’s good enough for them. They could care less about the user guide. They probably don’t believe in user guides anyway.
4.99% of the users will read the user guide. They will then send in feedbacks that begin with “I read the user guide but…” You cannot help these people. A year from now, they will be sending in feedbacks that say “I hear we have this new machine and it requires… coins? money? I don’t know. I’m confused. I just want a glass of water.”
And at least one user, That Guy, will read the user guide, front to back, and send in a feedback that says, “I read the user guide and it doesn’t explain how I can buy water.”
So you’ll explain about money, and finding and entering your selection, and That Guy will blink slowly and say, “Can you add that to the user guide?”
You’ll say, “You mean, Step 1: Find $1 in coins. Step 2: Insert the coins into the slot marked ‘Coins.’ Step 3: Enter B5 on the alpha-numeric keypad…?”
And That Guy will say, “Yes. But you need to explain all the coin combinations that could make up $1, and then you need to repeat the whole process for diet sodas. And regular sodas. And the fruit juice. And, oh, all of them.”
You can try suggesting a reference table, but it won’t work: That Guy really does want a step-by-step instruction guide for every possible coin permutation for every drink selection.
If That Guy is no one very special in the organization, things may be ok. A carefully worded email to the right manager (“Did you really want us to revise the user guide per That Guy’s request? It will weigh more than the vending machine when we are done, and so will the bill.”) shuts down That Guy fairly quickly.
But sometimes That Guy is the management.
That Guy is the reason some user guides start out: “Arrive at work using your normal mode of transportation, or, if your normal mode of transportation is unavailable, a suitable and safe alternative transportation method. If you have not been hired yet, see Human Resources to inquire as to the status of your application. If you have been hired…”
[This episode of Life’s Mysteries Explained brought to you by the number 6,842, or the number of pages in the theoretical vending machine manual requested by That Guy today. Thankfully, Upper Management interceded and my sanity—and several rainforests—have been preserved.]
Filed: General Topics
5 comments
14 Jun 2010 2 comments
I went to a tack shop this weekend and almost had to be physically dragged away from the bridle section.
And what caught my eye? A lovely dressage bridle blinged out to the nines?
Of course not—I prefer brown tack to black and gleaming leather to sparkling stones.
So it must have been a rich, raised hunter bridle, right?
Mmmm… there were some of those. But no, the item that had me drooling were rainbow web reins. Like these.
But it’s worse now—the store had the patriotic ones (meh) and the regular rainbow ones (drool) and I see that SmartPak has pastel ones. Pastel. I’m sure I need them. I just need to figure out why I need them.
While in my web-rein-love-haze, I also fell for:
- A gorgeous pale (cream-colored) Butet saddle. It was wrapped in plastic and had gloves nearby that apparently had to be worn to handle it. How you’d ride in it if you can’t handle it without gloves I’ll never know, but it was beautiful.
- A lovely Navajo pad. We used to use them for schooling. Why’d they go out of style? They were awesome.
- A fly bonnet for the Princess. Not that the Princess would deign to wear such a thing, but it could have gone on display with the Butet, far away from the barn, and existed simply to be admired.
I also think, after looking at some Western silver-encrusted halters for a while, that I could be converted on the bling thing. Provided the bling is copper. I have always loved copper. I don’t expect I’ll see copper-encrusted halters showing up in the catalogs any time soon, though, what with its broad market of… one.
Ah well. I’ll have to console myself. I wonder if the web reins are on sale anywhere…
Filed: General Topics, Probably Horse Related
2 comments
9 Jun 2010 3 comments
On my local Craig’s List, there is an ad for a bumper pull trailer that proudly describes the trailer as: “2 - 3500lbs axles, Bulldog hitch, pulls good, tires and floor is in fair condition.”
Axles, hitch, tires, floor—what more could you want?
You want pictures? Sure—they’re happy to oblige:
Walls and roof are not included, evidently.
But come on—be fair—the seller never claimed they were!
Filed: General Topics, The Wide, Weird Web
3 comments
8 Jun 2010 4 comments
In literary circles, you have to have a theoretical approach to literature. You can’t just say you like a book. You have to interpret it according to _____.
My personal theory can be boiled down to one statement: Communication is impossible, but we do it anyway.
Consider: I say I saw an animal and it scared me.
You think: A tiger? They have claws and fangs. That’s reasonable. Maybe a giraffe. Giraffes are kind of stoned, chilled-out creatures, but you never know. I wonder if I left the gas on at home. I need to remember to pick up my dry cleaning.
And because I can see your eyes glazing over and your attention wandering from the astounding revelation that I was scared, I add: It was a horse.
And you think: Freak.
Actually, you are probably more charitable than I am, and you imagine a Shetland Pony or a giant draft or something plausibly frightening.
There’s a complete lack of communication here. You have no idea what sort of horse scared me, or what the situation was, or why I’m telling you this.
On the other hand, it probably doesn’t matter if you’re picturing a Shetland Pony and I’m referring to a rabid Mustang that attempted to cull my car from the herd. The general idea is there: general type of animal, general emotion.
For the PETA and legal types out there, now would be a good time to mention that this situation is entirely hypothetical and my car was not savaged by a feral horse. A bug did have a particularly violent encounter with my windshield recently, but I have managed to put aside my grief at the world’s loss of such a fine insect and moved on with my life.
The point is that even though we’re imagining two separate scenes that really have very little to do with each other, something has still been communicated. For normal day-to-day stuff, that’s probably ok. If it weren’t, the English vocabulary wouldn’t be full of terms as elucidating as “stuff.”
But sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes, we need to be very, very precise. Otherwise, there can be misunderstandings.
Consider today. I was talking to someone who doesn’t know my history with jumping, and mentioned that my goals were 2nd/3rd level dressage and maybe some low-level eventing.
When I say “low-level eventing,” I mean “a twig on the ground, and you wave at the water as you pass by.”
Later in the conversation, he said something about 3’ jumps.
There is a big difference between a twig on the ground and a 3’ jump. Three feet of height, for one thing.
But while I was contemplating the suicidal nature that would compel someone to jump over a 3’ solid object in a field, the moment to correct the misunderstanding passed.
Fortunately, there was a positive side effect: he didn’t laugh when he said 3’. That sort of confidence is empowering. I can almost envision myself going beyond my definition of low-level eventing and up to the next level: branches, and the horse’s hooves get muddy when you gallop along the edge of the water.
Filed: Progress of Sorts, Theoretically Speaking
4 comments
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