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Why Dressage Riders Make Good Webmasters
It’s because we’re anal.
What? Was I not supposed to say that? We’re precise, then. We like precision.
My problem, of course, is that I was never very good a precision. Take geometry, for example. It’s one of the most relevant school subjects to dressage, don’t you agree? All about figures and shapes and things.
My geometry books had lots of sketches of pool tables in them. You had to figure out the path to hit the little white ball so it’d bounce of the little red ball and send the little red ball into the pocket. My brother understood it all, of course. He’s a good pool player. I don’t even know what the little white ball is called.
But since I want very much to be anal, I am convinced the little drawings of pool tables have something to do with dressage. Angles, vectors, I don’t know what. All I know is that I turn the corner to go up the centerline trying to plot my path out so I’ll halt right at X, and suddenly I’m six feet past it and just left of center. Kind of like the way every time I hit the little white ball it goes off in a completely unexpected direction and puts one of my brother’s balls in the pocket.
I keep trying, though. It’s the anal thing. I can do a thousand turns up the centerline, if that’s what it takes to figure out the mysteriously correct angle. Vector. Whatever. The horse will do a thousand turns up the centerline, too, because she’s no dummy and knows that halt-at-x is the last thing that happens before she gets to go off and eat lunch.
The point is: persistence. Niggling. Refusing to let go of something until all the details are perfect.
I’m like that with web sites, too. Other people will look at their hits and go “Oh, goody! Lots of visitors today! Yawn! Bed time!” I look up “hits” and discover it’s a bloody useless statistic, so then I look up which statistics are useful, and then I do reverse I.P. lookups, and suddenly I’m an expert on site statistics.
I could get an entire barn full of hunter princesses who think dressage is more boring than watching paint dry to beg to be allowed to watch an entire day of Intro-level tests, if only they didn’t have to listen to me explain why hits are a useless statistic.
Now I just need to find out a way to translate all the techy details into normal speech so I don’t scare everyone off all the time. I’m sure there’s a book that explains how to do that. I bet it even has diagrams.
I’ll pay extra for diagrams.
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Comments
Cue ball sounds right. I have no idea why I can’t remember it.
I should try your approach, though: no more aiming, just shooting. Bet I’d do better that way.
On Sep 23, 2006, RiderOne said:
I think it’s the cue ball. I know you’re supposed to aim and stuff when you play pool, but if I got any balls in pockets, even if they aren’t mine, I feel swell!