INSTRUCTION MANUAL BREAKDOWN

frank stella, bandshell, 1999 (model)

Recently got a new camera/video/stills and am checking it out. Reading the instruction book with glasses and a magnifying glass. Last night I made some pictures and videos of Scott Freeman and Edwin Lacy playing at the Fiddle and Plow in Woodlawn, Va. It would be exciting to have a new camera easier to learn than an F-16 fighter jet. I really despise it when instructions tell me to do something without telling what the something is, how to do it, how to start doing it, how to find it, how to anything. No "contact" place to ask a question. I have to go to "music transfer windows" and there I get "log on as a user with administrative privileges." Where? How? No link to click on, no suggestion of what to do. No anything. Log on? User with administrative privileges? Can't be done. No site to do any of that on. I tried pmb.update.sony.net and came upon an infinite list of Sony products, not one of them a place to "log on as a user with administrative privileges." Can't find anything even remotely close. Can't even find Contact.  Expensive camera, wonderful toy, does it's work right with beautiful results (inside the camera). Now I'm stumped on how to transfer pictures to computer. I'm about to say forget it, put the camera in the box, then on a shelf in the closet.


According to the instruction pages I am to double-click "Play Memories Home icon on the computer screen." LOL No such thing. Don't have it on my computer screen. Don't have it clicking on All Programs. It's not there either. The camera is plugged into the computer. When I turn the camera on, I'm told to have it off. When it's off it doesn't do anything. I'm glad I still have the previous camera for whenever I want to put pictures into the computer. I don't know what I'll use the new one for. Telescope maybe. Record sound? This is why I save instruction manuals. And this one has failed me at the very start. I have no recourse that I can find. As with everything computer, it is assumed it works; the problem is I don't know how to do it. There is nothing to show or tell me how to do it. I can't find answers to any questions. It's the same as not having the manual. It's the same as buying anything new that requires a manual. Often they're written by somebody who has English for a second or third language. This one uses correct English, but it doesn't tell me what I need to know to make the first step toward entering the pictures in the computer. For today, the progress ends. I will not attempt to figure this out beyond what I've already done. I'll wait for the day someone I know comes into the house who is a tech nerd, about anybody under 40. But I don't know many people under 40.


Good-bye new camera. I'll not be handling it for awhile. If I can't put the pictures into the computer, I can't use the camera. Since I can't use the camera, best to have it in the box with all its wires and inadequate instructions together, out of sight so I won't think about it. Thinking doesn't solve this issue. Some things I can figure out, like why not to make a sliding board horizontal. But I cannot figure out tech secrets when there's not even a clue to go by. I'm not one of those people seen in movies who hack computers and try this and that until something works. I don't know what to try to even see if I can find something that works randomly. I also know that if I go trying to figure it out beyond what I've already done, I'll be frustrated, will cuss myself to hell and back, and I'll end up going to bed to escape the predicament. So it's no longer a predicament. It's nothing until someone comes by who knows what to do, which I imagine to be no one. The best thing for me to do today is put it in the box and get it out of sight, forget I have it and live my life like it doesn't have a big block of Frustration to deal with. It is now under the chair. I will not see it until I find someone who can put something like this together without using the instruction manual. Maybe I'll call Tim the Techman and hire him to work it out. Not this week.


This is what I despise about everything that comes with an instruction book. If you don't know how to put it together already, without the instruction book, you're out of luck. Whenever I've had to go to the instruction manual in the past to "trouble-shoot" through the several page list at the back under FAQ, but never is my question on the list. Never. No matter what it is, it is never on the list. The camera was fun learning how to use it, figuring things out. I'd wondered why I had not already come to a stumped place. For three days I played with it and took pictures, made video, checking it out. Was very happy with it. Now it's worthless. Now it is the same as nothing. It is now under the chair where it will stay until somebody comes along who knows the contents of blank spots in instruction manuals that tell nothing. This kind of thing frustrates me so much I don't care if I never see the camera again. I will refuse to think about it until I can find a tech geek to fix the problem. The way I feel right now, I'd like to put it on the wall at the courthouse on court day, sit in the car and watch to see how long it lasts there, use my other camera to record its theft and put the video on utube with fuzzy pixels over the thief's eyes, because it would actually be a gift--to a thief. For the screwball irony in it. No point giving somebody something and having them arrested for theft. The joke would be the thief thought he stole it. (Sorry guys, I don't mean to be sexist.) 


I had some pictures of Edwin Lacy and Scott Freeman playing at Woodlawn last night, but, alas, they will remain in the camera indefinitely. I do not care how long. At this moment, I don't want to see them. I don't want to touch the camera. Don't want to think about it. As long as I see it or think about it, I feel Frustration. I want never to touch it again. However, what will happen will be that I'll see Tim or somebody in the next few weeks and address the problem, though only after forgetting it awhile. If I go at it with the frustration I'm feeling now, I'll destroy something. No need to destroy, because I already know that once this problem with "log on as a user with administrative privileges" is settled, all will be as easy as my older camera. Until then, I'll go on using my old friend I know how to use, or at least enough to be able to operate it. No pictures of Edwin and Scott from last night. I actually considered taking the other camera along last night and using it too. But didn't. Scott and Edwin were awfully good, as usual.


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