Technically Speaking

(Another episode in the “Better Living by Doing It Yourself” series)

Writing good instructions is hard. I feel qualified to make that assertion because it is what I do every day for a living. So I just wanted to start off this story by saying that I recognize that as an instruction writer, it is hard to anticipate all possible problems your users might encounter when they are attempting to use your product.

However, this week I had a set of instructions that failed miserably for me. This was due, in part, (probably) to user error, but this user error occurred because the instructions were neither clear nor complete. (I will give it credit, however, for good warnings like: “If you breathe the fumes from this product, contact poison control and see a medical professional” and “if you come in contact with this product, rinse well for 20 minutes, then contact a medical professional.” Oh, and there was the one about using gloves and a face mask when using this product. See, those are good warnings!)

Anyway, here is what happened…
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This is another _Better Living by Doing It Yourself_ story.

Tuesday nights are a little busy around our house. Christina is TA-ing for a class at BYU, so she doesn’t get home until 7:00. I have a presidency meeting that starts at 7:00, so we often cross like proverbial “ships in the night.” This makes dinner interesting, because we usually are home together to fix and eat it.

Last night my presidency meeting had been rescheduled to 6:30, and I don’t get home until 6:00. I was looking for something to eat, when I found four hard boiled eggs in the fridge. Christina had boiled eggs on Friday, and these were left over. I decided that I would make myself an egg-salad sandwich. I removed the shells, and was about to mash the eggs when I remembered that Friday’s eggs hadn’t been totally cooked.

Let me interrupt myself to state, for the record, that I really can’t stand raw eggs. My eggs have to be TOTALLY cooked, or I get grossed out. In fact, I don’t even like to SEE the partially cooked egg. So, I decided that I would microwave them to cook them on the inside before I had to see that they weren’t cooked.

I put the two eggs into the microwave for 60 seconds, and started to put away some dishes that had been washed.

Right as my timer expired there was a HUGE BANG from inside the microwave. My eggs had exploded. We’re not talking “cracked” or something. They literally exploded. It sounded like a bomb had gone off inside the microwave. When I opened the door, I wasn’t sure that one hadn’t.

Here are the pics. Click on each one to open a new window with a larger version of the picture. Most browsers will resize the photo to fit the window, so if you make the window bigger, the picture will get bigger too.
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I think I could write a weekly column on “better living by doing it yourself,” in which I could explain how often I try to do things myself only for them to go horribly wrong. This is one such example.

We’ll call it “The Botched Haircut.”

You’re groaning already, aren’t you! You already know that this is going to be a painful story. Well, any story involving a bad haircut is a painful story, but this one is especially so because at (almost) age 27, I haven’t yet learned that I shouldn’t try to cut my own hair.

This is something I should have learned at about age eight, when while visiting my grandparents in Canada, I decided to try to cut my own hair. Only problem was I used pinking shears (you know, the kind of scissors that instead of having a straight edge, have a zipper-like cut). This type of scissors is apparently more useful on felt than on hair.

Well, in my oh-so-wise 27-year-old mind, I decided this morning that I would try to shorten the hair at the top on the front of my head. (This hair is commonly referred to as “bangs”, but as a male, I vehemently deny having “bangs.” As of today that is even a true statement.) Well, I combed down the hair, and went at it with my scissors. Shorter is better, I naively thought to myself, so I decided to cut of a lot. This is when I made the Mistake. Okay, not really. I made the Mistake when I picked up the scissors. But I digress.

So I butchered the front of my hair. It looked like my hair had insulted a weed whacker, and the weed whacker retaliated. The weed whacker apparently won.

Christina walked in when I started to panic. Containing her laughter (mostly), she offered to “fix it.” Which she did. At least as best as could be done, given the circumstances. So now I have really short bangs. (There! I admitted it! I have bangs!)

And I’m grounding myself from regular scissors, in addition to pinking shears.

Hmmm… Wonder how I’d do with a weed whacker…

Chalk it up to “Better Living by Doing It Youself!”