Bert,
We both really need to get home. But that being said I couldn't agree with you more. Yes it's nice that guys like you share your insight and we help eachother out from time to time when and where we can, such help is still a poor substitute for a properly written user's manual by the folks who designed the product in the first place. It is sort of why I keep harping on the "in the lack of leadership thing" and my earlier statements on Sync, that the Job is not done until the paperwork is complete.
Now no offense here meant at all, but it does take one to know one best of all.... How much do ya wanna bet that Jon has a good amount of ADD just like me??? Man do I have great ideas, wonderful ideas for businesses and fixes and additions (like you too???) inventions, but I can't even keep my paperwork here at the office straight. What I would do to be able to afford an "executive secretary". Not completing the job, having a multitude of irons in the fire and being executive, CEO like, and creative as hell is PAR for the course.
Heck, my brother Josh who lives in RI studied with one of the main clinical researchers in the field, and they are in that RI, eastern mass, Harvard part of the world. Jon probably knows them himself, professionally if nothing else. Mayor and business man, Mike Bloomburg is a flaming case of ADD. I know I did some work in his original NYC TV studio. We couldn't get halfway thru building what we had all agreed upon as the design and set-up before this crazy, creative man would want to dig into it and we'd have to start all over again. How many times I tore out half my work just to start wiring and patching all over again. See how I'm tangenting here myself.....
So back to the original point. Yes we could really benefit from a properly written user manual from the designer of the product him, themselves. Now I discussed this a bit once or twice early on with Jon and Carlos I think. In the end most user's manuals sit there and collect dust and so many designers of all sorts of products feel they are a waste of time and money. My compromise suggestion was to write the thing in some amount of an e-form perhaps in the program, and it could be updated as needed easily in such a format. But for those of us who like to have hardcopy in front of us, we could either print a few pages as we attack a problem or an install now and again, or if it was properly designed, give us the option to hit a print all type of thing and we could print out the entire thing and put it in a three ring binder kind of thing. The instructions and manual for the MidMark Ritter equipment is contained within the software that came with it and one can easily print out a few pages of instructions for if and when one needs to attack something important. The way I see it is, the last place I want my instructions is trapped inside the computer that is giving me a problem. I want to be able to have a hardcopy on the desk next to me or in my lap while I try to hunt and peck my way thru the issue at hand, not flipping back and forth between screens of the manual and the actual program I am working on let's say.
Anyway, I've got late games after work tomorrow for a tourney and I'm tired and hungry as all heck. Good night...
Paul
