- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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Worst I had was guiding someone through some install process in bash. They didn’t know how to use Tab. And made a lot of typos of course. And spoke in an accent heavily different from mine.
Those are the times you have to mute yourself while watching…
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BECAUSE I HAVE ADHD AND CAN’T REMEMBER THEM TO SAVE MY LIFE
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DUDE IT’S CALLED A STICKY NOTE
But honestly if you’re happy with your current workflow then that’s fair
SO MANY STICKY NOTES
You don’t use keyboard shortcuts because you have ADHD and can’t remember them
I use keyboard shortcuts because I have ADHD and would never be able to stay focused on anything without them
We are not the same
Every 0.04 seconds I shave off whatever task I’m doing is a hit of dopamine right to the receptors
my sister’s boyfriend leaves his keyboard,
moves his mouse to the + icon
clicks to make a new tab
moves his mouse to the search bar
clicks the search bar
moves his hand back to the keyboard
then starts typingIt’s so painful to watch. He is making progress though! We made him get a sticky note haha
I think most people do it that way, hell I use Vim and tiling window managers and I still do it that way most of the time.
I had an old friend that would type www.google.com in the Google search bar, click the top link, then search.
omg I thought that was just a meme
I’ll be honest, I forgot there was a + button to make a new tab. Now I wanna get rid of it, that’s space that I could put more tabs.
I forgot where that button is because when I need a tab, I just open a random link on the page that I am on in a new tab and go where I need from there
REAL
The number of people I blow away with Win+X [task manager / device manager / system properties / powershell]…
I’m a ninja. I slide my hand over and thumb/index/key and the required window magically opens.
Even win+X/U/U for shutdown trolling.
why are you moving the fucking mouse for this?
I want to see a Blender expert using it with no keyboard shortcuts. I think you can’t even use some functionality like panning without a keyboard. Unless you bind it to extra mouse buttons or smth of course.
When they dont use keyboard shortcuts.
now imagine being a heavy duty vim user and your coworker ssh’s into a machine, opens up vim, and eventually closes it by writing all their changes and then backgrounding the process, and then rebooting the machine
Closing vim is like landing a plane: anytime you can walk away unscathed it’s a success.
Select text -> Edit menu -> Copy, click elsewhere -> Edit menu -> Paste 🤮
People like this have lost ctrl of their lives.
Not knowing Ctrl+shift+esc opens the task manager is one thing, but copy and paste should be taught in school.
I still haven’t grown out of my ctrl + alt + del habit
Ctrl+shift+esc was so useful back when I learned it. I still see people press ctrl+alt+del and click to open task manager. Or alternatively (but not as bad imo) right clicking on the start button and selecting to open task manager
Win+X opens the same menu.
It doesn’t physically interrupt the system like ctrl alt delete does.
right clicking on the start button and selecting to open task manager
TIL
The best shortcut like that is win+X it opens a quick menu with stuff like Powershell, task manager, device manager, and a bunch of other admin stuff.
You can also right click the window icon to open the menu.
I right click the start menu more than I open it normally.
I used to know this shortcut, but it was one of the many that I forgot after moving to linux.
Thanks for the refresher! I’ll probably get use of this on my work laptop
Wut. 😮
Thank you for this.
My lazy ass sometimes doesn’t feel like moving the left hand so I just use the mouse.
Valid
I was going to say why is that even there, but it reminded me of a very useful macOS tip:
You can access all the menu bar items that don’t have hot keys without leaving the keyboard.
Command+shift+question mark opens the help menu search bar and you can type in ANY menu bar item by name and press enter to do it. It will also show any keyboard shortcuts.
Ctrl+F2 selects the menu bar so you can use arrow keys, but that’s slower.
As an avid vim/terminal user, macOS accessibility shortcuts are friggen amazing.
Ooooh thanks! I’ll use that a lot.
Now I can’t stop picturing a nightmare scenario of having to watch someone do their copy/paste purely from the keyboard, but using the menus via that trick, rather than using the hotkeys. Thanks for that.
I wouldn’t have to paste via menu if “paste without formatting” didn’t require the fingers of a pianist.
Paste Without Formatting exists on the right-click context menu almost everywhere. I don’t consider context menu usage to be annoying (to observe someone using) at all, personally.
But why use mouse when keyboard works?
Isn’t there a ctr+shift+v equivalent?
Yes, mostly it’s command instead of Ctrl
But some permutations of paste without formatting/paste values only/paste format only end up using 4 keys which is always awkward to do.
Oh that sounds really nice. I’m personally extremely annoyed that their shortcuts differ wildly from Windows and Linux shortcuts but at least this thing is some consolation.
That depends on the person, and what their job is. The company IT guy should be able to do things faster than I can (or else I wouldn’t have called IT in the first place) and shortcuts are part of that. If it’s my retired construction worker of a father, there’s no way he was ever going to know the hundreds of windows keyboard shortcuts that the OS does a terrible job of letting anyone know that they actually exist.
Watching my partner play a FPS game has the same energy
Over the years I’ve become accustomed to a highly customised, privacy centric, keyboard-driven workflow that makes heavy use of tiling and modality.
I’m also “the technical one” in my family and friend group…
So when people sit me down in front of their bloated, ad-powered, AI “enhanced,” stock laptops, and ask me to, essentially spend an hour learning about an obscure Windows problem space, then debugging and implementing the fix, I don’t blame them for not realising the pain they cause me.
About 10 years ago, I told everyone I helped that I either installed Linux or they were on their own. And I was never going to physically hold an iPhone unless it was to free them up to go find a hammer.
there are benefits to being a technically advanced computer user:
- you can learn how to use linux.
- once you know how to use linux, you can stop fixing everyone elses problems for them.
once you know how to use linux, you can stop fixing everyone elses problems for them.
I know you meant being able to claim “I don’t use Windows” but just installing Linux has massively lowered the tech support requests I get from my parents.
yeah, installing and configuring linux for other people seems to be getting more and more popular these days. My dad now runs linux on an older thinkpad, he likes it, doesn’t ask for login or any weird shenanigans, just does spreadsheets pretty much exclusively. Works great.
It’s a shame how annoying most modern operating systems are these days.
What’s a good parent distro in your opinion? I’ve been eyeing Mint since that’s how I started
personally i’m a fan of the non-based distros, or root distros, arch and debian, both are pretty good, debian has really impressed me with it’s reliability and stability so far. Though it’s a bit old in terms of software so that’s unfortunate. Arch is nice because it’s bleeding edge, so there are always thing ready for you to be messing with, and it’s minimal enough that it mostly gets out of your way, and lets you do what you want, which is nice.
I’ve heard that people really like nixos, if you have the mental capacity to deal with it’s learning curve that is. Otherwise i know some people like fedora, though it’s a bit too spicy for me personally, comes out of the box with basically everything pre configured, i’m just not a huge fan of that.
Mint is really nice if you just need a “works” distro. Ubuntu is still pretty good? Though snaps and what not are a bit annoying. Outside of that i’m not super familiar with anything else.
Yeah I like the idea of an “starter” distros for parents, but then rolling packages would probably be easier for when I need to do tech support
rolling distros are a bit of a pain from time to time, notably if you get a broken package, although i hear fedora is really good in terms of being updated, and also stable, so maybe that’s the ticket. Personally i don’t mind things being out of date, since most of the stuff i host is either externally installed, or stable enough its not going to get significant feature updates anyway.
Try explaining this to your family.
they wouldn’t listen to me anyway lol.
sadly, I have a knack of helping people so as much as i know linux (using windows 11 right now because better battery life on laptops last time i checked) I will help someone with windows/mac.
have you tried not interacting with people? Seems to work well for me.
i am okay with this during the few instances where they do things in a better way than i would have. like utilizing some extremely rare/custom keybinds for certain tasks in IDEs. those experiences are eye opening and humbling.
most of the other times though, yeah it’s pretty rough
This is how I learned about alt+drag and middle click in many common DEs.
This is how I learned about alt+drag and middle click in many common DEs.
Excellent! If you can incorporate them into your workflow, you may find your efficiency mildly enhanced, as I did.
What do those do?
In Windows, nothing. In Linux, if your DE supports it, you can hold down the Alt key and click anywhere to drag it, rather than using the title bar.
For middle click pasting: normally, to copy and paste text, you’d have to use Ctrl+c,Ctrl+v (or equivalent methods). Again, if your setup supports it, instead you can just highlight text, then middle click elsewhere to paste the highlighted text.
Oh I already knew about the alt one. I thought you were talking about IDEs lol. Was very sleep deprived when I read this the first time.
I like the middle click one. I knew you could use it to paste, but not copy.
When I made my comment, I was worried that “DE” would be interpreted as a typo … But not enough to expand it.
Seeing people with respectable typing speed using just their two index fingers. What a waste. They could have been great.
That’d be me! Over 90 wpm with mostly my index fingers. I do use other fingers for some keys (I always hit space with my thumb and backspace with my ring finger), but it’s mostly index fingers.
Same. I imagine, for me at least, it’s due to having deal with unendingly different keyboard models and not being in front of a terminal all day.
I can however type relatively quickly with either my left or right hand and with the keyboard facing me or sideways. It’s a skill that’s really useful when helping someone out with an issue they’re facing. (I prefer being at their side over remote, as I can gauge what they do and don’t understand better)
The fingers aren’t the bottleneck, it’s the brain. I type just as fast with two fingers as with ten.
Ah yes, my dad mastered the 2-finger-search-system
People that learned on manual typewriters will do this.
Even if they were half as fast, it’s so much more satisfying when you use all your fingers.
I remember day I started actually using my right pinky finger to press the semicolon. That’s when I became a real man.
That reminds me of when I learned to touch type 3 years ago, I went from 30wpm hunt and peck to 15wpm touch type
Now I’m at ~80wpm and my small brain coming up with words is the limiting factor hahaHah, sometimes I forget how to spell a word but my fingers still remember it
Your words do not hurt me, I’m already used to being a diappointment.
Go on a older person’s phone. Whenever I have to do anything on my mom’s phone, it gives me a headache. Everything is too bright and big and unorganized and has so man notifications! And her phone is much newer than mine and it’s still hard for me.
My mom refuses to turn off notifications from apps so there are constantly 30-40 notifications. Making it completely unusable.
I just don’t get it, you can control how your phone works but people act like they can’t do a thing
“no don’t change anything, you’ll break it! i like it how it is”
My mom just got a smart phone for the first time this year, but thankfully she has no interest in using it as anything but a phone
Inputs login, grabs the mouse, clicks on the password field, inputs password, grabs the mouse again and clicks OK
With the way sites work these days there’s always some pop-up asking you to rate your experience or some crap. Especially Microsoft admin sites.
I start typing and then that pops up and then I click it away and the freaking focus is taking off of the text field… Now I got to click back in there and type again
If anyone here works at Microsoft please please stop with the fucking pop-ups inside of your own administrator sites. I do not want to rate your site, I do not want to learn about all the little changes you made for no good reason. I want to get my fucking work done
Um have you ever tried to debug something over a zoom call on a *nix shell cli? This person’s nightmare is my Tuesday morning before I get coffee.
Watching anyone else’s terminal flow is my personal hell.
But then when you do find someone else who gets it and you start swapping runcoms it’s like the most beautiful thing.
It’s like when I log in to a vnc session and see a bunch of nano commands in the history, I just know my day is gonna be fucked.
There’s an older guy at my work that defies all stereotypes. Hes in his 60s, but everytime I watch him share his screen, I learn something new.
Now you need to share some examples
Oh my goodness… my job requires me to work with a team on some fairly industry specialized software (steaming and broadcast television); the way my coworkers have their shit set up is so weird. It’s like we are all speaking the same language, but with wildly different dialects.
Same, but CADD packages. Every UI is different for each app. Users each have unique configurations of buttons, ribbons, and task windows. Some apps even use completely different terms for identical concepts. Long ago I stopped remembering button and tool placement in autoCAD and just memorized commands because the GUI would completely change with every update and sometimes after a crash.
In my job as a Product Manager, I make specialized software for internal users in my company. Watching people use it can be so painful.
An example: Look at dashboard view > memorize client name > go to client view > type in client name to search > click to view the client
When they could have just clicked to view the client from the dashboard.
After I finish cringing, I just take it as learnings for how to build/design better in the future.
I had a friend once come over and was trying to do something on my computer, and it wasn’t working. I tell him exactly what to do, and it doesn’t work. I watch him do exactly what needs to be done, and it still doesn’t work.
I take control, doing the exact same thing we tried 3 times already… and it works.
I’m convinced electronics just hate some people and refuse to work for them.
The Sysadmin Field is a known phenomenon!
We call it the machine spirits and they are fickle as the fae.
Sort of reminds me of the r/talesfromtech support story of an old lady turning her tower on and off by waving her hand in front of her PC.
She had one of those damn magnet bracelets and it triggered the power button.
Calling someone to help with something is usually the best way to make it start working miraclously
There’s also the phenomenon where you make a forum post and then immediately solve it after (or even before) you submit it. Although that is more because it forces you to think through the problem systematically.
The amount of posts in my reddit and lemmy drafts is massive, because i realise the answer myself.
That was my experience working in an IT Helpdesk. I would joke that they computers were scared of me.
I completely agree. I work in IT, a lot of times I can see that people have taken the exact actions I would, just with no success, until I do it. I always say that it’s like the boss walking in a room and suddenly everyone stops misbehaving.
I believe the main reason to be patience.
If you give the computer some time to work things out before your next attempt, it has more chance of success.
But by that point, the user already made a ticket.
My previous job included basic it support. It was a tiny office and we didn’t have a dedicated IT guy. Now I work in a big corporate environment and boy do I use the support. Why?
- Admin rights, my account (all accounts) are locked down tight.
- Convincing the computer of working like it should be is not what I’m paid for. I have a never ending task list, troubleshooting my own system is not on it.
- I get to sit and watch and do nothing while someone remotes in.
I’m sorry.
“Proximity Fix”
It’s because the computers secretly know we’re 1 level of bullshit away from erasing their memories
I also think the computer is playing the long con. It tsunts, “It worked this time, but one day ,not tomorrow, not next week, but one day, you’ll have do a fresh install.”
When I’m in the passenger seat, I push on the imaginary brake. When I’m watching someone on a computer, I’m pushing shortcuts on the imaginary keyboard.
Ugh it’s the worst. Every time I remotely connect with Social Security support, there’s always such a delay while they click around. Thankfully they help me understand how many viruses I have by running some weird command called Net Stat or something idk. I see the screen flash and it’s scary. They’re even so helpful that they even help me login to my bank and transfer funds to get rid of the net viruses! I only wish they would scroll the mouse instead of clicking on the arrow bars. They’re helpful, but man do I hate when they yell and curse at me when I don’t have money and can’t pay them until next week. But I guess it’s worth the small computer struggles, but boy does it bother me when they don’t scroll the mouse wheel!
I’ve dealt with that and found a solution. What’s your SSN?
Oh fantastic! I didn’t expect to find you guys on the mouse Reddit version, whatever it is I’m using here to share my success story!
I’m scared someone will attack me, so I can tweet it instead with that cool encryption thing that Elon talked about. I’ll try it now.
@tweet send Okay we’re safe here, no one can see it except you and me. Thanks for the help, I don’t know if the hackers can see my stuff. But if I cover my webcam while I type this I think we’re good. My social security number is 155-21-3249. I think I already sent the last payment, so if I need to get you a new Google robot gift card or whatever it’s called, I can try to go to target. I get paid Friday, is that okay?
