Mike Corrigan

By Mike Corrigan

BN Columnist

That was not an earthquake you felt last Tuesday, just the earth shifting slightly on its axis. Yes, I went and bought a tablet.

Not that I have the electronic marvel up and running yet; that unlikely event would probably send the planet spinning off toward the asteroid belt. Perhaps realizing this, and hoping to save the world for another few months, the manufacturers enclosed a book of allegedly helpful “instructions” on how to operate the thing, and I got almost as far as turning it on. The book was, apparently, written by lawyers, in conspiracy with demons, in Mandarin, and then translated by a team of chimpanzees trained in the proper use of English by Yogi Berra. Worse than the fractured language, each paragraph was followed by a picture of the appropriate screen that you were to adjust or somehow appropriately react to, viz:

Reverse the apparatus everywhere so now this

And to the right of this cryptic injunction, had you only a microscope handy, you could just make out a rendering of the screen at about one-one millionth of actual size, a dark blotch upon the face of which no discernible figures or letters or icons showed. Each subsequent instruction yielded a similar dot, each one indistinguishable from the previous mystery, each looking like nothing so much as a really big interrobang.

With apologies to the inscrutable Oriental mind, it wasn’t a very helpful instruction book.

Lest you think I’m joking — and you know I never joke — I quote some real sentences from this supposed “instruction manual.” If you bought a tablet also, and they left out the instruction book, maybe you can figure out how to get the thing up and running from these guides. But they didn’t enlighten me.

A9 sign and pictures will show up to turn until to the interface. (I was unable to complete this step. Just stupid, I guess — but I must say the accompanying monotone blotch was no help, either.)

In charging state, when the tablet is off, press the right upper “power button” it will shows “charging” figure, once again to click “power button,” the equipment will be opened. (Unbelievably, I figured out what this meant, and charged the thing, even though I had to call Yogi Berra, just to be sure.)

In boot mode, you can tap the power button {interrobang!} on the upper right side if the tablet, the system will into the sand by mode which can save power. (One can only imagine how much power! Whole deserts of it!)

Fortunately, I didn’t get far enough to have to try to figure out what this last one meant:

Click on the <now playing> will display being played album page; there will be lyrics shows under the page right.

Android instruction people: Henceforth, please remember to phrase your instructions in the form of a question. That way, both sender and receiver will be equally confused. An instruction book composed entirely of helping verbs is of surprisingly little help!

I am going online soon. I am hoping I will find the instruction book there. Perhaps I can bypass the whole language barrier thing and set up the device when the screen details are actually visible to the unaided eye, or at least to the aided one.

Mike Corrigan speaks only one language himself, and that one not particularly well, so he should talk. And as to technology, we are constantly amazed his copy arrives by e-mail and not by Pony Express.