Telstra Word Of The Day!

12:57 Oct 8th, 2009 | Notes

The Word of the Day is:

Home Network Gateway

“With Telstra Home Broadband, everyone can be online at the same time from anywhere in your home, without messy wires, which makes for a much happier household.”

Wow! What an amazing product! You mean I can have multiple devices using the same internet connection, wirelessly? And at the same time?! Just by using this Home Network Gateway?

Oh wait, you mean ‘Wifi’.

Okay Telstra, it’s time to get real. Trying to simplify computing language for the masses is one thing, but treating them like idiots by not giving them the proper terminology is going much further than you needed to go. You can’t go into a store and buy a Home Network Gateway, because it doesn’t exist. It’s jargon that your marketing people made up because they thought the term ‘Wifi’ was too complex for people to understand. You’ve just made the computer illiterate more computer illiterate.

Give people credit when it’s due, this isn’t the 90’s, they know what ‘Wifi’ is. And if they don’t, then you can explain to them what it is. You went to the trouble to explain your marketing team’s illegitimate offspring, the Home Network Gateway, didn’t you?

Word Pad Sucks

9:38 May 29th, 2009 | Notes

Have you ever installed a release candidate version of windows, not bothered to install a full word processor, started using Word Pad to type up your music composition process diary then have the entire OS crash and then get the blue screen of death?

I have!

I was writing my process diary during debating training (yeah, not much actually happens) when, all of a sudden, without warning the screen flickered and gave me the classic blue screen of death then restarted. I didn’t have time to react. No frozen screen or cursor or anything!

What the hell happened?! This is Windows 7! It’s not supposed to do that! It’s supposed to work properly!

The up side is that once it had dumped the memory, it quickly rebooted. My work wasn’t there but at least it went to the trouble of restarting for me. In all honesty, I wasn’t that annoyed, I had only done about three lines of work. But I’m still kind of curious as to why the hell it happened.