Friday, January 5, 2018

procedural

There are certain medical procedures which have a reputation in the popular culture as being outstandingly painful or agonizing to go through. I can now add a third one to the list that I found no more than ... definitely uncomfortable. I wouldn't welcome it, but there was nothing searing about it.

1. Prostate exam
2. MRI
3. Root canal surgery

On the other hand, there's something non-medical that we're always told is easy to do, and ought to be easy, but which is instead always difficult, frustrating, time-consuming, even infuriating; and that thing is:

1. Electronic device migration

By which I mean, setting up to your preferences, learning the new protocols of, and transferring your programs and data to a new computer, cell phone, or other electronic device. The programs I use at work, which all manipulate a database format that has been standardized for literally fifty years, are the same way: they don't import the data from the old program accurately, and they require entirely new ways of accessing and editing it. (One of many reasons I dread the prospect of getting a smartphone, on which migration to a new device is likely to be frequent and, past experience suggests, particularly nightmarish.)

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