I’m the king of missed business opportunities. For example, back in the 80s when I was a grad student, I was computer support for my department (I, as in little old me, all by myself). For you young’uns, that was back when we all used IBM ATs. IBM clones were on the market, but most didn’t trust them, and indeed, many so-called IBM compatibles weren’t entirely compatible. But I’ve gotten off the point.
As Mr. Computer Support, interactions like this happened nearly every day:
“How do I delete a file again?”
“D-E-L filename.”
Remembering “del” was beyond these peoples’ cognitive abilities, so I went from machine to machine creating “delete.bat” batch files — you know, the idea being they could type “delete” and that would be easier to remember. Well, it didn’t help, and I should have known it wouldn’t, because I also did this nearly every day:
“How do I copy a file again?”
“C-O-P-Y.”
“How do you remember that?”
Uh, well, it’s really difficult to remember that copy means copy. I mean, how do you answer such a brain-dead question? So he would type “copy” and press the enter key — and of course, it would return an error.
“I thought you said it was C-O-P-Y.”
“It is. You have to tell it WHAT you want to copy, and WHERE you want to copy it to.”
“How do I do that?”
You realize, don’t you, that most of these people had PhDs? That most of these people were tenured faculty? That most of these tenured faculty with PhDs couldn’t remember that “C-O-P-Y” copies files?
Anyway, every other day I would come home ranting about the idiots in the department, and I frequently threatened to write a book: DOS for Idiots. I never did, because I assumed nobody would be caught dead with a book titled DOS for Idiots.
Boy, was I wrong. Idiots have no shame. They carry around Scrapbooking for Dummies. I could have started the whole craze, but silly me, I assumed people had shame.
Then in the 90s when the hippie food craze really took off, I kept threatening to sell Organic Free-Range Water. I never did because who would buy bottled water?
Another missed opportunity to separate idiots from their income.
So based on recent events, I have a business idea, and this time, I’m going through with it. More on that later.
