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bigtips

My journey from computer naif to hacking the boss's icons

by M.T. "the Big Tipper" Martone

In the early 1980s, I managed to fail both a programming class I had been forced to take, and typing. I'm a pretty confident character, so it really got in my craw to see everyone else's fingers flying over their keyboards, and their successful programs flowing down that danged green-and-white striped printer paper.

Programming was some deadly amalgam of linear logic and the desire to solve simple problems somewhere other than in my head. I hated it, so I couldn't do it, and so I hated it more. I lumped this abortive attempt at programming in with Satan's other fun-time activity, math, and moved on.

At my first job out of school, we had K-Pros, which were obsolete even then. I viewed these machines as typewriters which might, and did, at random times make my work disappear. I did all of the general correspondence at this job by hand, for four years.

Stubborn. But you know what? I had never needed what a.computer could do for me. What finally changed that was writing this column. When I turned in the first "Big Tips" over five years ago, I wrote it out on legal paper, counted the words, crossed some out, stuffed it in an envelope, and walked it over to my first newspaper's office.

The next month, I was in my (then) grad program's computer lab puzzling over some simple drafting problem, and I thought, "Hey! I have 'free' access to these computers, and I could do word processing on them!" Duh. (I hope that bolt of lightning didn't mess up my hair.)

I read a kids' book once that compared our understanding of our brain's capacity to that of someone who finds a car, and not knowing what it is, sits in the front seat, turns on the radio, and says, “Hey, cool! This thing makes music!"

This is how I used those first Macs. Why, did you know that you could move actual pieces of text around without retyping them? It made my inability to type less of a problem, because a mistake didn't mean doing it over. Plus, it checked spelling and counted words automatically! My head spun.

So, time passes, and novelty fades, but you know what? With computers, there's no shortage of novelty, because it's the lifeblood of the business.

Every day there's something new I can do. Make a chart? No sweat. HTML coding? You got it. And who I am hasn't changed at all. The interface has just become more accessible. When you throw the Internet into the mix, the possibilities for productivity and fun are practically endless.

And so it was, a few evenings ago (What, you thought I was just telling you all this for laughs? Of course it's the introduction to a story.) I was engaging in my favorite atwork-before-8:30-or-after-5 activity: surfing the web and harvesting cool graphics.

This started out innocently, when I realized that saving an image was as simple as holding down my mouse button and telling the image where to go. As a woman with a six-foot cabinet stuffed with old magazines

BREW FWMASTER" II OUSE

"for projects," digital hoarding came naturally.

I started with random images, then gleaned some clip-art, and moved on the memory hog of obsessions, fonts. But I hadn't yet stumbled across what I would find that evening: really cool icons. I'd always envied people who had unique icons on their desktop, but I thought it took some convoluted process to switch them, and I never saw one I really wanted anyway. Well, that was all about to change.

This probably happens with most people: I'll try to do something, and it doesn't work,

BIG TIPS

like, say, driving a standard-shift car. So I move on. Then a month or a year passes, I try it again, and it just works. Suddenly, I'm not laying patches of rubber as the car shudders · across the church parking lot.

Maybe my brain just needs a little absorption

time, or I learn other

things in the meantime that I needed to understand the original task. This

is how my relationship with icons had gone. I'd found them, and thought, "Hmm, a ducky for my hard drive? Sure." But I couldn't get them to show up on my desktop. And when they did, how did I get my original files in there? Sigh. Time passed.

Then this week I tried again. I found a bunch of sites with really cool icons, downloaded them, used the provided instructions (Hey, there's a thought-thanks!) for cutting and pasting them and I was good to go.

Netscape was now a tiny jar of cranberry juice, and Internet Explorer was an itty bitty Bionic Woman. My desktop was sassy, and so very much more personal. Click, click, click, click. Mama Cass. A fish bowl. Mimi from Drew Carey. A uterus. But the last one was a biggie. What would I pick for the intercompany computer network? Hmm. I finally settled on a hot dog being roasted on a stick. Now, this was one righteous desktop.

I closed out, and went home.

The next day, I came in, and flipped on the computer, and admired my handiwork. The hot dog wasn't quite right, so I switched it to a French cruller. Smooth. Then I opened my e-mail. Blah, blah, blah-hmmm, one from the director:

"Who's responsible for the hot dog on a stick? I like it, but it's hard to click on." Doh!

People were settling into the offices around me, and computers were warming up. “Hey, what's this donut?" "There's a cruller on my screen!"

Since it was the network, it had changed on everyone's computers. I zipped an e-mail to the director saying I was sorry and to switch it back, but he said people liked the donut better. Phew. But that means I can change it whenever I want. I wonder if I can make a little icon of my face?

Burning questions? Contact me at the Chronicle, attention Big Tips, P.O. Box 5426, Cleveland 44101, or fax to 216-631-1052, or e-mail to martone@drizzle.com.

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