do good recklessly

I work in tech, and much of what I do is support sales reps within the company by resolving errors with the software they use.

There is one sales rep who, every single time I send her a message or email with extremely specific instructions that will resolve her issue, does something completely different from what I tell her. Every time. Without fail. It is so glaringly obvious that she has never read even a single word that I have written to her.

So one day, she sends me a message that says little more than "(software) is broken, help"

So I do my standard song and dance of asking her what she's trying to accomplish, and what specifically is stopping her from doing that. And eventually, after much unnecessary back and forth, she tells me there's an error message. I ask her to send me a screenshot of the error message. She does.

The error message basically says, "these two required fields are blank. To resolve this, please fill in these two specific fields, and then click save."

So I take a few deep breaths.

Then I lie to her.

I message her back, saying "hey yeah, for some reason it's not loading that screenshot on my end. Could you type out the full text of the error message for me?"

She does.

I ask her if she still needs help.

Client is reporting that Some Thing Program doesn't work. I ask if there's an error message with further information about what's not working. Client says "no". I go over and ask Client to open Some Thing. Client double-clicks on the icon for Some Thing, it starts to boot, an error message dialog flashes up on screen, Client closes error message before I can read it, Thing closes after the error.

"What did that error message say?" I ask.

"What error message?" asks Client.

I tell Client to open the Some Thing again and then not click anything else. Client opens Some Thing, error message appears, Client clicks it away again.

I tell Client to stand up, step away, and give me physical control of the computer. I open Some Thing, start looking at the error message without closing it, and Client says "You should close that." I tell Client that I am reading the error message. Client is apparently accustomed to treating error messages as a kind of spam email that should be deleted as fast as possible, and gets agitated that I'm reading it.

I read the error message. It tells me what the problem is. I fix the problem. Some Thing works now.

---

Later, I start thinking about how such an error message might perhaps be engineered to be more attention-grabbing and close-resistant as a way of making people read it. It's not important for some random program here, but there are more important systems (medical, etc) where it would be reasonable to demand the user's attention because people's lives depend on paying attention to the error message.

She was a computer programmer / analyst, a... Long Time Ago. Called in for a system she'd installed before, the office folk said they kept having problems where it Didn't Work Right (no error, a malfunction)

She investigated, and told them that could only happen if they did 3 specific things in a specific order, which they should not ever do.

So, she asked, did they ever do that?

No! Of course not, was the answer.

So she made a couple of small changes, packed up and said that should be fine, but they should call her if there were problems.

The next week

She had a call saying "We're getting a strange error message on the system, can you help?"

She said, of course, can they tell her the error?

And the message was:

This movie is currently a huge meme in china. It came out of nowhere and inexplicably got a theatrical release, looks like ass, was animated completely by the director and his mother, and took several years to make. "Niu Lai" translates roughly to "The bull is coming" and apparently the film has several other allusions to stock market puns. The Chinese stock market coincidentally had an uptick the day of its release which added further fuel to the meme fire. After going viral Niu Lai began to actually turn profit at the box office, theatres unprepared for Niu Lai mania (the creators did not distribute any promotional material) had to improvise DIY posters:

When your Marine wife’s buddy welcomes you into the Corps…there may be casualties.

Aka what’s a Harm x Mac wedding without a little chaos? Gunny puts his all into the swat and it dominos from there (don’t worry only Keeter’s pride is injured)

Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.

As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.

Deaf Characters:

Deaf characters masterpost

Deaf dialogue thread

Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)

A deaf author’s advice on deaf characters

Dialogue between deaf characters

Mute Characters

Life as a Mute

My Silent Summer:  Life as a Mute

What It’s Like Being Mute

21 People Reveal What It’s Really Like To Be Mute

I am a 20 year old Mute, ask me anything at all!

Blind Characters:

The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters.

@referenceforwriters masterpost of resources for writing/playing blind characters.

The youtube channel of the wonderful Tommy Edison, a man blind from birth with great insight into the depiction of blind people and their lives.

An Absolute Write thread on the depiction of blind characters, with lots of different viewpoints and some great tips.

And finally, this short, handy masterpost of resources for writing blind characters.

Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye

4 Ways Life Looks Shockingly Different With One Eye

Learning to Live With One Eye

Adapting to the Loss of an Eye

Adapting to Eye Loss and Monocular Vision

Monocular Depth Perception

Deaf-Blind Characters

What Is It Like To Be Deafblind?

Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights

Deaf and Blind by 30

Sarita is Blind, Deaf, and Employed (video)

Born Deaf and Blind, This Eritrean American Graduated Harvard Law School (video)

A Day of a Deaf Blind Person

Lesser Known Things About Being Deafblind

How the Deaf-Blind Communicate

Early Interactions With Children Who Are Deaf-Blind

Raising a DeafBlind Baby

If you have any more resources to add, let me know!  I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.

Grace describes it as best he can, but all he can really manage to get across to Rocky is that he was surrounded by small floating lights.

Later on, Grace is talking about the stars and how important they've been to human cultures for millennia. “What do the stars look like, question?” Rocky wants to know.

Oh, y'know, they're a bunch of small floating lights.

There's a disco ball on the Hail Mary. Grace says it's there because it “makes me happy”. “How does it make Grace happy, question?” Rocky wants to know.

Oh, it creates the illusion that he's surrounded by small floating lights.

Rocky begins to do some research.

Glitter: a substance invented by humans to make things look like they're covered in small lights.

Human jewellery: mostly involves gemstones or polished metals, designed to reflect small lights.

Christmas lights. Candles. Lanterns. Fireworks. Glowsticks. Glow in the dark paint. Rocky is beginning to notice a pattern here, statement.

It takes Grace a fucking while after getting to Erid to notice that a lot of the gifts he's receiving from grateful Eridians are either a) sparkly, b) incredibly shiny, or c) fitted with lights.

While the last one is obviously a concession for his human light sense, he's confused about the former two. Are Eridian materials usually this shiny? Is there some quality about sparkly or highly polished surfaces that makes them sound better? Or is there something about Eridian geology/metallurgy that makes their materials like this?

He asks Rocky about it.

“Simple. I tell people humans like lots of small lights. Humans are easy to make happy.”

Grace kind of wants to protest that humans are much more complicated than that.

But honestly… it fucking works. Like yeah the polished gemstones, shiny metals and glittery rocks are beautiful. Yes those Christmas lights you put up around the house did markedly improve my mental health, Rocky. Thank you, I hate it.

but, due to the fog of the amnesia, then the urgency of the mission plus Rocky's appearance, Grace doesn't fully look through every box until they're on their way to Erid. and that's when Rocky wakes up from sleep to see Grace sobbing over a bunch of letters. students telling him how much they enjoyed his class, actually made learning fun and interesting. got them through tough days. made them feel seen and appreciated. quite a few cite his class as being the spark that got them interested in science as a career. and even those that didn't still consider him the best teacher they ever had. fellow teachers admiring his classroom management and lesson planning, and even so his kindness to every student who walked into his room.

one letter is from the principal. when Dr. Grace's involvement in the Hail Mary Project became public knowledge, there was a push from the community to rename the school after him. after discussions with the school board, there had been a secret agreement to do so, even had a new sign made. they were just waiting for him to be released from the project and return to San Fransisco to surprise him. but, with the recent news of his "noble sacrifice", they'd gone ahead and done it. attached the press release with a picture of the new sign, a bunch of his former students standing around it, beaming. a local artist has been commissioned to add a mural to the front entrance over the summer break. and a final note: "Do your work knowing that it will allow the Dr. Ryland Grace Middle School to continue to educate and inspire students for generations."