Val Quainton - curmudgeon

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:

Then welcome to the Summer Reading Challenge!

📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚

📖 What is the Summer Reading Challenge?

Every year, Tawny's 8yo gets to go to our local library and gets a map/bingo card and rewards for reading books over the summer holidays.

Every year, she gets very jealous so set up her own excuse to read more and give herself fun rewards for doing so.

So that's it. Use the bingo card attached to this post for inspiration finding your next read.

📖 When does the summer reading challenge run?

It runs from 24th July to 31st August 2026.

📖 How do I get my bingo card?

It's attached to this post and can be downloaded and saved.

📖 I want to scream about the books I'm reading like a feral gremlin. What do I do?

We want to scream too. Make a post and tag us at @summer_reading_challenge.

📖 You mentioned stickers. Gimme, gimme.

They will become available when the challenge starts. Use to mark spaces on your bingo card, or go wild and use them on note books, lap tops etc.

📖 I really like fanfic, is that allowed?

Yes, absolutely. Although in the interests of keeping the event a challenge we ask you read longer fics (let's say 50k plus).

📖 Wait, don't go, I still have questions.

Then message @tawnyontumblr or @pyracantha14 As soon as we put our books down, we'll get back to you.

There is very little intrinsic institutional power in queenship. The power a consort, dowager, or queen mother has depends mostly on how much the reigning sovereign (usually a man) is willing to grant her. Needing a queen to serve as regent is exceptionally rare, and the regent is more often a male relative.

Queen regnant: woman who rules in her own right, not on behalf of someone else.

Regent: Someone who temporarily assumes the powers of the monarch on account of the monarch being too young or too incapacitated to govern.

Queen consort: Woman who is married to the monarch.

Dowager queen: Woman who was married to the monarch. The monarch is dead, and she is owed support as his widow.

she’ll be like “aziraphale would never suggest harming another living being” and i have to be like oh honey. he suggested killing a little boy to get out of work. and then actually tried to do it and only failed because madame tracy said “um wtf??? no???” while he was possessing her.

and then she’ll be like “ok but what about when he revives the dove after the magic show at warlock’s party” they changed that for the show. crowley originally revived it after aziraphale accidentally killed it.

and then she’ll be like “aw i love how aziraphale loves books so much he owns a bookshop” babe people literally think he’s with the mafia because he will resort to anything but physical violence to avoid selling his books. he rents in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in London and never sells anything. the mafia can’t even fuck with aziraphale because he makes them inexplicably disappear whenever they come around and we are never actually told where they go or what he does to them.

“oh but he loves humanity so much it’s so sweet how he would do anything to save humanity” book aziraphale doesn’t want to save humanity, book aziraphale wants to keep going on little dates with his boyfriend and reading books that he won’t sell and drinking tea and listening to his records in his little bookshop because Heaven is boring as fuck. He actively works to avert the apocalypse because he would have to actually do his job otherwise. Crowley quite literally only manages to convince him to help him stop the apocalypse because he reminds Aziraphale how fucking bored he’d be without creature comforts. Crowley’s trump card was literally “help me or you’ll have to watch The Sound of Music.” and Aziraphale FUCKING AGREES TO IT. To get out of watching The Sound of Music.

Book!Aziraphale is a bastard, and I love him.

Paper Towns is not a book supporting the manic pixie dream girl trope it's an explicit deconstruction and harsh critique of it and the book is NOT subtle about that. I can point you to the exact passage in the book where he spells out that people you like don't belong to you and maybe aren't even thinking about you at all, like there's a reason Margo is upset and confused when Quentin finds her, she didn't leave those clues for him and it's weird to her that he thought she did and that he came to find her, she didn't want to be found. If the book ended with her swooning and being so proud of him for understanding her clues and finding her so they can now run away together that would be manic pixie dream girl bullshit but the exact fucking opposite thing happens!! Did you even read the book???

And you aren't supposed to think the teens in The Fault in Our Stars are cool and quirky, they're children seeking meaning and identity while dealing with the horrific and profoundly dehumanizing and autonomy stealing expirience of terminal illness, the cigarette doesn't mean anything deep or profound, it's clearly just a coping mechanism for Augustus to help him deal with his health being out of his control, and Hazel's obsession with an old, obscure book isn't bcs she's cool and quirky it's because she's terrified when she dies her parents won't be okay and she won't be there to help, so she NEEDS to know what happens to the other characters once the main one dies so she knows what will happen to her parents when she's gone, and the story is not subtle in showing what these "quirks" are really about. Augustus is just dealing with reality in his own weird way and Hazel is experiencing something a lot of people with terminal illnesses do, deep concern for the people you'll leave behind. (When I had a cancer scare all I could think about was how worried I was about my fiancé, and when my best friend got cancer the first thing he told me was that he couldn't die because he was worried I wouldn't be okay without him. You forget to worry about yourself, you really do. That's not quirky, it's painfully true to reality.)

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!