What is this blog thing anyway?

So, I hear you asking, what is it about instruction manuals that put you off?

Well I think the language used is one thing. If it's not poorly translated from Portuguse via Taiwanese, Czechoslovakian and Serbo Croatian into pidgeon English then it will amost certainly contain TLA's. What's TLA's? Three letter abbreviations, thats what. Like OSD (on Screen Display) or HSR (High Speed Recording) The publisher will assume you know what all the TLA's mean, but I just end up feeling a TIT (Totally Idiotic Twerp) Then just when you think you're getting to grips with it they'll throw in an FLA (four letter abbreviation) and that's before we get to ACRONYMS. (A Complete Riot Of Nonesense You Might Say) ACRONYMS are great when they mean something or at least make sense, but most are totally irrelevent to the function or gadget in hand. My new boiler apparently came with a RULER. I spent hours looking for a length of plastic with measured marks on before I learned this actually meant End Users Licenced Engineers Report (yes I know, that spells EULER, I still don't know if it was a typo or a deliberate wind up) And since when did you need a licence to run a boiler?

My next issue is that the manual becomes thicker in inverse propertion to the gadget it comes with. An MP3 player for example will have a manual about four times it's weight and size, whilst the lawnmower I got last week, which needed assembling from about 18 pieces came with an A4 page with pictures and heiroglyphics but no words at all. Some of the symbols appeared to show a man having sex with a dog, but I think they meant it was a son of a bitch to put together.

My final problem with the whole manual thing is that I feel I shouldn't need one. It's a matter of male pride I suppose. Men should just know how to work gadgets. It's particularly annoying then when you three year old can take said gadget out of the box and have it up and running whilst you are still reading the bit about it havng a prewired plug with a thirteen amp fuse which if it has to be replaced ......zzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzz Sorry nodded off there. Why do they put that bit in anyway? I can see it has a plug on, I don't need the book to tell me.

That's it in a nutshell. Manuals into room 101 as far as I'm concerned. I have them all in a safe place just in case I need them, but do you know what? I never do. Because I have a three year old and I can press random buttons until what I want to happen happens. And if it doesn't something else will happen which will so amaze me that I'll forget about what I wanted to do and use the new feature instead.

Anyhow, seems like I'm getting the hang of this Blogging thing, so more in the near future.