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Folks, here's another twist for instructions.
I got this note from a friend of mine and though
I'd pass it on.
===================================================
It's been a snowy winter here in New Hampshire: The ground's been
completely snow-covered since mid-December, and two recent back-to-back
Nor'easters dumped a huge amount of the white stuff. Parts of our yard
are chest-deep in snow; standing inside the house and looking out, one's
feet are well below the level of the top of the snow outside. Our
driveway is walled with snow like a toboggan run; and the streets are
worse, with the snowbanks piled higher than the roofs of most cars.
In the midst of all this, our firewood carrier--- a kind of wheeled
carriage--- broke. It wasn't a trivial matter: Although we have
conventional heating, we provide most of our heat via two high-
efficiency woodstoves because wood is a local, renewable, and relatively
environmentally benign resource. With a large-ish and constantly-
occupied house (my office is in my home), we burn a *lot* of wood, and
losing the wheeled carrier was a major inconvenience.
I ordered a new one--- a different, sturdier model--- and it arrived
ready to be assembled.
Although it was from a U.S. company in Kentucky, the instructions were
crafted in the kind of language you normally see only in poor
translations. "Tube" parts were referred to as "tupes," "legs" as "leds"
and so on.
But here's the part that made me laugh out loud: While one side of the
instruction sheet was dense with a complete battery of single-spaced
instructions that detail the full assembly sequence, the other side
contained alternate instructions, which I reproduce here in full:
"Guy" Instructions:
1) Bolts go out.
2) Don't overtighten the nuts.
3) Axle caps go on last.
Yes, they really called them "'Guy' Instructions."
I'm hoping it was just a bit of dry Kentucky humor. 8-)
IPCC 01, the IEEE International Professional Communication Conference,
October 24-27, 2001 at historic La Fonda in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
CALL FOR PAPERS OPEN UNTIL MARCH 15. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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