Kludge powers activate

[breakinglight11]

I am not particularly technically savvy. I think when I was a kid I was a bit ahead of the technology curve for my age, as I had my own computer way before the vast majority of my peers and therefore picked up a lot more earlier than most of them did. But by now, with so very many friends who are accomplished techies, often professionally, I am something of the Luddite in my social group.

Still, if I have one particular ability related to computers and technology, it’s that I have a knack for getting around a problem by finding a kludgey solution. If there is an awkward, inelegant, improper way to make something achieve the desired end result, I will probably find it and use it to laboriously and at length end up with the final product for which the process was begun. I almost certainly will not have succeeded at fixing the problem, or even at making the process in question something more educated people would consider truly operational, but I will probably have gotten the thing for which I engaged the process in the first place. My recent experience with a video subtitling program called Inqscribe comes to mind, in which I figured out a rhythm of activating the various functions that managed to get around its profound propensity toward freezing. Today I set up the computers in my office to connect wirelessly to the new printer by plugging them into the printer, getting the computers to recognize the printer's existence, and then taking out the wire and requesting that it attempt to reach said acknowledged printer over the network. Wonder of wonders, it worked!

Things like this may end up wasting a lot of time which might have been saved if I just found somebody more knowledgeable, but I am proud of my ignorant self for figuring out how to get it done anyway. And none of the people in my office (business and sales guys, mostly) could figure it out, so I feel particularly good about it now.

Comments

[in-water-writ.livejournal.com]

That "kludgey" way of fixing the printer is actually a legit fix- plugging it in locally makes it easier for the machine to detect the drivers, and once the drivers are installed, if you point the computer at the printer on the wireless, it says, "Oh, hey, I know what kind of printer that is!" Instead of "I have no idea what that thing you're trying to connect me to is at all." The way I would have done it is to download and run the printer software from the manufacturer on the each machine, which would be the 'proper' way, but your solution might actually be faster.

So, you may not have the 'knowledge,' but it seems you've definitely got good intuition with tech. (And if you ever want to hear the techy way, to fix something, just ask. I'm happy to share what I've learned.)

[lisefrac.livejournal.com]

I feel like I should invite you to join me at my place of business, where we do everything the kludgy way!

[laurion]

The ends justifies the means. Sometimes. But in this case, totally.

And good for you for not being afraid to try a solution, instead of just giving up.