
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 4, 1994                   TAG: 9501040063
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THEY CAN TAKE SLOT C AND SHOVE IT

I will now dedicate the following to those of you who are still bleeding from putting all those toys together at 2 a.m. on Dec. 25 after Santa Claus had left them off - putting a finger beside his nose and saying "some assembly required."

I no longer bleed at 2 a.m. on Dec. 25, but I know how it was. I've still got scars from this race set I put together, sort of, in 1962.

It was different when I was a kid. Santa always gave a hand. At least, one Christmas I got a tricycle with the handlebars on backward, and my old man blamed it on Santa.

But what I am here to announce today - with the help of The Wall Street Journal - is a new job description for those people who write instruction manuals and sheets.

They are now called "information designers," and this should give us some hope. At least, "information designer" sounds a little more compassionate and caring than "manual writer."

This new breed may be kind enough, for example, not to write something like the following:

"If you want to see the monochrome or color default settings, point to either MONOCHROME DEFAULT or COLOR DEFAULT and click. (If you have a black-and-white monitor, be sure to choose the COLOR DEFAULT option so you can see the various shades of gray."

This kind of writing has discouraged me from looking for my color default settings in my aging computer. They can just stay wherever they are in the damned thing. I can get along without knowing a thing any various shades of gray I might be entitled to.

There are more universal instructions that almost always include the word "templates." I don't know what a template is, but I do know that sometimes "Template B must be attached to the activator, just below the monastic coil breaker, or the activator will malfunction and the strabismus indicators will not work."

There are simpler instructions, as in: "Put Tab A into Slot B and bevel the edge of the template until Slot C comes into view." Some of us are unable to find Tab A. Never mind Slot C.

The Journal, incidentally, reported that there is an instruction sheet for Reebok's Instapump running shoes that tells you how to pump air into the suckers.

I'm happy to report that I got a pair of L.L. Bean snow sneakers for Christmas, and all I have to do is put them on and lace them up.

The eyelets at the top did give me a bit of trouble at first.

by CNB