Thursday, July 29, 2010

User Manual for Living

I recently heard someone talking about the old adage that "Life does not come with a user manual. Disagreeing with this statement, the person went on to state "Life does come with a user manual and its called The Bible. So if you have questions just R.T.F.M.

Hmmm...so the original was a hodgepodge of notes left by the genius but socially inept Design Engineer after building the first model. These were collected and extensively edited by the Tech. Support staff to answer the operational questions they were facing in their day to day jobs. Of course, a council of representatives from the Marketing Departments from all the companies trying to sell the device then had to publish the manual in a form that would actually sell their product. By the time all this was completed many new versions of the product had been released but hey, it was still the same basic gizzmo. Then a mere 2000 years ago the Design Engineer returned from vacation, read the manual, called the editors and publishers fools and demanded a major addendum be added. The editors and publishers obliged but then killed the engineer so he couldn't cause more problems for them.

So here we are some 2000 years later with multiple versions of the manual, not being read by most, being understood my none, but being quoted by everyone with an axe to grind. Some believe that the engineer is no longer dead and will one day come back to explain it all again. Until that happens I guess we are stuck with just pressing the reboot button from time to time.