To Dream an Impossible Dream...
As a college student, whose campus is 20 miles away, I recently became engulfed with the burning desire to access from home the files collecting dust on my college server.
I asked one of my instructors of the feasibility of this, and she visibly blanched, and began to shudder. After a moment she composed herself, and hastily scribbled something on a corner of paper torn from her syllabus.
"Talk to these people. They might.. they might be able to help you." She looked around furtively. "I hope I haven't said too much!" She gathered up her belongings and fled the class, even though we had forty minutes remaining.
My curiosity piqued, I glanced at the sheet. Written on it, in the blood-colored ink instructors use for corrections, were the words "MyLab, " with no spaces. Must be a typo, I thought. How little I knew.
Several hours of web-surfing later, I remembered my original task, and went to the DMACC Help Desk page and clicked on the "MyLab" link. (And yes, it was deliberately named without spaces, probably in the hopes that it would make it seem cooler than actually was.) A drop down menu with only one option appeared, a design flaw that hinted of ominous things to come.
As I had no other (drop-down window) choice, I clicked on the link for "Connect to MyLab." And, and... it was a lie! There was no link - only a series of possible program downloads and this indecipherable text:
I've read passages in ancient Greek that made more sense. At least I could make out some of the sorority and fraternity letters, and math symbols. And this page, it was so... so... ugly!
On top of that it listed four possible download options, but didn't explain why the user would require the use of one over another. Just here they are... blah! Of course, I ended up doing exactly what the Help Desk didn't want me to do, what this page had been created to prevent me doing.
By that, I mean I had to call the Help Desk people and ask them what the page didn't explain.
You really have to wonder how these pages are tested. Just having the guy at the next desk in the IT office check it for spelling errors, or what?
I finally got it sorted out after speaking to some anonymous Help Desk minion. The conversation only took a couple of minutes, but it would have been even shorter if he hadn't taken the time to exhale a long, loud sigh after each of my questions.
All gratuitous examples of my scathing with aside, I wouldn't have had to call in and been sighed at if they just had put just a wee bit more information on the page. If you have Windows 7, or Vista, 64 bit, then download this. Local Mode means this. It would have only taken a few minutes longer to create that page, versus the one they currently have, maybe a bit longer if the IT guys insisted on sighing while writing.
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