Orangenfox

This started out as an experiment based largely on peer pressure, and the strong desire to 'play too' when my friends put up lists of prompts for character drabbles and the like. If it ever turns into more, I will probably forget to update this. Absolutely sincerely, Orangenfox. (It's been a few years and now I have to add: if I suspect a new follower is a bot then I block and report, and suspicions are high.)

[writingdose]

the author’s barely disguised love, joy and passion that they have for the characters, writing and their stories

[polarity-disturbed]

big fan of when a character metaphorically sweeps something under the rug, but you can feel them flinch every time they walk over it and feel the crumbs beneath their feet

[pretentiouslimericks]

It feels like I’ve talked about this before, but to me the funniest version of Portal is if Chell is deaf.

Like, most of the major story beats, at least the ones that directly affect her, have a prominent visual component so she’s following along with the basics. But she has no idea who cave johnson is, or what wheatley was trying to explain to her, and she certainly wasn’t hurt by any of glados’ insults.

but the best part of this headcanon is imagining glados checking chell’s personnel file years down the line, noticing the word “deaf” for the first time, and just going “WHAT???”

[emptyjunior]

Glados learning sign language so Chell can hear at least one of her excellent monologues and Chell just closes her eyes

[junebug-jamboree]

[sotc]

when mage’s eyes glow/change color while casting their spells reblog if u agree

[maureen2musings]

Photo finalist: Natural World competition, Animal Antics

taylor.nature.photography

[writing-challenges-and-prompts]

Writing Prompt

Water is patient and forgets nothing.

[adhdwannabewriter]

Writers, which software do you use?

Google docs

Microsoft word

Ellipsus

Libre office - writer

Notepad (the fuck is wrong with you lol)

Pages

Other (comment, please, esp if you recommend it)

Checking results

Voting ended onJul 20

I used to use Google docs, but the white mode only was really annoying me (tires my eyes), so I swapped to Ellipsus (which I genuinely love and recommend), but it was bothering me a bit that I need wifi in order to use it, so now I switched to LibreOffice Writer, which I do like.

It very much has a Microsoft Word feel, but is open source and you need no accounts to use it. It's local on your device, so no AI can scan it, and no wifi is needed.

I still wish it had the Google Docs cards, because, bitch, that thing is so good for easy organizing.

[daily-prompts]

Give your setting a secret. What happened there years ago that the landscape still refuses to forget?

[mcsryaoihell]

my bonnies

[purplesaline]

Melon collies

[sahonithereadwolf]

I can no longer feel the infinite sadness

[horreurscopes]

never forget the universal rule of the order of things: People Will Not Read It

[horreurscopes]

signs at stores? émail? menu ?? instruction ? post online ? caption with andswer to question ? group hand outs ??? street sign ??? no. The Written Word Is The Enemy

[lasrina]

#The number of compliments i have gotten for reading a thing

The ability to occasionally Read A Thing will make you a hero in your workplace, especially if it is for example an error message that tells you what you need to do differently, or instructions on unjamming a printer.

[stephaniematurin]

how dare you say we put jam in the printer

[berkelbites]

Ok reblogging this again because story time.

I work in tech, and much of what I do is support sales reps within the company by resolving errors with the software they use.

There is one sales rep who, every single time I send her a message or email with extremely specific instructions that will resolve her issue, does something completely different from what I tell her. Every time. Without fail. It is so glaringly obvious that she has never read even a single word that I have written to her.

So one day, she sends me a message that says little more than "(software) is broken, help"

So I do my standard song and dance of asking her what she's trying to accomplish, and what specifically is stopping her from doing that. And eventually, after much unnecessary back and forth, she tells me there's an error message. I ask her to send me a screenshot of the error message. She does.

The error message basically says, "these two required fields are blank. To resolve this, please fill in these two specific fields, and then click save."

So I take a few deep breaths.

Then I lie to her.

I message her back, saying "hey yeah, for some reason it's not loading that screenshot on my end. Could you type out the full text of the error message for me?"

She does.

I ask her if she still needs help.

She does not respond.

[samueldays]

I have similar story from tech support.

Client is reporting that Some Thing Program doesn't work. I ask if there's an error message with further information about what's not working. Client says "no". I go over and ask Client to open Some Thing. Client double-clicks on the icon for Some Thing, it starts to boot, an error message dialog flashes up on screen, Client closes error message before I can read it, Thing closes after the error.

"What did that error message say?" I ask.

"What error message?" asks Client.

I tell Client to open the Some Thing again and then not click anything else. Client opens Some Thing, error message appears, Client clicks it away again.

I tell Client to stand up, step away, and give me physical control of the computer. I open Some Thing, start looking at the error message without closing it, and Client says "You should close that." I tell Client that I am reading the error message. Client is apparently accustomed to treating error messages as a kind of spam email that should be deleted as fast as possible, and gets agitated that I'm reading it.

I read the error message. It tells me what the problem is. I fix the problem. Some Thing works now.

---

Later, I start thinking about how such an error message might perhaps be engineered to be more attention-grabbing and close-resistant as a way of making people read it. It's not important for some random program here, but there are more important systems (medical, etc) where it would be reasonable to demand the user's attention because people's lives depend on paying attention to the error message.

But then people with a perverted intellect would still be thinking about ways to avoid reading the message, like dragging it off edge of screen or hiding it behind another window. So maybe the dialog box could have an always-in-front feature to override other windows, and the alert could use the computer's hardware "beep" functionality that can't be switched off by muting the regular sound system, and keep beeping... shit, I realize I'm reinventing pain, and get philosophical about it.

[doccyuk]

Story from The Past about My Mum:

She was a computer programmer / analyst, a... Long Time Ago. Called in for a system she'd installed before, the office folk said they kept having problems where it Didn't Work Right (no error, a malfunction)

She investigated, and told them that could only happen if they did 3 specific things in a specific order, which they should not ever do.

So, she asked, did they ever do that?

No! Of course not, was the answer.

So she made a couple of small changes, packed up and said that should be fine, but they should call her if there were problems.

The next week

She had a call saying "We're getting a strange error message on the system, can you help?"

She said, of course, can they tell her the error?

And the message was:

"You Said You Didn't Do This"

[memeuplift]

[churrotowns]

since it’s pride month, throwback to this beautiful cover and this wholesome interaction between two icons

[brightlotusmoon]

[copperbadge]

Went outside in Chicago just now and the air quality is "chewable".

[dduane]

NASA spacecraft wakes up to continue groundbreaking mission beyond Pluto | CNN

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft recently came out of hibernation to continue its journey through an unexplored part of the solar system.

[aster-likes-space]

The way he said it so casually is absolutely killing me

[the-big-mood]

The process of carefully layering and then cleanly unmolding a rainbow jelly cake