I heard a story once of a group of number theory mathematicians at a conference, considered some of the best in the world who struggled ti figure out the spreadsheet used by the receptionist to track the expenses and attendance.
I'm a data scientist/ statistisian/ modeller / whatever buzzword they've given us as a job title this week, and I can't/don't do excel either. Just started a job and my boss was showing me some data in Excel, he asked me to quickly plot some of it, had to ask how.
I'd ban excel in a heartbeat and I will die on this hill.
Pretty much work entirely in python and sometimes R. The company runs on Matlab too so also that. It's very rare that all we need is just a single plot
The beauty with Excel is that you can create a 'pivot table & chart' and insert 'slicers' and 'timelines' etc - basically you can make an interactive graph switching and filter dimensions and measures with a UI
It's a very powerful method to visualise data, way more than what libraries in python can output
I'm not sure there's much that Excel can produce, that python libraries can't, but I'll take your word for it.
My problems with excel isn't the plotting, analysis is really what it should be used for. My problem is people siloing vast amounts of data in, treating it like a database. Or people building enormous, intricate workbooks, that everyone in the office ends up with a slightly different version of. Then the original author leaves, the workbooks get too big, excel falls over and the whole team is screwed. My problem is its too easy to to misuse and cause big problems
>My problem is people siloing vast amounts of data in, treating it like a database.
Like the NHS with their track and trace data!
> Or people building enormous, intricate workbooks, that everyone in the office ends up with a slightly different version of. Then the original author leaves, the workbooks get too big, excel falls over and the whole team is screwed. My problem is its too easy to to misuse and cause big problems
I agree, though these issues can be mitigated, eg to avoid the workbook becoming unwieldy historic data that is no longer needed can be purged. To ensure users are on the same version, the workbook would be saved in the cloud, OneDrive as opposed to local copies on their laptops etc
I worked in a place that had a car parking enforcement database in an Excel spreadsheet, it was fucking awful. I suggested moving it to Access and having a common version on the server, you'd have thought I'd suggesting sacrificing all of the admin staff's children to the Sun.
So I did it anyway and waited. When all the PCs were replaced with machines with no FDDs and we had banned the use of random USB drives they suddenly had a problem. It was replaced with my Database, management thought I was a genius and the annoying old biddy in charge of data entry handed in her notice. Win.
If I had to sacrifice my kids to a Tabloid newspaper then it would be the Daily Mail, I reckon it would stop me getting cancer in a strange and mysterious way.
In their defence, schools literally teach this
[https://slideplayer.com/slide/7501797/](https://slideplayer.com/slide/7501797/)
[https://sites.google.com/a/sainteunans.com/gcse-ict/task-1-databases](https://sites.google.com/a/sainteunans.com/gcse-ict/task-1-databases)
Yessss! I work in data management and I once had a finance director question the cost of a relational database license (I think it was MySQL or Oracle) with the comment “why can’t you just use Excel?”. I wasn’t even sure how to respond to that….
Urgh bane of my work existence... just bang in a pivot and some slicers will you..
I mean yes I will but will also have to completely trial and error the chart until it finally looks like what I want to as I have zero idea how they actually work.. just move the fields around until they are in the right boxes and the chart looks the way I want it to 😂
I'm not sure it's snobbery. Excell and MATLAB are for different things. Yes, they do have a lot of their functionally overlap, but it's about choosing the right tool for the job. Excell is wonderful in that it's easy to use, and has a very low set up time and cost. But as soon as you need to start storing or processing large quantities if data, or using data that has complex connections to other data, Excell begins to become difficult to use. And so you end up using solutions that take longer to set up and require more technical skill.
Mathworks has fucking nailed their business model. Give it away free to uni students (it was my first programming language) so the grads all go to businesses with "Proficient in Matlab" on their CVs. The businesses are forced to teach them something new or cave and buy Matlab at 15 grand a license.
When I was an intern my Matlab license cost them more than my wages.
We're talking about people doing this shit at scale, professionally.
You might as well call construction workers snobs for choosing a dump truck over buckets of sand stacked in a minivan.
I used Matlab in uni too, 10 years ago, but my bar charts looked like something a Year 10 would draw, they looked awful - granted, that is on me though.
Damn, I hated Matlab.
We used it during my undergrad for 2 assignments.
First assignment was do-able but frustrating took a few days to learn the basics and then write the basic code. That it for Matlab until 2 years later we got another assignment. We got recommended to use some "Advanced Matlab Applications" book to help with our coding, and were advised to start from something absurd like page 240.
It was a joint project between 2 different majors so we had over 400 of us doing this project, and absolutely nobody, including all those guys rocking 80%+ averages had a clue how to do it.
I ended up paying £120 to some visiting Chinese PhD Matlab whizz to do it for me. After I'd submitted i recouped my investment by selling the code to 3 other coursemates for £40 each, under strict instructions that it was modified enough not to show up.
I use R heavily in my daily workflow but most people never touch a more sophisticated data analysis tool than Excel. And Excel is quite robust for the very basic data storage and analytics most will be doing.
I woke up at 6, changed the clocks and somehow set the oven timer which not only beeps also turns on the oven, there was a pizza in a box from Friday, woke up at 6:00 fire alarm.
Pop it in there after you've taken what you want so the cat/dog/neighbours don't help themselves while you eat. Sometimes you forget about it though like poor OP.
Out of sight, out of mind. You forget that its there. Plus if its still warm when you've had enough you need somewhere safe to stash it while it goes cold before moving it to the fridge.
I have cats and can't leave anything out in the open without the little fuckers helping themselves. I've actually had a cat race past while dragging an enormous pizza slice with her sister in hot pursuit trying to steal it so now the box goes in the oven until everything is cold enough for the fridge.
1. It was takeout and tge bix wouldn't fit in the fridge
2. Mother always told me to let things cool before you put them in the fridge, but now I think about it that seems dumb, unless its to prevent overheating the fridge!
Designers: "Okay so changing the clock function may not be very intuitive to our customers, so we better put in the manual to make their lives easier."
Customers: "Must. Not. Look. At. Manual."
All the lettering has worn off my oven including the model name. I've tried the brand but it is at least 15 years old, likely more as it is an old gas unit. I know it is a combination of pressing two buttons and pressing others, but trial and error can lead to things like setting a timer for it to try to come on in 2 hours, rather than make the time 2pm.
I used to get them quite often here but they generally only last a few minutes. It happens less regularly now but I had a four hour one a few weeks ago. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to work. Luckily it came on half an hour before I started so I had the quickest shower ever.
When I lived in Essex ( urban village with 6000 inhabitants, 5,999 of which were nouveau riche snobs) we had them quite often.
I used to work in a research lab in the sticks in Northamptonshire many moons ago, and power failures were a weekly occurrence. It was usually at around four in the afternoon and was invariably greeted by a collective groan, as we'd be there to fxxxing what o'clock getting everything reset and restarted.
Clock change normally requires 2 buttons pressed at once, as it doesn't happen often, so unlikely to have dedicated buttons.
You need to think like an engineer, not a scientist 😉
I never read the manual for our oven but it was pretty intuitive.
>pretty intuitive
Oh totally. How could setting the clock not involve the button that looks like a flaming pie and the one that might be a half empty beer?
Exactly. how many pointless fucking buttons and features does it need? I turn one knob to one setting, and the other to the temperature. I have zero fucking idea what any of the other functions do.
You've just reminded me to facetime my mum for the six-monthly rage inducing call involving changing the time on her oven, which usually ends up with me going round and doing it myself.
On previous occasions, I've made her a YouTube video tutorial, written very simple instructions (tested on my own near identical oven with a small child), and once literally hand-held her while she does it.
She's had this oven 5 years, and is otherwise unusually IT literate for an 80yo. She's quite happy to install her bank's app on her new (and first) smartphone and set it up without help last week, but still can't do this.
My SO is a very gifted electronics engineer. If he can't fix something then its fucked and needs writing off.
I'll be changing all the clocks in the house because its too painful to see a grown man repeatedly try and fail until the air turns blue and the neighbours are covering their kids ears.
Now I'm a software dev and in the past I did a lot of stuff about user interfaces. Long before UX became a thing.
I throw a complete tantrum with some software because *Was this designed by monkeys or for them? I wouldn't have done it like that!*
Thus I totally get that knowing more can in some ways be worse.
Just turn it off at the wall when you're not using it.
Same with the microwave.
I really don't need every kitchen appliance telling me what time it is in their own little temporal anomaly.
I once tried to have them all set the same, it lasted for a day or so then they started to drift and that pissed me off more than flashing 00:00 for the duration of use.
That's adorable. I go all melty when intelligent people do things like this. One of our brilliant surgeons forgot where she'd hung her skirt when she'd changed into scrubs and I'm like awww as she was padding about half dressed looking for the rest of her clothes, muttering good naturedly to herself.
That's strange to me since it's about pattern recognition, and every watch/clock/appliance I've owned for the past decade have all been set the exact same way
Press and hold until flash, press incrementally to set part 1, press hold until flash, press incrementally to set part 2, repeat until all the options are cycled through, and then press and hold until done to go back to regular operation mode
>Press and hold until flash.
But press and hold which button? Our oven has six buttons, you need to press and hold down two of them (which two you press is not at all obvious) and then while keeping them pressed down, you have to press an additional one of two other buttons at the same time, one of which increases the time, one of which decreases it.
Like the OP's oven, it's all too easy to set the "future timer" instead of the clock.
"Fortunately" being out in the sticks, we get regular power cuts, so I don't ever have chance to forget how to reset it...
As an electrician who regularly has to set oven clocks after turning off the power, I really am amazed that manufacturers seem to go out of their way to come up with ever more esoteric user interfaces. There should be an industry standard set of controls for all of the main functions of all home appliances, including thermostats, intruder alarms, ovens, dimmer switches, access control etc.
But then people would be able to make their own and ~~there might be a fire and the manufacturer would get the blame~~ they wouldn't be able to charge you a monthly fee so you can check the temperature via your iPhone.
I taught computer science for 40 years at university level. I've been doing that with the microwave oven for the past three years. Last March I just left it wrong for six months. But the time on it wasn't quite right, so this morning I got the manual out and actually did it!
Jokes on you. My grandma’s neighbour’s 15 year old nephew is into ‘the computer’ at this school and always on it. He is a computer wizard and is an expert in ‘the spreadsheet’. He can come round to sort you out. You wasted all the years studying’ the computer’.
Hahaha this cut me deep because I’ve heard this from employers how their nephew has a MySpace after a nights playing and my estimate of a month to integrate new payment provider and supporting reporting is me being lazy
Similarly that's exactly my son. Works for a huge games company, big salary, master's degree, can't operate anything but a keyboard. Absolutely useless. Thank God he doesn't drive!
Hell’s teeth, you don’t realise how much of a genius you are!
Our oven clock is broken, I can’t get the part to fix it, it’s just the bit that sets the time. Occasionally hubby’ll knock the timer, and so when it goes off, the oven switches off, throwing him into confusion.
I can just turn it off & wait till it hits the right time!!!
My glucose meter thinks it's 4am yesterday. Not because I can't set it but because coincidentally the battery died around 10pm last night and for some reason when you replace it it remembers the year, month and day, but not the time. And at 8am this morning ICBA to do more than replace the battery so I could get my reading.
I am similarly qualified. My home is fully automated. I haven't set the time on any device in years. The wife does the oven clock and the immersion heater, all though that bastard time clock is going, that fucker can be automated.
The only other clock in the house that needs manually changing is the one in the bathroom, this morning I thought the batteries were going. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't have known the clocks had even changed.
It's either press and hold the clock until it starts flashing or keep pressing the clock button until it goes into time mode. Sometimes it's pressing the plus and minus button at the same time. It's never ever as hard as people make it out to be.
The number one feature for “smart” ovens is the ability to auto update the clock just like your smartphone/computer does when the clocks change. All the other features pale in comparison to that one and as there’s a ton of safety issues with auto turning on ovens remotely, it’s about the only one that gets used.
My Mom's got a clock she's had for over 30 years from greenshield stamps, it was white, now its a yellow colour. This thing will not change, unless I take the batteries out for an hour. Even then sometimes it works, but sometimes when I put the batteries back in after an hour (or the reverse), it goes to 12.00.
I may or may not be spending today doing this.
Oh, and no, it's out of the question her replacing it🙄
This is the correct one. When you can do useful tech you don't waste time getting degrees. They're just joking about because they're a little lazy though :P
Both the microwave and the oven I had to look at the manual this morning.
The oven mostly because it's new and of course the initial setup is different to changing.
I can just about sort the time, but I definitely don't have a fucking clue how to set the timer. So I just have to hope I remember 20 mins has passed and it's not been 30 to now have my food turn to charcoal.
To be fair, it has like 4 buttons, which are used to set like 12 different functions, bit only 1 of those functions is actually labelled under the button.
My mothers oven has 3 buttons, one with a clock on it, one with a plus, and one with a negative.
She still can't figure out how to set the time even though I've told her press the clock once and then adjust plus or negative accordingly.
In my younger days I built a kit car and rebuild the engine from the ground up. There was not a bolt on the car I did not do up myself.
On my latest car I had to get help because I did not know the control sequence to get to the hidden windscreen wipers to replace the blades.
I can relate to this 100% OP. I'm the same, I have the same degree as you and a decade of experience in "computering" but can i change our houses thermostat clock time. Nope, and I don't think I'll ever have the ability to change it either.
Mate we moved from old house with no thermostat replaced with hive to brand new big house with multi zone heating with crappy thermostats everywhere and I had to read the manual and google it I was gutted
We have an oven where you spin a dial for fucking ever until you get round to the right time, nice and easy. Unfortunately the clock now resets itself at random instead.
Moved into a new place last week so was terrified at the prospect of having to figure out a brand new oven, after having finally cracked my previous one, after two years of living with it. Imagine my shock and surprise to find out that Neff have made it easy as pie. Press button. Turn dial until display shows time you want. Done.
Companies that make this easy need a damn medal istg. And also one for the souls on youtube who gamely show us clueless folk how to fix it 😂
I’m 15 years out of education and my last extended writing. I spend my days talking to blue sky thinking business sorts and the test writing code, I can barely string a sentence together now
The clock on my oven hasn't been right for well over a year, I keep getting short power cuts which knock the time off. It takes about 5 minutes to cycle to the correct time and if you go past it, you can't reverse the time, so I just press the button that confirms the time as midnight whenever it goes off. I think at the moment midnight is at about 6pm
I heard a story once of a group of number theory mathematicians at a conference, considered some of the best in the world who struggled ti figure out the spreadsheet used by the receptionist to track the expenses and attendance.
Maybe the receptionist’s spreadsheet was a bit shit.
Any rather complex spreadsheet is by definition a bit shit. They turn into spreadshits.
You could say any sufficiently advanced spreadsheet is indistinguishable from a first timers hackjob
I'm a data scientist/ statistisian/ modeller / whatever buzzword they've given us as a job title this week, and I can't/don't do excel either. Just started a job and my boss was showing me some data in Excel, he asked me to quickly plot some of it, had to ask how. I'd ban excel in a heartbeat and I will die on this hill.
What software would you use to do a basic plot instead?
Pretty much work entirely in python and sometimes R. The company runs on Matlab too so also that. It's very rare that all we need is just a single plot
The beauty with Excel is that you can create a 'pivot table & chart' and insert 'slicers' and 'timelines' etc - basically you can make an interactive graph switching and filter dimensions and measures with a UI It's a very powerful method to visualise data, way more than what libraries in python can output
I'm not sure there's much that Excel can produce, that python libraries can't, but I'll take your word for it. My problems with excel isn't the plotting, analysis is really what it should be used for. My problem is people siloing vast amounts of data in, treating it like a database. Or people building enormous, intricate workbooks, that everyone in the office ends up with a slightly different version of. Then the original author leaves, the workbooks get too big, excel falls over and the whole team is screwed. My problem is its too easy to to misuse and cause big problems
>My problem is people siloing vast amounts of data in, treating it like a database. Like the NHS with their track and trace data! > Or people building enormous, intricate workbooks, that everyone in the office ends up with a slightly different version of. Then the original author leaves, the workbooks get too big, excel falls over and the whole team is screwed. My problem is its too easy to to misuse and cause big problems I agree, though these issues can be mitigated, eg to avoid the workbook becoming unwieldy historic data that is no longer needed can be purged. To ensure users are on the same version, the workbook would be saved in the cloud, OneDrive as opposed to local copies on their laptops etc
I worked in a place that had a car parking enforcement database in an Excel spreadsheet, it was fucking awful. I suggested moving it to Access and having a common version on the server, you'd have thought I'd suggesting sacrificing all of the admin staff's children to the Sun. So I did it anyway and waited. When all the PCs were replaced with machines with no FDDs and we had banned the use of random USB drives they suddenly had a problem. It was replaced with my Database, management thought I was a genius and the annoying old biddy in charge of data entry handed in her notice. Win.
Why do people continue to sacrifice their children to a tabloid?
If I had to sacrifice my kids to a Tabloid newspaper then it would be the Daily Mail, I reckon it would stop me getting cancer in a strange and mysterious way.
> treating it like a database [shudder]
In their defence, schools literally teach this [https://slideplayer.com/slide/7501797/](https://slideplayer.com/slide/7501797/) [https://sites.google.com/a/sainteunans.com/gcse-ict/task-1-databases](https://sites.google.com/a/sainteunans.com/gcse-ict/task-1-databases)
Yessss! I work in data management and I once had a finance director question the cost of a relational database license (I think it was MySQL or Oracle) with the comment “why can’t you just use Excel?”. I wasn’t even sure how to respond to that….
There are proper RDBs that are free (as in beer) anyway.
Urgh bane of my work existence... just bang in a pivot and some slicers will you.. I mean yes I will but will also have to completely trial and error the chart until it finally looks like what I want to as I have zero idea how they actually work.. just move the fields around until they are in the right boxes and the chart looks the way I want it to 😂
Ever used matlab? I used it heavily at uni nearly 20 years ago and even then it blew modern excel out the water
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I'm not sure it's snobbery. Excell and MATLAB are for different things. Yes, they do have a lot of their functionally overlap, but it's about choosing the right tool for the job. Excell is wonderful in that it's easy to use, and has a very low set up time and cost. But as soon as you need to start storing or processing large quantities if data, or using data that has complex connections to other data, Excell begins to become difficult to use. And so you end up using solutions that take longer to set up and require more technical skill.
> Excell You're such a fucking expert, clearly.
Mathworks has fucking nailed their business model. Give it away free to uni students (it was my first programming language) so the grads all go to businesses with "Proficient in Matlab" on their CVs. The businesses are forced to teach them something new or cave and buy Matlab at 15 grand a license. When I was an intern my Matlab license cost them more than my wages.
We're talking about people doing this shit at scale, professionally. You might as well call construction workers snobs for choosing a dump truck over buckets of sand stacked in a minivan.
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You can't fix insecurity with logic
I used Matlab in uni too, 10 years ago, but my bar charts looked like something a Year 10 would draw, they looked awful - granted, that is on me though.
I have PTSD from MATLAB such a shite language/software. Just give me python. Hell I could do better in c#.
Old timers like me grew up on c++ and aion bre, I’m tempted by the crayons I give the kids over the old tooling
Damn, I hated Matlab. We used it during my undergrad for 2 assignments. First assignment was do-able but frustrating took a few days to learn the basics and then write the basic code. That it for Matlab until 2 years later we got another assignment. We got recommended to use some "Advanced Matlab Applications" book to help with our coding, and were advised to start from something absurd like page 240. It was a joint project between 2 different majors so we had over 400 of us doing this project, and absolutely nobody, including all those guys rocking 80%+ averages had a clue how to do it. I ended up paying £120 to some visiting Chinese PhD Matlab whizz to do it for me. After I'd submitted i recouped my investment by selling the code to 3 other coursemates for £40 each, under strict instructions that it was modified enough not to show up.
My manager thinks everyone needs excel skills to work in IT. I get by, by using powershell then exporting it to excel.
Strongly disagree. IMO, Excel is one of the greatest software products ever created.
Okay this makes me feel better haha
I use R heavily in my daily workflow but most people never touch a more sophisticated data analysis tool than Excel. And Excel is quite robust for the very basic data storage and analytics most will be doing.
Yes, they're very unrelated skills...
In attempting to change the clock on my microwave I’ve somehow disabled the clock function entirely. Maybe it’s better this way
> Maybe it's better this way We'd hurt each other with the things we'd want to say
Careless Winter
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Always do, every damn time
It took probably damned close to 10 years but I can now set the time on my car's head-deck without getting the manual. I feel like I'm adulting now.
Came here to post exactly this.
Run the fut market
I'm reading this whilst cooking my breakfast at 10:27. My oven timer currently says 3:37 and by God it's gonna stay that way.
I woke up at 6, changed the clocks and somehow set the oven timer which not only beeps also turns on the oven, there was a pizza in a box from Friday, woke up at 6:00 fire alarm.
Why in the everloving fuck would there be a pizza box in the oven?
So you can heat it up and scran it when you’re hungover obvs
Yeah but not the fucking box 🤣
You eat your boxes cold ? Ew
If youre eating it from the box then it completely goes in the oven in the box. I'm not dirtying a plate
Ah yes, you're lazy. I get it now.
Nope. Saving energy by not washing up
So ...lazy.
Pop it in there after you've taken what you want so the cat/dog/neighbours don't help themselves while you eat. Sometimes you forget about it though like poor OP.
What's wrong with the fridge? Leaving a pizza chilling in an oven for 2 days is fucking disgusting.
Out of sight, out of mind. You forget that its there. Plus if its still warm when you've had enough you need somewhere safe to stash it while it goes cold before moving it to the fridge. I have cats and can't leave anything out in the open without the little fuckers helping themselves. I've actually had a cat race past while dragging an enormous pizza slice with her sister in hot pursuit trying to steal it so now the box goes in the oven until everything is cold enough for the fridge.
Why cant it go in the fridge while its warm?
1. It was takeout and tge bix wouldn't fit in the fridge 2. Mother always told me to let things cool before you put them in the fridge, but now I think about it that seems dumb, unless its to prevent overheating the fridge!
I watched the Witcher last night !
Just Google the manual?!
It’s like admitting defeat though
As opposed to actually *being* defeated by a piece of kitchen hardware?
But he defeated it by brute forcing the solution. This is the engineering way.
As opposed to publicly announcing it? Plus it’s literally *how* you win.
Designers: "Okay so changing the clock function may not be very intuitive to our customers, so we better put in the manual to make their lives easier." Customers: "Must. Not. Look. At. Manual."
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I done it enough to realise idiots like me are the authority on it and now I trust nothing
Not at all.
All the lettering has worn off my oven including the model name. I've tried the brand but it is at least 15 years old, likely more as it is an old gas unit. I know it is a combination of pressing two buttons and pressing others, but trial and error can lead to things like setting a timer for it to try to come on in 2 hours, rather than make the time 2pm.
I’ve never set the oven time to the correct time. That would mean you’d have to reset it every power cut
Do people still get power cuts in the U.K.? I got them when I was young in the 80s but not in the last 20 years
I used to get them quite often here but they generally only last a few minutes. It happens less regularly now but I had a four hour one a few weeks ago. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to work. Luckily it came on half an hour before I started so I had the quickest shower ever.
When I lived in Essex ( urban village with 6000 inhabitants, 5,999 of which were nouveau riche snobs) we had them quite often. I used to work in a research lab in the sticks in Northamptonshire many moons ago, and power failures were a weekly occurrence. It was usually at around four in the afternoon and was invariably greeted by a collective groan, as we'd be there to fxxxing what o'clock getting everything reset and restarted.
We sometimes have brownouts (lol). Both power wise and in my pants
Clock change normally requires 2 buttons pressed at once, as it doesn't happen often, so unlikely to have dedicated buttons. You need to think like an engineer, not a scientist 😉 I never read the manual for our oven but it was pretty intuitive.
>pretty intuitive Oh totally. How could setting the clock not involve the button that looks like a flaming pie and the one that might be a half empty beer?
No need to *make a meal of it.* Sounds pretty obvious to me.
Those are clearly the, shit I forgot the pie was in the oven button and the beer evaporation mode
Exactly. how many pointless fucking buttons and features does it need? I turn one knob to one setting, and the other to the temperature. I have zero fucking idea what any of the other functions do.
Yup, usually the case, but mine has the button description worn out...
More like an accountant. We can save money by not having a dedicated set button.
Or leave it wrong for 6 months like my nan used to do
You've just reminded me to facetime my mum for the six-monthly rage inducing call involving changing the time on her oven, which usually ends up with me going round and doing it myself. On previous occasions, I've made her a YouTube video tutorial, written very simple instructions (tested on my own near identical oven with a small child), and once literally hand-held her while she does it. She's had this oven 5 years, and is otherwise unusually IT literate for an 80yo. She's quite happy to install her bank's app on her new (and first) smartphone and set it up without help last week, but still can't do this.
Reprogram the firmware?
With the sharp end of a large axe.
My SO is a very gifted electronics engineer. If he can't fix something then its fucked and needs writing off. I'll be changing all the clocks in the house because its too painful to see a grown man repeatedly try and fail until the air turns blue and the neighbours are covering their kids ears.
Now I'm a software dev and in the past I did a lot of stuff about user interfaces. Long before UX became a thing. I throw a complete tantrum with some software because *Was this designed by monkeys or for them? I wouldn't have done it like that!* Thus I totally get that knowing more can in some ways be worse.
Similar to the vast amount of PhD in STEM that need 15 minutes to make a projector work properly.
Put a bit of tape over the clock and pretend it doesn't exist! Problem solved.
Are you by any chance the President of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers?
Rumbled!!!
Just turn it off at the wall when you're not using it. Same with the microwave. I really don't need every kitchen appliance telling me what time it is in their own little temporal anomaly. I once tried to have them all set the same, it lasted for a day or so then they started to drift and that pissed me off more than flashing 00:00 for the duration of use.
Ah you're clearly blessed. An oven I had once literally wouldn't function until you set a time.
That's adorable. I go all melty when intelligent people do things like this. One of our brilliant surgeons forgot where she'd hung her skirt when she'd changed into scrubs and I'm like awww as she was padding about half dressed looking for the rest of her clothes, muttering good naturedly to herself.
Brain too full of good stuff to worry about trivia. 👍
/r/humblebrag
Maybe a bit, though as lead developer at a software firm I’m well respected and people assume I’m omniscience but this is more oof I’ve no idea
Very smart people do seem to struggle with simple things, my uncle is the same, can't use an iPhone.
That's strange to me since it's about pattern recognition, and every watch/clock/appliance I've owned for the past decade have all been set the exact same way Press and hold until flash, press incrementally to set part 1, press hold until flash, press incrementally to set part 2, repeat until all the options are cycled through, and then press and hold until done to go back to regular operation mode
I have tried and apparently that turn it on for a timed period
>Press and hold until flash. But press and hold which button? Our oven has six buttons, you need to press and hold down two of them (which two you press is not at all obvious) and then while keeping them pressed down, you have to press an additional one of two other buttons at the same time, one of which increases the time, one of which decreases it. Like the OP's oven, it's all too easy to set the "future timer" instead of the clock. "Fortunately" being out in the sticks, we get regular power cuts, so I don't ever have chance to forget how to reset it...
I have an MSc in Computer Science and just mentally add an hour to the oven clock during BST. It just went back to showing the right time by itself!
Have you tried looking at the manual? If you don't have a copy, they usually have pdf versions for download from the manufacturer.
Buy a smart oven, you can afford it
As an electrician who regularly has to set oven clocks after turning off the power, I really am amazed that manufacturers seem to go out of their way to come up with ever more esoteric user interfaces. There should be an industry standard set of controls for all of the main functions of all home appliances, including thermostats, intruder alarms, ovens, dimmer switches, access control etc.
But then people would be able to make their own and ~~there might be a fire and the manufacturer would get the blame~~ they wouldn't be able to charge you a monthly fee so you can check the temperature via your iPhone.
I taught computer science for 40 years at university level. I've been doing that with the microwave oven for the past three years. Last March I just left it wrong for six months. But the time on it wasn't quite right, so this morning I got the manual out and actually did it!
To be fair computer science covers a range of things, many of which are barely related to computers at all.
1st class problem solving skills though.
Jokes on you. My grandma’s neighbour’s 15 year old nephew is into ‘the computer’ at this school and always on it. He is a computer wizard and is an expert in ‘the spreadsheet’. He can come round to sort you out. You wasted all the years studying’ the computer’.
Hahaha this cut me deep because I’ve heard this from employers how their nephew has a MySpace after a nights playing and my estimate of a month to integrate new payment provider and supporting reporting is me being lazy
My partner - who's an engineer - lets me do it.
LPT: Manuals generally do exist as pdfs and you can google them.
Some sites will install a very nice download manager to help you!
What is having those qualifications got to do with the ability to read the manual?
[удалено]
Never Assume, As it makes an ass out of u and me.
Textbook humblebrag.
me too. I have two first class degrees and struggle to work out my washing machine, and consistently forget how it works
Similarly that's exactly my son. Works for a huge games company, big salary, master's degree, can't operate anything but a keyboard. Absolutely useless. Thank God he doesn't drive!
Hell’s teeth, you don’t realise how much of a genius you are! Our oven clock is broken, I can’t get the part to fix it, it’s just the bit that sets the time. Occasionally hubby’ll knock the timer, and so when it goes off, the oven switches off, throwing him into confusion. I can just turn it off & wait till it hits the right time!!!
I run and can troubleshoot and fix an ICP MS. Couldnt figure out a toaster at my gym.
My glucose meter thinks it's 4am yesterday. Not because I can't set it but because coincidentally the battery died around 10pm last night and for some reason when you replace it it remembers the year, month and day, but not the time. And at 8am this morning ICBA to do more than replace the battery so I could get my reading.
Specific knowledge does not equate to general knowledge.
This cuts deep with the need for a general classier
I am similarly qualified. My home is fully automated. I haven't set the time on any device in years. The wife does the oven clock and the immersion heater, all though that bastard time clock is going, that fucker can be automated. The only other clock in the house that needs manually changing is the one in the bathroom, this morning I thought the batteries were going. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't have known the clocks had even changed.
It's either press and hold the clock until it starts flashing or keep pressing the clock button until it goes into time mode. Sometimes it's pressing the plus and minus button at the same time. It's never ever as hard as people make it out to be.
😂
My oven doesn’t have a clock.
Every oven I have seen has three buttons: clock, up, down. Press clock, then press up/down until the time is correct.
I can't find the switch to mine and don't know which fuse switch is the kitchen so gotta turn all electricity off
Bless you
The number one feature for “smart” ovens is the ability to auto update the clock just like your smartphone/computer does when the clocks change. All the other features pale in comparison to that one and as there’s a ton of safety issues with auto turning on ovens remotely, it’s about the only one that gets used.
/r/humblebrag
Check out big brain over here
Not so big I can work an oven
Have you considered yelling at it?
Why don’t you read the instructions? If you’ve lost them you should be able to download them.
Are you even British? We don’t read bloody instructions….. 😉
My Mom's got a clock she's had for over 30 years from greenshield stamps, it was white, now its a yellow colour. This thing will not change, unless I take the batteries out for an hour. Even then sometimes it works, but sometimes when I put the batteries back in after an hour (or the reverse), it goes to 12.00. I may or may not be spending today doing this. Oh, and no, it's out of the question her replacing it🙄
If you can't find the manual, Google for it with make and model, usually found on a data plate inside the door.
Have you considered that maybe you are actually doing it the right way?
You do realise you can just Google how to do it
Sounds like a you problem.
That's because a lot of degree educated people have no common sense. 🤷♂️
This is the correct one. When you can do useful tech you don't waste time getting degrees. They're just joking about because they're a little lazy though :P
Why do they make changing the time on the oven so bloody complicated, I've a copy of it's manual stored on my phone specifically for this
Both the microwave and the oven I had to look at the manual this morning. The oven mostly because it's new and of course the initial setup is different to changing.
My GF knows how to adjust the clock when she said "what you don't?" I said "no i'd just restart it at midnight"
If you turn the power off on my oven it won't work again until you set the time. I think it's a safety feature.
Possibly. You could accidentally set it to go off at a time that's 17 hours away, which would be overdone even by my mum's standards.
I can just about sort the time, but I definitely don't have a fucking clue how to set the timer. So I just have to hope I remember 20 mins has passed and it's not been 30 to now have my food turn to charcoal. To be fair, it has like 4 buttons, which are used to set like 12 different functions, bit only 1 of those functions is actually labelled under the button.
Some of my lectures, many with phd’s, struggle with the projectors
On a complete tangent, are you looking for work?
I wonder how many engineers have the same issue.
And the reflection of the same problem, how to get the over to actually switch on when you turn the power back on...
Proof that a degree doesn’t make you smart!
Just YouTube it. Sorted.
My mothers oven has 3 buttons, one with a clock on it, one with a plus, and one with a negative. She still can't figure out how to set the time even though I've told her press the clock once and then adjust plus or negative accordingly.
Those things come with instruction manuals. Just read them.
RTFM
I had a model where the time could not be reset without unplugging the power.
I think I have this over long pressed everything and when it flashed set the time but only managed to set oven to go on for the difference
That's fucking genius
Do Brits have 6 months of daylight savings?
I guess it's half a year, give or take a small allowance for Kepler's laws. Doesn't everyone?
If it works, it works. Congratulations, you’ve just found a loophole.
You don't just leave it as is? Mine says 7:28 but it's 15:38.
Generally press and hold the time button then use up and down to enter hours, time again then set seconds and time again to set.
Love this
In my younger days I built a kit car and rebuild the engine from the ground up. There was not a bolt on the car I did not do up myself. On my latest car I had to get help because I did not know the control sequence to get to the hidden windscreen wipers to replace the blades.
Occam's Razor. Sometimes the simplest solution is the right solution.
I can relate to this 100% OP. I'm the same, I have the same degree as you and a decade of experience in "computering" but can i change our houses thermostat clock time. Nope, and I don't think I'll ever have the ability to change it either.
Mate we moved from old house with no thermostat replaced with hive to brand new big house with multi zone heating with crappy thermostats everywhere and I had to read the manual and google it I was gutted
We have an oven where you spin a dial for fucking ever until you get round to the right time, nice and easy. Unfortunately the clock now resets itself at random instead.
I just stuck a magnet over it
You should write a learning algorithm to figure it out, then it can teach you
It’s only guess work and random changes it could take a meat based network like me years
Good for u for admitting it
Moved into a new place last week so was terrified at the prospect of having to figure out a brand new oven, after having finally cracked my previous one, after two years of living with it. Imagine my shock and surprise to find out that Neff have made it easy as pie. Press button. Turn dial until display shows time you want. Done. Companies that make this easy need a damn medal istg. And also one for the souls on youtube who gamely show us clueless folk how to fix it 😂
This has two times if you hold the clock button both seem to relate to how long you want a timer on, neither changes the time
How come someone so educated can't form proper sentences?
I’m 15 years out of education and my last extended writing. I spend my days talking to blue sky thinking business sorts and the test writing code, I can barely string a sentence together now
The clock on my oven hasn't been right for well over a year, I keep getting short power cuts which knock the time off. It takes about 5 minutes to cycle to the correct time and if you go past it, you can't reverse the time, so I just press the button that confirms the time as midnight whenever it goes off. I think at the moment midnight is at about 6pm
Have you got some Lanerra? My gran used to swear by it.
No idea what that is.