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Hall Of Technical Documentation Weirdness
An anonymous reader submits: "Generally speaking, with the exception of Tina on Dilbert, technical writers aren't very funny. This is something of a rare and unintentional exception. This guy has assembled a bunch of examples of bizarre technical illustration. There's only about 15 at the moment, but he's collecting further examples."
To go with... McDonalds coffee: "May be hot." Ready meals: "Remove plastic before cooking" Nitol (sleep tablets) "May cause drowsyness" Laxitives "exessive consumption may produce laxitive effect." The list is endless.
Might contain traces of funny.
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
There are 12 exhibits, they're even numbered if you can't count to 12 ...
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"There's only about 15 at the moment, but he's collecting further examples."
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This article sucks
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Holy Slashdot, Batman! There's smoke coming out of our webserver!
On a Caterpillar trench digger, there was this funny picture of a NO sign around a chainsaw looking thing and a caption that said, "Engage crowd control before operating".
because-trench-diggers-control-crowds
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I don't know how many other people out there have experienced Japanese toilets, but let me tell you, you don't need an instruction manual, you need someone to come and show you how to use those things. You don't wanna be pressing the wrong button at the wrong time, I can assure you from personal experience, makes my eyes water just thinking about it.
...but now I'm not that sure any more...
I guess I expected something more like.
this
And
this
Seen on a packet of "Salted Peanuts" in a pub in the UK "May contain traces of nuts" You'd kinda hope so wouldn't you
- Prythee no sport with stingy of play asperity game. Winding finger have got bloodstream not wallk. Throagh of peril. (bold my addition)
- Tad disport of time grown man tatelage.
- Till thge cowcomes home. Wield toys damage, burn-in prytheee wind to a close wield.
- Give attention to open/close toys, therefore take place peril.for instance slipup batteries wield result in the emission of heat rupture liquid.vent itself prythee pay attention.
- Play at sith to a certainty bolt up power supply fetch out batteries.
- Batteries no electification dissolution,plunge ioto aquaor fire.
- Not trust for tad batteries lest in advertent eat off. In the event of accident without loss of time plythee pillroller tuke order with.
I am not the best typist, but most of the weird spellings above are in the actual warnings. The original may be found here. I wonder if they will ever take the word "prythee" out of their translation dictionary.When the zippotricks website was taken off the Net this week, they posted the amusing disclaimer, "A lighted lighter is hot and can start a fire or burn people."
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Examples:
There was a woman performing the things as he said them. He introduced her by saying, "Jane, who told us on her resume that her hobbies were stroking kitchen appliances."
And he referred to a metal measuring cup as, "A space age one-of-a-kind measuring tool"
I must admit, the motorcycle-style position while dumping is probably more natural, but it does seem strange after being taught the Western-style method of dropping your kids off at the pool.
Anyone who laughs at "insert trousers" needs to readjust their sense of humour.
Now, in a club in Lagos Nigeria (the bar is called Towers, a nice place on Victoria Island), there is a sign above the urinals, which says:
"Employees must wash genitals before returning to work"
I just wish I'd had my camera with me, but you will have to take my word for it.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
My dad was once assembling a new riding lawnmower. He had to open the box to get the instructions. Step one in the manual was to open the box.
We all know it doesn't hurt to throw a few technical illustrations into papers we may be writing...
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail64.html
I mean it.
I don't have a sig.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Some friends and I came up with this. It's based on the signs that used to be available at ready.gov.
Most of my favorite examples are as a result of a poor translation...
From instructions for a plastic puzzle ball that comes apart into 8 pieces, to be reassambled:
"DECOMPOSITION FUN BALL. TAKE PIECES APART. TRY TO PUT BACK TOGETHER. NOW YOU CAN HAVE HOURS OF DECOMPOSITION FUN!"
(No cemetery required.)
And another one, which actually is technical writing of a sort; those instructions from the back of a pack of chopsticks at a Chinese buffet. For the most part, they're pretty good, but I like the last instruction, after telling you how to manipulate them:
"4. NOW YOU CAN PICK UP ANYTHING"
Haven't tested that bold assertion on cars or women, yet.
For example:
- a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program
- Can't cast a void type to type void (because the ANSI spec. says so, that's why)
- can't go mucking with a 'void *'
Plenty more goodies! Somebody had some fun writing those error messages...PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
My first thought was "god, what a bunch of anal-retentive...." So I continued reading, and almost didn't notice that the next blank(or not blank) page was:
THIS PAGE ALSO INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
I smirked a little, and read on. It kept getting better though:
YES, THIS PAGE -ALSO- INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
THIS PAGE SHOULD NOT BE LEFT BLANK. OOPS, JUST KIDDING.
etc. etc...they obviously had some fun with that one, realizing just how stupid those messages are and poking fun at it.
It's almost as good as the Irix workstation which was donated to the HS...it would get increasingly cross if it found someone else was using its IP, and the logs would look something like this:
Computer with MAC Address 34:23:23... is using my IP address
Computer with MAC Address 34:23:23... is using my IP address
Computer with MAC Address 34:23:23... is still using my IP address
Computer with MAC Address 34:23:23... is STILL using my IP address
Computer with MAC Address 34:23:23... IS STILL USING MY IP ADDRESS GOD DAMMIT!
(I don't remember the exact wording, but yes, it would finally start cursing mildly).
Please help metamoderate.
I wish I still had the instruction manual that came with my girlfriend's old Dell mid tower (Pentium MMX model that came out in about 1997).
It had a screwless door that you could remove to add RAM and expansion cards. The instruction manual illustrated how to remove the door: one hand on each side to press the catches down, and one hand to push the door off. That's right, three hands to open your computer. And the illustration actually showed three hands!
I actually pinned the picture on my dorm bulletin board, and holding it up as an example of terrible industrial design...but maybe it was just 'bizarre' and deserves to be on that site.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
One time I helped put together a childrens jungle gym sorta deal. It came in a box about the size of a small Australian territory in about 367,894 seperate pieces. Being the men that we are and with the youngins watching in great awe we tossed the directions aside and dove in. After we finished we realized it looked like a scene from that movie "Labyrinth" and something was very very wrong. I picked up the directions finally and opened up to the first page and at the very top in really small print it said "Welcome back". Now I dont know if it was meant for another reason or it was the author being a smartass but it was damn funny at the time you had to be there I guess.
:)
--- if y cn rd ths y cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmmng!
We tech writers love words and dry humor, and are usually the first to laugh at such content. That is partly what keeps us smiling as we work with others' bulleted lists, brain-dumps of unpunctuated text, and illegible whiteboard diagrams! We laugh just as easily when our work is published in our managers' names or that of brilliant software developers who cannot generate a complete sentence. It's our nature and skill to communicate what matters and drop the rest. Others are often the source of such nonsense in "our" work.
What d'ya mean technical writers aren't funny? We have great senses of humor. How else could we tolerate working with engineers?
Olin Shivers was one of my professors at Georgia Tech (and a great one at that), and he's also the author of the scheme shell. I always smile when I read the acknowledgements page.
http://www.talknerdy.org
The creator of that little gem was Dick Hustvedt, a brilliant engineer with a wicked sense of humor. He was one of the inventors of VAXclusters, as well as of the SD730 Solar Horologue Option - see end of this post.
When in the VMS SYSGEN utility, and you asked for a list of the parameters, the list included the units. The TIMEPROMPTWAIT parameter was unusual in that values in one range did one thing, while values in another range did something else. Dick wanted to encourage users to go read the manual for the full explanation, so he had the units listed as microfortnights, hoping that puzzled readers would go search out the details.
Sadly, Dick suffered severe brain injury in a car accident many years ago, and was unable to return to work. We named a conference room in his honor at the Nashua, NH facility where VMS engineering lives, and if you visit it, you can see the prototype SD730, which was introduced as an April Fools joke one year. Here's the text from the "Product Information Sheet" for the SD730.
VAX-11/730
SD730 Fixed Head Solar Horologue
Overview
The SD730 is an option for the VAX-11/730(TM) that provides an inexpensive solution to the problem of setting system time correctly following a power failure. An astronomical reference is used to assure accuracy. Reliability is assured by the simple, elegant design which employs well-proven technology.
Description
The SD730 is a gnomonic high noon detector that provides a simple, but elegant solution to the problem of setting system time correctly following a power failure. This option is particularly valuable for processors lacking battery backup for their time-of-year (TOY) clock.
Highlights
- Gnomonic interference high noon detector
- High accuracy assured by low-drift astronomical reference
- Connects to existing DR-11C port on VAX-11/730
- Proprietary high-moon rejection design
- Offline mode for standalone time measurement
- User installable and maintainable
- Reliability assured by minimal component count and proven technology
- Heavy duty construction resists solar wind
- Anti-corrosion coating prevents gnomonic plague
Description
The SD730 provides a single bit of data via the DR-11C port of the VAX-11/730 that encodes all of its sensory information. Decoding is accomplished by measuring the on/off intervals of this sensor channel. Derivation of the time and date is accomplished by the SD730 Shadow Processing Support Software.
Accurate high-noon sensing is obtained by measuring the solar transit time and computing the midpoint. This algorithm also corrects for variations in gnomon width, latitude and season. In the event that a cloudless night permits a high full moon to be seen, it will be differentiated from an authentic high noon by comparing observed transit time against a reference solar transit time.
Within 24 hours following power restoration, the SD730 driver software will restore the correct system time.
Power outages in excess of 24 hours can be accomodated once a reference year has been accumulated. Day length, solar transit time and their rates of change are used to recognize the day within the year.
Installation
The SD730 is user installable and comes complete with an installation kit consisting of a lensatic compass. All software is self-installing and self-calibrating. The only requirement is that system time be set correctly and that at least one clear day be allowed for self calibration.
The SD730 will not operate reliably when installed at latitudes greater than 60 degrees.
Maintenance
While the SD730 is simple and reliable, some environments may necessitate periodic cleaning of the gnomon and photo-detector. Although the gnomon shields the photo-detector from debris, this may not be sufficient for particularly hazardous locations subject to overflights by large flocks of migratory birds. To assist in problem detection, error log entries will b
take a gander.
I have violent reactions to nuts, but only the ones heading SCO.
I could never figure out why, on the back of a credit card, it gives the number to call if your card is lost or stolen. If your card is lost or stolen, how can you check the back of the card for the number to call????
One time I asked for one of those hooks that snap onto the top of a cubicle wall, so I would have a place to hang my jacket. What they got me instead was a really nice padded coat hanger, like for a suit jacket, with a small clip-on hook to hang the coat-hanger on. It came in a special triangular box labelled "Garment Management System". So I cut the name off the box and stuck it on the wall next to the hanger. Just so people wouldn't mistake my Garment Management System for a mere coat hanger.
Here.
As mentioned in that story, my all-time favorite is from a Mackie (audio mixer) manual:
"The mating ritual of consenting adult banana plugs".
(anyone who's ever "mated" banana plugs knows exactly what the author was talking about. (-: )
S
I bought this stroller made by Graco for my daughter a few years ago, and, I kid you not, on the illustration for folding it up for storage was this warning: Remove infant from stoller before collapsing
An anti-personnel landmine that reads simply "Front towards enemy."
Here is a link to a list of some product warning sites:
Dumb.Com - Product Warnings
Sign, Interstate 10, Near Phoenix, AZ
"State Prison: Do Not Stop for Hitchhikers"
On a Rowenta iron:
"Warning! Never iron clothes on the body!"
On a blanket from Taiwan -
"NOT TO BE USED AS PROTECTION FROM A TORNADO."
I picked up this book yesterday for a writing class at SFSU and I agree, it's a gem. My favorite quote (so far):
Flammable - An oddity, chiefly useful in saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable.
Priceless!
Unfortunately he's not being funny either.
having warm water sprayed on my ass was the highlight of my overnight stay.
You must have not met a girl who does the thing with the string of beads.
Freedom: "I won't!"
The Feedback column in New Scientist has these every week. My favourite so far was the invoice for a locomotive purchased at auction, something like:
Item: Locomotive Quantity: 1 (approximately)
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"