Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [33]
I should be smarter about technology. Once during an arson prosecution, the projector I was using to show crime scene photographs flashed and then went blank.
Frantically, I got the other prosecutor to ask for a recess, and when the judge and jury went out, I tried in desperation to discover what had gone wrong. I poked at keys and wiggled the mouse. I pulled at cables and prodded at connections. Nothing worked. There was still just a blank screen. The gods of technology were mocking me, I felt sure. As the time neared for court to resume, I stood in the middle of the courtroom and nearly cried. My high-diving act was rapidly approaching a fatal fall.
Then I looked down and noticed that the projector had come unplugged. I will never forget the feeling in the pit of my stomach when that screen went blank.
At least I thought I would never forget it. And yet I forged ahead with my love of technology in trials, with predictable results. In a murder prosecution, we were using a simple program (at least I was learning some lessons) to display photographs. All was working well until, as defense counsel and a police officer sparred over the contents of her notes, my screen saver activated. This particular screen saver was a silly phrase keyed in, as a joke, by a police officer during a previous trial. There were plenty of reasons it managed to come up during an important trial: I hadn’t set the timer on the screen saver at a sufficient duration; the police officer operating the computer became distracted by the testimony. It doesn’t matter—it just happened. So, as the defense counsel stood beside the witness and in front of an eight-foot-by-eight-foot screen, a message began scrolling in three-foot letters directly behind him:
I’M A SPECIAL DONKEY I’M A SPECIAL DONKEY
Given my past experiences, you might surmise that I would be cautious and careful in too readily relying on technology.
You’d be wrong (you’re wrong about me a lot; I think you overestimate me).
I decided that if my new Vision/Plan/Task program worked, it would work better with the aid of a computer. Perhaps, I reasoned, I could adapt some of the features of my calendar and email program to create an electronic list with reminders and Tasks. Maybe I could create templates and ticklers and all manner of productivity enhancements. I would develop Vision screens and Plan screens and link them to the Task screens preprogrammed into the database. I would be able to track progress and assess my Order skills as I went. As I considered the possibilities, I was almost giddy.
As I sat in front of the computer, no real plan in mind (irony rears its head again), I started playing around with my regular scheduling software. I could easily establish a Task, but I couldn’t figure out exactly how I would create grander things like Plans and Visions. I couldn’t simply make them a Task; that would have been too basic. I needed higher-level thinking. A little more tinkering produced something that resembled a Plan template. I field-tested it and lost everything I had done. Not to be undone, I tried to reproduce the Plan template and failed. This was going to be more difficult than I had first anticipated.
Finally (and reluctantly) I turned to the Help feature. As I searched around for features of the program, I found a design form and thought I had an “aha” moment. It didn’t work. I don’t know why; it just didn’t.
Okay, I decided, back to the Help feature. I stumbled onto something called InfoPath—another part of the off-the-shelf software about which I had no knowledge. It seemed to hold some promise for creating forms. As I ran through the Help menu and tried to replicate its instructions, I discovered that I had created . . . absolutely nothing. I tried again, and again and again. After several attempts, it occurred to me that the program’s designers must have created this as some kind of nerd prank. “Let’s put in these instructions