techrecovery | Mar. 30th, 2008

(crossposted in my own LJ)

this is a bit offtopic, my apologies, but...well, here's the backstory.

When I'm not fixing printers, reinstalling Outlook, or otherwise doing some form of user support, one of my hobbies is working on cars. Not hotrodding, not custom body modification or to-spec restoration...just good, basic maintenance to keep my car running well forever (or for as long as economically feasible).

I'm currently staring at a couple of old air-cooled volkswagens, and will be tearing into their engines here in the next few weeks. As I read literature about them to get myself prepared for the task, I have found one book in particular, "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step By Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot" by John Muir (this book is old enough and in a layperson-friendly-enough style that I think it just might be the book that started the "Idiot's Guide to $FOO" meme that has been so pervasive for the past decade or two). This book is an absolute gem.

This book starts out with a chapter on how to use this book, which starts with basic instructions for FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS, and oh em gee, I think I want to plagiarize this section, change "car" to "computer", adjust other language where necessary, and start sending it to all my tech support clients. And I think every manual for everything, ever, should start with a chapter a lot like this.

At any rate, I get a kick out of reading it, and I think other folks here might also.

( the text )