Why Guys Don't Read Directions

Published on July 9, 2005 By MasonM In Blogging

While I have really been enjoying my new bike, the rear deraileur wasn't shifting quite as smoothly as I would like. Since we are rained in by Dennis I decided to go ahead and tune the shifting a bit. This bike has a very nice Shimano deraileur of a type I had never had before so I wasn't quite sure of exactly how to tune it properly.

I spent a little time looking up the specs and adjustment instructions for this deraileur, which seemed to focus primarily on getting proper cable tension where on the older ones I have had in the past focused more on getting the upper and lower stop limits set correctly.

Well, after spending a half an hour tinkering with the cable tension, exactly following the procedure as detailed, the shifting was no better than when I started. Ok, I'm no bicycle mechanic but I'm no slouch either. Something just wasn't quite right here.

I decided to forget the directions and just do what made sense to me. After resetting the cable tension to where I thought it seemed like it should be I proceded to set the stop limits the old fashioned way. This got the shifting very close to what I wanted and after then making some minor cable tension tweaks it now shifts smooth as a baby's butt. Very nice.

And people wonder why we don't bother reading directions.

Comments

Trudygolightly

on Jul 09, 2005

That's what I like about guys! They just step up to the plate and get the job done!

MasonM

on Jul 09, 2005

LOL Trudy, sometimes it's just easier that way. I spent 30 minutes trying to do it "by the directions", and about 5 minutes just doing it my way.

Dr Guy

on Jul 10, 2005

IN many ways you are exactly right! We already know it, so why go through the manual meant to keep manual writers in clover?

In my JOb, any piece of software that is meant for general consumption, I never read the manual. If I cannot install it just by feel, it gets a trash recommendation! If it is going to be obtuse, the end user is going to find it impossible.

MasonM

on Jul 10, 2005

I agree Guy. I rarely read the man pages for software. Most of it these days is pretty inuitive anyway and once you've learned to use a lot of software learning a new app is pretty easy. If it isn't, it was poorly written.

When I use command line apps (which is often in Linux), I may take a peak at the man page to see what the syntax format looks like for optional paramaters, but that's about it. Once the app is running anyone should be able to figure out how to use it.

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