The Everyday Adventures of Abi Jones

SecureFX: ridiculous!

Tonight I had the not-so-fun experience of getting the Fiance (or Fianch, as he calls himself) set up with SecureFX. It isn’t that I actually know how to use the program. No, I really have no clue. He asked me to help him and my response was

Because I knew that’s what I was going to do, just click on everything until it worked. Because that usually works. It isn’t so much a matter of brute force as understanding that you probably have one off selection (FTP vs. SFTP) in an obscure admin menu and you just need to change it. But in the process of telling him to just stop looking over my shoulder while I messed around with his computer I realized that I don’t just click through all of the menus. No, I have a very explicit, tested procedure for figuring out what the heck is wrong with a program.


You know why? Because you can Google errors. And I am very, very good about figuring out which search terms to use to get the results I wanted. From there I realized that I should create a file for the error log, switch some SSL settings, turn everything on and off again a couple of times and Voila!, it works.


I don’t know. I don’t know how I did it exactly. All I know is that is what I do. I tried to explain to him that I think it is because I’m not afraid of breaking things on a computer. I believe that there are very few irreversible errors and those that can’t be fixed shouldn’t be an issue because you backed everything up to your portable hard drive and Amazon S3, right?


Tonight’s experience made me realize why my work is so fulfilling. It made me understand that it isn’t fearlessness that gives me the ability to deal with programs like SecureFX and Domino Designer and Lotus Notes Administration. No, what makes a differences is my passion for a truly great user experience. In this day and age there is no excuse for a difficult-to-use product. There is no excuse for poor design. No excuse. And so I’m proud. I don’t just make things that are usable.