Recalling a lesson from New Media studies: users become afraid when something goes wrong with their interface, they perceive the last action that they did was the cause of the problem.

And so I frantically hit all the different keys in a desperate attempt to reverse the spell gone wrong. I simply have no idea what I did to make the screen become like this, but I do clearly remember I was typing this:

...computer hardware is an investment

And then I decided, 'costly' should be added, so I go back to revise it.

...computer hardware is a costly investment...

And that's when it happened.

A costly 'investment' indeed. Rather the experience is more like a downward spiral to dereliction with no way of climbing back up :S

Frantic to restore things to normal, I call Kevin, computer genius. He offered the best solution: System Restore, and everything really restored back to normal, without losing any files which I have been currently working on.  ¶ 11/25/2006 05:12:00 pm