Then on Friday at work, someone who works in a department on the other side of the building to where I sit came over for something else, and noticed the web page on my second monitor displaying the new program I'd written. It allows the people in the call centre to see how many lines there are free on the bridges and how many are in the enter queue (where you go if you need operator assistance). She commented that it was very clever and very complicated. I explained that no it wasn't - I used the same method that the people in reservations use to connect to the bridges and I run just one command to get the numbers. The rest was formatting on a web page and retrieving the numbers every 5 seconds.
She sounded a bit surprised and said that I was clever for putting it all together.
I shrugged it off but it got me thinking. I do things because others can do it, so why can't I? I don't understand the mentality that people can't do things, or shoudn't attempt things. It just 'keeps people in their place'.
Now admittedly, there are things I wouldn't want to try because I'm just not interested in or I'd find the experience unpleasent. But seriously people - humans invented technology - so why are people afraid to use their noggins to figure it out?