rowyn: (thoughtful)
My bank recently started using a software product called "ImageNow".

Technically, the bank's been using it since before the merger in 2001. But until last year, no one at the bank had any training on it and it hadn't been set up by anyone who understood what it could do. So it was being used, but very, very badly.

ImageNow is marketed as a virtual file storage system. You scan your documents in, and then ImageNow can organize them to mimick your existing physical filing system. In theory, you can throw out your physical files and just use ImageNow for everything.

Except it's actually better than that. ImageNow doesn't just store image files; it can store and display just about any document type. It has 5 customizable property fields, plus fields for "Drawer" and "Document Type", which are mainly useful for security purposes. It basically gives you a little database of information attached to every document you put into it. One of its big selling points is that it's very easy to set it up so it "talks" to whatever database system you're already using, and it can pull the data from that program and attach it to the document you're putting into it, so you don't have to do data entry for every file.

One of my first thoughts, after training on this software, was "I want to scan my desk and put it into ImageNow". I hate digging through piles of paper looking for one piece. I want my computer to find it for me. We didn't buy ImageNow to let people organize their desks: we bought it to store the documents associated with customer accounts. But there's no reason it can't store the paper at my desk, too.

So I persuaded my boss to let me set up my own drawer, and I've been dumping this and that into it.

And the thing that struck me, as I was dumping files from my desktop into it, is that ImageNow isn't letting me do anything I couldn't have done two years ago when we replaced the department copier with a copier/scanner. I could have scanned everything then and saved it into directories and files on my computer.

Except for one thing: the directory tree architecture sucks for organizing things. Here we are, in the 21st century, and so far as I can tell every computer operating system from Windows to Macs to Linux to the Internet is still based on directory trees. What's up with that? ImageNow's system doesn't feel revolutionary or perfect, by any means. But it sure feels a lot better than C:\Toddler Bank Loans\Customer Number\Customer Name\Account Number\Document Type\Doc Date\. (Which, perhaps, is something like what ImageNow looks like on the backend that I never see. Or maybe it looks more cryptic than that and the searchable database is stored in some attached file). But in ImageNow I can, for example, do a search for name = X AND document type = Y. At the same time! It's not Google, but I've found that even Google isn't that good at, say, helping me find specific emails in Gmail. If I don't remember the right keywords it can't figure them out for me. It's kind of handy to have something prompting me to put in keywords.

I don't want to undersell ImageNow, which does more than just offer a more searchable file storage method. But I do find myself wondering "why can't my operating system's file storage work like this?" How hard would it be to make an applet that laid over Explorer and prompted me for customized key words when saving files, so that I could search for those later instead of trying to remember "What did I name this file?"
rowyn: (Default)
If my life doesn’t straighten up soon…well, at least my apartment will. Sometimes, when I’m in a bad mood, I’ll clean. This goes along the lines of, “If I’m not going to have a good time anyway, I might as well get something productive done.” Yesterday I vacuumed the den. Yay.

When I sat down at my computer last night, after checking journals and so forth, I fired up MagicOnline. Or rather, tried to. Instead of running, it gave me a cryptic error message along the lines of “Failed to find initialize sserife.fon fontname sserife.fnt!!!” (Exclamation points not added.)

So, I went to my font directory to see if I had sserif.fon. I did. In fact, as I was soon to discover, sserif.fon is the font that Windows 98 defaults to using for…just about everything. File and directory names in Explorer, pull-down menu bars, desktop file names, windows headers, etc.

At Lut’s encouragement, I have a semi-current backup of my C drive on my D drive—we use a program that makes an exact copy of the two, with the result that if anything goes wrong on the active drive, we can mirror the backup onto it an, voila, it will work again.

Thinking, “Maybe my sserife.fon file has become corrupted. I will copy the D drive version back to it.” I try doing this. I get an error message saying “You already have this font. You must uninstall this font before you can install it again.” I delete sserife.fon from the C drive.

My entire desktop converts to an illegible 6 pt font. . o O (This is not a good sign.)

I try to copy sserife.fon from D to C. I get the same error message as before. Oooookay. I check to make sure that deleting a font does uninstall it. According to Windoze help, it does. I go look through the C drive fonts directory again. C claims sserife.fon is still in it. I delete it again.

I try to copy the D drive version to C…only now the D drive says it doesn’t have sserife.fon. Ok. I go to deleted items, recover two separate copies of sserife.fon, and reboot.

The machine powers up, and claims it can’t find sserife.fon anywhere, including under deleted items. I gradually discover that the D and C font directories are pointing to the same list.. Delete a font in one, it goes away in the other. Add a font in one, it is added to the other (Though I wouldn’t find that out until later). I discuss this matter with Tufty and Kage, my computer-literate friends, and they agree that, yes, this is very strange. Kage sends me a copy of sserife.fon from his computer. I try to reinstall it, and this time get a new error message, along the lines of “This font file is corrupted, or you have too many fonts. Uninstall some fonts, or get a new copy of the file.”

At about this point, Lut got home. I abandon the computer to his devices and start cleaning.

A few hours later, Lut has managed to get the sserife.fon file to install, but everything is still displayed in 6 pt illegible.fon. Lut runs numerous diagnostics, all of which label my computer “Working as intended.” He finally gives up some time after I go to bed, and tells me in the morning it’s still not working.

I boot my computer in the morning. Everything looks fine. MagicOnline runs without a hitch.

Technology at its finest.

August 2025

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