{"id":646,"date":"2006-09-25T16:05:33","date_gmt":"2006-09-25T21:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=646"},"modified":"2007-05-24T13:49:27","modified_gmt":"2007-05-24T18:49:27","slug":"nested-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=646","title":{"rendered":"Nested Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thinking back to <a href=\"?p=642\">the frustration of Blender<\/a>, one of the things I noticed was that I was suffering from <em>nested<\/em> difficulties. This is where, instead of solving a problem and moving forward, the solution to a problem involves a sub-problem, which in turn has its own sub-problem, and so on.  A day with many problems seems rough, but it happens.  A day where each attempt to solve a problem only reveals new problems is maddening, and threatens to drive me over the edge.  Consider this scenario:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Drive to store (Get flat tire)\n<ul>\n<li>Change flat tire<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Continue driving to store (Get another flat tire)\n<ul>\n<li>Change flat tire<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Continue driving to store (Get another flat tire)\n<ul>\n<li>Change flat tire<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Continue driving to store (Get another flat tire)\n<ul>\n<li>Change flat tire<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Arrive at store<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a bad day, to say the least.  Having all four tires go flat would be frustrating, but for me it wouldn&#8217;t be as rage-inducing as getting just ONE flat tire under these circumstances:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Drive to store (Get a flat tire.)\n<ul>\n<li>Change flat tire\n<ul>\n<li>Bolts are stuck (Use WD-40 on bolts)\n<ul>\n<li>Get WD-40 out of glovebox. (Glovebox won&#8217;t open.)\n<ul>\n<li>Pry open glovebox with screwdriver (It&#8217;s too dark to see what I&#8217;m doing.)\n<ul>\n<li>Use flashlight &#8211; Flashlight won&#8217;t turn on.\n<ul>\n<li>Change Batteries (Get batteries from trunk)\n<ul>\n<li>Open trunk. (Can&#8217;t open it: Trunk key is bent.)\n<ul>\n<li>Enter rampage mode.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is far, far more frustrating to me, even though on balance I might arrive at the store sooner than if I just had the four flat tires scenario.  With each new layer of nesting my anger doubles.  It&#8217;s like an anger multiplier.  One level deep is annoyed.  Two levels deep is angry.  Seven levels deep and I conclude the entire world is against me and must be destroyed.  I&#8217;m sure this is how super-villians are created:  They are normal guys until a day comes when they have a seven-level problem and they decide to hire an army of henchmen and build an orbital death ray.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"?p=642\">With Blender, every problem was a five-level problem<\/a>, which is why the program made me so crazy. I&#8217;d hit level five, get enraged, and storm off.  Then I&#8217;d regain my composure, come back, and try <em>something else<\/em>, only to have it all happen again.  So, it really was for the safety of the world that I had to give up on it.<\/p>\n<p>LATER: Looking back, I think my experience with the <a href=\"?p=252\">HP Pavillion was another set of deep-nested problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thinking back to the frustration of Blender, one of the things I noticed was that I was suffering from nested difficulties. This is where, instead of solving a problem and moving forward, the solution to a problem involves a sub-problem, which in turn has its own sub-problem, and so on. A day with many problems [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}