I recently finished teaching my first online course at UCI and just started another this week. The first week is consumed mainly with people introducing themselves and the students getting accustomed to the online software.

Today I replied to a couple of "Hello" messages from my students. In each case I typed in my reply - much as one would do on s2ki.com - and clicked the button to add my post to the thread.

The screen came back with this message:

Your post has been successfully added.

Apparently my post could have been unsuccessfully added, or simply added, or not added at all (which is clearly different from being added unsuccessfully.). I was glad that it was added, but could not honestly say that I was any more so by knowing that the addition was successful.

I later edited one of my replies and clicked on the button to submit my changes.

The screen came back with this message:

Your post has been updated.

I confess to feeling the slightest twinge of regret that, although it was updated, it wasn't updated successfully. However, the changes I submitted do appear in my reply, so my update, while not explicitly successful, appears to be, at least, adequate.

 

I'm just curious about this "impolite" side of magic no-one likes talking about. And a buddy once studied under a "top line" guru, which he seemed to think was better than the mid line or bottom ones, but I just like to think a guru is a guru is a guru. And not to get off-topic, but I once had the pleasure of working with a guy into risk avoidance (credo: why screw around with mitigation when you can avoid it altogether), but he was no fun ever since he made partner

 

Sounds like department of redundancy department to me.

 

Help stamp out and eliminate redundancy!

 

Because risk and return have a strong positive correlation.