Is THIS Too Far?

Back when I was pregnant with Small Person, Tall Person and I had an experience that taught us a helpful lesson about parenting - it's also turned out to be somewhat useful for managing too. We were out walking at Bellevue Downtown Park and were treated to an amusing interaction between what appeared to be an older uncle or perhaps grandfather, and his two-year-old charge, Alex. We know that this particular small person was named Alex because as he started sprinting for the hinterlands, we could hear his caretaker call out, "Now, don't go too far, Alex! Don't go too far!"

Tall Person and I burst out laughing at the same time, watching the older gentleman try to chase down speedracer Alex, who clearly had no intention of stopping anytime soon. Our best guess at what was going through little Alex's mind? "And just how far is too far grandpa? Is this too far? Is this? How about now?"

We took that incident to heart and when our own small person started testing out his legs, our instruction to him was, "Stay where you can see me!" Our theory has been that, like with rear view mirrors, if you can see me, I can probably still see you.

Whether I'm parenting or managing, I try real hard to think about how to deliver instructions that make sense from the perspective of the person receiving them. It's not always easy but I get better results that way.

It seems I don't always take my own advice though. Today I was alerted to a problem on the the Survival Strategies for Techies blog that shows up when using Firefox. I'd probably have run across the unresponsive script errors myself if I'd been using Firefox more often but I get lazy sometimes and the truth is that as much as I like Firefox, I hadn't gotten around to loading it on my computer.

I've loaded it now though, and as best as I can tell, it seems I may have been skirting around the edge of too far with respect to all the cool toys and gadgets I've been loading onto the blog. The good news is that there seems to be a pretty simple fix (or workaround, depending on your perspective), just by modifying a Firefox setting. Whew, glad that's settled! Now, if I can only figure out what happened to the MadKast icons on the more recent posts. Maybe something else strayed too far somehow along the way.

If you've got better troubleshooting suggestions or recommendations, send them to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com so I can find the best fix possible. I like hearing stories about what's too far too.

How will I know when I've gone 'too far'?