how to confuse the user

[Mikus Grinbergs]

Recently I've been experimenting with booting my XO from an USB 
stick.  I've been using the script 'livecd-iso-to-disk' to place 
various F11-based builds (one at a time) onto the USB stick.

Just now, when a newly-created USB stick finished booting on the XO 
(and a virgin sugar 0.84.5-1 was launched), I was presented with a 
nearly-full-screen message saying: "Your Journal is full".  I tried 
various things, but that "nag" screen kept reappearing (and thereby 
prevented me from *using* my XO's screen to do what I wanted).


My complaint is that there was __no way__ that I could see to get 
rid of this "nag" screen.  [It did have a "Show Journal content" 
button - when I pressed that, the Journal View came up (telling me 
"Your Journal is empty"), but was promptly replaced by the "nag" 
screen ("Your Journal is full") again.  Somehow (I don't know what I 
did to free myself) I managed to get to Home View, from which I 
launched 'Terminal'.  Even then the "nag" screen (now blocking my 
view of 'Terminal') showed up at least one more time.

IF you are going to bring up a message to the user which obscures 
some of the XO screen -- there should be an *obvious* way (for 
instance, an 'X' in the upper right corner) for the user to get rid 
of that message.  To keep showing a message that gets in the way of 
the user actually doing anything -- only serves to confuse the user.


mikus


p.s.  It would be nice if the "Journal is full" message did not get
       shown when the Journal was in fact empty.