A resource that needs to exist for us n00bs

Someone needs to write a document on "how to open files" for every data management application. It's really nice and all to have tons of analysis toolpaks, but if you can't get your data into there, how the heck do you analyze it?

I say this because I wasted 45 minutes trying to figure out "how do I open an .shp file in ArcGIS?" before I realized that: 1) the real ArcGIS is not ArcView (what CU had) but actually a very large set of files, about seven of which are executable programs named other things that start with "Arc"-- ArcMap, ArcInfo, ArcGlobe, ArcCatalog, ArcTools, 2) You can't actually open a file directly in any of those applications and 3) Using ArcCatalog to set a working directory in a drive that can be opened in ArcMap is pretty darn confusing.

Okay, so I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who wouldn't find that confusing. But I did. Just like I found "set wd()", "importdata," and even using Excel for the first time really confusing. It's like, okay, I have all this stuff, but how the hell do I get to it...

There needs to be a middle ground in computer help manuals-- one for people who are capable of using the advanced features on a program (because they have used them on other similar programs) but need to learn the fundamentals of "where do I click for what?" You know, for example, in Excel, it would be great to have a book that wasn't just "and THIS IS A CELL!!" but also not one that was like "and if you want to program your own macro to do such and such thing you will never use this is similar to insert the name of some other programming language here you have never heard of." What I want is something that is like: do you need to use v-lookup tables? First click here. Then type this. BAM. Look up table good to go.

If only my idea wasn't so fail, I'd make "the big book of doing easy stuff on computers for those who want to pretend to be saavy" also known as "someone else has already written a program to do that: what to click to make yourself look smart." And then I'd be super rich. Right.