Thursday, 26 October 2000 11:30pm
H
ere's something to think about. Who would want to drive a car that had an engine that would just randomly shut off every once in a while on the highway? Who would buy a TV that, around once a day, would randomly flip to a blue screen, and would not let you watch anything else until you turned it off and back on again? Most people who went to an electronics store and brought home a TV that behaved like this would not hesitate to pack it up and take it back to the store and either get an exchange, or demand their money back. It would just be completely unacceptable for a consumer product to be that unreliable.
So what is it that is so special about computers? When a computer shuts down in the middle of an important project, or shows you that "Blue Screen Of Death", why do people just put up with it? Why do they just think to themselves "oh well, that's just the way computers are", when such behavior from any other consumer product would not be at all tolerated?
This isn't a question about "what causes computers to be unreliable", and this isn't about what operating system is superior to another. I realize that a lot of computer problems are caused by the users themselves, by hardware conflicts, and many other things that are beyond the control of the companies that produce these products. Yet, there is also so many products that are just rushed to release too early, full of bugs in their own right that have nothing to do with user error or hardware conflicts, or are just plain poorly made.
Who would accept "well, we just wanted to make sure it was released before our compeditors unit, so we didn't have enough time to work all the bugs out, here, have this service pack bug patch" as an excuse from the manufacturer of that shiny new DVD player that you just brought home and plugged in... and happens to not work with any of your movies? So what makes the computer industry immune to such expectations?
Sure, if you buy a classic car, you expect to have trouble with it. It's old, it's parts may be worn out, rare, and hard to replace. But why should brand new computers and software behave the same way? And why do people just accept it as just being the way things are?
And would things be the way they are if from the beginning, people demanded the level of perfection that they expect from other consumer products? Many people would say that it's impossible to find all the bugs before a release date. Would that be an acceptable response from a company such as Boeing, who manufactures aircraft with literally millions of parts? Granted, lives are at stake when it comes to 747s, but then again, that just means that a certain level of perfection has been demanded of the industry. Why doesn't any form of that seem to exist in the computer industry?
And back to the original question... why in the world are people just content to accept this as just being the way things are... when they wouldn't do that for any other sort of product?
That's just a weird thing that I noticed that I was wondering about. By the way, I'm not trying to say anything bad about the computer industry. I'm really more interested in knowing why the same people who get fuming mad if it takes more than 3 minutes to get through the McDonald's drive through, don't care if their computers crash all the time, or if their AOL just randomly logs them off whenever it pleases, and just accepts that as the way things are. It's just weird to me.
Anyway. I don't think I mentioned it before, but I updated/changed around some of the pictures from the August Vegas update. I am too lazy to put a link here for you to go see it so too bad for you. Sorry, but I spend all day in front of a computer, doing little things like putting links here and there to make people's lives easier. I don't really feel like going through more effort than I really have to right now because that's the kind of thing I do all day now. I just want to write :)
And no one has found my mystery girl from Vegas. Or if they know her, they haven't contacted me about it. Oh well, whatever. It's not like I'd be pathetic enough to think about her every single day and just be constantly filled with feelings of regret all the time about being too dumb to realize that I should have gotten her number anyway even if she did live far away, and it's just a stupid fantasy that we would have hit it off at any other time or place or under any other set of circumstances besides being young, and being in Vegas where people have no inhibitions and anything goes, especially since we met in a loud club where everyone is just hooking up and we couldn't even really talk or get to know each other anyway or anything like that. I mean geez, what kind of a sad person do you think I am?
A very sad one indeed.

Thursday, 26 October 2000 11:30pm
T
his is kind of weird and random, but a photo I took of Scripps pier some years ago ended up on this girl's website. Check it out.

Thursday, 26 October 2000 11:30pm
T
onight I am in L.A. I bought dinner for my family. It was supposed to be a thing for my grandmother. Like a "wow, I'm so proud of my grandson, he makes money and can buy me dinner" kind of thing. It originally was supposed to be some really great food. I wanted to go to Lawry's... but it ended up being at lousy Souplantation. How did it go from Lawry's to Souplantation? Well it was originally supposed to be just my parents, my sister and my grandmother. But then one of my mom's sister's found out about it and said "hey I want some free food too," and it got downgraded to chinese food. But then everyone else heard about it, and basically, it ended up that it was going to be dinner for my grandmother and 18 of my closest family members ahahaha. So someone decided on Souplantation instead. So instead of a few of us getting a really great mean, it was a whole lot of us getting a pretty lousy one. By the way, of those 18 family members, none were any more distant than first cousins... and this is all on just my mom's side of the family. Not the biggest family around, but definitely big.
Anyway. I don't even like Souplantation. I was sad when Soup Exchange went out of business. Why? Because they actually had some real food, like chicken and other varieties of meat. You could actually get a real meal from them, not just a bunch of healthy, non-fat soups and salads. And to add insult to injury, we actually had to drive past Lawry's to get there. -sigh-
On the other hand, it is pretty hard to get all 18 of us together at the same table at the same time. Actually there are 20 of us, but the twins were spending the night at a friend's house for a sleepover birthday party or something like that. Usually it happens on Thanksgiving, and sometimes on Christmas and New Years Day, but very rarely does it happen on other occasions, and it was good spending time with everybody and getting everybody together. And it's definitely great spending time with the kids. But still... PRIME RIB!!!
Hey, I got mentioned on this weekend's update of comabound. It says that I'm "the man" and the true "vegas pimp". It's still weird for me to think about how some people actually think it is "cool" to get e-mail from me or something. I'm just a guy. And I think it's cool when I get mentioned on other people's sites too, or get e-mailed by them. The Internet is weird. It's like, all kinds of regular people can become some sort of a celebrity in some circle of interest. Like, never before has it been this easy for the average joe to get his name out there, as long as he has something funny, or cool, or profound, and most importantly, original, out there.
I mean, even if your site is getting like only 1,000 hits a year, when was it ever easier for 1,000 people you don't know to see your work, unless you were somehow already famous?