Day 1210 – Peter has Risen!
Tuesday May 12, 2020
173 Days until the election on November 3rd
253 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
“You mean Jesus, don’t you?”
“No I mean Peter, as in Principle.”
“Oh. What?
“G. Dammit, do I have to explain everything to you? Stop. Stop moving your lips as if you were going to reply. That was a rhetorical question, which means you don’t need…No, wait… You don’t. You just don’t… You Don’t Answer It.
“Why? OmG. Because the answer is obvious, that’s why.
“You want the answer? You don’t know what the answer is? Well, you think you know but you aren’t sure? I’d tell you the answer is “42” but then I’d have to explain that, so why don’t you join the rest of the gang below the line of hashmarks and I’ll explain. Okay? Okey-dokey.”
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Sorry for the preamble above, but it had to be done.
For the regulars, you know, obviously that I’m talking about The Peter Principle. The book that touted the idea that “everyone rises to their level of incompetence.”
I now see that it isn’t only in personnel that this phenomena happens, but in just about everything. No wonder the world is so screwed up! (Ah. Finally, the Holy Grail of Insight has been revealed to me! Thank-You Jesus.)
And speaking of Jesus, why do people believe without any rationale or verifiable evidence? If that isn’t the greatest con … makes Trump look lie a piker. (What’s next for The Donald? Orange jumpsuit or orange robe? I’m thinking religion is his last frontier. “It will be the greatest religion. Worship me! All the others are fake. Fake religions!”) But, after pissing off my religious friends, I must admit I digressed. Sorry.
And before I start, let me also say that I have unleashed a monster and this is the first of many. I think I have found my true calling. This is the new beginning! This is the blessed day! Hallelujah!
“The monster? No, not that. Zip up your pants.”
I would call it The Bitchy Club of Old Men but who wants to read that? The Corey-Lama called his group “Horny Naked Buggy Chicks” because who wanted to know what old guys on kite buggies were doing.
It started simply enough. Remember that screed, not too long ago…the one entitled “The Illusion of Progress”?
My buddy Frank in Texas responded. I’ll share his response below, but before I do let me tell you what happened next.
I thought Frank’s reply was so good I sent it to Hubert in China.
Hubert’s reply was so good and it mentioned the iPhone 6 which is a favorite of my friend dean in Florida and the only reason my brother in Connecticut hasn’t responded or my friend Paul in England is that I haven’t sent them any of this. And frankly, if I did respond to all of them I’d have no time to do my screed.
I am therefore founding the International Association of Men – Grumpy, Old, Disturbed.
Or IAM-GOD (that’s 2 TLAs not one SLA, which would sound like some sort of radical left, or right, wing group .. Oh wait Patty who?)
So before I bring on Frank’s response (his first response) I must expand upon what I set out to explain in the beginning. The Peter Principle is everywhere. Peter’s “everyone rises to their own level of incompetence” is akin to Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. I am laying out the General Theory of Incompetence.
Now that I realize what is happening I have to wonder, “Why didn’t I see it sooner?”
(Don’t even pretend that you saw it. Shut up. Sit down. Listen and Learn. [That’s LaL as opposed to LoL. Got it? Good.) )
Peter Lynch in his book “One Up on Wall Street” said that you should only invest in companies that any idiot can run because eventually an idiot will run them. He’s right about an idiot coming in to run a company. Run it into the ground. (Excuse me, I mean slash expenses, like R&D, so that the profits will go up short term, the execs can cash out on their stock options, and they can load the company up with debt, then off load it like a bloated dead whale over the side of the ship onto the market and move on. They could then run for President. Think Mitt Romney.)
In software there’s the term “the skip generation bug” that’s where a bug gets fixed in one release only to reappear in the one after that.
I have now come to realize that software goes through a lifecycle. Not the one we think of, but it too, rises to its own level of incompetence. I have heard statements like: “iTunes used to be great, then they screwed it up”, “Google Photos used to be great, then they screwed it up,” “VRBO used to be great, then they started charging everybody exorbitant amounts.” Etc. Etc. (Send me more examples, please!)
My last job was to replace a database with Seibel Systems. Seibel was a company bought out by Oracle for a billion or so. (Which is like if IBM had bought out Gene Amdahl.) What Seibel offered was a huge database map and you could squish whatever you had as a database into it somehow. This was called an enterprise platform and it touted the idea that once you learned Seibel you could put it anywhere. It’s kind of like saying you could replace all the tools in your garage with a Swiss Army Knife, but Tom Seibel was very good at selling the idea to upper managements, despite the worker bees yelling, “It’s a piece of shit and it stinks!” I was a worker bee and labeled “not a team player,” and was asked to leave, because I kept asking, “Why are we doing this? It’s not better, cheaper, or faster?” (Those were the three big buzz words at the time.)
The result of this transition was that the company had to buy a huge amount of hardware, the data map we had, which took a half day or so to understand was replaced with a god awful huge incomprehensible piece of garbage, which was more expensive, ran slower and was not better but terrible. This was progress. In fact, the people that had to use the new system laughingly said, “Oh well, we’ll just wait until we get a response in a few minutes” as opposed to seconds in response time before.
So without further adieu, because there has been way to much already: here’s Frank!
Hi Rick,
The rule is RTFM.
I am constantly bitching about software and, in particular, the lack of documentation so the user can figure out how to use it.
That is only half of the problem. The other half is hardware without documentation.
First, the marketing geniuses decided that nothing should have labels on it.
For example: “ON”
The product also had to hide any buttons, switches, places where things plug in, like a power cord or USB cable, to be fashionable, whatever…
[Remember street numbers on buildings? Try to find them now. Somebody decided it wasn’t cool to have street numbers on buildings. Now, after our Google Maps maybe leads us to the vicinity instead of over a cliff, we have to park and search for fifteen minutes to find the right building or house, because none of them have numbers on them. What a pain in the ass].
Then they decided, “All of this stuff is intuitive to me, so we will skip the cost of printing manuals.”
“Plus, we can save a lot of money on printing costs. We can put something on our web site to replace our manuals.”
The first step in doing away with manuals, was to have a web site and post a few paragraphs on the web site that were useless to anyone else.
Later, since the “documentation” on the web site was useless and the web master reported to management that no one was accessing it (no “hits”), the company decided to do away with “manuals.“
Besides, it’s all intuitive.
Marketing chimed in, “We shouldn’t have any documentation about discontinued products any way. As for new products, we want the customers to buy our new products every year. If they cannot get their toaster to work or it breaks, we don’t want them to be able to troubleshoot the one they have. We want them to buy another toaster.”
Meanwhile, out on the frontier, the box with the new gadget arrives and the user/customer opens the box.
He pulls out his new computer, printer, television, toaster, whatever.
It has with it a “Quick Start” document. After the obligatory four pages of language starting with DANGER, CAUTION or WARNING, that says, “do not use the toaster while taking a bath or near power lines,” the document includes a picture with various international incomprehensible symbols on it.
Hmmm? “How do I open it to put the batteries inside?” After spending a couple of days unable to figure out how to open the black plastic box, I throw the toaster against the wall and the battery compartment opens.
The next question is, “How do I turn it on?”
There’s no button, no switch. Whatever magic it takes is hidden.
Refer back to the document. “Ah, a web site.”
Go to web site. Try a Search, or two hours of searches or look for a HELP tab. No help tab. How about a Site Map? Nope.
The web site is like a dried up creek. Non-navigable.
Nothing anywhere on the web site about the products except some spiel about how great they are.
“These are state of the art toasters. Your new toaster has a magic sensor such that when your toast is about to burn a high speed cooling fan comes on and immediately cools down the toast.“
“If the toast is really in peril, the sensor will activate a high pressure hose to spray the toast with a blast of cold water.”
I just want a fucking piece of toasted bread.
Cannot find anything that tells me how to turn on my new toaster.
No phone number or address on the web site.
Well, even though I cannot find the “ON” button, I have to hook up my new toaster to my blender with a USB cable (not supplied).
During the pandemic, I go to Best Buy and buy a cable. Hope it works. There are about 50 choices of USB cable at Best Buy.
Well, it fits. “Where does it plug into the blender?”
Oh, that’s hidden, too.
But, I kept the blender documentation.
Look at the documentation. It says nothing about connecting it to my toaster, or to anything else.
Check their web site. Don’t see a model number on my blender. Nor, do I see a blender on their web site that looks remotely like mine.
Should have kept my Bass-O-Matic from 1975.
RTFM.
When I cleaned out my parents’ house I should have kept the the toaster they bought in 1950, instead of buying a new one.
RTFM = Read the Fucking Manual.
But, there are no manuals anymore.
Fucked up government. Fucked up corporations.
Fucked up country. They cannot blame China, even if the American corporations manufactured the toaster and blender in China to save on labor costs. American workers are just too expensive.
But, they can sell us crap without manuals.
Good luck with your camera.
I had to take my camera manual on every trip I took for the first five years I owned my camera. I am now in year six and lost the manual. I am not traveling, either.
Take care,
Frank
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Wait! There’s more!
The rant will continue!
Stay tuned.
More bitching from IAM-GOD tomorrow, or the next day, whenever.
173 Days until the election on November 3rd
253 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
PS I forgot to mention that the point in doing this was to lead up to the fact that countries too can become run by idiots. I’ll explore that in a later screed. Now for a nice peaceful picture…
This is the lake near the archaeological site of Tzikin Tzakan in the Peten, Guatemala. The lake is beautiful, but don’t get too close. The crocs will eat you alive.
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