Who Is Hosing Me?
I hope y’all enjoyed the kid-friendly headline. It wasn’t my first choice. -Ed.
I’m looking at one of the 42,000 spinning animations that constitute the soundtrack of my life. In this particular instance it belongs to the Netflix app on my iPad. But really it could be any of them.
One question: Who is responsible for this outage outrage?
Yes, we have the technology to sell technology whether it is ready for prime time or not.
When I was a kid “sit and spin” was consider an insult. Now it’s a phrase that singularly defines an entire generation of tech-hungry consumers.
Who decided this shit was ready? Because I have a serious bone to pick with them.
The technology cycle works like this: Invent. Sell. Count your piles of gold. Then, and only then, stick your head up, look around and see how it works. (Just ask Apple about iOS 8.)
This thing, right here, right now, is not working. Since it takes about 42 pieces of tech just to make this go, how should I proceed? Is there a way for an average schmo like me to logically isolate the culprit? Is there anyone I can call who won’t say, “Nope. It’s not us,” and point the finger at one of the other 41 links in the chain, including me?
I think not.
Is it my ISP? The cable assholes of Satan? Is it the router? The modem? Any points of relay on the internet between me and them? Is it a problem in my iPad? Is it Netflix itself? Is it the Amazon Cloud where Netflix wisely decided to put their egg in a basket? Is it a fucking solar flare?
All I know is that I paid a lot of money for this shit and that money is long gone. And there’s no tech fairy who will make it right.
What a helpless feeling. It’s enough to make my head spin.
This post was written on an iPad using only one finger. Sheer torture.
Blog the insanity!
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
–Albert Einstein
It normally happens a few times a day. It’s a fairly common occurrence but even so we don’t normally notice it that much. For those of us who work and/or play on a computer we may even have developed a blind spot for it that we don’t even know we have.
You click something on your computer and nothing happens. In spite of Einstein’s brilliant definition above, you wait a second or two (an eternity in computer terms) and then click that something again. And again.
Here’s the frustrating thing: Maybe on the second or third click it suddenly and miraculously works in complete and utter disregard for Einstein’s wisdom.
Einstein was wrong! But then again, I don’t think he ever met a computer. On a computer doing the same thing over and over again can (and often does) produce different results.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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