A Purely Personal Persnickety Perspective

OS is up to his keister in projects with deadlines, bills to pay, and hoping that next week's schedule doesn't get blown to Kingdom Come by another volcanic outburst, cuz' he's expecting someone from London to get some work done that he spent weeks getting scheduled. He also just had a conversation with an apologetic FedEx agent who explained that service to the UK is still intermittent, and no he can't say when tomorrow's package of documents will actually arrive in England's Green And Pleasant Land.

Can't control volcanoes, so nothing to do but keep a sense of humor and think of Plan B.

Other stuff, humans do control. Great parts of the past two days have been spent with various Apple products, supposedly the Latest and Greatest, that simply will not function as advertised. Everything is very elegant, stylish, 'cool', etc.  It just that, upon following all the instructions, not much works well.

He's an old middle-aged guy, admittedly, but he has one thing to say before trying to actually get some work done:  Computers and software are tools. Think of hammers, screwdrivers, picks, shovels.

Tools.

We use tools to get stuff done. We don't care how elegant they are. All we care about is 'Hammer drives nail straight into beam.', 'Pick moves dirt, to be removed by shovel.' When the tool works, then it does what we paid for it to do. When it doesn't, we're not in the mood to be told by a 22-year-old kid with tats and piercings that 'We just don't get it'.

On the contrary, we do get 'it'. This hammer won't drive the nail, and we paid for both.

These things are tools. Before adding elegance, think function. Hammers drive nails.

Please.

Where the Recession Isn't

I'm allergic to shopping malls in general. Artificial, overpriced, all look the same, modern pagan temples to conspicuous consumption; and 'scuse me please, but the Victoria's Secret window displays are embarrassing.

But yesterday, I was in one, getting one of my kids fitted for a new pair of glasses via Lenscrafters--it was a good sale, and I took them up on it.

This mall was not dead, only a couple of empty spaces, but it wasn't hopping as in previous years.

However, the kid wanted to check in at the Apple Store to price an upgrade to his computer.

Holy Cow! This place had thirty customers in their modest space, at 8:00 pm. I saw little kids in strollers playing with iPhones. Pretty amazing...

The nice sales lady said they were gearing up for Tax Amnesty Weekend, when the State of Tennessee lifts its 10% sales tax finger off the retail sector for three days. She said the line outside the door would stretch to a three-hour wait.

To quote Jerry Springer: 'What have we learned here?'

Well, Apple makes products that really work, are great fun to use, and dramatically improve people's lives.

And, when the State ceases to punish people who engage in economic transactions--you know, making stuff, selling stuff, buying stuff--business blooms.

Hmmm...

Maybe, if the State were smaller, and taxed its citizens less, the citizenry would thrive better.

Maybe, if business could concentrate on making and selling stuff people really want, (unlike GM and Chrysler) people would buy their stuff without Mr. Obama paying them cash to shop.


Hmmm...