The Happy Moron

Why do you use F5 to lock your application so that when I try to *refresh* my mail I get locked out?
Why is the only access to Search via a tiny magnifying glass icon? Is a menu item or a toolbar box too much to ask?
Why are your advanced search options so pitifully lacking?
Why are [...]

Words Matter
Words are important. If they don’t go so far as to limit what and how we think, at the very least they direct our thoughts. The simple use of single word can carry a lot of subtle and hidden meaning. In particular,  the definition and root of a word might be based on a great many [...]

Most software engineers are at least a little bit prissy when it comes to talking about ‘bugs’. We’d rather you call them “defects.”
I’d like to say that this isn’t just software engineers being petty and small minded, but it is. Software engineers *are* small minded. We have to be, because, well, we just are. The [...]

Am I the only one a little creeped out by Facebook’s silent addition of a “People you may know” box which popped up on my profile?
What’s next? “People you may want to date?” It would go nicely alongside those ghastly, ubiquitous singles ads. Do you remember when Facebook didn’t have ads? I do [...]

When I want to run SQL Plus I navigate through five menus (not counting the initial click on the Start button).
This is ridiculous but (sadly)  it is not unusual. It’s a good thing I’m not senile yet and can still remember where most things on my computer live.
This is why I hate computers.

Mom doesn’t like it because Mom is always smarter than you are.
So is Phil Gordon. At least when it comes to poker. Hmm…
Phil guesses that about half of the ‘name pros’ on television have a negative net worth. That 90% have serious difficulty in holding onto the money they win, and stay near broke, regardless [...]

If you’re familiar with Calvin and Hobbes, you may recall the strip where Calvin asks his father how they determine the maximum load for bridges.
“Oh, they just drive larger and larger trucks over a bridge until it breaks, and take the weight of the last truck. Then they rebuild the bridge.”
It’s quite funny, until you [...]

A computer is a rock. It’s a (very) finely carved chunk of silicon and ore.
A computer is hard in the same way a rock is hard – when you crash into it, it bruises you, because you are bruisable and it is not. It is more stubborn than you are. A computer is what it [...]

People are voracious. Whatever we have is, well, not quite good enough. I see this in our use of language, where we take words with exceptional meaning and apply them to the ordinary. Awesome! Righteous! Afterwards, we have to coin new words because the old ones have lost their exceptional lustre. Writers labour under the [...]

Yes, I’m talking about picture nine. Woah.