If two men had this social interaction, the snubbed compliment-er would have thought to himself, “What a douche bag.” That would have ended the interaction. Not you ladies. You have to have this thing called closure. Closure in man-speak means getting the last word and humiliating the other person. Closure, like string theory and female orgasms, is an unproven concept. The reason men don't engage in this behavior called closure is that we might actually get involved in a physical fight.
When no alcohol is involved, fighting is something most men avoid. My theory of fighting is as follows. If a bigger guy wants to fight me, I don't want to fight because he's bigger than I am. If a smaller guy wants to fight me, I don't want to fight because he probably knows something I don't, like karate. This is a form of the cold war nuclear war deterrent strategy called mutual assured destruction. Men don't fight, because there is too much to risk. Thus, social snubs don't escalate to fisticuffs very often. When alcohol is involved, however, we get in touch with our inner bitches and have at it.
This afternoon to get away from the world championship bout of closure (there's the segue), I retreated to the master bedroom to watch my wonderful fifty-two inch, high definition television. I hit the on button on the remote – and nothing. OK, no big deal, I'll just change the batteries and problem solved. Not quite – still nothing. Changing batteries is about the total extent of my handyman skills, but I am pretty good at electronic troubleshooting. After resetting all the audio visual equipment, I eventually narrowed the source of the problem to our Google TV set top box.
Our Google box is a cool little device that allows us to search pretty much the entire known universe for a program on any topic. For instance, if I search for “pedophile”, I will find every movie or TV show related to Jerry Sandusky whether the show is on our cable system or the internet. The problem with the device is that it requires cycling of the power every few days or it looses its mind. By the way if I search for “closure”, I get every PBS special ever shown on premenstrual syndrome and Midol. That I accept this constant resetting of the Google box is a symptom of a disease call Microsoft-itis.
Microsoft-itis is the lowering of our performance expectations. We no longer expect anything to work more than 80% of the time. I'm not up in arms that the Google box looses its mind. I pretty much expect that all of my electronic devices will screw up regularly. My piece of shit Sandisk MP3 player needs to be reformatted every week, and I have to recopy all of my music. This problem has been well documented on Sandisk's own web forum for more than a year, but they don't care enough about customers to fix it.
I call this mental illness Microsoft-itis, because they originated the disease. When MS-DOS, Microsoft's first operating system, became a standard, we all learned that rebooting our computers five or six times a day was normal. A day without a reboot was truly a wonderful day. Now with Windows, we get a dozen or more daily software updates. I could spend most of every work day doing nothing but installing bug fixes. Why blame Microsoft for that since there are a lot of publishers involved? Because they designed Windows to make this nonsense routine. How many times have you shouted at your computer, “Just give me my damn cursor!” as the machine does whatever it feels is more important than your desired task? This is why Microsoft gets the blame.
Since Microsoft products are part of our every waking minute in some regard, we have become numbed to the hours robbed from our lives by idiot programmers, who really don't give a damn. Fifteen years or so ago, the president of Peachtree accounting software, Bill Goodhew, made the mistake of being honest in answering a journalist's question. He said that he prioritized adding new features to his software products over fixing bugs. He was pilloried in the press and tried to retract his statement, but he was just being honest. He knew he could get away with treating users like fools.
A few years ago, Bill Gates made a snide remark about the auto industry not staying up with technology. The chairman of General Motors responded that if the auto industry made cars the way Microsoft made Windows, we would have to restart our engines at every intersection. To show that life is truly absurd, automakers are now seriously considering adding that as a gas saving feature. As if the assholes in front of me at an intersection aren't slow enough on the gas pedal.
I wish I had some truly good news to share about Microsoft-itis, but the disease will be with us for a long time. It has infected every area of technology. Our best hope is for computing in the cloud. Of course we all know Al Gore discovered the cloud right after he discovered the internet and the moon and stars. The cloud MAY get us away from relying on Microsoft. With cloud computing, the operating system on your computer really doesn't matter as long as you have a browser with access to the internet. In another weird twist of history repeating itself, this is a lot like the mainframe computing model of the seventies and eighties, a lot of mostly dumb terminals accessing a central brain machine called a mainframe.
Maybe we should organize “Races for the Cure” for Microsoft-itis. Maybe Lance Armstrong will sell cheap bracelets to fund cloud research. I'm graciously willing to accept your donations. I will organize a think tank that will meet at Lost Rhino brewery. You are invited. It will be the first Wednesday of every month. Bring your brainpower and your thirst. Leave your thirst for closure behind.
Thanks for reading. For real tax accounting and tax advice, please visit the main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com. Also, if you have some snarky (or God forbid, sincere) comments I can use in support of my book proposal, please send them to fstitely2@gmail.com. Until next time....
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