I consider myself a reasonable person.  I have, through my travels, learned many lessons about the wondrous variety that is humankind.  These lessons have shown that it's best to set one's expectations extremely low and hope that one may be surprised more often than disappointed.

That being said, there seems to be a growing trend of incompetence sweeping through society.  It's becoming commonplace for products, services, and anything else you can think of, to operate substantially under what a sane person would consider adequate.

For instance, my wife and myself recently decided to switch from Comcast to DirecTV for our TV service.  We had the DVR service from Comcast then, due to highly unsatisfactory performance, we decide to give satellite a try.

Things went well for about a month, then, suddenly and randomly, shows that were set to record would no longer record.  They would appear to record, but that was just to toy with us.  There'd be a "hey I'm recording now, guy" icon in the guide and a happy little orange light on the outside.  But, alas, nothing.  Fooled!  In general, the whole DVR is a piece of crap; the interface and general usage is horrendous.  It's impressive how poorly it does the one, and only, thing that it's supposed to do.

There's more to that story, and perhaps I'll share it in another post.  It basically involves the DTV tech support telling us we can't turn our TV on while something is recording.  I'm guessing the invisible television gnomes anger the DVR.

So, there we have two cases where the sole reason for something being in place was to serve a particular purpose and it couldn't even do that.  First, the DVR itself, then the crap-sucking tech support.

Another example of the growing inadequacy keeps popping up that the local fast food chains.  Somehow it's become impossible for the employees of these fine establishments to read a screen and put stuff in a bag.  I mean, come on, that's all you have to do!  You look at a list, pick up a clearly labeled foodstuff, and stick it in a bag. I guess I ultimately shouldn't expect much from people making minimum wage who are being crap danced^* on by some guy/girl manager who think they play an important role in society.

I think it's fair, however, to expect more out of my fellow programmers.  I expect that if you are a web developer that you should understand the lifecycle of an HTTP request.  That seems like a minimum.  But, alas, everyday, I am surprised by the lack of fundamental knowledge in so-called web developers.  And that, unfortunately, is just the tip of the iceberg.  I'm sure there will be more posts on this subject as well.

I could go on, and I'm sure I will, because this is really ridiculous.  We, as a society, need to hold ourselves to a higher standards.  We should always strive to be better and fight complacency.

I'll leave you with this: the more you think you know, the less you actually do.  People who are convinced they know everything, never learn anything.  A penny saved is a penny earned.  Blood is thicker than water.  Don't judge a book by its cover.  Never place valuables inside livestock.  Avoid eating those little packets that come in shoe boxes that say "do not eat."  Never make eye contact with a baboon.  And, finally, what ever you put in, always consider that a doctor may have to take out.. because of the vacuum that's created when you put it in.. and he'll laugh and tell all of the nurses what you've done and you'll cry a little but then you'll think to yourself, "it was worth it" after you apologize to everyone at your kid's first birthday.

*Yes, I believe I invented the phrase "crap danced" or at least its use in that manner.