You Expected a Website to Work? You're Kidding!

So the Affordable Health Care website isn't working?

Has anyone tried to use Yahoo email lately?

Or tried shopping on Macy's website?

Or even tried shopping Amazon on one of its off-days when it's stuck in a closed loop?

Have you tried to get your television service through Comcast cable for an entire evening without it breaking down and losing the signal ?

Get a new refrigerator that doesn't freeze everything when set at "Normal Cold"?

Get a $2400 hearing aid that amplifies without constant fiddling to remove feedback?

Use a $5000+ bi-pap sleep apnea machine by Respironics that has a built-in water heater that's supposed to work?

Get an on-line Amtrak ticket that has the right date on it?

Get your local bank's telephone information system to give you an update on your checking account?

Get someone on the phone at your phone service provider to explain why you have received a computer-generated letter telling you that some other unnamed person has been added to your account?

Like many of you I spend a lot of time just trying to get American businesses to function adequately.  How do these companies make any money?  How much do they owe me for all the trouble they cause me and the time they steal from me.

Last month Comcast's cable TV was down so much they had to credit me $100.  I could get rich being a Comcast customer.

So why the surprise that the Obama administration's computer contractors screwed up the health insurance website?  Especially when  the GOP in the House refused adequate funding for the startup.  Take the low bidder and get less.  That's how it works.  Why is that a surprise?

I was married to two different men over the course of 50 years.  Two men but one industry:  the electronics industry.  I saw computers go from punched cards and room-size machines to little itsy bitsy things that you can't really see.  The first micro-processors sat on my husband's chest of drawers while he and Bob Noyes tried to figure out what to do with them.  One thread has been constant for 50 years.  The stuff doesn't work.  Whether manufacturing overseas or not, the industry is of a get-it-out-the-door mentality that has carried over from the hardware to the software of the computer industry.

Selling the product and shoving it out the door has always taken priority over testing and making sure things work.  Get the beat on the other company!   Remember the hand-held electronic devices a few years ago which were getting hot and catching fire?  Not such a great idea in a hand-held device, right?

So why didn't someone tell Obama that "we need more time"?  Because no one in the electronics or programming industries is able to say those words.

And you wanna know why?  It's very simple.  They have been programmed not to!

And, kiddo, that's a program that's always worked!