I've been wondering lately if I should go to college.

Free stuff is good. Maybe not so good for the economy, but good for mental health. If we had to pay for everything, we'd all probably make a lot more money, and be able to buy more stuff, but I don't think we'd have as much stuff (stuff does not refer only to the physical).

I came across this site, called Nyanko Batake, which has a cool gallery. The pictures will often tell a little story just by themselves, although not a complete one. It is an instance of words not being important, which is good because the words would all be in Japanese otherwise.

Well, in keeping with that idea...

I may be old enough to remember a time when things just worked. Well, some things. There was once a push for reliability, things that wouldn't need to be replaced or repaired so often. Somehow, this trend was lost in the face of useless features and glitter. People would like a gizmo that does 99 useless things and 1 useful thing poorly, rather than a device that does that 1 useful thing well. People seem to want things that are faster regardless of whether or not they can use that extra speed.

It also seems like improvements make people lazier. Programmers used to optimize code so their programs would run faster, more reliably. Now, programmers are lazy, use code generators, making the faster processors necessary to do the same thing at the same speed as the older program on an older machine. I remember long ago, using a 33MHz computer, thinking how my word processor would be lightning fast with a 1GHz processor, but now it seems like my word processor takes longer to do anything. Restarting a program because it crashed somehow has become accepted. Having 128MB of RAM just to run an operating system doesn't seem weird to anyone.

I would take a heater that doesn't break down every three years over one that realistically simulates Jamaican weather. I would rather have a reliable refridgerator rather than one that can keep separate compartments different temperatures. I would rather have a car that doesn't need to be serviced every six months over one that has a switch that will make more noise and is labeled "performance". You can add features to things if you want, but don't make unnecessary sacrifices. I hate people who put marketability over reliability.

"We made it neon purple, so it'll be more popular with young people, but we had to sacrifice 20 miles per gallon, and the engine breaks when it goes over 80."

One of my many laments is "Patience = 30 seconds". It actually started while I was playing Starcraft. It seems like if you don't play Big Gay Hunters or Lost Temple, you're probably not going to play. The other maps are scarcely played anymore. I hate both those maps, so I would look for non-BGH non-temple games and join those. While waiting for players to join, I would notice that people wouldn't stay for more than 30 seconds, thus the game would never start. This is, coincidentally, the max length of time of the average television commercial. This annoyed me to the point where I stopped playing Starcraft altgother.

Now, while playing Warcraft 3 and Magic: The Gathering Online, I experience the same things. People join for about 30 seconds, then leave when the game hasn't started. That's pretty bad for MTGO because there's a minimum 3 minute wait (which is beyond stupid, but I'll get into that later). I've also noticed this patience-level outside of the gaming world. Many people consider a movie slow if it has 30 seconds of low-activity at any point. Action films are considered by the masses as poor if there isn't an explosion or neck-snapping every 30 seconds. You have to have something every half-minute to keep people interested.

I've witnessed people in their cars start to yell at the traffic light after they've been waiting for about 30 seconds. I've seen people in line at a music store get annoyed at the customer at the register because they've taken more than 30 seconds to pay by check (which is almost justified). I generally see it anywhere a small amount of patience is needed. Somehow people still manage to wait three hours in line to ride a rollercoaster, which is ironically something I refuse to do.

I could keep going on about it, but I've lost interest. It's taken more than two minutes to write all this as it is. To summarize the summary of the summary's summary, people are a problem.

Cell phones. God damn. I want one, but they seem to make people stupid.