Software Problems - Daily Diary

A friend and I were talking the other day and I mentioned how I think the current state of software technology is awful these days. My friend looked at me like I was crazy; he thought current software was pretty incredible.


How could two reasonably sane people have such differing opinions about current consumer computing technology? Obviously, if you look out at the Internet and read most tech blogs, it is almost non-stop advertising for how great everything is and UPGRADES and PROGRESS.  If you point out to these people how, say, Firefox and Adobe can't seem to fix their years-long problems with Flash crashing their browser, or how often Excel locks up a computer, you'll get something like "oh, but the new features!" or "they'll fix this eventually," you begin to realize that these tech geeks are in denial. They have a vested interest in selling the myth that tech is getting better, when in fact it is getting worse. I call these people technology apologists.

My position is that at least 50% of so-called technical progress in software is NOT worth it because it introduces so many additional bugs that negates any additional productivity the new features are supposed to provide. Yes, syncing my phone to my GMail account is a new feature, but NOT having the (insanely simple) option to sync ONLY entries with phone numbers is INSANELY stupid and not worth it.

Per a discussion with a friend the other day, I thought I'd keep a log of the software problems I encounter in a TYPICAL day.  I am probably a borderline "power" user, but I think what I do is hardly unusual.

Even using Firefox to type this in has awful bugs. Why does hitting ENTER while I'm writing this take me to the bottom of the blog. WHO KNOWS?   The most maddening thing about current tech (for me) is that the answer to the questions "why does this software work like this?" or "how can I/who can I go to to fix this?" are almost always: NO ONE KNOWS. It is almost impossible for the average use to FIND anyone who DOES know.

Granted, lots of things work right, but the level of shittiness that tech users are expected to put up with to do simple, daily tasks is extraordinary. There are NO products other products this shitty than tech/software in a capitalist market about which you can say this.

(This message started being composed using Yahoo Web Mail.)

Starting at 8:05 a.m.

Using my 4-month-old HTC One VX multiple-core Android phone running next-to-latest Android (v 4.1.2):

- Paid headphone button controller app on Android phone does not advance to next song as advertised
- I brought up Chrome on my Android phone here at work and I get an error because the last page was a "verify you want to connect to the Internet using Goose Island's free Wi-Fi!" Chrome will NEVER find this - BECAUSE I'M NOT AT Goose Island USING FUCKING Goose Island's FREE WI-FI. If I was the average user and brought up Chrome and constantly saw an error message (see above), I'd think SOMETHING was broken with my phone/connection/etc. It's not.
- The reason the above is fucked up: you cannot set a home page on Google Chrome on Android; it will only display the last page used.  I want to set it to Google.com but I CAN'T. NO ONE CAN on Chrome for Android. IT IS RETARDED.
- You cannot "quit" Google Chrome on Android. You can only go "back" using the back arrows until you get to the first screen (see above) and the back one more to "quit" back to the Android home screen. Why? NO ONE KNOWS.

Using my Dell Intel i7 w/ 8 GB memory running Windows 7 ENTERPRISE:

- I am reading my e-mail. I use Firefox 24.0 to read my mail on Yahoo web mail. Yahoo web mail is incredibly shitty since the Yahoo "upgrade" in June.  It take multiple tries to move/delete/file e-mail messages. It takes 1-10 tries to delete or move an email message. Messages that were marked "read" are randomly marked "unread" over the course of a reading session. This happens regardless of shitty browser is used (FF, Chrome, IE). This happens throughout EVERY SINGLE DAY I USE YAHOO E-MAIL.  It is MADDENING that such an essential, every-day tool DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY. It used to work fine; now it does not. THIS IS NOT PROGRESS.
- Firefox on Windows hangs and crashed on start-up today because the Flash Player plug-in takes up ENORMOUS amounts of resources, e.g. 200-300 MB ON TOP of FF's 1-2 GB of memory use. This bug has been present at least since FF 8.0; we care currently on FF 24. There are THOUSANDS of messages on the Mozilla site on this problem. Neither FF nor Adobe seem capable of fixing this.
- Speaking of goddamn Flash, YouTube videos ALWAYS play poorly (jerkily, studdering) on Firefox, and yet play absolutely smoothly on Google Chome - in fact, it is the ONLY thing I can say is superior on Chrome vs. FF. Why is this? NO ONE KNOWS.
- And don't get me started as to why some web sites ONLY work with IE vs. FF vs. Chrome - with Chrome being the "least supported" even though they claim to be the most "open" of the browsers. It's a joke.
-Speaking of the fucking Flash player, I have it turned "OFF" in FF (i.e. "never activate"), yet when I go to a site that needs FF, it keeps insisting that I MUST download Flash and install it even though it is already installed. THIS IS SO RETARDED; why not just PROMPT to turn it on? Why can't FF know it is already fucking installed????
- "Shockwave Flash may be busy or may have stopped responding."

[BTW, when FF crashes as it just did a moment ago, it tries to "help" by recommending a page on how YOU can debug THEIR software to find out how YOU can LIVE with it. It requires you to disable ALL the plugins and add-ons (which are mysteriously called "extensions" in the "add-ons" page - incredibly confusing to non-techies) and re-start these one at a time. So basically, they're asking the average user to be fairly sophisticated (like a developer) to figure out what is worng with THEIR software!!! I'm technically savvy and I find this process laborious and insulting to the user and incredibly lazy from the FF developer. Why is there no FF tool to help you find the add-on aka extension that's causing the problem? This is the level automobiles were at in 1910! This is absolutely unacceptable for any product, but tech apologists think this is "normal."]

- Whilst updating Flash via FF-generated message that I must update my Flash Player, I got a "Windows Explorer has stopped working. Click here to search online for a solution and restart the program." I've selected "Find a solution online" for dozens of different crashes and it NEVER finds a solution. Why does it NEVER find a solution to the problem? NO ONE KNOWS.
- BTW, I did the above update only to have the Flash Updater Installer state: "You already have the latest Flash Player." Why did I get this fucking update message to Update in the first place? NO ONE KNOWS.
- Also, I did the above update and in ADDITION to getting the relatively benign Installer message that I don't need to update, I got this ERROR message saying that the update FAILED that I know I can happily ignore: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/completion/aih/?exitcode=1013&type=install&appid=200  Yes, *I* know I can ignore this message; but do other computer users know to ignore it? NO? WHY EVEN SEND THIS MESSAGE? NO ONE KNOWS.


It is now 11:12 a.m. I am absolutely not making any of the above problems up. AND: I've spent the majority of the past 2 hours in meetings NOT in front of a computer. Tech apologists find this level of shittiness acceptable. I do not.

Back on my work computer:

- I am installing some updated software I use daily [Skype, PeaZip, Google Drive]. Somehow, for each of these, the permissions to create programs menus in the Start Menu got corrupted (NO ONE KNOWS HOW OR WHY THIS HAPPENED) and the software won't install correctly, and a window pops up with a cryptic error message and asks me to retry, ignore, cancel, etc. I know how to get around this. Would a normal user? NO. They would be FUCKED.
- The PeaZip (as popular as Winzip, etc.) .exe installer program comes up as a red "could be harmful to your computer!" message in IE (NOT from my anti-virus software). It is not harmful. Why do I get this message? NO ONE KNOWS. BTW, I've had to click down 4 layers of "are you sure?" messages just to get this to install.
- BTW, I tried to save this e-mail message JUST NOW as a Draft and Yahoo e-mail popped up a message:

"We’re sorry, but att.net Mail can't load due to a temporary error. You can try back again shortly, or visit our help pages for ways to troubleshoot the issue.

    Try again
    Visit Help for troubleshooting instructions
Temporary error: 4"

Why does this happen? NO ONE KNOWS. Will Troubleshooting help? NO. It never helps. Why? NO ONE KNOWS.
More importantly, will I ever get my e-mail compose message back? Will I lose everything I've typed in thusfar (which has happened MULTIPLE times to everyone who has ever used e-mail using one of the big "free" e-mail systems)? NO ONE KNOWS. So now I am typing this on Notepad so I don't LOSE everything I've typed in so far about how shitty software is.

- My weather notification icon on my taskbar does not display the temperature until I click on it the first time. I've re-installed the program multiple times [it used to work correctly] to fix this. This will go away eventually for a reason NO ONE KNOWS.
-  I just started up Chrome browser here at work, which I use for school-related things only. (I use FF for non-school related things.) It comes up saying "Chrome did not shut down correctly. Restore previous pages?" Now, I KNOW last time I shut down my computer using the standard Windows shut down. For SOME FUCKING REASON Chrome cannot handle this, so I get this startup error if I forget to "exit" Chrome "correctly". [Ever get that, "He's dead, Jim!" message from Chrome? Great corporate strategy: use geek humor to try to cover up how incredibly shitty your software is - it can't shut down correctly on it's own! Solution: display a lame Star Trek message. HILARIOUS!!!!] [Well, at least Chrome did not come up with the sproatic "can't access webpage" start up messages, which is does about 50% of the time.]
- My Skype update now means that Skype does not start up completely. I never get to the login screen. I'll try to uninstall Skype and try to re-install.
- During the uninstall of Skype Click to Call, I get an error message, "Another program is being installed. Cannot continue." Is this true? NO, of course not. So, I quit the uninstall. And behold: Skype Click to Call is removed!! Did this uninstall happen properly? Where did the error message come from? NO ONE KNOWS.
- After completely un-installing and a regisitry cleanup and a Windows restart, I tried to re-install Skype, and it re-installed and started up cleanly. [Did it really require all this for it to work properly? Past experience suggests yes, better safe than sorry. This is NORMAL in the tech world. I think this level of quality is pathetic.]

It is now lunchtime. These are the tech issues I've encoutered in the first 1/2 of my work day. Onwards!

- I need to compose an email reply using my school's Outlook web mail. I'm reminded that Google Chrome will not open pop-up windows, such as those generated by an e-mail reply or compose message in Outlook Web Mail, in a new tab in Chrome; it will ONLY open then in a new window. There is NO setting or option in Chrome to make a pop-up open in a new tab. [People have been asking for this feature in Chrome since 2009. For any tab-based browser, to NOT give the option to open pop-ups in a new tab in the main browser window is FUCKING INSANE.]
- Speaking of tabs and Chrome, you can't scroll though tabs using a mouse wheel or anything other than selecting a tab. There is a Google Chrome Toolbox extension that has a checkbox "Scroll tabs using mouse wheel" that NEVER FUCKING WORKS, HAS NEVER WORKED, and in spite of thousands of customers complaining about this on the Chrome user site, WILL PROBABLY NEVER WORK. Why? NO ONE KNOWS.
- I'm also reminded in just my daily browsing that you can't just print a facebook page. Everything comes mis-aligned and cut off. So if you want to print off all your friends who are having birthdays this week, you can't: you'll have to copy and paste these to SOME OTHER PROGRAM THAT WORKS, or just fucking deal with it. You'd think that SOMEONE would fix this or provide a SANE and useful way of printing something from the most popular social networking site in the fucking universe, but techies obviously have something better to do. [BTW, people have been asking for this feature for YEARS.]
- Speaking of printing, do you know that if you want to print a list of the add-ons (or extensions, depending on which page you're on) you have installed/active/disabled in Firefox, YOU FUCKING CAN'T?  Do, even though it looks like an ordinary tab listing your add-ons, you can't print it. There is no context menu when you right-click - it no longer works on an add-ons page. Under a File menu, if you select "Print" you get a message "printing XUL documents not supported." Why and what the fuck in an XUL document????  NO ONE KNOWS.
- Firefox, Windows Explorer, etc. have had multiple bouts of "Not responding" during the day. This on my obviously underpowered (sarcasm) i7 8GB Dell desktop computer.
- I have a dictionary program that is supposed to allow you to specialty-click (e.g. alt-right-click) on a highlighted word and up pops a definition and other entries from Wikipedia, etc. It was incredibly useful and worked PERFECTLY on XP. I just tried it now and it doesn't work - nothing happens. Of course, it works spottily or not at all on Windows 7, and NO ONE has come up with a replacement. I keep it running on my Windows 7 box because it works about 50% of the time. This is supposed to be acceptable to the tech apologists, but I think this is pathetic.
- I need to log into AT&T's web site to view my bill. Because of cookies, it has my phone number pre-filled into the "login" field as "(773) 307-5203", even though last time I entered 7733075203; however, if I just enter my password, the site comes back and says that "(773) 307-5203" is invalid because it has special characters in it. BUT I DIDN'T ENTER IT WITH THESE SPECIAL CHARACTERS; THE FUCKING AT&T site did it!!  So I have to re-enter it as 7733075203. 
- Speaking of my desktop dictionary not working, I decided to look online for a desktop dictionary software replacement. I found high recommendations for "The Sage", which is supposed to do everything I want: runs on the desktop and is available w/o internet connection (i.e. standalone); browser integration, etc. All you have to do is install it and then you should be able to ctl-right-click on any word in any document on any application and it dictionary & theasaurus entry should should pop up. So I install it without issues. Does it actually work????? NO, of COURSE not. I try ctl-right clicking on a word in this very message I am writing you, and the normal right-click menu appears for Notepad. WHY? NO ONE KNOWS. What's wrong and how can I fix this? NO ONE KNOWS. Why does this work for some people and not others? NO ONE KNOWS. So I'll just uninstall it. This is the state-of-the-art in software right now.
- Speaking of state-of-the-art, I just went on Google Play to see if there's any app updates for my phone. Also, I remembered an app I downloaded some months ago and then removed and I wanted to see if there's an update for that one too, but I don't remember exactly the name of it. Google Play has "My Apps" and also "All" which lists all the apps I've ever downloaded. However, I quickly find out that you can't sort this list of All apps in alphabetical order; it's hard to see for sure, but it looks like they are listed in the order downloaded. Look in settings or anything, and NOPE - you can't list these in any user-defined order. This is bullshit, so I use the "feedback" on Google Play to say this is bullshit, and it turns out there is NO WAY to just provide this feedback via e-mail, etc.; the menus take you to a place where Google will have to call you on your phone. What the hell, I'm not busy at the moment, and to Google's credit, they call me almost immediately. Of course, I have to give them AGAIN all the information I just entered in Google Play JUST TO TELL THEM THAT THEY SHOULD PROVIDE A LIST OF MY APPS IN ALPHEBETICAL ORDER. The guy from Google is very pleasant, and puts me on hold for 3 minutes to pass this feedback onto whomever. Will this be another "feature" Google users will ask for for years and Google won't provide it? WHO KNOWS? NO ONE KNOWS. But the nice guy from Google seems absolutely clueless as to why I would want this. He asks if I can fill out a brief survey at the end of the call, and I say yes, but of course some software glitch prevents him from attaching the survey to the phone call and we end the call.  This is my interaction with the most advanced software development company on the planet.

- Today is my birthay and a number of people who sent me messages in Skype are wondering why I did not reply to them when in fact I did not see ANY messaged in Skype for me. WHY??? No one knows.



- Today I found out that my phone's voicemail feature got turned off when I upgraded my data plan back in June.  I have not had voicemail since June. I had to call AT&T to find this out, have them turn my voicemail feature back on, and re-set up my voicemail. Prior to this, any called would just hear my phone ring and ring endlessly. I was told by the AT&T tech person that "their system does this" when data plan changes, and since voicemail is "free" with my plan, there is no refund or compensation to be had. I've wondered why I've not received ANY voicemails over the past several months in spite of many missed calls. I thought maybe the trend was not to leave voicemail messages anymore. 

- Top 'o the morning to you!  I just brought up Google Chrome and I get the infamous, inexplicable "This webpage is not available" for MOST (but not all) the 6 tabs on my start-up page. Why? NO ONE KNOWS.
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“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing.”

           - Arundhati Roy