Scott Adams' Blog

The Problem With the Economy

Posted February 12th, 2010 @ 3:22pm in #General Nonsense

My computer’s memory fills up a few times a day, and then the system crashes. It doesn’t seem to matter what applications I use. And closing applications doesn’t free up memory. This has been true on every computer I have owned, both Macs and PCs. Rebooting periodically is the only temporary fix. To which I say, “SERIOUSLY?? WTF???? IS THIS REALLY AN UNSOLVEABLE PROBLEM, LIKE FRICKIN’ GRAVITY???”

So yesterday I did some searching and found online a piece of software that would allegedly monitor my memory use and allow me to free up the stranded parts when needed. It got excellent reviews from professionals in various magazines. The thing I knew for sure is that one of two things would happen:

The software would do absolutely nothing.
The software would crash my system.

On the plus side, it did not crash my system. But neither did it do anything. I just sent an e-mail to the support address to ask if the buttons are some sort of placebo or practical joke. I can press all sorts of buttons on their unfathomable interface and the little graph that shows my memory use stays exactly the same. And just to make things ironic, THE FRICKIN’ THING USES MEMORY!!! It’s like buying paint remover that is actually paint.

This leads me to my point. I think the problem with our economy is that most products are complete and utter crap. Suppose, for example, that I want to buy a shirt that looks okay on a guy my age. I have a choice of styles that include surfer dude, preppy douchebag, grandpa’s barber, and human billboard. No one even bothers trying to make stylish clothes for the LARGEST SEGMENT OF THE POPULATION OF THE COUNTRY. Allow me to act surprised that Macy’s is having trouble.

Try to buy some furniture. I dare you. It will take two months to arrive, if you’re lucky. I am trying to figure out why no one jumps on the market opportunity to make furniture that can be delivered in only 6 weeks. Seriously. If the demand for frickin’ chairs is that high, why aren’t more people making them? Is EVERYONE busy making software that doesn’t work?

How about my new printer? The box said it can fax, scan, copy, print, floss my teeth, whatever. Every time I want to print a page of text, I hold my breath and burn incense. It’s an iffy proposition. I think the drivers actually rot. And God forbid I try to feed the device some important documents in the irrational hope of scanning or copying them. I kiss the documents goodbye before I send them to their destruction in the machine’s bowels.

As I write this, I’m waiting for a response to why my memory-freeing software doesn’t free any memory. I already know they will tell me to push exactly the buttons I already pushed, and when it doesn’t work, they will act mystified and tell me they have never seen this issue before.

That’s what’s wrong with the economy.