Peaceful. Calming. Necessary

Some days I wonder if I've completely lost it. Things that ought not to be difficult, and in fact were not difficult in the past are becoming rage inducing ordeals. A few days ago it was trying to get something into and out of dropbox on different computers.

Today it was Amazon. One of our favourite authors has released a novella called The Flowers of Vashnoi. (The title tells you who, if you're a fan.) I saw the email from Amazon saying we might be interested. Linda read the sample and wanted it, and asked me to buy it.

I've done this before. I picked up the iPad and tried to buy. (Ok, it was several years ago, but so what?)  No way. I could not find a way to buy it. Amazon just kept telling me I could read it. Eventually I logged into the computer, bought it, and sent it to my iPad. Linda is reading it now.

There are many days now I think this whole internet and computers in general thing has jumped the shark. Some of you know I gave up on Evernote because they kept changing their interface. Once upon a time it was a useful app. Then one day I'm looking at my device, wondering how to add a note. I decided that if I had to figure out the interface every time I wanted to use it, I was done.

Another example, Snag It. It's a a screen capture app. Back in the early 2000's, it was totally the bomb. I could be in an app, do a keyboard command, draw a square, alt tab to Word, Cmd V to paste it, all faster than talking about it. I did a zillion screen shots while writing business requirements documents and test results and how to manuals. Now that simple app is a jungle. I can use it, but it does so many things that I don't want it to do, that it doesn't do the things I want it to do very well at all. Not happy.

Don't get me started on Maximo. Yes, I know, I chose to take this job, knowing how complex and bassackwards Maximo is behind the scenes. But there are lots of days I wonder just what they were thinking when they designed it, or what drugs they were smoking when they were "improving" it. Fortunately, for much of what I have to do I need not look at the front end. Though one of these days I'm going to have to rewrite the MAX DECODE statement to untwist attributes. (If you know what that means, you feel my pain. If you don't, treasure your ignorance.)

And Excel and dates. OMG. There are lots of days I want a button on Excel to make it stupider and stop trying to help me. I want dates to be presented in the one true format and none other. Today is 2018-05-29 for ease of reading, but for the grownups it's 20180529. All together now. There is no other rational way of writing a date. If you think so, you are part of the brainwashed by Microsoft problem, and we can't be friends anymore.

It keeps getting more and more complicated. App designers keep adding "features" and changing the interface to make it look like they are doing something. Usually it's making it worse. Apple is long past that point. If you have any doubt, just try to use iTunes. Don't get me started on the program that deals with photos. I used to totally be an Apple guy. Now I'm wondering if I'm ever going to buy another Apple device.

In the midst of so much rage, it's nice that there's some calm happening. What could be more soothing than some white flowers with faint pink or yellow highlights? Plus water drops! What more do you want?