jr conlin's ink stained banana

Ok, remember my post about Windows7 being usable? Nevermind.

Lately, i've been increasingly disappointed by technology. Stuff works, but quite often, just barely. As a f'rinstance, if i install my work VPN onto my snazzy new Win7 laptop, it does evil, horrible things to the core network driver. The best thing is that there's lots of people i can line up for blame. Microsoft (for making an operating system where the network device interface can crash silently with no way to tell/recover/figure out what the hell happened), my place of employment (for not providing a simple damn ssh proxy i can use instead of some horrible Java based wvpn), even Ubuntu gets some hate because the various default configurations both don't work on my snazzy new laptop, nor provide a clear, non conflicting java install so i can use the crappy WVPN i'm forced to use.

This means that for all intents and purposes, should i want to use the WVPN and not have my machine rendered mostly unusable: (broken sleep functions, etc) i need to run the WVPN inside a virtual machine running XP.

This is not what technology promised. My life is not made easier. Bliss and astonishment do not fill my eyes. Actually, quite the opposite. More anger and free-form profanity.

And it's not just this. i could list hundreds of items ranging from digital frames to DVD players to cell phones that all fail to deliver the sort of wonder and delight that, frankly, i'd expect in the 21st century.

For the record, my first MP3 player was a Creative Jukebox that took 6 rechargable AA batteries and held a massive 230MB of music. It worked great. It even recharged the batteries. What's more, i could use it to charge the AA batteries in my somewhat oversized wireless headphones. These devices were only lost because they physically failed at some point. Ultimately, these were simple devices, focused on single tasks, and doing so magnificently. i'll pitch in that my camera is similarly highly functional in that regard and manages to provide me continuing delight.

i know i kind of beat the "Simple" drum like a politically incorrect target of an oppressive regime, but there's a bloody reason. i remember what it was like in the "bad old days" when things actually were simple. Things actually worked most of the time back then. For 's sake, if we're headed toward the future, we should not be looking quite so fondly backwards.