Things not working properly even after you've given them a good thumping

Douglas Adams said "We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books."

At my old work, we had a database that was pretty impressive, but that on occasions failed to work. There were lots of "wouldn't it be great if"s and "if only it did this"s. At the company I now work with, there's a database system and it fundamentally works. But on occasions it doesn't work. Sometimes because people do silly things with it. Sometimes because computer programmers don't know as much about everyone's job as the people that do the job, so don't foresee an eventuality.

This week, we discovered a host of customers had been sent statements that were not complete. This was down to a human error but a perfect system would have highlighted the error, I think, and mentioned it during the printing process. I've spent most of today explaining the error to several clients.

I usually agree with everything Douglas Adams says, and everything he infers. He was someone who not only shared a lot of my world view, but shaped it. I shared his view, from an early age. The quote at the top seems to come from someone who makes a living without needing to use things that don't work, and seemed to imply it was a bad thing. I'm glad things don't work sometimes, and a lot of my old colleagues probably are too, if they think about it. If we ever make a system or an object that just works, it will stop people from working, and all of the offices will be filled with shiny infallible machines. And I'll have no money to buy food, clothes, long weekends in Singapore and festival tickets. Or the wine I'm drinking right now. So, I'd like to raise a cheap Australian Cabernet Sauvignon to things that don't work. Cheers!