Um...Burger King?

OK, I'm not sure why this needs to be said, but apparently Burger King needs to be reminded that they sell food. That people eat. With their mouths.

When I was younger, Burger King ads featured delicious-looking flame-broiled hamburgers and a song about how they'd make my burger however I wanted. The song was so catchy that I can still sing it all the way through without even thinking, so it's not like it wasn't working.

Then, they got a new ad agency. Who decided that the best way to get people to buy burgers was by showing me an incredibly creepy plastic-headed king with dead eyes and an "I like to wear skins" grin. I don't know...maybe lots of people thought it was all edgy or something, but I haven't set foot inside a Burger King since I started associating it with waking up to find a plastic-headed serial killer in my bedroom, as depicted on one of the commercials. Burger King even calls this thing "The Creepy King" so it's not like they don't know. At any rate, I'm not eating anything that The Creepy King hands me, that's for darn sure!

Recently though, Burger King had a marketing epiphany. They decided to ditch The Creepy King and instead try to get me to buy burgers by ... wait for it ... showing me Steve Tyler of Aerosmith TOUCHING MY FOOD. Now, think what you will about Aerosmith's music. The fact remains that Steve Tyler makes a point of being a very very dirty boy. He's not clean. He's not nice. He's not safe. So, why in the FDA would I want to eat anything that he's been even marginally involved with? WHY?

Then, there is the "Mr. Beckham Goes to Burger King" commercial. David Beckham is drop-dead gorgeous and I'm always happy to see him show up on my TV, but the commercial is about the entire staff of BK failing to serve him food.

Burger King: You sell the ability to walk up to a counter and get a reasonably edible burger for a relatively small amount of money in a short amount of time.  At least, you used to. I never go to Burger King anymore, because I really can't figure out what it is you do now. Well done.

The Pareto Principle For Developers

For those who don't know, the Pareto Principle is that thing that says 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. So, while ten goths may have collectively used all the eyeliner, two of them (we'll call them the Bogart Twins) used 80% of it between them. 

The Pareto Principle has been applied to software developers by saying that we spend 80% of our time on 20% of the work for any given project. I've come to the conclusion that this is hooey. We do not spend 80% of our time on 20% of the work. We spend 10% of our time doing the entire project and the remaining 90% is consumed by some minute detail that should have taken five minutes and ends up eating three days.

I once did a little project where I knocked out the code that did the actual work in a couple of hours. I then spent days battling the generic installer so I could deploy the thing. Which was frustrating, but not even close to the stupidest of the examples I can offer.

If you want to see me levitate with anger, let's talk about the time I couldn't get something to be the right color. It was a simple RGB setting. It was even called RGB. I checked my value over and over again. I tried multiple syntaxes. I pored over the documentation. I cursed the gods. Eventually, I stumbled upon the problem. Some clever soul had decided that RGB values should really be specified in alphabetical order, i.e. BGR.  They also decided that this was so obviously correct, it didn't need to be documented. I'm not making this up.

I've also spent absurd amounts of my time filling out structures. Filling out structures isn't a problem. Needs to be done. However, filling out structures where many of the members must be set and there is only one valid value for each one and it's cryptic and it doesn't default and you have to go look up what The Magic Value is for each one of them makes me want to take up drinking just to see if it all makes more sense with a bottle of Scotch in me.

I could go on. And on. And on and on and on and on and on. We all could. As I publish this, I'm actually a bit concerned that the planet will be knocked off its orbit by the sheer force of all the programmers nodding their heads.

So remember, when you pay a programmer for an hour of their time, remember: 90% of that is to pay a person to sit at a desk with their head in their hands weeping at someone else's remarkable stupidity.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I saw yet another TV show last night where a man looked earnestly into a woman's eyes, told her that he'd wanted her from the moment he saw her, and she melted.

I just don't get it. If somebody wants me the moment they see me, then they don't want me. They want my hair, or my ass, or my breasts, or the way I echo something that's already in their head. This is not something for which I melt.

I want somebody who has wanted me since they read my source code, or heard me speak about good design principles, or saw my thoughts on women's issues, or found out that I think it's really important to be kind to the people around you. Something besides a visual impression reacting with their own preconceptions.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but, "You have beautiful eyes," doesn't even catch my interest, let alone make me swoon. I'm much more likely to roll my "beautiful" eyes and get on with what I was doing. Because I'm doing things. Things that do not involve sitting around waiting for some random guy to decide he might be willing to hit that. Or even to have coffee with that.

I run a business. I write code. I participate in my community. I garden. I cook for pleasure. I play World of Tanks. I read. I do things with my family. It takes a lot more than a vague compliment about my looks to get my attention these days. Especially since I don't consider the fact that said random guy thinks that his opinion on my looks will be important to me to be a compliment in the first place.

I'm complicated. I'm sophisticated. I'm engaged in many activities and interests. I'm multi-dimensional. I'm variable. I'm articulate. I'm interesting. Yes, I'm also pretty by some standards, but if that's why someone is interested in me, then I'm not interested in them.

I've reached a stage in my life where I require someone who wants to be with me to engage with me as a whole person. Anything less is just a waste of my time and energy, and those are precious commodities.

So, no, I'm not a bitch because I don't consider Random Person thinking I'm hot to be a high-priority event that deserves my attention. It's just not very important to me compared to the other things in my life, like the people who have actually gotten to know me. Sorry.

How To Be Cool

My partner told me a story today about a guy he knew in high school and recently reconnected with on Facebook. This guy was really nice. He was kind even to people who were not kind to him. He did his best to like even people who did not like him.

He grew up to be an investment lawyer. A very wealthy and successful investment lawyer. He accomplished this not through the kind of reprehensible investment strategies that have so damaged our economy, but through slow, smart investments. Investments that made money for him, his clients, and generally strengthened the economic environment in which he moved.

He leads a full and well-rounded life. He earns a good living. He has a family. He writes and plays music. And he's still a really nice guy.

When my partner reconnected with him, he was welcoming and glad to be back in touch. He sent some of his music. He still speaks to people with kindness, even though he is well out of the economic class of many of his friends. He provides good and thorough investment advice when asked without being superior or dismissive.

He was a good boy who has grown into a good man.

At the end of the story, my partner bowed his head and said, "And this is the guy I ditched in high school because I didn't think he was cool."

How World of Tanks Ate My Brain

For about two years now, my best friend has been playing World of Tanks. He's been playing a lot. And by a lot, I mean he recently played his 4000th round. I was really surprised by this because, while he likes tank games, he doesn't like online games that you play with groups of other people. I kept expecting him to get fed up with that part of it and move on, but he didn't.

About six months ago, he started telling me hopefully about how you could now "platoon" with another person so both of you would always be on the same team. "Oh crap," thought I. "He wants to me to play some stupid-ass video game."

I hate video games. I like playing card games on the computer, but I really dislike most video games. I hate games you can't pause. I hate playing against other people. I hate games where you have to drive. I hate games where you have to shoot. I I have terrible problems with directionality, reading maps, and orienting myself in first-person view games. World of Tanks has all of those things.

Needless to say, I declined to platoon.

A few weeks ago, I was in a particularly good mood and as he was finishing a round of the game, I said I wanted to try playing a a round. He couldn't hand me laptop fast enough. So, I played a round of the stupid game. Then he tried to get the laptop back. Which didn't work out well because it turns out that I love this game. I shouldn't love it. It has everything I hate in a game, but somehow they managed to balance all the elements in such a way that I'm having an absolute blast playing it.

Currently, I've got an M3 Stuart. Some of the players know everything about the actual tanks, but I'm doing pretty well just to remember the name of the one I'm driving. The game has tried to be pretty good about replicating the actual capabilities and features of all the tanks in the game, but where it really shines is where they decided that purity just isn't fun.

When you enter a round, you are on one of about 20 maps with 29 other tanks, 15 to a team. The other tanks may or may not ever have been on the same field as yours in real life, or even in the same war. WWI American tanks are mixed with WWII German tanks. Chinese tanks are teamed with French tanks. The only thing that controls which 30 tanks end up in the same round is that they fall in the same range of  capabilities. A Tier I tank doesn't find itself in the middle of ten Tier 7's, which just wouldn't be any fun at all. None of the maps are real places and none of the battles ever happened. The rules are simple and the possible strategies are endless. Some people can't drive. Others can fire accurately while driving backwards in a circle. Those who get killed continue to shout advice at the survivors via chat. It's exciting and addictive and a giant pile of fun.

However, this game is eating my brain, especially when I'm driving my car. I find that I am taking corners tightly and carefully to avoid ambush. I am certain that all bushes conceal an enemy about to fire on me. I have to resist pausing before I crest hills and stop myself from hanging sharp rights into fields to avoid staying on the roads. I have to remember that my 2002 Taurus cannot crash through walls or drive over other cars. I wonder why my artillery is not taking out the oncoming traffic.

I plan to continue playing this game, but if you are driving through my area, be careful. I may be "hull down" on the other side of a hill or camping in the bushes waiting to strike.