Scott Adams's Blog, page 380

The Not Even Trying Products

Today I went on a scavenger hunt. Specifically I was trying to find the "reply" button on my Gmail interface. The damn thing keeps moving, depending on the length of the message. And it's pretty well hidden in a forest of 40-some buttons sprinkled around the page that do all sorts of things I rarely or never want to do. Three of those buttons are different ways to get you back to the inbox.

To be fair, Gmail is lightning fast, and free. But did anyone with training in interface design even ...

Things You Dread

Last month I asked you to tell me why your project at work, whatever it is, appears to be doomed. Many of your comments became the seeds of Dilbert comics. You might have recognized them.

That experiment worked so well that it's time to try a variation. Tell me in the comments what upcoming activity at work you are most dreading, and why. Dread is funny. Be sure to use the word dread in your comment.

As you know, most problems in life are caused by sadists, nut bags, and imbeciles. Be sure t...

Things That Work

Last night I realized I was whining too much in this blog about products that don't work. So I decided to write today's post about a product that exceeded my expectations. We designed our home with a residential elevator. We didn't want to go through all the effort of building our dream home and then decades from now need to move when stairs become an issue. I was worried about having an elevator because it seems like exactly the sort of thing that will break on a regular basis. Last night I...

Dilbert for Sale. Peanuts Too.

Today United Media announced it might try to sell the licensing rights for Dilbert, Peanuts, and the rest of its licensing properties.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/35536849

United Media has been handling syndication and licensing for Dilbert for over 20 years. They plan to keep the syndication part, which involves selling and distributing comics to newspapers. The licensing group, which is potentially for sale, manages licensing of Dilbert, Peanuts, and other properties to the third parties wh...

More Problems with the Economy

I've run into this situation twice in the past year: A sales person will tell me, in insincere confidence, what a jerk some other customer is. It usually comes in the form of a story that is presumably meant to amuse me, as in "You won't believe what this customer did the other day." There's usually a point to the story, such as Don't waste a sales person's time if you aren't going to spend a lot of money. Or Don't ask stupid questions. I suppose the sales person who shares these stories wa...

Replacing Yourself

Think of the first 20 people you know who have had all the kids they are likely to have. That generally means people over 40. For the purposes of this discussion, exclude anyone over 70.  Add up the adults in your group. Then add up the number of offspring they produced. Is the net gain in humans sufficient to grow the population?

When I do the math with my own circle of friends, we approximately break even, after allowing for spillage and spares. It made me wonder about the rest of the world...

Shiny Objects

Recently, two of the smartest people that I know told me they are putting all of their money in silver and gold respectively. The thinking is that our national debt will surely crush us, along with the next wave of mortgage defaults, and the collapse of the dollar, and the drop in consumer spending, and perhaps a plague of locusts. The only option you can rule out, they believe, is that things will go well.

On one hand, I understand their points of view. I can't imagine any way the national d...

The Problem With the Economy

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 moni...

My Shop Vac

Now that I have a manly garage, with a manly workbench, I was delighted to receive for Christmas a Shop Vac. It's a magical device that sucks up all sorts of debris, even liquid. It has attachments for everything. I think one attachment is for haircuts, but I haven't tried it yet. The Shop Vac is gray and black and reminds me of R2D2 so much that I expect it to jack into my breaker panels and reprogram my DVR.

My point is that my Shop Vac is totally awesome. That is, unless I try to move it. ...

Knowledge That Matters

I wonder if the most valuable knowledge you can have is the knowledge of what you're good at. For example, I doubt you are working at the very best job for your aptitude. We tend to drift into our careers. It's more luck than plan. But imagine if you were born knowing you had the natural aptitude to be the world's best brain surgeon, or guitar player, or graphic designer. On the flip side, maybe you thought you had more talent in some field than you do, and wasted a lot of time preparing for ...