This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
California Careless
Some of you know that I founded a business called Prophet way back in 1992 and, among dozens of other products, we created ProphetCharts. I use this product to this day (constantly, in fact), and even though Prophet was sold nearly nine years ago, and its products were frozen in time, ProphetCharts is still superb and, for me, irreplaceable.
The main reason ProphetCharts has stood the test of time is because I was so relentless about polishing the product. Any time there was the smallest irksome problem, or something that could be just a little bit better, I would gripe about it until it was perfect. If I only had the last nine years to continue griping, God knows how cool ProphetCharts would be by now.
Sadly, government-created software products utterly lack this kind of level of care. Hired guns receive staggering fortunes to write fourth-rate code, and it shows. The federal ObamaCare web site exceeded the billion dollar mark a while ago, and dozens of states have had to create their own web sites. The state of my residence, California, is one of these, and their site is Covered California (which is littered, as you might guess, with images of all kinds of "diverse" families - - I'm just waiting to hit the page where the family represented is a white man, a black guy, and they're both in wheelchairs).
I used the site, and although it didn't bomb the way I've heard the federal site does, it's far from perfect; here's just one little tidbit from a help page:
Ummm. So let's see here. This "help" page tells us:
- The Browse button removes a document;
- The Upload button lets you see at a document;
- The Back button (oh, sorry, "buten") lets you look at a document (which, I suppose, is different than seeing);
- The Remove link uploads a document
- The View link (errr, "butten") takes you to the prior page.
Jesus Lord, my God in heaven, did anyone even look at this even once? Every single line is wrong. EVERY ONE. In fact, some links have are wrong in more than one way - - somewhat of a triumph, I think. Who knew there were so many ways to spell "button"?
Governments suck. The contractors that are hired by them suck even worse. Or, at a minimum, they are inept opportunists. I can't blame them, though. If someone handed me a zillion dollar check that I could just outsource to overseas programmers, I'd embrace the opportunity as well. Congratulations, taxpayers! The joke's on you. But don't worry. If you need help, just click the buten.
- advertisements -
I work for a large US company that fired all their IT engineers a few years back and now uses India for all IT support. Absolutely horrible. You cannot understand them no matter how many times they repeat some things. I honestly had one guy that I said, "Can you repeat that?" to eight or nine times, finally I just said sorry and hung up. It's sad, if your job is done on a computer good luck, there is some geek out there that will do it cheaper.
I was an A-team developer years ago. I had exactly one Indian programmer that I could rely on; he was a wizard with Unix. Nice guy, eager to help, good communicator, and responsible. The rest of the Asians were just not very good, many were pretty bad.
I don't believe the press. Asians are not nearly as smart as advertised. A tiny few are really good, but most are arrogant, hopeless children. The old Indians are notable for their laziness, incompetence, and arrogance. Never put them in charge of anything. The young indians are good workers but have no vision or leadership skills at all. The Chinese are almost uniform in their sneakiness and poor communication. There are always exceptions, of course, and those are wonderful to work with.
This generally holds true in other industries as well, such as petrochemical engineering and construction. After several decades working in a multiculti envirnoment, I've had more than enough experience with this.
Western civilization requires Westerners to build and run it.
I know, they took most of the money and gave the work to low end programmers and without any help or support. If the govt. would have written up a better contract saying if this isn't done a certain way you payback a portion of the money etc. etc. look how fast it would have been done and done well. The funny thing is that if they would have used top notch programmers the still would have made good money.
I hate to be picky, Buck, but if you had used correct grammar, your answer would have been much more impressive. Never use the word "would" in the "if" clause.
Guy where I work got a call on a bill they claim he owes...not the principle (which he already paid)...just the interest owed.
"Roger" (Raji) started out by saying "How do you intend to pay?"
He asked..."Are you even a fucking American?" Raji said no. He then said...and I quote:
"Don't EVER call me again motherfucker!!!"...and hung up on him.
Now, I don't know what this winds up meaning for Wall Street bankers & geo-political thinkers but I liked it ;-)
Is anyone ever going to call out Communist Insider?
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-to-fund-a-guaranteed-basic-income-2013-12
PUKE !!!
Hell, they could send us all ten times as much, $5,830/month per person would be a drop in the bucket compared to the QE gravy being slathered all over the banks and Wall Street.
I refuse to be upset about social welfare programs until the bank/corporation/insurer welfare programs are stopped and the FED is ended (dismantled, destroyed - no central banking).
The end of central banking will be the end of the state as we know it.
And you will get your wish.
Just be prepared in the interim:
http://readynutrition.com/resources/52-weeks-to-preparedness-an-introduc...
Lock and load. Let's do this.