Web 2.SLOW?

[As his Squidoo page loads, Vince mumbles, “Bloated code crap! Why am I ‘waiting for Squidoo' to download its stuff?!!! It's a freakin' machine! Shouldn’t *IT* wait for me?!!! I'll give ya a freakin' "drumroll"!]
    Obviously, dealing with these “feature rich” environments means a certain amount of aggravation. Just because you *can* do something doesn’t mean you should.
    As I’m editing this post in Word, because typing it into the blogger interface is jumpy, kludgy and annoying, I can’t just type a *, then a word, then another * without Word deleting both *’s. So, I have to type the word, add the * then move back to the beginning of the word and insert the second *.
    Undoubtedly, some genius (who passed up a promising career path in packaging technology) decided that little function was useful, just like the genius who decided that jumpy JAVA inputs were a good idea.
    I wonder if those two met the genius who makes me insert “nbsp’s” so I can indent my paragraphs, instead of hit the freakin’ TAB key and have it WORK?!!!
    Going to either Squidoo or Wordpress to even log into my dashboard is a waste of time, as all the “feature rich” crap loads without even the courtesy of showing a splash screen. Attempting to modify or update either one is boring: I can go make coffee waiting for the new screen to load, stop back to enter [YES] to tell the thing to stop running a script that’s broken, go shave, then come back and try to do something useful.
    This is clearly a case of reach exceeding grasp. The only question is: will we live long enought to see the time when all this “feature rich” crap will actually work in something resembling real time?

TGIJ

January is normally the slowest month for retail sales. Thank God! Ironing out the kinks of a newly created anything is tough. Ironing out the kinks of this new store is especially taxing, since the combination of slow download/upload speed, even slower PC performance, entirely new area of eBay I’m unfamiliar with, new interface rules to remember, etc., means I have little time to spend on customer service.
         Yes, I’ve made a couple of sales. The first was to a total newbie, from Italy, no less – first purchase, no feedback. The second alerted me to a major goof-up in my instructions for downloading eBooks, which meant revising all my listings to give the RIGHT instructions for downloading my files.
         Now I’m off to the bank to open another account for PayPal micropayments on sales of less than $12 US. I’m sure there are more headaches ahead, but I’m looking forward to the eventual automation of so much that I am doing by hand – and foot!

The Aggravation Index - a measurement tool for actual cost of anything.

Many things in life are aggravating. In fact, one could argue that life itself is aggravating. However, for the purposes of this discussion, let's deal with aggravation as a cost of doing something. We'll measure it via AI = Aggravation Index:

VL = VERY LOW
L = LOW
M = MEDIUM
H = HIGH
VH = VERY HIGH

Here's an example: you find a Web site with thousands of free eBooks, titles only. Aggravation Index - VH. You'll have to download and parse each one to find out its value. Despite the fact they're free, many may be worse than useless - they'll be wrong, outdated or simply waste your time.

Here's another: you grow tomatoes in your garden, with all the work involved to make them excellent. AI = VL. You find the physical work relaxing, the chores are a time to reflect and enjoy being outdoors, the bugs and weeds are part of the process, and the result is delicious. Even if you never sell one for profit, you still get the full enjoyment of them for yourself and those who receive them. Sometimes, giving away your best is enjoyable.

The next time you think you've found a bargain, examine it for AI. You might find you've saved yourself some time, effort and, yes aggravation. Also, feel free to share your AI knowledge with others. I've actually rated myself as AI = M. I feel I have a Constitutionally protected right to annoy others, but not to excess.

HTH,
Vince