Lessons Learned From Imcompotence

Lessons Learned From Incompetence

On Wednesday, January 9th, the internet at my house went out.  Thanks to a foot of snow falling overnight and the streets around my neighborhood not being plowed, the streets in my neighborhood were slick and icy.  In these conditions, someone hit a CenturyLink utility box that provides the DSL internet service to my neighborhood.  This accident is something that could have been easily fixed if CenturyLink had the proper resources in place to handle the repair.  However, due to CenturyLink's complete and utter incompetence, these resources were not in place, and my neighborhood was left without CenturyLink service for about a week.

Not being to access the internet at my house made me very angry.  Very angry in deed.  If you follow me on Twitter, you are already well aware of this.  In this period of rage, I do what a lot of people do: I played a lot of video games where I could kill a lot of people.  Wow.  Typing that just now makes me feel that my response was kind of messed up.

As I was playing video games while my internet was out, I though of a news story that had broken recently.  Electronic Arts has announced what their strategy was for their upcoming entry in the Sim City franchise.  EA announced that people playing the game would need to always be connected to the internet.  EA said that this was because, in order for the game to play at optimal level, some of the computing would have to be done on EA's servers.  Skeptics slammed EA for this move, saying that the Always-On internet requirement was a way to curb piracy, dismissing what EA was claiming entirely.  However, I'd like to take EA statement on face value, if only for a moment.

Let's say that the internet was out where I lived, much like the situation that CenturyLink put me in due to their incompetence.  Let's say that I wanted to play video games, which is what I did during the period of CenturyLink's incompetence.  Let's say that I wanted to play the new Sim City game that I had legitimately bought from a legitimate retailer, legitimately.  Due to EA Always-On internet requirement, I would be unable to do so.  I would be unable to play a game that I had legitimately bought and that the company who produced the game was still supporting because of the failings of a third party.

This is why I do not support cloud based computing.  I do not want to be in a situation where a third party, who's utterly and unapologetically incompetent, prevents me from accessing something that I find to be critical.  Sure video games may not be of absolute critical importance, but what if I needed to access my banking information, or the place that I work, or health care services, or other things that may lead to actual harm to the lives of myself or the lives of others?  The only person I want to be at fault if something that I'm responsible for doesn't get done is me.  Blaming other people for things not getting done is a behavior that I don't like seeing in other people, much less in myself.