What have I ever done to the internet?

I worked from home today as I’m having my office decorated and a new wi-fi system installed.

Like anyone who, by the sweat of his brow, has earned the right to such luxuries, I have a cleaner, a vision of pulchritude and the subject of more than a few nocturnal reveries, who I pay to come three times a week to do stuff I don’t like doing, like scrub my toilet and clean the oven.

She arrived as usual this morning and began busying herself with the task of degreasing the kitchen sink downpipe, another task that I prefer to outsource. Minutes later a lady estate agent dropped by with two potential female tenants, who are considering renting the place while I’m away for a few weeks.

So there I was, on my patch, bored insensate with a PowerPoint presentation, alone with four vixens, one humming contentedly in the kitchen and three others in the bedroom.

Now I don’t know how many of you have ever looked at the internet before but I have, and I was pretty confident that I knew where this was leading.

Imagine my sense of frustration and anticlimax, then, when the estate agent merely showed the two potential tenants around, thanked me politely and left, while the cleaner just continued cleaning, finished, asked me for her money and went home.

Why would the internet lie to me?

Time to open a vein

I mean honestly, what’s the point?

Reluctant tug of the forelock to Andy McHaffie.

People get paid to do this

In the He’s Spartacus inbox this morning was an email from my good friend, Gort. He is, as you will deduce from the following text, in the software development business….

In my capacity as a frivolous adornment to the service economy I spent all day last Tuesday adding a beautiful but completely unnecessary animation to some text on an app. I finished last week. The animation conveys no new information, doesn’t make the text any more eye catching (the text is of little use anyway) but is cool and awesome and as such it was a day well spent.

I showed the new “feature” to Selena, who is head of sales and as such the person for whom the app. is ultimately written. Naturally she bleated about it being a complete waste of time but I can guarantee when she demos its functionality to clients they will drop trou and assume pos in double quick time.

If my 20 years in software has taught me anything it’s that apps can do what they are supposed to do brilliantly but put it in a room full of marketeers (our target market) and it will be the cool, awesome but ultimately pointless stuff which clinches the deal.

“Yeah, yeah, 1 billion rows per second is all very well but just what else does this bring to the tab….. OH. MY. GOD! Is that little counter exploding every 10th number? Giles, we must kill to get this application!”

The spirit of Douglas Adams’ telephone sanitiser is alive and well, and residing in marketing departments across the globe.