Maybe Next Year

A few weeks back I outlined what I wanted for Christmas this year. I didn't get a single thing from my list. Nothing. Nada. Bupkiss. Zilch. Zip. One of my nieces did give it the old college try with the leather shoelaces, but she had no better luck than I did. I did get a few questions about my list that I thought I should answer, though.
   Most questions came specifically about my desire for the still-beating heart of Bill Gates. Why would I want such a thing, and what had Bill Gates ever done to me that I thought the only way to even the score would be to subject him to an Aztec-style sacrificial death?
   Well, let me 'splain. What has Microsoft given the United States and the rest of the world time and time again, since the late 70's? One thing, above all.
   Mediocrity.
   Microsoft, and by extension Bill Gates, the man responsible for Microsoft, has given the world sub-standard software that works just well enough, but not really well at all.
   Because of Microsoft's half-assery, people have come to expect that kind of neglect and irresponsibility from everything in all aspects of their lives. It's the tragedy of just good enough. The software doesn't work like it should? Well, that's just the way those things go. The project didn't deliver what it was supposed to, on time and on budget? Eh, we'll fix it in the next go-round. The car seats don't meet Federal regulations? They rarely do. Overpaid jerkoffs blatantly steal, and abandon their fiduciary responsibility to the global financial system? Ah, well, that's the way of things. Local, state, and Federal governments are incompetent and corrupt? Of course they are, that's the nature of government.
   Don't you see? As a society we have grown used to things not living up to what they should be. We have come to expect shoddy workmanship instead of craftsmanship. We have come to expect prevarication and lies instead of straight talk and honesty. We have become so used to people trying to weasel out of obligations that we don't hold them to their word, and we're even a little embarrassed to mention it.
   And, yes, I'm blaming Bill Gates for all of that.
   He built his business not by focusing on what he was selling people NOW, he built it by focusing on what imagined he was going to sell people NEXT. That philosophy means that you couldn't give a rat's ass about making a good product today, because you're going to replace it anyway.
   The older I get, the more I realize that one bad decision today can screw up things decades later. Microsoft's history of bad products that don't work properly delivered years late only proves that point. Somebody's got to pay, someone has to be punished so that other people realize it's not okay, this is not the way things should be, and it's not what anyone should accept.
   Sorry, Bill, it's your mess and you have to clean it up. The Aztec way. Old-school.