Things that are apparently hard

[substitute]

1. Keeping an accurate "new voicemail" flag on a mobile phone. (See Note 1)
   
   
2. Sending a text message from a phone. (See Note 2)
   
   
3. Monitoring the temperature at a data center and keeping the A/C running. (See Note 3)
   
   
4. Receive and file paperwork, first entering it on a computer database. (See Note 4)
   
   
5. Render a web page. (See Note 5)

Note #1: This has been true since the first mobile phone I used. Voicemail flags stick for days, or never appear. The flag will pop up two days after a message is left. Sometimes the victim must reset the new voicemail flag by leaving voicemail for him or herself and then deleting it. How can this be?

Note #2: As long as I've been using SMS, it has failed to send about half the time. The signal bar will show full strength! yay! Then, when an SMS is sent, the phone will tell me that the message in fact cannot be sent. A few minutes later, caught in a lie, the phone admits to having no signal at all and starts trying to find one.

Note #3: Thermometers are cheap. So are loud bells. Summer happens every year! So why is it always the customer who discovers it's 80 degrees Fahrenheit inside? Isn't this job #3 after "not on fire" and "power on"?

Note #4: You're an insurance company. What is it you do there, exactly?

Note #5: When the page causes a browser to look up DNS for five or six ad services, and won't render the page until this is done, DNS then blocks and the viewer either never sees the page at all or gives up in disgust after a minute or two. I can't see how this benefits the advertiser or the website owner or anyone, really. Why even use hostnames? Why a duck? Why not a chicken?

Comments

[brianenigma.livejournal.com]

1. In my decade-or-so of phones, I've never had a problem with the voicemail flag.

2. I've only had issues with the email->SMS gateway service sometimes taking hours. SMS<->SMS and SMS->email usually seem to be fine. Sometimes I'm surprised at how fast I can send a Dodgeball and have it come back to myself and everyone at the table almost instantly.

3. Most "advanced" temperature sensors are I2C chips that cost no more than $0.30 and are made in China. Usually they work, sometimes they don't, often boards are designed to use them incorrectly. Case in point: our network switches have the temperature chips on the side of the backplane facing the relatively-cool logic board, not on the side of the backplane with the blade cage holding 1G copper phys and toasty warm fiber SFPs. The logic board can be quite happy while the network interfaces are failing left and right, and we'd never really know it. (We've since rev'ed the design a bit, but still...)

[substitute.livejournal.com]

1. Lucky you!

2. Lucky you! SMS is instantaneous when it works. When it doesn't work, I get the behavior above and it makes me something something.

3. Oh I'm not talking about the sensor on the computer. I'm talking about the one on the wall in the DATA CENTER. Maybe they could even buy two!