I think the reason this hasn’t been featured here yet is that I’m past the stage of considering the DMV as a badness, and at the stage of considering it a necessary evil, like a deteriorating physical condition due to advanced age. That’s still an excuse, however, so to do my subject the diligence it deserves, I’m taking it on.

The DMV makes no sense to me unless its sole purpose is to remind us to be humble. an overwhelming majority of the things I need to get done should not require me to go to a place that’s conveniently open precisely when I need to work, fill out endless paperwork that seems to have no purpose other than to make me rethink how much I really want to get that thing done, and talk to people for whom it’s unclear to me what they hate the most: me, drivers in the abstract, mankind, themselves or their jobs. Probably all at once. Unless, as I alluded to earlier, this is a carefully architected ploy to make us rethink what we’re doing, ensure that we really need that driver’s license (the DMVs-run-by-environmentalists conspiracy theory?) and make us feel very small in relation to the System.

Fortunately I only had to deal with the DMV three times in my life. Anoter visit is approaching, and by God I’m prepared. Except that all the preparation is pointless in the face of a highly chaotic nonlinear system which is the DMV.

I nominate this one for the SuperBadness award.

If (like me) you work in any kind of office, or (like me) you have a slight office supply fetish, you will no doubt know what I mean: those black boxes divided into four compartments with magnetic walls that hold paper clips. They hold the paper clips well… perhaps too well. I found it frustratingly impossible to get the paper clips out. “Frustratingly,” because it seems like it should be very easy to do. I find myself having to bend my finger (or should it be two fingers?) in the container only to have the carefully guided paper clip get stuck at the top. Or am I supposed to take the top off? If so, what’s the point of the top in the first place?

A big reason I don’t like these paper clip holders is that they are an example of a tool that does not have intuitive user experience, and–worse–the intuitive operations result in failure. The tool makes me question myself and my common sense. Tools shouldn’t do this.

My relationship my the iPhone is a love-hate one. In fact, I am writing this on an iPhone, which diligently corrects the small typos I make on the keyboard. But good luck trying to change the font (I hate the built-in one, Marker Felt). But, while one can spend years talking about the virtues and the deficiencies of the iPhone, I will now focus on a definite badness which I can’t stand: the responsiveness of the UI. It reminds me of the Razr’s UI (which was abysmal…). After I press the button on the main screen it takes anywhere between 3 and 5 seconds to start typing a note. Going into the most recent text message, which is a one-click operation (good!), takes so somewhere between 3 and 7 seconds. How hard can it be to load a screen! The iPhone has some pretty serious processing power behind it (which explains why it often gets so hot and all those cases of spontaneous combustion) so where is it all going? The UI animations?
This is particularly disappointing because Apple is renowned for its insistence on good user experience, and because this kind of slowness is a serious lost sale in the iPhone versus Blackberry battle. True, the new model is apparently faster (fast enough to have incentivized my friend S.T. to switch to the iPhone for most of his email work), but I’m having a hard time understanding why I need to buy a new version of a gadget just to make it bearable to use. The operating system on any gadget should be designed so that it offers the user a constant amount of responsiveness- if the hardware can’t take the snazzy animations, take them out! Or at least allow power users to turn them off. Or cache the shit out of the problem. It’s not a hard problem.

For a change, I’d like to talk about something that is a rare gem, a goodness floating in the sea of badness, and that gem is the concept of chest pockets in shirts.

They are a brilliant and often overlooked idea. How many times did I have to do something with my phone, or my glasses for a brief moment (for example, while handling something else), only to find that I had no pocket near me that has easy access and won’t crush the delicate thing I’m trying to put aside. Without it, I am left with some poor choices: use my pants pockets which are usually packed with stuff, and often (especially if I’m sitting down) are hard to put things in. Or perhaps I could use some surface around me, but often (say, on the plane) there is no such good surface (the seat pocket is evil… i frequently damage things by trying to squeeze them in with all the magazines, or simply forget to take them with me after the flight).

I think all shirts should have pockets, period. It’s zero cost, and you never know when they come in handy.

This one came to me on my recent trip to New York City. I biked to the train station, then took the train to Grand Central.

As I got out of the train, it hit me. Noise. Noise that you can’t attribute to anything in particular, Noise that permeates your every thought. Silence is a very difficult thing to get if you live in the city. Yet it’s so wonderful- you can hear yourself think, you can focus on what’s happening around you, your senses are more acute and that allows you to understand the world better.

Avoid noise. Cherish the silence.

I’m always amused by this. Pssh, as if (a) I didn’t have to, and (b) employees actually did wash hands…

They even have blogs about this.