Anyone that’s followed my blog for a while or knows me personally has probably deduced something curious:  I’m a odd set of contradictions.

One side of the coin, I’m an avid technologist.    I own an obscene number of computers, both Mac and PC.   I’ve got an iPhone, and owned one of each generation.   I cancelled my cable nearly a year ago and stream Netflix and local channels via Windows Media Center on a computer hooked up to my television.   I don’t own a landline; all my telephone service is wireless or VoIP.    Even my business is completely done on the web with Quickbooks Online and Google Sites, Gmail, and Docs.

Now flip that coin over:    I have three, yes three, apps on my iPhone.   I don’t use LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.   I have no desire whatsoever for a tablet PC or an iPad.   I’m seriously considering purchasing an older (pre-1975) car to re-build as a daily driver and dumping my 2007 Aveo.   I still write checks, fill out forms with a ball point pen,  and do my bills via snail mail.    I’ll call someone instead of texting them.

So what gives?  Why the dual personalities?

I’ve been wondering that myself lately, and started keeping track of why I tend to do things a certain way versus another.   For instance, I’ll not think twice  in allowing Quickbooks Online (which is great, by the way) automatically post transactions in our business account directly from Chase, but minutes later I’ll be writing a check and affixing postage to an envelope addressed to the office insurance company.   Insanity perhaps?

Well, no, as a matter of fact.   You see my moment of clarification resulted from an airbag light and an accelerator pump.   Let’s back up six months, and put our gearhead hat (or welding visor, for you true hardcore grease monkeys) on for a few moments.

I’ve had a lingering problem with the Camaro that anyone with old-car experience has probably felt before.   When dropping the gas pedal to the floor, the car would stutter and hesitate for a moment (kind of embarassing in a muscle car!) and then finally pick up steam and roar ahead.   The reason for this is due to the carburetor’s throttle plates suddenly opening all the way, and all the vacuum in the engine’s intake system disappearing for a moment while the engine’s RPMs spool up.  For those not-quite-car-savvy readers out there, vacuum in the engine is what pulls the gas/air mix in and allows it to go ‘vroom’!  No vacuum, no vroom.

Over the decades carburetor designers figured out that if a small syringe-like pump–called an accelerator pump–was physically hooked up to the cabling coming from the gas pedal, they could preempt this pause with a small squirt of straight gasoline into the throat of the engine. This provided some temporary “oomph” for a few seconds while the vacuum caught up with the driver’s right foot.  Clever thinking, to be sure.

Now, let’s fast forward back to modern-day.   My 2007 Aveo has an Airbag light on.   Much to my chagrin, it is completely undiagnosable sitting in my garage.  You must take it to a service center with the appropriate code scanners to even know what’s wrong.

So here comes my epiphany.

As an engineer and a tinkerer, I want control.   However, I’m also lazy.  What I’ve found is that if something  just works, I’m willing to allow it to work behind a set of curtains–even if that means raising an eyebrow and surrendering a bit of control.   However,  if something is problematic nothing angers me more than not being able to fix it myself.  In fact, I’ll even stop using it or throw it away.

I own the 2007 Aveo.  I have the title, and it is lien-free.   However, I couldn’t even obtain the specifications on how to diagnose the airbag system on the car even if I wanted to.   Chevrolet doesn’t make them available, I’m sure because they’re afraid someone will set the airbags off by accident.    So the question is, do I really own it?   I’m still subservient to the manufacturer, even though I’ve paid for the product.

I also own my Camaro, and last weekend I finally fixed the hesitation problem by bending a piece of wire on the carburetor with a pair of pliers.

I’ve realized that this same disparity lack of control and trust is my issue with software and technology in general.   As software is getting more and more complex, and nearly everything is online 100% of the time, quality and control  is seemingly going south along with it.  I doubt this is intentional by software developers;  more likely its just the vast task of maintaining and QA’ing gigantic amount of source code.   I’ve recently noted that when software or a piece of digital tech fails me, I get very bitter and don’t often go back and use it again.   The same thing is happening with my 2007 Aveo, and I’m once again behaving irrationally about it.

So for all you software developers out there:   Take a lesson from the carburetor designers of an era past.   It’s cute to be clever, but simplicity and reliability are true genius. It seems software is going the wrong direction–placing features higher in importance over function and reliably.

Get back to to basics, and just write damn tight code.   Your user base will thank you.

I’ll keep the Haynes manual handy, if you need to borrow it.