Angry in the Great White North

Look, the global economy has gotten badly gummed up.  Like any system, ideally it ought to run forever.  But nothing is ideal except in the minds of physicists and socialists.

Real people, like engineers, know that nothing is ideal.  The real economy is in bad shape.  Stephen Harper is leading Canada to join with other countries to get the engine going again. 

Now how do you get an engine turning over after it has seized up?  Do you yell at it to become more fuel efficient and to ignore the effects of friction?  Of course not.  You fix what's wrong, replace the oil, and then inject energy back into the engine (pulling on the recoil start). 

Of course, you shouldn't have to inject energy into the system.  Of course, if everything worked perfectly, a constant supply of fuel is all that would be needed to keep the engine going on and on.

But no engine is perfect, and sometimes you got to pull on that recoil start after fixing what's broke.

And that leads to that other point.  Who would you want to fix that engine?  The guy who just likes to fix things?  I mean really likes to fix things.  He sees his job to constantly tinker and fiddle.  Worse, he thinks you're not qualified to use that engine.  It would better for everyone if he just kept the engine himself after fixing it, you know, to make sure that there's no more problems.  Just in case.

Indeed, he thinks the engine was always broken, even when it seemed to be running fine.  It only works right when he's controlling every switch, turning every gear, and managing every dial.

On the other hand, what about the guy whose attitude is leave well enough alone?  He'll do what needs to be done, and not much more, and as quickly as possible. At earliest opportunity, he'll hand the engine back to you.

I choose the second guy.

I've built a lot of machines over the years.  Some were mechanical contraptions.  Some were software programs.  None worked perfectly, and I had to intervene on occasion to deal with an unexpected, but inevitable, failure.  I fixed the problem as best I could with the information at hand, the best advice that was offered, and as quickly as possible.

My boss was not interested in having me endlessly fiddle with the darn thing.  Just patch it up and get it started again. 

And each time I was rewarded with a system that worked very well for long time, until another unexpected, but inevitable, failure occurred.  I shouldn't have to fix these things, of course.  Ideally, they ought to have worked as designed, without my intervention.  But this is the real world. 

Get real.