To Serve Libraries

 Hi again. Hope you've been well. Software can be kind of boring. No one really cares about most of the cool little features that we spend months developing. I mean, think about a utility such as a word processor program. I have used "MS Word" about every day since the early 1990s. How many features can you think of that were added since then that are really useful? Seriously, the last cool feature that I use regularly was mail merge. MS corp needs revenue so every year they release a new version of the software and hope people will buy the same software yet again. I used the 1997 version for ten years or so. Now I use the 2007 version. Office software is like a microwave oven or a toaster. They were pretty much perfected more than 20 years ago. Of course they can add bluetooth, and enable Alexa to inform you when the toast is ready. It will be cool when your robot can serve your poptarts in bed. So here's what I am currently working on: Camera integration. This is ac...

During the recent supply shortage, I made a costly mistake when buying what was in stock just because it was quick and easy to get it. The parts I normally recommend had long lead times of several months. So I ordered a couple computer systems in mid-2020, which were not what I wanted. The systems I wanted would take about three months or so to get. So the systems came in the usual nice packaging. They were 'top-of-the-line' newest tech.  The system hardware was fine. But we had extreme instability with unexplainable memory and CPU usage problems which made the computer totally freeze up or crash at odd moments. So I went back and forth with the customer and supplier for several months. Finally, the system improved, which I think was due to better drivers and software updates catching up to the new hardware. On-site trips cost a fortune though and we followed many false leads like seeing if increased memory would help. After it was done I had lost $7000 and my customer was not ...