The creaping featuritis thing amazes me to this day. I am a codeslinger, if you want it I'll write it. But I will tell you if I think you're making a mistake.

One of my old bosses put it well when a customer was questioning my opinion on some of their stuff I was pushing back on.

"If he thinks it's a bad enough idea to tell you that you shouldn't have him do it, you should f'ing listen. You do remember he bills by the hour? If he's telling you it's not something you want him to do he's doing you a favor. And if he won't do it there's no way in hell we'll do it for you, he's the guy we send people to for crazy shit."

That's not the way businesses operate, and the larger they are the more layers of BS things filter through. The person who champions the project hands it off to a subordinate, who hands it off again, etc. By the time it gets to the poor sap who had to bid out the project you're lucky if you get a cocktail napkin sketch of a UI concept and a few vague notes about what it should do.

There is another form of this that I deal with quite often, where upper management concieves of something that is totally impractical for the people who will actually need to use it. You go through all the look, feel and features stuff to get what the corporte folks envision and then install it only to find that the operations people won't use it.

It can be extremely frustrating, but if you were smart about collecting your money you've gotten paid and you're never going to have to support the code.

I almost wonder if they're counting on it, that's why they're stoking the fires dividing the haves and have nots. Rather than banding together and marching on Washington there will just be rioting where the local business owners houses are assaulted by the former recipients of the nanny state handouts when the system goes belly up.

I used to worry about my buddy the police officer and his stockpile of guns and ammo. He's positively convinced in the next few years we're going to see widespread rioting and looting. Lately I'm not so sure he's wrong.

Farmers spread the manure from their animals back on the fields as a way to maintain field fertility. They're not likely to want it shipped off and used to power a server farm, as that will just increase their chemical fertilizer costs.