Two things that I just don’t understand…

…green bars and orange markers. I’m talking about the percentage complete bars that accompany many software programs or computer downloads and the orange 10-yard markers used in the NFL. Neither one has any meaning whatsoever.

For example, as I wait for my pictures to download to a photosharing website, I see a green bar that shows that download progress is at 50%. I think to myself, I’ve waited one minute and based on the completion rate, I should only have to wait one more minute... so no, I won’t run to the bathroom just yet. I’ll wait and use the facilities in a minute, after I have kicked off the next set of downloading (which should, based on the fact that I have waited one minute for half as much as I have in my second download), take two minutes – a much better amount of time for using the WC. However, after the remaining one minute that I have left on my first download starts to stretch into minute four, I’m left wondering if I have made the right decision and I start to do the peepee dance around the computer chair. The green bar seems to have stuck with only one little pip to be filled in remaining… and I wonder why the last one takes five times as long as any of the previous ones. It just doesn’t seem to make any sense. Why use them if they really don’t reflect a measurement of, well, anything?

And then, there are the orange down markers... A football field is over 50 yards wide; there are 22 players on the field during every play and the ball moves like crazy – up and down and back and forth – during every second of the game. There is no way that the placement of the ball after any play can be completely accurate. But when there’s a question about whether or not the ball made it exactly 10 yards (which is completely impossible to know), the refs bring out the two orange markers connected by a 10 yard chain to measure. They put the second marker right next to the ball – and possession is decided by even just a hair. Adam tells me that this is really the only fair way to do it. And I suppose that you probably win as many as you lose in the grand scheme of things – so it probably all evens out… but in today’s world, it seems that there should be something that we can use that is even just a tad more accurate. Maybe something like a pedometer for the ball?

So, in case you can’t tell, this post is written tongue-in-cheek… I mean if these are my complaints, I haven’t got many. But these teeny-tiny pet peeves that do have answers – they have to. I know that I’m asking for the absurd… but for these two little things – isn’t there something that can be done?