Dumb, Dumb, Dumb!

I took my annual trip to Seaside Park today. It is a ritual. I started in 1960 when I was first a Lifeguard in New York City. We would take our day off, a Wednesday and drive down in O'Neil's fathers white Lincoln Continental. It was beautiful, the water was clean, we could swim, and we could make fun of wimpy New Jersey Seaside Life Guards. We were after all from Coney Island, and other New York Beaches, we were all well over 6' and we walked with the confidence of having survived July 4th with over 1 million bathers!

Why Seaside, it was just because it was there, and far enough from New York that the Jersey Sewers did not deposit Jersey stuff on the sands. You see in those days Jersey had no sewer plants and they, well to be crude, dumped their stuff in the harbor. It would then wash onto our beaches! We refrained from swimming except under dire circumstances, and one of our guys was a 3rd year med student so we had all kinds of antibiotics.

But now it is a routine, down to Seaside, trying to support them after their multiple disasters. But this year, in my opinion, some Govenment entity decided to install electronic parking meters.

Now the screen for instructions faces the sun, is about 3" by 2", and the font looks like 4pt Arial. The font is almost the same color as the screen. Lines of dozens of people are waiting as each tries to read what to do, half leave in disgust!. I have never, in my opinion, seen a system so incompetently designed. I asked the local police if this was a common complaint, YES. It is clear to me, in my opinion, that the town may just not want any visitors! Only in New Jersey. Perhaps these were the same programmers who did ObamaCare web site? Not really, at least you could read that.

Oh Yes, this is politically correct, it is solar powered, but guys the sun is 90 degrees off, it shines on your screen! I guess they were educated in New Jersey Schools!

Let's see how the pig race turns out!

Oh by the way, I have been reminded that the candidate from Queens has used a similar tale to bemoan solar. Now this is not a solar rant, in fact our oldest is the solar guy for the NH Electrical Co-Op. We also have wind turbines in NH. The problem there is distribution. Namely we have a century old electrical distribution network and technology can do so much more. The problem here is design. Small letters, poor contrast, complex entry mechanisms, and facing the sun to make it unreadable, unworkable. So unlike the Candidate from Queens, my gripe as the "Voice from Staten Island" is if all else fails.... listen to the customer! But that is something Government entities fail to do, since there is no cost at messing up.