Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

I opened my bookkeeping program, Quickbooks Online, this morning to find the following message: COMING SOON.

Usually when I see this message I’m interested. It means a new restaurant is arriving shortly or a new movie is about to arrive at the local cinema. Maybe even a rock band I want to see.

But when Quickbooks announces that something is coming soon, I tremble. The last “Coming Soon” changed the color of the various pages – no big deal – but it also came with a variety of features that I didn’t like. For instance, there used to be a feature called “Find” with which you could find a particular vendor that you paid on a regular basis. I found it very helpful. However, after “Coming Soon” arrived, I had to click through more pages to get to that feature. In addition, I had to figure out how to do this in the first place. So nothing came any sooner than it did before.

Today COMING SOON screamed at me again. It was followed by the tagline “A refreshing look and customizable menus. Learn more on our blog.”

I feel a primal scream of my own coming on.

First of all, who’s to say what’s refreshing? The fact is I find that once I’ve figured out a way to do something on a computer, I’m pretty content with it. I stop thinking that there could be an easier way. Second of all, customizable menus don’t really appeal to me. See the previous sentences for an explanation. And finally, I don’t want to visit the QB blog to be told what various computer geeks have been up to.

I have nothing against computer geeks; in essence, they rule the world. At the same time, I wish they would leave well enough alone and go solve some of our other social problems.