{"id":35590,"date":"2026-08-21T13:15:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T18:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=35590"},"modified":"2026-08-21T13:15:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T18:15:40","slug":"lileks-veers-into-my-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/21\/lileks-veers-into-my-lane\/","title":{"rendered":"Lileks Veers Into My Lane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lileks.com\/bleats\/archive\/26\/0826\/35.html\" target=\"_new\">Today<\/a> he posts a bit of Internet user interface foolishness:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Peculiar clippings from life on the web. I was filling out a maintenance report to fix the screen door, and was stuck on this connundrum.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/fieldoptional.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>I ended up entering &#8220;if it&#8217;s optional why is it required?&#8221; Mr. Helpful here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ah, gentle reader.  As you might know, I had a blog back in the day called QA Hates You, and just about every day I made mock of Web site errors and whatnot.  That was when companies at least seemingly tried to make their user interfaces work right.<\/p>\n<p>I see on LinkedIn, sometimes, testers with Open to Work banners trying to remain relevant by posting such things, but: I think that a lot of places really don&#8217;t care.  In much of my recent career, getting it right isn&#8217;t the goal.  Getting the most money, getting the contract extended, that has been the goal.  So problems you find and note just get ignored.<\/p>\n<p>And the misconfigurations that I find in Application Tracking Systems, where you see this sort of thing all the time, are even worse.  Why, by cracky, in my salad days, I would have tested them, too.  But: Move fast, break things, leave them broken, get away with the loot before anyone is the wiser.<\/p>\n<p>Also, because I&#8217;m pedantic, I have to point out Lileks misspelled <em>conundrum<\/em>.  Because QA never rests, and QA knows no friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today he posts a bit of Internet user interface foolishness: Peculiar clippings from life on the web. I was filling out a maintenance report to fix the screen door, and was stuck on this connundrum. I ended up entering &#8220;if it&#8217;s optional why is it required?&#8221; Mr. Helpful here. Ah, gentle reader. As you might [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35593,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35590\/revisions\/35593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}