This blog hasn't been exactly the height of excitement since the announcement, but I have only these words for you to explain why: mustard, mylicon, and milk. If any of these words don't quite register with you, don't worry. The day you decide (or fate brings it upon you) to become a parent, it'll all come into focus.

Aside: God Bless sales people. The patience I have learned while dealing with them over the last five years has made me a more patient person overall. The Offspring's crying doesn't phase me one bit, with brief exception for those rare moments when he hits a particular note that resonates in our bedroom. Even The Smarter Half has commented that I deal with crankiness much better than she does. Pound moments in parenthood, I guess.

Since The Offspring has arrived, I have been swimming in baby products. Diaper Genies, diapers, formula, various devices, creams, and lotions, etc. The list goes on. I'm convinced that Gerber is the Mafia of baby stuff. Shoot, they practically own two full isles at the local Target.

As I look around at these gizmos, it occurs to me that this industry is huge and practically recession proof. Your job situation may be tenuous, but dropping $10 on a tiny bottle of Mylicon is still a no brainer. Ditto with diaper genie and its refills.

I compare that to the tech industry where countless man months are spent figuring out how to forward a packet a few nanoseconds faster than last year and I'm compelled to scratch my ass and wonder where we went wrong. Sometimes taking away a feature and looking at the dumb/simple solution is really what will generate a better ROI than optimizing memory read/write cycles on a fast path.

Take a look at OnStar. GM made a huge investment into telematics which has paid off in spades for them. However, all was not rosy from the start. In 2000, they got caught up in the dot com boom when folks like Scott McNealy were saying that people weren't interested in cars, they were interested in Java based roaming portals. (Eh?) The result was that OnStar tried to become too much and too complicated. Customers didn't know what they did and retention was very low. As the bust settled in, GM circled back and figured out that they had made things too complex. The product was simplified and a core value raised to the consumer. The result was a smash hit. Dealers started commenting that people were thinking about GM cars because of OnStar.

Looks like The Offspring needs some attention. Time to run.