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004Mark Woodman wrote today about The Plumbing Fable. It's a tale about the Really Simple Sink. After reading his fable, I remembered this place. At first I couldn't place it, but now I remember the dream I had. Somehow, Mark and I have had very similar dreams nightmares. This is what I recall of that scary night, tucked deep under the covers, all alone, in the dark basement of my house.

I walk into a store. It was called Sinkdication, a plumbing store that specialized in sinks. They had the top sink salesman in fableland. His name was Dave. The store wouldn't have existed without Dave. Dave had expanded on an old employees designs and added his own touches to create the ultimate sink; called the Really Simple Sink. The sink was a hit and everybody had to have a Really Simple Sink.  Everybody was happy and Sinkdication was the fastest grown plumbing store in all of fableland. Sinkilizer, the mayor of fableland, declared "Life is grand! Sinks for all!"

Eventually other salesmen at Sinkdication started to come up with enhancements to the Really Simple Sink, but Dave wouldn't let them package the enhancements with the Really Simple Sink. They had to sell the enhancements as separately priced add-ons. Eventually, many of the engineers got fed up with dogmatic Dave. They vowed to create their own sink. They called their sink the Pie Sink. After several iteractions, they renamed it Echo Sink. After several more iteractions, they renamed it Nota Sink. After several more iteractions, they renamed it Formerly Echo Sink. And finally the name Atom Manufacturing Sink stuck.

The Atom Manufacturing Group discussed their designs each day after work for their ultimate sink. The design changed and changed and changed and change. The one feature that remained the same thru the design process was the arm REST. Brink, the head of the Atom Group, declared that Atom will have SOAP. They released pre-manufacturing specs for their ultimate sink to grandiose acclamations. The biggest house developer in town, Booble, decided to only make houses with plumbing rough-ins that fit the Atom Sink. They built millions of houses to spec.

Unfortunately, manufacturing the Atom Sink took 18 months and Booble needed millions of sinks. So other plumbing stores in town released their own Atom Sinks based on the pre-manufacturing specs to service this supply shortfall. During production-line setup, better ideas arose and when released 18 months later, the Atom Sink had a new and better adapter. They released new manufacturing specs based on this much better design. But, Booble and the other house developers continued to create new houses based on the pre-manufacturing specs. Residents of the town went to the Sinkdication store and asked for Atom Sinks for their houses.  The Atom Group always replied, "Your sink is obsolete. Refit your house to our new specs."  Eventually, the Atom Group went back and added one additional sentence to the pre-manufacturing specs.

DO NOT implement it or ship products conforming to it.

007Booble had placed an order for 1 million Atom Sinks and had to retrofit all the recently built houses in town. Developers all around town began retrofiting their houses and sinks to support this new manufacturing spec. Some residents of town didn`t know about the change in sink. They tried to install the Atom Sink in the pre-spec hookups. When they tried to return the Atom Sinks, they were told, "Their sink rough-ins were obsolete." Johnsink, a fan of the Atom Sink yelled "Didn`t you read the specs? DO NOT implement it or ship products conforming to it." Eventually, Booble got fed up with confusion and installed both Atom and Really Simple Sink hookups. Every house developer and every sink manufacturer in town were now producing sinks that conformed to all the specifications. Nick Demon, a sink manufacturer cried, "Just use one sink hookup." Residents refused to buy houses that didn't support both Atom and Really Simple Sink. Costs went thru the roof.

On my way out of town, I overheard two residents talking. The first resident, named Reinsinker, had heard that Dave sold his Really Simple Sink manufacturing plant to SinkBench for $1 million and was now working on a Really Simple Fridge. The other, named Sinkry, heard that SinkBurner, a competing sink manufacturer sold their plant to Booble for $100 million and Spystolo Sunk, the founder, made a mint.

"Ya SinkBurner," said Reinsinker, "It had hookups for Atom Sink cold water, but not hot. But they had great Really Simple Sink hookups too, so I only had to retrofit my house to get hot water. Cost me a bundle, but it could've been worse."

"That's the nice thing about owning a 10 year old house," said Sinkry. "I've had the Really Simple Sinks for 10 years and every once in awhile Dave had a sale and I picked one up. They were so simple to install, I didn't even have to call the plumber. In fact, every Really Simple Sink came with the same 10 yr-old instructions. But I heard some Moron wants to update them."

At which point, I left town fearing my life.

Note: Kudos to the first person that matches up all the proper names to their blogs. Sorry for the typo. I wrote this while cooking supper (how many Ps?). If you find a typo, then please ridicule me in the comments.

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