Journal of the Easily Amused

Obama/McCain debate Part X

2008-09-26T22:14:00.002-04:00

Don't you hate it when one person says "He said that" and the other says "No he didn't" back and forth. They went on a tear there, McCain banging away about talking to Iran....do many people think it's that important either way?

Now onto Russia....how long is this debate again?

McCain hit a Russian/Goergia question out of the park stringing together a lot of different people, places and things together (yeah, I don't know what he said, but it sounded like he knew a lot of stuff!) Obama came across not quite as strongly, but pivoted nicely to talking about the importance of energy security.

We're at the last question!!! Are we safer than before 9/11?

I thought Obama's answer that wrapped by talking about America's standing in the world was powerful, and McCain's response about Reagan and missile defence and the end of the cold war was kind of off. But so far I'd say no clear winner or loser; but what will the media say, because you never know what you think until the media tells you?

And c$%p we're back to being in Iraq. haven't we beaten this dead horse enough yet?

Come on, please wrap it up!!

Obama/McCain debate Part IX

2008-09-26T22:01:00.002-04:00

McCain made a strong appeal mentioning that he has the bracelet of a dead marine and the mother asked him not to let the death be in vain.
Obama came back with his own bracelet from a mother that asked that he make sure another mother doesn't go through the same thing. Not sure if it worked (sure it didn't for the righties, probably did for the lefties.)

Now into the threat of Iran. McCain: we can't allow another Holocaust. (What, they are rounding up Jews in Iran???) Let's all get together with the French and Russians and sanction them! Oh, and by the way, they are responsible for a lot of trouble in Iraq.
Obama: Hey, we took out Iran's main enemy Iraq, and they have benefited. Sanctions, but we also need to have deplomacy; not talking to people doesn't punish them.

Arguing about meeting people from Iran.

Obama "Meeting with them without preconditions doesn't mean inviting them over for tea"

Now it's hair splitting time!!! Can you talk to bad people or not?

Obama/McCain debate Part VIII

2008-09-26T21:52:00.002-04:00

I'll say this, Obama knows a lot about Afghanistan; or sounds like he does.

Loke most people, my eyes glaze over after 15 minutes on Iraq and stuff. Does anyone not have opinion about this?

Ouch! McCain took shots at Obama for saying he'd attack parts of Pakistan, and Obama came back that coming from someone that's talked about invading North Korea and bombing Iran, he wasn't sure how credible that is.

We're an hour in! Woot!!! How much more?

Obama/McCain debate Part VII

2008-09-26T21:38:00.003-04:00

McCain: "I have not been voted Ms Congeniality in the US Senate" - second time he's said that.

Lehrer: what's the lessons of Iraq?

McCain: Can't have a failed strategy. War badly misshandled, but now we are winning.
Obama: Fundamental difference; the first question is should we have even gone there? We are over stretched and distracted.
McCain: Next President is not going to have to decide whether we are going to invade Iraq.

I think they both make strong points that will appeal to their bases. Not sure they are changing anybodies mind.

You say Taliban, I say Tallyban.

Obama/McCain debate Part VI

2008-09-26T21:31:00.002-04:00

Half an hour in and the people here are getting distracted....how much longer?

Lehrer is pissed that they aren't really answering his question about how the economic solution will impact their programs.

McCain: freeze spending on everthing but Department of Defense, and oh, create jobs by building nuclear plants!!

Lehrer: are you willing to acknowledge that this crises is going to effect how you run the country?

Obama: no doubt we'll have to make some tough decisions, and it's important about what our values.
McCain: I don't want to hand the health care system over to the Federal Government.

McCain: One of the reasons we're in this mess is because spending got out of control.
Obama: But John, it was your President that presided over this, and you voted with him 90% of the time.

Obama/McCain debate Part V

2008-09-26T21:21:00.002-04:00

Now they are banging at each other about taxes on companies.

McCain: he voted to raise taxes on people
Obama: he voted to give money to oil companies

Lehrer: if we do the recovery, what you going to give up?
Obama: we have to do healtcare, energy and infrastructure. We'll have to put off some things (he doesn't list them though.)
McCain: we have to cut spending because it's gotten out of control. Opose Ethanol spending, do away with cost plus programs for department of defense. "I saved money and put people in prison over some Boeing contract."
Did McCain just say "we have to screw up every government department"???

Obama/McCain debate Part IV

2008-09-26T21:19:00.002-04:00

Probably about now is where most people tune out. I know I am.

So far, they both seem okay. I think whoever you support, you're not going to change your mind on that. Maybe someone will trip up. That's what we have to hope for.

Obama/McCain debate Part III

2008-09-26T21:11:00.002-04:00

Lehrer is trying to get Obama to ask McCain a question....but he seems disinclined to at the moment.

Lehrer says "say it to him" so Obama repeats it, and McCain says to Lehrer "You worried I didn't hear it?"

They are both talking, but I don't think either of them are saying "we need to do this and that."

McCain just said "we Republicans came to change Washington, and Washington changed us." He doesn't like earmarks. And now he's going after Obama for earmarks. Obama comes back and says he's suspended earmarks, and oh, by the way, earmarks are 18 billion, and McCain wants taxcuts totalling 300 billion. Is there a direct connection?

McCain is really getting excited about earmarks. I'll give him points for that.

Obama/McCain debate Part II

2008-09-26T21:01:00.003-04:00

abcNews is telling us that this is the big one! They'll have nine minutes for each question??? OMG...I'll never survive.

Here we go. Jim Lehrer looks Presidentail.

Says it's going to be about forign affairs and security (and hehe economices)

The audience has promised to remain silent...no cheers or noise of any kind...we'll see if that survives.

Out they come. Shake hands. McCain looks very white.

Lehrer is beginning with a quote from Eisenhower about the importance of economic security...so where do you stand on the economic recovery package.

Obama: we at a defining moment in our history. Worst moment since the Great Depression. (Holy S&*t!!!)

He's saying we need oversight and chance to get money back and all the usual stuff. I think he looks Presidential....oh, and he just said this is the result of eight years of bad stuff by George Bush supported by McCain. Ouch!!!!

McCain: "got to fix the greatest problem I've seen...and I've been around a long time." This isn't the beginning of the end of the crises, it's the end of the beginning (have I heard that before somewhere.)

So they spoke, and I'm not sure exactly what either of them thinks the solution should be. Lehrer pushed Obama and he starts talking about how we got into this mess.

Then he asks McCain if he's going to vote for "this plan" and he said "I hope so." And is now talking about another Eisenhower story. He's talking about the loss of accountability...

I think they both avoided it.

Blogging the Obama/McCain debate

2008-09-26T20:46:00.002-04:00

...because I have to have a reason for watching this thing.

It's 8:47pm and I'mn already here sitting in front of the TV waiting for the debate to start. They are playing The Colbert Show right now.

Go! Speed Racer

2008-05-09T11:19:00.005-04:00

Yahoo posted the first seven minutes of the movie Speed Racer yesterday, and against my better judgment - and with a few minutes to kill - I decided to watch it. If you're looking to kill a few minutes, nothing will kill them more effectively than this movie. It did not look good.

But don't take my word for it. Salon.com has posted a review that has the tag line: You know a movie's heading nowhere fast when even its monkey doesn't make you laugh. It doesn't get better. Here's some choice lines:

Every once in a while I'm hit with a movie whose existence I find impossible to comprehend.

..its alleged script was written by...

..the movie is filled with tedious video-game-style racing

The filmmaking in "Speed Racer" lives down to the feebleness of the writing

The effect is clever the first time it's used, tedious the following 999.

[character] is so annoying I kept wishing he'd go play in traffic

...so arrogant about its so-called stylishness and energy that it feels like punishment

Manic and multicolored, "Speed Racer" is an excess of nothingness.

With a review like that, you wonder if the movie could rival the play Moose Murders as the standard for awfulness?

Probably not.

Car UI Design

2008-04-23T13:33:00.002-04:00

The article "Can this car save Ford?" from Fortune magazine's site, describes Ford's ongoing efforts to reinvent itself; and survive.

Most interesting for me was this snippet from a design meeting:

The question is, Should Ford offer drivers buttons on the steering wheel or racing-style paddles behind the steering-wheel spokes? It is a small detail - each component costs about $25 - yet it produces spirited discussion.

Mulally wants to know how the gear changes will be signaled to the driver. Mark Fields, who runs Ford's car business in the Americas, worries about durability and warranty costs. More fundamentally, he questions whether drivers even want to shift gears themselves. "I'm concerned we're going in the wrong direction," he says. Jim Farley, newly recruited from Toyota (TM) to oversee global sales and marketing, is thinking about how the action will feel: "If the paddle shifter is well done, it could be a big advantage for us."

Having spent many meetings teasing out the details of software design, it's telling to see that car companies do exactly the same thing. Of course they do! Yet somehow I just never thought about it.

Ford has recently identified 300 different characteristics - from the chirps on the electronic key fob to the clunk of a closing door - that define the personality of its vehicles. "There is great value for us in creating a Ford DNA," Mulally says.

Again, wow! I always thought expensive cars had a heavy sound to them (because they are heavy), but I never thought about a Ford having a distinctive sound. Do they really build a door and go "works great, but doesn't sound like a Ford!"? And how do they change that?...prerecord a sound and play it through the car's sound system to augment the actual sound??!

Create Your Story Contest

2008-04-14T13:41:00.003-04:00

Crackle is running a Create Your Story contest.

- You know, create a video and win a contest! Sounds easy!

"Big deal!" - I hear you thinking.

Well, sure. Except if you win, then you get:

A Sony XDCAM EX™ Camcorder; a Sony VAIO® Computer; Vegas® 8 Editing Software; and; an offer to receive a development deal with Crackle Studios to develop material for Crackle distribution, including two (2) meetings with Crackle Studios executives, subject to the terms and conditions described below (the "Development Deal"). - Approximate Retail Value ("ARV"): $9,000.

At that value, I'm guessing the XDCAM is the PMW-EX1 - woot! (No, seriously, Woot! The PMW-EX1 would be worth winning.)

And of course, the meetings with Crackle Studio executives, let's not forget those. The value of those; priceless (hmmm....I wonder if they'd buy lunch?)

Except:

The Development Deal meetings may be conducted in person or via telephone, as determined by Sponsor, in its sole discretion.

"Paging Mr. Taz, Development deal on line 3!"

No, seriously. Really?! A phone call? Well, the camera would still be worth winning.

So, yeah, you have until May 31st to get an entry in. Just make sure you don't break any of the rules, particularly this one:

(b)[...] did not purchase the web cam, video camera, and/or other equipment used to create the video (the "Equipment") for purposes of entering the Contest;

Wait...You can't buy a camera to make a video to enter the contest, to win a camera? Can you rent a camera?! I really don't get that one. If anyone can explain it's significance, please let me know!

Boston Flex Group

2008-03-26T14:27:00.002-04:00

...and if you're wondering why I bothered putting in a Flash/Flex announcement, well here's the other shoe. There's now a Boston Flex User Group:

FIRST MEETING: Tuesday April 8, 2008 7 pm, at Adobe's Newton Office
The Boston Flex User Group's first event will be held on the evening of Tues, April 8, 2008 at Adobe Systems' Newton office at 7 pm. Developer Peter Farland of Adobe Systems will be giving us the inside scoop on the new Open Source Flex SDK, which not only includes the Flex 3.0 Framework but also the entire set of SDK tools, exposing a lot of source code and internal tooling that has never been publicly released before. Did you ever want to change the Flex Framework and rebuild your own distribution? Do you ever wonder what the Flex compiler is up to when it's chugging away? Are you just plain curious? Please join us!

No, I'm not involved with the group, though I hope to get along to the meeting. Maybe there will be giveaways..

It seems like only a few years ago I was being - reluctantly - dragged from being a Director developer to a Flash one, and now - out of no where - everyone wants me to be using Flex. Sigh Change is the thing. The world keeps changing. Change with it, or be flattened by it.

Flash Player security update coming...

2008-03-26T14:17:00.003-04:00

If you're using Flash or Flex, then you should be aware of an upcoming update to the Flash player that Adobe says will prevent Flash player apps being used to launch attacks against consumers, but could also break some apps.

Adobe's own announcement says that if the following situations apply to your Flash/Flex app then you might be impacted:

You use sockets or XMLSockets, regardless of the domain to which you are connecting

You use addRequestHeader or URLRequest.requestHeaders in any network API call when sending or loading data cross-domain

OR

You provide access to content on remote domains as a web service provider

You have SWFs that are exported for Flash Player 7 (SWF7) or earlier that communicate with the hosting HTML by any means

You use "javascript:" through network APIs to communicate outside a SWF

You can read the article in detail here.

Careful what you blog about...

2008-03-26T14:10:00.002-04:00

....cause the screens have eyes...

Cisco's legal trouble stems from a Blogspot-hosted blog called Patent Troll Tracker, which Rick Frenkel, who directs the company's intellectual property department, launched last May. His posts focused on patents and patent litigation--an issue that Cisco has pressed Congress to address by overhauling what it views as a broken U.S. patent system.

A few weeks ago, Frenkel revealed his identity, and two patent attorneys in Texas filed suit, accusing him of tarnishing their good names and disparaging a patent case their client had filed against Cisco--all the while allegedly concealing his affiliation with the company.

As a result of the suit, Cisco has added a rule to it's Internet Postings Policy (which it has evidently had for three years.) The addition reads:

"If you comment on any aspect of the company's business or any policy issue the company is involved in where you have responsibility for Cisco's engagement, you must clearly identify yourself as a Cisco employee in your postings or blog site(s) and include a disclaimer that the views are your own and not those of Cisco."

Cisco's policy makes good sense to me, but I wonder how many companies will simply issue edicts against employees blogging about anything to do with their work life - or even anything at all?

Profiling Customers

2008-03-18T14:13:00.003-04:00

A year or so ago I heard from a Best Buy employee how Best Buy was categorizing it's shoppers into different demographic types. He said that they were setting up the stores to appeal to these segments.

Now Consumerist has posted "Best Buy's Internal Customer Profiling Document" which lists all these types, who they are, and what drives them. It's an interesting read, though you have to wonder what the average sales associate makes of this information. Can they really tell - just by looking at someone - which group they fall into? Is that middle-aged woman with a 10 year-old really married and living on a budget?

This blog entry Best Buy vs Circuit City:Customer Centric spilled the beans back in April 2007 about the different Best Buy segments and notes:

It empowered employees to focus on their angels ( high potential customers) so that they spend more and increase their share of wallet (SOW).

Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson is quoted as saying:

"In our world the way you win the game isn't the price of the TV - which is about the same for all retailers - but the experience you give customers once they are in our stores"

Maybe I'm not in any of the target demo's but neither Circuit City or Best Buy offer me a more compelling experience. Best Buy stores I'd rate slightly higher based on variety and quality of merchandise, though that might just be a perception based on the colors in the store. Frankly, I compare on price first, then convenience (oh, and I have a Best Buy card, which factors in when they have those interest free offers.)

Certainly, past experience dealing with sales associates wouldn't have me pick one over the other.

It's official; I'm an addict

2008-03-18T13:37:00.001-04:00

News.com: MD says Net addiction really is a mental illness

[...] online fixation can be serious a problem--a compulsive-impulsive disorder whose sufferers endure gadget cravings, broadband-deprivation withdrawal, increasing tolerance for spending extraordinary amounts of time online, and no apparent embarrassment when they wake up in the morning with a keyboard imprint on their face.

...though no face imprints yet.

Paul Krugman tells it like it is...

2008-03-17T14:46:00.003-04:00

Even if you only have a cursory interest in economic thinking you've probably heard of Paul Krugman. Krugman is an economist, author, and writes a regular Op-Ed for The New York Times and in an interview in Fortune, he gave the following answer to the question: Why [is this not going to be like] the Great Depression?

[...]I think we know more than we did then, and just the fact that we have a big federal government is a stabilizing factor. But the current problem is still pretty awesome.

the current problem is still pretty awesome

I don't know about you, but having become familiar with "pretty awesome" used to indicate something that's really good, I had a hard time wrapping my head around that sentence.

Pi Day

2008-03-14T15:20:00.002-04:00

Pi Day: 3/14

Busking Sign

2008-03-14T10:54:00.001-04:00

Requests: $1 per song, $2 to stop

Unexpected Search Results

2008-03-11T13:50:00.002-04:00

I always forget what B&H Photo's web address is - or seem to get it wrong - so today I did a quick Google for 'b & h photo' and the first thing I get back is a photo of a B-52!!

User Interface: figuring it out

2008-03-10T16:47:00.006-04:00

In reviewing part of the interface for the design of a testing program, the client designed a function for the system-administrator that looked like this:

The left hand link opens a window that displays the test, while the right hand link assigns (or unassigns) the test to all of the users. Clicking “Assign” releases the test to all users, and changes the state of the item to “Unassign”

First things first, a link that opens another window seems fine, but having a link that actually changes the state of data in the system seems counter-intuitive. Especially when these items are side by side.

When you get into the actual functionality of this item, things gets even hairier.

What does that thing do?
Remember that this is a system-admin function that assigns tests to other users. Now the system-admin can go in and individually choose to assign these tests to the other users (through another screen), but this function is supposed to assign the test to everyone. And once you’ve assigned the test to everyone, it can then be used to unassign the test as well.

This immediately provoked questions like:

1. What happens if you assign the test individually to several users, and want to unassign everyone that’s so far been assigned the test? Do you click once to assign it, and then click again to unassign it?

2. If a student is half way through a test and you unassign it, is data lost?

3. What if you assign the test to all users (the item changes to unassign) and then several more users are added? Can you use the function to assign the test to those users?

The answer to 2 is most important, because it became apparent that the data shouldn’t be lost (just the users access temporarily disabled.)

First redesign
My first thought was to change the test so that there was an Auto Assign mode, and if it was on, then users could access the test, and if it was off, they couldn’t.

That certainly looked prettier than the first design, and a little more obvious what was going on too. But, it turned out to not really offer the functionality that was wanted any more than the first design.

Second redesign
The second redesign seems to get closer to the desired functionality. It splits the function into two options; one that turns the testing mode on and off (i.e. you don’t unassign things, you disable the testing) and an Assign All button.

Note that the Assign All button does not change to an Unassign All button; it remains an Assign All button after you use it.

This design solves all but one problem: what if you actually want to disable the test rather than just turn it off? We could add a third button “Unassign” – and for the sake of completeness, maybe we should – but it comes down to: how are system admins going to use the system? In most cases, they aren’t going to want to unassign everyone. But they may want to turn off the testing temporarily, and they could want to assign everything to all the users. Leaving the unassignment function a manual process (i.e. you use the separate function for individually assigning and unassigning tests) simplifies the UI, but shouldn’t actually cause most users any more work.

R U using txt abbreviations?

2008-03-07T15:02:00.002-05:00

While New Zealand allows students to use "Text-Speak" in exams, it seems that Australians have gone one better and are now using common texting errors in baby names!

LOL.

I wonder if this is only a transitory effect, and five years from now we'll all be looking back at the 90's and 10's as that funny time when odd abbreviations popped up, only to be washed away as technology improves and solves some of these self imposed limitations.

I know I tend to type full words on the QWERTY keyboard of the iPod touch more than I do on a cell-phone's numeric keypad.

Informational Cascade and the Digital Hordes

2008-03-06T14:45:00.001-05:00

One of many issues that you face when dealing with the Digital Horde is Informational Cascade. Put simply; when someone states a fact or answers a question, those that follow can skew their answers towards that answer even though they originally had a different answer.

This is less true of expressions of opinion, but it can play a part.

There's an interesting example of informational cascade in this article: Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus which explains how medicine was almost hoodwinked into believing that fatty foods shorten lifespan based on dubious assumptions and data.

While the article - and the example - are interesting, the following statistic is the takeaway:

[...] groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group’s members have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a mistaken consensus.

Perhaps my favorite example of Informational Cascade is highlighted in a clever letter written to the radio show Car Talk that pointed out how the hosts had engaged in mad speculation about a topic that they new nothing about:

I am writing to offer profound thanks to you for resolving an important philosophical question that has been heatedly debated for the last twenty years. [...] Do two people who don't know what they are talking about know more or less than one person who doesn't know what he's talking about?
...
One person will only go so far out on a limb in his construction of deeply hypothetical structures, and will often end with a shrug or a raising of hands to indicate the dismissability of his particular take on a subject. With two people, the intricacies, the gives and takes, the wherefores and why-nots, can become a veritable pas-de-deux of breathtaking speculation, interwoven in such a way that apologies or gestures of doubt are rendered unnecessary.

In the final analysis, Informational Cascade confirms that results are more accurate if the respondents don't know how previous respondents have answered a question.

Managing the Digital Hordes

2008-02-29T15:31:00.004-05:00

A strength and a weakness of the Internet is the ability to have anyone comment on just about anything. Visitors to sites are a great repository of knowledge…and opinions…and weird attempts at humor…and vitriol.

Sometimes it seems like the chaff is obscuring the wheat.

Sites are adopting various strategies to try and improve the quality of the contributions from the site visitors.

POST MODERATION
Salon is probably best described as a political/life style publication. They publish articles, news items and opinion pieces, and allow readers to post “letters” in response. With politics and religion being two of the biggest flash points in any web community, it’s not surprising that they have run into their share of problems with posters.

In a post on February 27 titled Anonymous no more, Salon editor Joan Walsh wrote:

We have started moderating letters and comments even more aggressively, but we have also decided to end the option of posting letters signed only "Anonymous."
[…]A few people argued that we'd discourage whistleblowers and other tipsters from sharing information. Honestly, I'm not sure we've ever acquired information like that via letters; anyone wanting to contact us anonymously can do that through "readermail 'at' salon.com,"

Moderation of letters includes not just deleting or editing problem posts; they also categorize letters, letting the reader view All letters, or Editor’s Choice letters (though not in all cases; clearly it requires work to do this.)

In Joan’s letter, she notes that they are looking at other ways to rate/moderate posts:

We've also heard your advice about reader moderation tools that would let you rate posters and ignore those you are sick of, and we'll be rolling out some improvements to letters in the months to come, as well as new tools to encourage reader participation.

RANKING POSTS
Woot is a website that offers one day deals on various items. Visitors to the site can post comments about the item of the day (noting how good it is, or how good the price is, or asking questions about it’s use.) In addition, they do some moderation of this area, breaking out “Quality posts” in a special section at the top of the comments list.

This is possible one of the best features I've seen, and something I wish other sites (like Engadget and Gizmodo) would adopt.

The item of the day today, Myvu Personal Media Viewer Fully Loaded Edition for iPod, found 262 comments at 3:00PM EDT, and 14 of those flagged as Quality Posts. This included items such as links to reviews, and a PDF manual, and comments like:

* "I had a customer who bought one that was re-gifted over and over and over again in his office. Everyone who used it would get horrible headaches from the video."

* “But these glasses were more like holding an ipod screen and arms length away from you. Very small, surprisingly so. It's all about FOV (field of view) for these things, and resolution. Low res (320x240) wont matter as much with movies, but the size is MEIN LIEBEN!. I've yet to see a reasonably priced (300-400) SVGA resolution device available. Just think, you could use that to replace your laptop screen, and just have a small battery powered brick computer with a fold-out keyboard. Awesome."

This weeds out comments like:

* weird... Friend had one.

* Holy Moly!! It's Geordi La Forge's Visor!!

* Are you kidding me? Matrix reloaded!!

It’s unclear how Woot breaks these out, but it appears to be a manual process. There’s no rating system (readers rating comments) though there is a Report option to flag questionable posts.

Is our researchers smart?

2008-02-28T13:14:00.003-05:00

Someone sent me a link to a synopsis of a study Does class size matter?New research in Elementary School Journal questions deeply held assumptions about the educational achievement gap

Evidently the report “explores the hard data and finds that some of our basic assumptions about class size may be incorrect” and though it “found, not surprisingly, that smaller class size is a better situation for the children at all achievement levels” it also found “that the children who are already high achievers benefited the most from the extra attention afforded by smaller classes.”

The study then goes on to note this startling problem:

[small classes] produced higher variability in achievement which indicates that the achievement gap between low and high achievers is larger in small classes than in regular size classes

But wait! They’re denigrating positive results because it skewed a metric which may be a fallacy to begin with - that everyone can reach the same level of achievement.

Do smaller classes help students" Yes...and no. Konstantopoulos finds that “although all types of students benefited from being in small classes, reductions in class size did not reduce the achievement gap between low and high achievers”

Actually, it did help all students….there’s no “yes…and no” about it. What it didn’t help was the achievement gap.

Put simply:

If low achievers improve their grades by 10%
and the high achievers improve their grades by 15%,
then SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS: the achievement gap has widened!!!

If reduction of achievement gap is the only goal, then stop teaching the high achievers. Achievement gap narrows, mission accomplished! But the goal should never be to make everyone the same. It should be to make everyone perform at their highest level.

With thinking like this, one day all students will be ABOVE average.

(thŭm)

2008-02-27T15:20:00.003-05:00

That’s some contract you’ve got there…

2008-02-27T15:06:00.002-05:00

Okay, so the format war is over. But it seems Dreamworks must have very poor lawyers; they still don’t know if they can release on Blu-ray.

You’d think that Toshiba pulling the plug on the format earlier this month would kind of negate any contract to release on that format, wouldn’t you? Someone must have put in a clause about that, surely?

But we may be overlooking something. Dreamworks is getting paid money to release on HD DVD ($100 million according to one source.) It sounds like Dreamworks might get more money from Toshiba for essentially not releasing the title, than they would if they released it on Blu-ray.

Toshiba probably guaranteed Dreamworks a given amount for each release. Gives you an idea of how much money the manufacturers were slinging around to entice the publishers - or maybe how little the studios are making on the HD releases (either format) at the moment.

Boy on a Missile

2008-02-26T15:26:00.003-05:00

A friend sent me a picture of a kid hanging on to the front of a plane, which was particularly funny as I had already seen the same kid hanging on to the front of a car.

So here is the next chapter of his exploits:

Sortable isn't a word?

2008-02-26T10:31:00.002-05:00

I was writing a description of a program today:

The list is sortable by class, assignment name and due date

And MS Word underlined sortable and suggested:

storable
sort able
portable
suitable
settable

What?!!

A search on dictionary.com revealed no definition for sortable under sort, yet a Google search returned 2,430,000 results for sortable! It's kind of odd to find that a word you assumed was a word, isn't really official. (Note: a search for lol on dictionary.com returned a result.)

We need to sort this out. If not sortable, then what? "can be sorted" seems so....blech.

P.S. A Google search for lol returned 540,000,000 results....but still...

The Ultimate Question Finder

2008-02-25T14:04:00.004-05:00

In Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” the Earth turned out to be a giant computer built by the mice to answer the ultimate question. Well, actually, to find the ultimate question; they already had the answer: “42”

On the face of it, this seems ridiculous; how could mice afford the cost? But maybe Adams was closer to the truth than we realized.

When talking about intelligence, it’s nearly always been considered at an individual level. Einstein was brilliant, George is a ‘C’ student, and while we have SAT scores to compare students, we think little of the intelligence of a nation. If we do, it’s about whether Japanese kids are better at Math than their American counterparts.

But what happens when intelligence becomes massed together? When we become part of the Collective, and one with The Borg? What if the Internet becomes the expression of intelligence? We've collected intelligence together before - in places called libraries - but the Internet is much more than a library; it provides instant connections between diverse works.

IBM is taking its massive super-computer Blue Gene and looking at placing the entire internet on it. Apart from providing a dictionary of every sexual position, what will this accomplish? And is the intelligence of the internet the files it contains, or is it also the application of the intelligence behind it (i.e. the people who rate things on Amazon and respond to your web posts.)

IBM explores 67.1m-core computer for running entire internet

Project Kittyhawk: building a global-scale computer: Blue Gene/P as a generic computing platform

Rules for Developers

2008-02-25T10:53:00.000-05:00

If the fancy thing won't work - or is too difficult to implement - do the simple fix and pretend like that was all you had been planning to do anyway.

Skipping a Confusing Alert Box

2007-12-16T21:17:00.000-05:00

I was setting up an Airport Extreme base station this weekend, and I encountered this interesting dialog box. At first blush it looks like it's trying to be helpful:

This congifuration will cause your base station's light to blink amber. Are you sure you want to continue?
Click ignore to prevent your base station's status light from blinking amber for this problem.
Skip | Cancel | Ignore

Okay, so I get that if I don't want the base staion light to flash amber, then I click Ignore. But what if I want it to flash amber? Do I click Cancel? or Skip? If I click Skip, what am I skipping? If I click Cancel, am I resetting what I changed (nope, it just takes me back to the screen that generated the dialog in the first place.)

It seems obvious that it's probably Skip I should click, but I wasn't certain. I spent a good minute puzzling over that thing, and decided to just click Ignore because that's what it wanted me to do.

But to be honest, I also didn't understand why the setting I had chosen would cause it to flash amber. And why that was a bad thing. All in all, I was confused, and that's a shame.

One Cool Camera

2007-12-14T12:12:00.000-05:00

Sony announced the PMW-EX1 HD video camera months ago, but it’s only in the past month that articles about it have started to appear, and it still seems to be in pre-order status.

And first things first, this is an expensive toy; $6,699 is the price at the moment, putting it out of reach of the video hobbyist.

But what a camera. Sony sells a variety of HD camera’s, and this one bridges a gap between their semi-pro cameras and their true pro cameras. On the semi-pro side, existing cameras like the HDR-FX1 and HVR-Z1U feature three chips, a fixed lens, record to tape (MPEG-2) and cost about $3,000. In size and shape they are very similar to the PMW-EX1.

Then you jump to the professional cameras like the PDWF330, which feature interchangeable lenses and record to optical discs using Sony’s XDCAM format. But it’s a big jump; $15,000 is at the low end for these cameras.

For me, the intriguing thing about the professional XDCAM cameras is the move away from tape based recording. Except for the PMW-EX1, all XDCAM cameras record to optical discs that provide random access; connect the camera to your computer and immediately see thumb nails representing all the clips on the disc.

The PMW-EX1 uses the XDCAM file format, and also supports random access; but records to flash cards rather than optical discs. And it costs half of what the PDWF330 costs (but twice what a HDR-FX1 would cost you.)

The PMW-EX1 does provide a lot of features that the HDR-FX1 lacks; XLR inputs and the ability to record slow and quick motion (from 1 fps (frame per second) to 60 fps in 720P mode) are appealing, as are it’s full manual (absolute focus position) and semi-manual focusing. When they announced it, I was hoping it would be around $4,000. The extra $3,000 is hard to swallow “just” to record to flash memory; even with the many additional features.

And when it comes down to it, it’s the movement away from tape that’s the most interesting – and the most worrying – feature of this camera. I’m excited by the idea of getting rid of tape; but I honestly don’t know how I’m going to manage archiving when I go to a tapeless system. I’m terrible at doing backups and archives, and tape provides at least an emergency backup.

In the B&H article First Look at the Sony PMW-EX1; An Interview with Doug Jensen there’s a reference to “an archiving method that actually gives me two backups of everything I shoot” but he cannily doesn’t explain what that method is (or what it will cost.) I’m afraid that if I ever ponied up the $7,000 for this camera, I’d need to spend another $2,000 or more to really set up some kind of archive system. For example, Sony’s PDW-U1 XDCAM Drive Unit costs $2,800. Of course, I could buy a Blu-ray burner for about $600.

I guess it’s just as well I can’t afford this camera.

Sony PMW-EX1 overview

PDW-EX1 brochure (PDF Format)

Digital Content Producer: First Look: XDCAM EX

First Look at the Sony PMW-EX1; An Interview with Doug Jensen

DV User: Sony XDCAM EX – PMW-EX1 Solid-State First Look

Well...DUH

2007-12-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

I went to Yahoo this morning and was reading the first headline:

Gore: U.S. blocking progress at climate talks

When the word DUH appeared on the screen in huge letters, exactly mirroring my own reaction upon reading the headline.

It was freaky! Turned out it was some Hyundai promotion; they're Big Duh event.

For a moment I was disappointed. It had been fun - but freaky - to have the system animating my thoughts. Even with computers, correlation does not mean causation.

Dave Matthews Plays New Song “Round and Round"

2007-11-19T16:46:00.000-05:00

Rolling Stone has a neat little video interview with Dave Matthews. He talks a little about guitar playing:

I’m not a master of the guitar by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m happy not being, but I do think that I sometimes more than other times have a sort of unique approach to the guitar and maybe it comes from a lack of a traditional education in the guitar

and also about performing

I forget lyrics though, all the time […] I don’t think it’s a terrible thing to forget the lyrics, I think you just ….mumble, and a lot of my lyrics are the same, I repeat myself. The ideas. But I think you can make noises too. Sometimes I just change the lyrics because the old ones…I don’t like the old ones any more.

and plays a piece he's been working on called Round and Round. If you're a fan, you'll enjoy it. If you're not, don't bother clicking.

Interesting interpretations of Hitchcock

2007-02-27T18:25:00.000-05:00

The Univeristy of California Press is offering a book "Alfred Hitchcock Centenary Essays" which looks very interesting. Their website describes it so:

Alfred Hitchcock: Centenary Essays displays the range and breadth of Hitchcock scholarship and assesses the significance of his singular body of work. The book engages with Hitchcock's characteristic formal and aesthetic preoccupations, his relationship with modernism and politics and his engagement with romance and sexuality.

but it's the contents list that is especially interesting:

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Twice Forgotten: The Sex Lives of Heterosexual Mexicans in the United States
2. Beyond the Hymen: Women, Virginity, and Sex
3. Pleasurable Dangers, Dangerous Pleasures: Men and Their First Sexual Experience
4. Sex Is a Family Affair: Nurturing and Regulating Sexuality
5. Sex and the Immigrant Communities: Risky Opportunities, Opportune Risks
6. Sexual Discourses and Cultures in the Barrio: Networking
7. Sexual Bargains: Work, Money, and Power
8. Gendered Tapestries: Sexuality Threads of Migrant Sexualities

New Zealand in the News Ed.II

2007-02-17T10:47:00.000-05:00

Cross-dressing lawyer hangs up his dress

A male lawyer who appeared in court dressed in women's clothes as a protest against what he said was New Zealand's overly-masculine judiciary was suspended Wednesday after being found to be in contempt of court. The High Court found Rob Moodie, a 68-year-old, balding man who appeared in court in dresses and toting a handbag, was in contempt for circulating suppressed documents outside the court in one of his cases.

Moodie officially changed his name to "Miss Alice" as part of his protest against the "old boys network" that he said runs the nation's judiciary, and was granted an award for the most bizarre conduct by a lawyer in 2006 by London's The Times newspaper.

Taupo skydiver tells of miracle survival

Michael Holmes, 25, went into a spin when his main parachute became tangled during a 4000m drop over Taupo, but survived when he landed in a blackberry bush.

"When the second parachute didn't open I realised it was all over," he told London's The Times newspaper from his bed in Waikato Hospital. "I was going to die. You don't have much time to say goodbye. I just said: 'S**t I'm going to die'."

The ordeal was witnessed by John Siddles, a local man, and his 18-year-old son, Adam, who were watching the parachutists to decide if they wanted to try it themselves.

"One of the skydivers was coming down and going round and round," Mr Siddles said. "He looked like he was all tangled up or something. He just came down, straight down. It looked like it had opened. "We decided it's not for us."

New Zealand in the News

2007-02-03T13:35:00.000-05:00

(Bleep) bless you, ma'am

A censor was told to edit out all profanities -- including any blasphemy -- for the version of the movie The Queen distributed to Air New Zealand, and other carriers. The new censor mistakenly bleeped out each time a character said "God," instead of just when it was used as part of a profanity, said Jeff Klein, president of Jaguar Distribution, the company that distributed the movie to airlines this month. In-flight viewers of the film at one point heard "(Bleep) bless you, ma'am," as one character spoke to the queen.

Love them Sheep

New Zealanders' love affair with sheep gained official recognition Friday when the agriculture minister declared Feb. 15 "National Lamb Day." New Zealand has 4 million human inhabitants and 60 million sheep. Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton suggested New Zealanders had no reason to be embarrassed about their sheep population, and said Lamb Day would mark the 125th anniversary of the first shipment of frozen meat from New Zealand to London.

Woman fights mountain lion to go to New Zealand

Wildlife officials on Thursday credited a woman with saving her husband's life by clubbing a mountain lion that attacked him while the couple hiked in a California state park

... Jim Hamm, 70, was in fair condition Thursday. He had to have his lips stitched and underwent surgery for other lacerations on his head and body.

He told his wife he still wants to make the trip to New Zealand they planned for their anniversary, she said.

Wood to Ethanol

Two national institutes--Scion (formerly known as the New Zealand Forest Research Institute) and AgResearch (formerly known as the Pastoral Agricultural Research Institute)--are working with Diversa of San Diego, Calif., on experiments for turning wood chips and other byproducts from the country's forestry and paper businesses into cellulosic ethanol. Unlike conventional ethanol made from corn or sugar cane, the cellulosic variety comes from agricultural products with little or no other value, which drives down the cost of production.

and finally...
Mortgage’s for PS3’s
The 60 gigabyte model of Sony's PS3 will be priced at 1199.95 New Zealand dollars when it goes on sale March 23.

eBay - get rid of your trash

2007-01-10T15:10:00.000-05:00

For some time eBay has been the place to get rid of that junk you have lying around. Now it seems to be the place to get rid of your trash too.

My officemate is a diehard eBayer; using it to buy all kinds of things, but today he had a bit of a meltdown when he found people selling piles of LCD displays that are broken, non-functional, non-operational, you name it.

"What's up with this?!" he was exclaiming. "This is trash!" and "Now every idiot is on here!"

He's thinking that he should try and sell an empty milk carton; except I'm sure it has already been done.

We both liked this auction; it's someone selling a working LCD display, but they had a picture captioned "Pictured may not be the actual auction item, but clearly represents it." The picture may represent the item; if the item is wrapped in dark plastic, surrounded by white styrofoam, and placed inside a cardboard box!

Leave the world a better place

2006-12-11T16:28:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else find it ironic that an ad campaign for the Lincoln Navigator has the tagline: My Dream Is To Leave The World A Better Place Than I Found It?

Odd ad...

2006-12-05T11:12:00.000-05:00

CitiBank Ad

2006-09-20T19:23:00.000-04:00

The Story So Far

2006-09-20T19:13:00.000-04:00

Back in December someone stole my identity and charged some things to my CitiBank card. You're probably thinking this is a story about being unable to get these fraudulent transactions removed, but no, this is a story about a company that for over six months was unable to simply document the charges to the account - have it's computers send copies of the statements from that period - never mind removing them.

During this time I've had some wonderful Alice-in-Wonderland like conversations with people, my favorite being the Customer Service Supervisor who was adamant that they had done their part because the computer system said so. When I asked if she was saying that computers never made mistakes she told me "No, but they are always right." Another time I was told that a computer system change in June was responsible for the problem, and this change was also blamed for the removal of some notes attached to my account at the Fraud Department.

Things are moving forward however. Just this weekend CitiBank went and did some things and now my account is in credit for $2,000. That's also wrong, but at least Collections isn't calling me.

Out of frustration, I made an ad parody of those CitiBank fraud ads.

Another statement...

2006-09-20T16:08:00.000-04:00

...make that two. One printout for the missing period, and separate copies of the last three months. I think we're now at 11 separate sets of statements.

I was looking at two of the sets of statements, and I noticed that the 'report date' was 5/15 and 5/16, while the mail date on the envelopes was September 13 and 14. If that's correct, there could be three more months of my calls to Customer Service to get through, so there must be at least five or ten more sets of statements in my future.

It's like they gave the computer an enema, and now it's sending out all the backed up requests. I'd love to call and tell them this - maybe it's a problem in the system that they can fix so that it doesn't happen to others - but who would I talk to? I know that Customer Service wouldn't have a clue what to do with this information.

In Other News
This morning I got up early and went back down to the park where the video was shot and recorded some ambient noise to put behind the new voice that's been placed over mine in the ad. Without the ambient noise (steps on gravel and background noise) it just sounds wrong.

I finished the ad, and would have posted it this morning but there's a minor glitch that I want to fix in the end graphic. So it should be up tonight!

Ad in post production

2006-09-19T21:51:00.000-04:00

Meanwhile; the ad continues at a pace and I'm really excited. Rob recorded an awesome voice over for the tag line, and we recorded the voice over for me this afternoon. I then sped it up a little and it works really well with the video I think; close enough that it almost matchs. It's not perfect, but I don't think it has to be.

Going to show it to some people to get feedback, then maybe put it up tomorrow.

Stop It!!

2006-09-19T21:48:00.000-04:00

In the mail today; yet another copy of the statements from Dec-February. I think that must make about Nine different sets of statements; which is probably about as many as I requested over the past six months.

Another day...

2006-09-18T23:33:00.000-04:00

...and CitiBank delivered (in separate envelopes) copies of the last four months statements, as well as two more copies (in separate envelopes) of the statements for Dec-February.

I would call and tell them to stop, but who do I call? And what would they do anyway?

Meanwhile, I worked on the script for my CitiBank parady ad. Showed it to Dave at work and he didn't like the first draft, so I took another go at it. Then this afternoon David from work came and helped me video tape it. And I've asked Rob to record the tag line at the end because he has a great announcer voice. Tomorrow we record the voice over part. With a bit of luck I will have it finished by Wednesday,

Oh, you shouldn't have!

2006-09-17T21:29:00.000-04:00

I have to admit that I was a little concerned that CitiBank was going to clear everything up this week and I would have nothing to write about.

It's purely selfish, I know, but I just felt that the arc of the story would be seriously compromised if things were resolved this way.

Fortunately, CitiBank has come through for me!

I called customer service again this afternoon. Pressed 1 for English. Entered my account number. At this point, normally I get passed to a customer service person. But this time I got the recorded attendant, who told me that my last statement had a balance of $1,490.00

….you have a credit balance of $2280.00

Say what?!!

I had to relisten to it three times to be sure I'd heard it right.

Then I spoke to a Customer Service person. First I explained the whole story. I told him that I didn't like to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I thought that my being in credit for $2,000 was just as wrong as them thinking I owed them $1,000.

He put me on hold for a while, then came back and said he didn't know what was going on, and that he would transfer me to a surpervisor.

Hello, I'm Kim!

Kim was friendly, bubbly, and almost happy to talk to me. I once again explained the whole story. I've told this story so many times to so many Customer Service people that I'm getting bored with it. I also worry that I'm just going on and on, so I try to edit it down; but there's so much that you need to know to make sense of what's been happening. I kept stopping to try and figure out what to edit out, and realizing that I couldn't cut much.

When I finished, she took a look at the account.

"Well, I see we have two credits, and there's no notes."

If course there weren't. It seemed that the two fraudulent transactions had been credited twice instead of once. Or something like that.

Kim said she'd send a request to the Help Desk.

"Help Desk?" I asked. "What's that?"

"Well, they'll look into this and see what happened."

"Really?" I said. "I wonder why no one told me about this in the past six months that I've been calling?"

"Well, they're internal only."

Yes, but why had no one bothered to send my problem to them before, I wondered. I mean, I owe them and they do nothing, as soon as I point out that they think they owe me money, they send it off to the Help Desk.

I didn't make a fuss. Kim was being helpful, and I knew it wasn't her fault. It's the fault of the companies policies and procedures.

She did tell me that she would put a stop on the credit request so that they wouldn't go and send me a check, and then - and she laughed a little - call me up and want it back.

"They'll look into it and let you know what's going on," she assured me.

"They're going to call me?" I confirmed.

"Someone will absolutely let you know what happened," she repeated. "It usually takes about a week."

I was feeling a little reassured, and then she added "You should probably call again then and see what's happened."

We don't want to talk to you right now

2006-09-17T17:22:00.000-04:00

I hadn't heard anything from Collections for a couple of days, and I was getting lonely. Had they found another person to harass? Had they cleared up my account? Had they moved it off to some collection company that would soon be knocking at my door?

I wasn't sure what was up, but if I have learned one thing in the past few months it's that waiting for things to happen is not a good idea.

So this Sunday morning, just before noon, I called, and after entering my account number got the following message:

I'm sorry, our records are currently unavailable.

If you are calling to report a lost or stolen credit card, please press of say 1.

All other callers, please call back at a more convenient time.

Uhhhh....More convenient time? For who? Now was plenty convenient for me! Calling back another time would actually be a bit inconvenient.

You've Got Mail

2006-09-16T23:44:00.000-04:00

Another copy of statements (well, a transaction report really) arrived in the mail today. That makes four copies in a week.

It's feast or famine.

The Dogs of War

2006-09-14T17:27:00.000-04:00

In chat today:

TiredOne: grats on statements btw
Taz: oh, it's one tiny step forward
TiredOne: Better than a step backwards.
Taz: I'm planning on making a commercial that's a copy of those one's they have with the people talking and a different voice
Taz: true....but until the balance is gone and they stop calling every other day, I'm not gonna tie up the dogs
Taz: and maybe not even then ;-)
TiredOne: LOL
Taz: once you let the dogs of war out, it's awfully hard to get 'em back in the kennel

Which is true. I'm all fired up about this! I want to make movies! Posters! Write a letter to the Editor!

They haven't heard the last of me!

MOOD: grrrrrrrrrrrrr

I've concluded that the whole affair is making me paranoid....

2006-09-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

[This entry left blank.]

What worries me now

2006-09-14T15:37:00.000-04:00

A friend told me that he had a credit card with a balance on it. He refinanced his house and used the money to pay off several accounts, including that one. He called the bank and they told him the balance, and he sent a check, but the next statement had an interest charge of about 12 cents.

What worries me is that the Fraud Department will clear out the Fraudulent transaction, but there will be some interest charge on the March account after I sent them the check to cover the rest of the balance. Then the system will recalculate and charge me $39 late fees for each month since then that I never paid. In theory, I could have a bill for over $200.

Or the fraud guy could have completely messed up, and even without the fraud transaction, there's an outstanding balance, and once again I'm looking at about $200 of charges.

Okay, you figured out how to do that...

2006-09-14T15:35:00.000-04:00

Got home today to find the third copy of the transaction statements waiting for me.

Did something get cleared out and all the past requests are getting filled? Will I be getting a dozen copies?!

Before I get too excited..

2006-09-13T17:46:00.000-04:00

Despite the arrival of the long missing statements;

* I'm still waiting to hear from the Fraud Department to find out what they are going to do.
* I still haven't heard from Billing Complaints
* Collections should be calling tomorrow night
* I can't have any more arguments about the infallibility of computers with Customer Service

All in all, I'm not too sure how far I've advanced.

...and now I've got to read through these damn statements.

Miracles can occur...

2006-09-13T17:43:00.000-04:00

I don't know how they did it;

Did they get the managers approval?
Did someone teach them how to use the new computer system?
Did the Post Office manage not to lose it?
Was my address correct?

No one's sure how, but Citibank actually managed to send me a copy of my transaction report for last December.

Scratch that. Two separate copies. Separate mailings.

How did this happen?!!!!!!

Uhh...why did you call?

2006-09-12T19:46:00.000-04:00

I got home and found a letter from Sears [it's really from the idiots at Citibank];

Which says "We received your inquiry concerning your account. In order to assist you we need additional information..."

So I called, thinking that maybe this was a result of my letter to Billing Complaints.

The first Customer Service person asked me for just about every piece of identifying information they had, then immediately said "Oh, I can't talk to you, I have to transfer you."

"Oh suuure," I said. I knew where this was going.

Sure enough; Hello Collections!

Did I want to make a payment? I explained that I had received a letter from them. "That's because the account is in arrears."

I read her the letter.

"Wait a minute while I read the notes on the account" she said.

"I'm sure there's a lot of them," I joked.

"Are you dealing with Fraud about this?" she finally asked.

"Amongst others," I replied. "Do you think they sent it?"

She thought so.

I then asked if maybe Billing Complaints could have sent the letter, but she was doubtful. She said she'd transfer me to Fraud. I was on hold for about five minutes, and then the music changed and suddenly I was getting the main menu again. I seemed to be on hold for ever.

I hung up and called the number on the letter again, and asked if I could be transfered to Fraud. The Customer Service person said she couldn't do that, though she did have a number for them, so I wrote that down and called Fraud.

Which begs the question; if the letter was sent by Fraud, but I can't reach Fraud through the number listed, then did Fraud send the letter?

I spoke to someone in Fraud and - long story short - he had no idea if they sent the letter, and if so, what they wanted. He did say that they hadn't received the affidavit I had sent (what a surprise.) I pointed out that the date on the letter (August 31st!) was actually after the Fraud sent out the affidavit.

He did think that once the affidavit was received it would take 'about a week' to clear up...

he also said that I should get a letter from Fraud saying what they had done.

So we wait. And Collections will be calling in another couple of days.

And I guess I'll never know who - or why - they sent the letter.

Dear Sir...

2006-09-12T19:04:00.000-04:00

Just sent this letter:

William R. Rhodes
President and Chief Executive Officer of Citibank
Citigroup
399 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10043
U.S.A.

[Name,
Address]

Sir,

I am writing to alert you to problems with the way that your company conducts business. These are issues that I think are serious and have ramifications for your customers, and I suspect that your Customer Service Department has not brought these issues to your attention.

Perhaps this information can be used to better inform your operation in the future.

1.] In December of last year, someone fraudulently changed my mailing address and then used my Citi issued credit card to make purchases. This was done despite the fact that I had a password on my account (as my social security number had been previously compromised.)

Your companies’ failures:
a.] An account was changed without the password attached to the account
b.] Your company made no effort to check the change of address. Sending a notice to the old address stating to the effect ‘If your address has not changed, please call us’ or even calling the old phone number on the account, would have provided some measure of security.

2.] For the past six months I have been trying to get copies of statements for the three months that the address was changed (Dec 05-Feb 06.) I have spoken to Customer Service and the Fraud Department multiple times. I paid your company the amount I was told was outstanding (minus the fraud charges) in March, yet have received no formal documentation of the charges. This has also meant that I have been unable to find out why the new account you issued in March had an opening balance.

Your companies failures:
a.] Customer Service has not been able to provide statements after multiple requests.
b.] No Supervisor is able to offer a creditable answer for why these statements are not being generated; and can do nothing, and WILL DO NOTHING to establish why they aren’t working.
I’ve heard multiple explanations (the request didn’t have a managers’ approval, the computer system changed in June, the Post Office must have lost them.) None of these seem credible; when I pointed out that no other mail was missing, and I was receiving the monthly statements the response from a Supervisor was; ‘we’re sending them out.’
When I asked if they could prove that, I was told ‘the system says so.’
When I asked if she was saying that computers never make mistakes, she had the decency to say No, but then added that ‘they are always right.’
The only other solution, I was told, was to send a letter to Billing Complaints.

3.] After months of failures at Customer Service, I sent two certified letters to your company; one to the regular mailing address (I was then told that address would not work and I would have to send a second letter.) I sent a second certified letter to Billing Complaints on August 21st.

Your companies’ failures:
a.] There is no way to contact Billing Complaints to establish if they received a complaint, what (if any) action they may take, and how long it will take them to complete their investigation (if any.)
b.] Customer Service is unable to contact Billing Complaints, or know what (if anything) they might be doing.
c.] Customer Service also does not know if the Fraud Department is taking any action on an account.

4.] During this period I have refused to pay the balance. Having paid your company $2,000 in charges that your company can’t document, why should I send you another $1,000, particularly when it seems likely now (after talking to the Fraud Department five times) that a fraudulent transaction they said would be removed, was not. Your company is now charging 30% interest, and an almost equivalent amount in a Late Fee of $39.

Your companies’ failures:
a.] After the Fraud Department said that they would remove a transaction from my account, they failed to do so, and they failed to notify me of their inaction.
b.] The Fraud Department provided no documentation of any action they took (or declined to take) after there was a fraudulent transaction on the account.
c.] Your company is currently charging the equivalent of 60% interest on my account, which is close to usury.

5.] At some point this year your company changed computer systems. This meant that, according to Customer Service, requests were being placed incorrectly. These requests still do not work. When I spoke to the Fraud Department, I was told that many of the notes from the original problem with the account were no longer available ‘because of the system change.’

Your companies’ failures:
a.] As someone that works in the computer industry, I find it inconceivable that a company such as yours would change their computer systems in such a way that Customer Service would be ineffectual, and unable to access records previously entered in the system.
b.] Your personnel seem woefully under trained in the usage of the computer systems that are supposed to assist them.

For you edification, I have included copies of the letter I sent to the Billing Complaints department.

Sincerely,

Cc: Office of the Attorney General
Consumer Complaint and Information Section
One Ashburton Place
Boston, MA 02108

Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation
10 Park Plaza, Suite 5170
Boston, MA 02116

Senator Edward M. Kennedy
317 Russell Senate Building
Washington D.C. 20510

Priceless

2006-09-12T19:02:00.000-04:00

Stapler: $7.99

Paper Clips: $2.49

Certified Mail: $ 7.07

Sending letters of complaint: Priceless

Contacting CitiGroup/Citibank

2006-09-12T14:40:00.000-04:00

They really don't want to hear from you. Call Customer Service, but beyond that no one has any phones it seems.

They must be awfully efficient at Corporate, without all those pesky phone calls.

Curiously, I found the phone number for a Citigroup Vice President in the Czech Republic. But not for any Citigroup U.S. Vice President.

I wonder if he speaks English?

I've just finished writing a letter to William R. Rhodes, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Citibank. I'm sending it to the Citigroup address:
399 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10043
U.S.A.

I'm also cc'ing:

Office of the Attorney General
Consumer Complaint and Information Section, MA

Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, MA

Senator Edward M. Kennedy

The Post Office is making a lot of money out of this...

CitiCorp Computers are always right

2006-09-11T23:56:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd take another run at CitiBank's Customer Service [sic] today, just to let them know how pleased I was with the copies of statements I'd received for the wrong three months.

I figure that eventually I'll either find someone that has a clue about how to solve the problem, or b) someone I've talked to before… "Didn't I talk to you in June?!"

First up was Jessica, who dropped me like a hot potato. I'd hardly given her my password than she said "Oh I can't help you," and said she was going to transfer me. "I handle accounts that are one or two months over due, but your account is over three months, so I have to send you to another associate."

I spent a while talking to Kay, explaining that the requests were going in, but I wasn't getting anything out. I also noted that I'd been assured on September 1st that I would get them and now they'd gone and sent me the wrong months!

Kay's mantra was: "We put in the request."

"But I'm not getting anything!! Who can fix this?"

"Hang on," she finally said. "I'll let you talk to MAU, maybe they can help."

She didn't explain who MAU were, and was gone before I had a chance to ask.

Next thing I was talking to Supervisor Laura in Collections.

Now I'm sure Laura is a nice person. And on my good days, I'm a nice person too, but frankly, I'm getting rather short of temper. So Laura probably thought I was a cranky SOB.

Things started off badly when she asked me for my social security number rather than my password. It's a pet peeve of mine as I'm convinced that it's because of this that my address was changed in the first place. She didn't understand what I was upset about, and when I pointed out that several customer service people asked me for the social security number when they shouldn't, she was unmoved.

"I can't do anything about that," she said.

"But you're asking for the social security number," I pointed out.

"I just need it to check that you are who I am talking to," she snapped back.

I then pointed out that my social security number has been compromised so it can't be used to identify me.

"I'm in management, I know they've checked already so I don't have to ask for the password," she pointed out rather airily.

I didn't think to ask 'Well if they have checked already, why are you asking again?'

I probably should have ended it then. I was already annoyed, and she had already written me off as one of those raving loonies they get. But I persisted, and told my story all over again about the lack of statements, and now, about the wrong statements.

"Well, there's a new request put in yesterday," she said.

Oh great! I had no idea the person I spoke to yesterday in Collections had put in another request. Every time I talk to someone in Customer Service they just put in the request again.

"But it's not working!" I said. Then I listed off all the excuses I've heard about why the statements haven't worked, and concluded with the Post Office excuse, demolishing it - I thought - by pointing out that I've got every other piece of mail from them.

"We've put in the requests and it's sent them," she answered back.

"But the computer isn't doing it. So who can fix this?"

"I can only put in a request to the computer."

"But I'm not getting them."

"Well I can only tell you that we are sending them."

"How do you know that?" I shot back. "Does someone actually take them off the printer, look at them and then send them out?"

"No sir."

"Can you prove to me that you actually printed them and sent them?"

With the patience of someone that works with three year-olds, she explained it to me;

"The computer says it sent them."

I thought I had her at this point.

"So you're saying that the computer never makes mistakes?" I asked.

"No," she denied, but then added; "but it's always right."

I was really getting annoyed at this point.

"But what happens if it doesn't work? Surely there's someone that can check this?"

"No sir."

"But I'm not getting them!"

"We sent them out to you."

I tried another tack.

"Okay, so you're saying I'm lying then?"

"No sir."

"Well then what explanation do you have?"

"We put in the request, sir."

I gave up.

Am I too nice?

2006-09-11T19:47:00.000-04:00

I think my problem is that I have been too nice.

For the first couple of months I didn't really worry; I figured things would be sorted out sooner or later so I just asked for them to send me the copy of the statements and waited. Also, the statements didn't even have a 'minimum amount' that needed to be paid. So why worry? Surely they'd get this straightened out in a few weeks.

But then five months went by and nothing changed.

When, in frustration, I sent a letter to the Billing Complaints Dept, I toyed with the idea of cc'ing the State Attorney General and Senator Kennedy's office. But even then I decided that was going too far, too fast.

Then they started demanding some kind of payment. They increased the interest rate and kept adding Late Charges. At this rate, by December I figure that a $900 charge will have turned into a $1,600 charge. And you thought a 20% interest rate was high!

So now the gloves are off! The Collections Department is calling me every other day, they still have not provided statements in over six months, and I'm just annoyed. No one seems to be able, or interested, in solving the problem. And I'm starting to take it out on the Customer Service people.

I'm sending a new letter to Corporate, and I'm going to cc the Attorney General, Senator Kennedy, and anyone else I can think of.

I was listening to NPRs business news show MarketPlace this evening, and was reminded that they have people on doing commentaries about different things. Maybe I could do a commentary about incompetent credit card companies? Or maybe incompetent customer service? Or both?

CitiCorp screws up again

2006-09-11T18:07:00.000-04:00

Got home today and there were three envelopes from Sears/CitiCorp. I couldn't believe it! Had they actually managed to send me the statements for December-February?! Had they sent me three copies just to make sure?

I opened the first one; it was a copy of last months statement.

The second one was for July, and the third for June.

They'd sent me three months of statements all right; just the wrong three months.

Idiots.

CitiBank Usary

2006-09-10T21:35:00.000-04:00

I keep forgetting to mention that right now Citi is charging my account 31% interest, and a $39 fee each statement for not making a payment. The interest charge each month is about $30, so in effect

They are charging over 60% interest.

Nice work if you can get it.

It's Sunday evening...

2006-09-10T21:28:00.000-04:00

It's Sunday evening at 9 o'clock. Time for CitiCorp/Citibank/Citi whatever Collections Department to call me and find out if I want to make a payment.

"You're account is past due $320. Do you want to pay that now?"

"No," I say.

"Well how much do you want to pay?"

"None of it," I say, and proceed to tell her my whole story. I'm getting quite good at it. I mostly remain calm. I think that throws them. When I tell them that I can't get Customer Service to do this simple thing they can't offer me any solution.

"Is there no one I can talk to?"

"All we have is the Customer Service number, and the Corporate address."

Turns out that the corporate address is similar - but not the same - as the Complaints Department. Someone else to write to. A friend told me to write to the President; but how do I find his name and address?

I also explained that I was dealing with the Fraud Department. She thought I would have the most luck with the Fraud Department - and I agreed - though I explained that I still wanted to get a copy of those statements that I never got.

She just said "I understand," and wished me a good evening.

Data Printout For:

2006-09-10T11:55:00.000-04:00

Received in the mail yesterday an official-looking letter with the words 'Data Printout For:" and underneath "For Sears Gold MasterCard Cardmember."

Holy Cow!

I thought they'd actually pulled it off and sent me a printout.

Wrongo!

Turned out it was an invitation to join one of their account protection plans!!

Seven to Ten Business Days

2006-09-09T23:05:00.000-04:00

Have you seen those CitiBank Identity Theft Ads? You know, the ones where you hear one persons voice talking, but you see a completely different person? The whole point is that they had their identity stolen.

They are kind of funny (unless you've had it happen to you!)

Now, CitiBank may make some effort to counter fraud, but when it comes to Customer Service they are hopeless. Here's my story:

In December of 2005 someone changed the mailing address on my Sears/CitiBank credit card. The odd thing about that is that it's the second time someone has done this to me. The first time was back in 2002 with a different credit card, and because of that experience I put a password on all my credit cards. The idea behind having a password on accounts is that someone can't change / use the account with just your name and social security number. It's pretty much standard advice for those that have had their identity stolen.

So someone managed to change my address; and clearly without the password. I just don't think there's any way that someone could have guessed my password.

Be that as it may, the bank also fell down because they did nothing to check that my address had changed; they didn't call my 'old' phone number, or send a simple letter to my old address: "We got your address change, if it hasn't changed, call us!" It's a pretty basic way to protect against such scammers.

The next problem was; I didn't notice that I wasn't getting statements. That's probably my fault, but in my own defense, by pure circumstance I'd cut back on using that card after December (it was unrelated to the card, and just one of those weird coincidences.) Anyway, I just kind of figured that I hadn't been using the card; forgetting that I had used it quite a bit in December, and had a couple of automatic bills going to the card. Okay, I don't keep track of things as tightly as I might.

It was only in February 2006 that I got a call from the CitiBank Fraud Department; had I bought something from B And H Photo recently? Had I ordered something in December? There were two suspicious transactions, one for about $900 in December, and another for about $1200 in February. At first I was stumped because - another weird circumstance - I had bought stuff from B And H Photo before. Not very frequently, but now and again. For a moment I was confused, but then I figured out that, no I definitely hadn't ordered something from them in months; and the last thing was a computer keyboard that was less than $100.

After talking to the Fraud Department, I called B And H and explained that I didn't place the orders. They cancelled the second transaction.

I spoke to the Fraud Department and we went through all of the transactions on the account. The person at the fraud department then told me the outstanding balance on the account (less the two fraudulent transactions.) I then wrote them a check for that amount. I was under the impression that they would remove the two fraudulent transactions.

CirtiBank created a new account. I received the card, and - much to my surprise - the first statement had an opening balance of just over $1,000. I hadn't even used the new card!

This is where we descend into the rabbit hole
I called Customer Service and told them that there was an opening balance I couldn't understand. Would they please send me a copy of the statements for December through February? I was pretty sure that the balance was one of the fraudulent transactions, but I couldn't figure out exactly what it was since the amount didn't match either.

Customer Service was very nice and told me I would receive a copy of the statements in "seven to ten business days."

A month later a new statement arrived. It still had a balance. I called Customer Service and explained that I hadn't received the copies of the statements. No problem, they told me, we'll put in another request. It will take seven to ten business days.

Nothing arrived.

I called back. Figuring that maybe the problem was that the Fraud Department had closed the original account, I spoke to someone in the Fraud Department. They told me that they could provide me with a "transaction summary" but not copies of the statements. I said that was okay. They told me I would get it in seven to ten business...

Nothing arrived.

I called Customer Service again and spoke to someone who was very apologetic. She went away and spoke to her Supervisor and came back and told me that the problem was that such a request had to approved by the manager. That's why they hadn't worked. She had put in a new request, and I should get it in seven to ten...

Nothing arrived.

Then I got a call from Customer Service. My account was in arrears. Did I want to make a payment? No I didn't, I said. I explained the whole thing. The person wondered if my address was correct. We checked and it was okay. I explained that I was getting the monthly statements just fine.

She put in another request and told me I would get it in seven to...

You guessed it.

At this point I figured, why not just get them to read me the transactions, and I would write them down and figure out the whole thing myself? I called Customer Service and attempted to do this, but there was one problem; they only keep six months of transactions online, and at that point, she could only go back to January.

I could go on. I have spoken to Customer Service many times. I've heard the following explanations:

The request should have been approved by the manager
They changed computer systems in June
The Post Office must be losing them (why don't I call them?)
My address must be wrong

I have explained multiple times that no other mail is missing; that I am getting the monthly statements without fail. We've checked my address about ten times.

Along the way, I have discovered that you can speak to Customer Service and their Supervisors, but they can do nothing other than to request the report. If nothing comes back, they can't do anything (and don't really care.) They are incapable of having someone request the report and see that they actually get something in hand, and then send it to me.

You can't speak to the Billing Complaints department; they have no phones it seems. You can only send them letters; which go unanswered. By the way, complaints has a different address to their usual mailing address. Send your letter of complaint to that address and...tough. Send another. Send a second letter to the right address and you can't get them to confirm that they received it. The Complaints Department - it appears - is the equivalent of a Black Hole. Things go in, but nothing comes out.

Customer Service has always been courteous - even when I was in a less than happy mood - but they are utterly incapable of solving any problem.

They can't call you to check that you really did change your address, but they can call you every few days to find out why you won't pay.

Here we are, September 1st, and still no solution!
After telling my story to a co-worker, he said that I should call and just insist that they do something. "If the first person can't help, then insist that you talk to their supervisor."

All fired up, I decided to take a run at the Fraud Department again. I called and spoke to someone (once more explaining the entire story.)

"You need to talk to Customer Service," he said.

"No, no, they can't help," I said.

"Yes they can," he assured me.

"No," I persisted.

"But I'll be on the phone too," he said, and despite my protests called someone in Customer Service. Fortunately, he explained everything to Nicole, who was very nice. She said that she would get her supervisor. The Fraud Department guy rang off. I was put on hold.

I was sitting there, listening to the on-hold music, thinking maybe I would get someone who knew what they were doing, when there was a 'click.' The music was interrupted, and suddenly I was getting the main phone menu message. 'Crap!' I pushed the number for Customer Service and got connected to another person.

"I was talking to Nicole," I explained. "Can you reconnect me?"

"No, but I can help you. What's your problem?"

Great! I get to explain everything again! This person proceeded to tell me it was a problem with the Post Office. Why would I call the Post Office I asked, since I was getting all my other mail, and the monthly statements too? But that's all she could offer me as an explanation. So then I spoke to her Supervisor, who calmly explained that it was a problem with the way the request had been entered - due to a change in the computer system - but that they had fixed that, and I would get it in "seven to ten days."

"But what if I don't get it?" I said.

"You will," she assured me.

"Yes but, I'm not saying that you're wrong, but just playing devils advocate, since it hasn't worked before, what happens if I don't get it?"

"Well, then you'd have to call back."

"And be back at square one?"

"Yes, but -"

"Then I'm..." I was getting annoyed at this point.

"But you are going to get this one."

I was still unhappy. I'd requested this so many times. So I persisted.

"Could someone request the report, get it and send it to me by certified mail so we both have a record that it was sent and received?"

"No."

"No one can do that?" I pleaded.

"No."

"So how do you solve any problems?"

"You're going to get this one." It was becoming a mantra.

"Yes, but when?"

"In seven to ten days."

I was about running out of ideas, so thought I'd go back to the Fraud Department one more time. Maybe I'd been fixated on getting the statements, when all I should have done was called back fraud and said "Did you clear off those transactions?"

Yeah, I know, seems obvious. I don't know why I didn't think of that before; even when I called the Fraud Department and asked them to send me statements.

I called Fraud and spoke to a friendly person. She said she couldn't look at all the notes on my account because "we changed systems back in June. I can see some of the details, but not everything."

Also, "the person who worked on your account is no longer with us." I wondered if they were dead, or just 'passed on.'

"There's another system I can use," she continued, "but I don't use it very much, and I've forgotten my password," she apologized.

Then she got all excited. "Oh, I think I..." pause, "oh, no, sorry."

But, I did get her name, number and extension, and she told me she would call me back. And unlike one Supervisor in Collections who told me he would call me back "after checking with Customer Service downstairs," she did call me back!

It seemed that they hadn't removed the first transaction. Why not? Because I hadn't sent them an affidavit.

"So what happens now?" I asked.

"Well, I'll send you another affidavit. Fill that in and send it back."

"Okay," I said, thinking things were looking up.

"You should get it in seven to ten business days."

Look Out! Politics

2006-09-07T13:59:00.000-04:00

I didn't intend to get into politics on this blog, but I'm annoyed about this ABC 'docudrama' that is coming up called "Path to 9/11" Not only does it appear to be a 'fictionalized' account that was produced by people with a right-leaning agenda, but it's being aired on the fifth anniversary of this tragic event. In an election year.

I don't usually do this, but I sent an email to the local ABC affiliate (would have written, but figured it was too close to the air date to do much good anyway)

I'm concerned that you will be broadcasting “Path to 9/11” this so-called docudrama, that actually appears to be more of a fictional drama than anything else. Several people who are represented in the events have criticized the accuracy of the program (see reports in the New York Times and Washington Post.)
Screening the program even with a disclaimed[sic] that it is a ‘docudrama’ seems to be a major disservice to the viewing public. Particularly when screening it on the anniversary of the event.
This is not something I expect from your otherwise excellent station!

Am I just spitting in the wind?

Notice the suck-up comment about the station? Damn! just noticed a grammatical error! *sigh*

Still, Republicans got a movie about Reagan pulled a while back...

And the punchline is.....

2006-09-01T23:48:00.000-04:00

On one of the guitar bulletin boards I frequent a poster was lamenting problems with participating in an eBay auction (someone tried to scam him with a fake second chance offer.) He was now nervous about a second auction and said:

Oh well. I am glad I still have my D-41. Why would I want more guitars. Ha Thats what my Wife said before she passed on. She said that about my Guns too. She said why do you need two guns. She didn't understand that either. Ha

I kept expecting a punchline, but it never came...

Rampant Consumerism

2006-08-31T23:46:00.000-04:00

I just got one of these:

I've always thought they were the coolest looking kitchen appliance, and I've always wanted one.

The thing is; I don't bake. I mean hardly ever; and when i do, it's mostly packages of Brownie mix from Trader Joe's. So this thing is probably gonna get very little use at all.

Still, it looks damn cool....

GPS Update

2006-08-31T23:37:00.000-04:00

I love my GPS! I wonder why I didn't get one sooner.

The trip to Pennsylvannia went badly and it went well. Going down it wanted me to go on I-95, through New York. Since that's the way I went the last two times, I thought why not. Well, it's not a good idea to go through New York at about 4pm on a Friday. Learned that lesson well!

But we got to the destination; even if it was about two and a half hours later than expected.

Coming back everyone had different advice on how to go, and I ended up going north to 84. 'Gertie' wasn't too happy about that; though I pretended to go somewhere else at first, as soon as I said I wanted to go Home she tried to make me go east to I-95. I didn't want to do that, and kept ignoring her advice to 'take the next exit' (at one point she wanted me to take the next exit and turn around and go back to the last exit! Forget that.

And then she got so confused that she generated an error and was unable to calculate a route. We both stewed on that for a while, and then about an exit on I reset her and 'ta da!' she gave me a route that was more to my liking!

Most of the time I find that for around home I prefer my own routes to the one's she can come up with (they aren't bad, but she has no aversion to travelling down Mass Ave., which I will avoid if I can. However, she also found a better route to a couple of places that I go to infrequently.

And it's kind of nice to know that if you do get lost, Gertie is there now to provide directions; even if they are only on how to get home!

GPS

2006-07-28T13:48:00.000-04:00

I just got one of these; a Garmin StreetPilot i2 Vehicle Navigation GPS System. It was only $220 from Amazon.

I partly got it because I have a big car trip coming up, and partly because my office mate Dave has a GPS (though a completely different system) and he's been going on about that a fair bit lately.

The i2 is the base model; it has a black and white screen and only enough memory for a few states. I managed to load MA, ME, NY, NJ and PA into the memory. I could buy a new memory card for about $40 and be able to load all of the US into it, but I'm going to wait on that.

The black and white screen seems fine for basic navigation. When you are looking at the maps zoomed out it's a little hard to tell what's going on; color would be much more helpful for that.

So far I have used it to navigate to work and to the sub shop (both places I already know how to get to!) It did a good job in both cases; though it wanted me to take a different route to what I normally take, it happily recalculated when I deviated from it's prescribed path.

I guess the big test will be the trip coming up, and going places I haven't been to before!

Don't you just hate beign stupid?

2006-05-26T23:37:00.000-04:00

For a while now I've been thinking about how to listen to my iPod through speakers. I've thought about the Bose SoundDock (too expensive) and the Apple iPod speakers thing (way too expensive) and then one day it occured to me; just plug the iPod into my surround sound stereo connected to the television.

I connected up an RCA to mini-plug cable in the back of the amplifier, and plugged it into the headphone jack of the iPod, and stuck the iPod in it's charging cradle next to the stereo.

It worked okay; but I had to crank up the amp to get good volume due to the headphone output being lower than line output, and the stereo isn't the biggest and best; fine for movies, but it seems to lack something for music...

Anyway, I had that set up for the last week, and was generally happy with it. This evening I was moving the cradle from the computer back to beside the stereo - the cradle works both as a charger and as the connector to the computer when updating the iPod - when I noticed on the back of the cradle a little mini-plug labelled "line-out."

Well duh! The stereo works much better with that!

Goodbye Film

2006-05-25T17:05:00.000-04:00

Canon announced that they have ceased development of new film camers (both SLRs and point-and-shoots.)

This probably shouldn't be a surprise. Nearly everyone seems to have a digital camera these days, and I was just down at the local Camera store and noticed that they were pulling out there film processing room.

Kodak is also falling on hard times.

Will anyone be using film five years from now?

Translation of Adobe PR

2006-05-18T13:47:00.000-04:00

This is hilarious. A Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Adobe’s ‘FAQ’ Regarding Their Acquisition of Macromedia.

I originally came across this ages ago and thought is was hilarious; but then I kept losing it, and it's not easy to find on the web.

Having found it again, I thought I better post it so I won't lose it again.

Here's a couple of highlights:

How many employees does Macromedia have?

Macromedia has approximately 1,450 employees worldwide.

Please note use of present tense.

Do you anticipate a reduction in force as a result of this transaction?

When two successful growing companies join together, the result is a combined organization that creates new and exciting opportunities. The combination will lead to powerful new areas of innovation, new products and solutions, and an acceleration of our respective growth agendas. At the same time, there will be some duplication of employee functions between the two companies, and upon the close of the transaction, we anticipate some level of reduction in force. While we anticipate the integration team will identify opportunities for cost savings, the primary motivation for this acquisition is to continue to expand and grow our businesses into new markets.

Yes.

Will all the reductions in employees come from one company or the other, or both companies?

Any potential reductions will be carefully considered and are likely to impact both organizations.

Have we mentioned that PDF is an excellent format for distributing résumés?

Exciteable

2006-05-17T14:55:00.000-04:00

I was all excited about this device that you plug your iPod into and you can connect speakers to and it puts out 15 watts of power....and then it occured to me; I already have the cables to connect the iPod to the stereo I already have! :-( Sometimes I get too excited by a good looking gadget

Great deal on a battle tank!

2006-05-17T13:18:00.000-04:00

I love dealmac.com as a source for deals and interesting things. Today they had a writeup for a battletank that's sold on Amazon that reads:

NAO Design via Amazon.com still has the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank for $19,999.95. With shipping at $14.99, we couldn't find a similar battle tank for less elsewhere.

But it only has a 6-horsepower engine and a 40 mph top speed (down hill, I'm guessing) so I don't think it's much use except for a sci-fi movie prop; better off getting a bullet-proof Mercedes.

BBC interviews cab driver instead of IT expert

2006-05-16T10:48:00.000-04:00

The BBC were going to interview Guy Kewney, an IT journalist, about the Apple vs. Apple suit. Instead, they interviewed his cab driver.

Seems that somehow they got them confused (though one is white, and the other black.) The cab driver looks shocked when he realizes that they think he is someone else, but then gamely talks his way through the interview!

First outsourcing to India, and now this! Are no IT jobs safe?

Sony BRAVIA ad

2006-05-15T11:56:00.000-04:00

Sony's recent ad featuring thousands of balls bouncing down the streets of San Francisco weren't a CGI effect. They literally bounced 250,000 rubber balls down the streets; firing them out of guns and dumping them from front-end loaders.

You can see making off videos at their site.

I Forgot My Account Info

2006-05-10T11:11:00.000-04:00

Which just sucks, as it took me a long while to remember what I used to create this blog!

Don't you just hate having to deal with multiple passwords and stuff??!

Sony Bluetooth Microphone

2006-01-27T09:09:00.000-05:00

I bought a Sony HDR-HC1 (Hi-Def camcorder) a couple of months ago, and Sony turns around and brings out an even cheaper model; the HDR-HC3.

I was going to get a little annoyed because it is supposed to be about $500 cheaper, and supports a Bluetooth remote mircphone.

But I'm happy now, because they have an add-on that will work with the HC1; theSony ECM-HW1 Bluetooth Wireless Mic. The wireless mono microphone has a range of 30 meters and comes with a receiver that can be attached to the handycams shoe adapter. If the Camcorder has the ability to record in 5.1 channel Dolby Digital Surround Sound then the ECM-HW1 can be used as the microphone for the center channel.

How cool is that?

It's going to be available in Japan next month and cost about US$165.

Umm...ouch!

Software Patents

2006-01-14T21:14:00.000-05:00

I'm not too sure how I feel about software patents. On the one hand, if someone comes up with a really new, original idea, then they should be able to benefit from it. On the other hand, I couldn't help but be sympathetic with this statement from a British judge:

"The United States takes the view that anything made by man, under the sun, can be patented. And they have granted patents for business methods, mainly computer business methods. But as far as I can see, it would cover a new and improved method of stacking oranges on a barrel"

Subway Frustrations

2006-01-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

Subway has this promotion going called 'Fresh Resolutions.' Go to Subway and they give you a scratch card with two parts. Rub away the large circle and (annoyingly) you get this 'resolution' like: "Exercise More" or "Save Money." Well gee, thanks.

Scratch off the other circle and you find a code. You have to go to the Subway website and then register(!) and enter the code. And then (are we frsutrated yet) you wait while this Flash animation 'scratches' off to show you that you didn't win anything. Surprise!

I'm sure it would be different if you won something...

But, this highlights one thing about long, gratuitous Flash animations; they might be marginally fun the first time, but they get boring really quick.

I've gone veggie

2005-11-27T23:47:00.000-05:00

Well, not totally veggie, but I am experimenting with it. The week before last I went the whole week without eating meat. It wasn't that hard, either.

This week was Thanksgiving, and trust me, there's no point in going vegetarian the week of Thanksgiving. You have to start things off slowly.

I don't intend to give up meat entirely; just trying to cut down.

I bought some multi-vitamins from Trader Joes today. A 30 day supply. Much to my surprise, it came as a packet of about 7 pills you are supposed to take with a (large) meal. Crumbs! I wasn't expecting that! I thought it would be one pill...But then there had to be something filling up the big can I guess!

Well, I'm gonna try it for a week or two and see if I notice any difference.

I have noticed one change already; my pee has turned brite yellow.

Todd AO

2005-11-26T20:08:00.000-05:00

The movie Oklahoma had been re-released on DVD with both the Cinemascope version and the Todd-AO version. Todd-AO is a wide screen format that was wider than Cinemascope, was projected on a curved screen, and shot at 30 frame per second rather than films traditional 24 fps. Kind of the IMAX of the fifties I guess.

They shot the movie twice; each scene was shot first with Cinemascope and then Todd-AO (or maybe vice a versa.)

The DVD has the Todd-AO version on the second DVD, along with a short documentary about Todd-AO. It was interesting. I watched a bit of the Todd-AO version, but was dissapointed to find that it was not as 'wide' as the Cinemascope version. Not sure why.

The sound was different - not sure if better. I watched the song Oklahoma and the mix of some of the voices was different. There also seemed to be a noticeable difference in the 'feel' of motion when things moved. But the real problem was color: the color was washed out or muted, and not half as good as that on the Cinemscope version. It looked very much like a television show from the late sixties, rather than a movie.

I don't think I'll watch the rest.

Al Frankin

2005-11-16T15:23:00.000-05:00

I've been a fan of Al Frankin for a while, and have listened to his radio show, off and on, almost since it began. I even attended the last taping in Boston (election day, 2004!) which was a lot of fun.

So I was excited to hear that he was coming back to Boston to tape his show. He has a new book out The Truth, With Jokes so it's kind of a radio show/book tour. A friend, Matt, is a big liberal too, and was interested in going, so I put in for tickets and on the day we caught the train into town and walked down to the Wilbur Theater, where the show was being broadcast.

The ticket said to arrive by 11:00am, and we got there at about 10 minutes to. There was only a half dozen or so people milling about outside, as well as someone distributing literature for a democratic candidate for Governor.

They let us into the lobby, but we had to wait until about ten past before they let us into the theater. Then we quickly marched down the isle, and managed to get two seats in the front row, not quite directly in front of the table that was set up on the stage.

Of course, we were there to see a radio show, and between you and me, there's not often a lot to see. Al came out and did a little introduction before the show, then he went and sat at the table, and that was about the end of the action!

Al is funny, and interesting, and it's funny to see his expressions, particularly to things the guests said. And he had some interesting guests. Barney Frank was on by phone, but then a Harvard Professor came on to talk about relationships within society (he's the author of a book Bowling Alone.

There was also a couple of peopleon to talk about the woes of health insurance.

Matt had to get back to work, so before the show was over we went out to the back of the hall to get in line for the book singing. A good move on our part as we were about the sixth in line.

Definitely try and catch Al in person.

Bad Sandwich

2005-11-08T13:32:00.000-05:00

Wild Oats (a supermarket chain) used to have these sandwich wraps which, though expensive, were pretty good. Now they have introduced 'Toasted Sandwiches.' Could this be in response to the introduction of Subway's toasted sandwiches??

I decided to try one today. There wasn't a lot of traffic at the counter. Actually just one other person (perhaps a sign?) and it took the woman behind the counter quite some time to make the thing...of course, a good part of that was toasting time. They obviously don't have high-speed ovens like Subway ;)

Also, she had to walk back to the kitchen (about 50 feet) to toast it, come back while it was toasting, then walk back to get the sandwich. Efficiency ain't the watch word here.

I got a Rustico Romano Chicken Sandwich. $6.99 plus tax.

It was worse than the Subway Parmesan Sandwich...

Firstly, by the time I got back to the office (about a five minute walk) part of the chicken was cold. Not warm, but cold, leading me to suspect it was never hot in the first place. This might be explained by the fact that it was a pretty big hunk of chicken. It was breaded. It was a little dry (or maybe the combination was.) All in all, it was less than appetizing.

I put it in the microwave and tried to bring it back to life. Warmed up it was a little better, but not a whole lot better. It kind of felt like I was eating a left-over sandwich.

Don't think I'll be getting this again.

That fact that I wrote about this (and even took a picture of the sandwich) just goes to show how dull my day is.

The Right Thing

2005-11-08T11:17:00.000-05:00

"The Americans will always do the right thing," Winston Churchill once remarked, "after they've exhausted all the alternatives."

Semen Washer

2005-11-07T13:18:00.000-05:00

....was listed as one of the ten worst jobs in science.

Here's the money shot:

"The hardest part is explaining it to friends," Schillinger says. "But we do have stories." Like what? "Like the donor who was in the room for the longest time. We had a big discussion about who was going to check on him. Turns out he thought he had to fill up the entire specimen cup."

Which I think was the punch line to a joke...

This Explains Something

2005-11-06T14:15:00.000-05:00

Went and saw Good Night And Good Luck on Saturday night. It's a good movie; interesting camera work and editing; a lot of out of focus stuff that I couldn't tell if it was intentional, or part of the screening, or if my eyes were going.

That's not important.

I'd previously parked on the street. It was 6:14pm. I tried to read the tiny sign in the parking meter to see if the meters ran until 6 or 8pm (they run until 8pm in Boston, where I guess they are trying to get more money in parking tickets.) Since it was already dark, and the lighting was so poor, I couldn't read the damn thing. Asked a couple of people on the street; they had no idea. One person *thought* it was 6. No street sign explained the hours.

That's not important.

They had one of those slide shows at the beginning with ads and silly facts and questions. This is where I read:

At the age of 14 Tom Cruise joined a seminary, intending to become a priest.

Dig (at) Kansas

2005-11-02T13:45:00.000-05:00

I have a friend from Kansas, so I enjoyed this...

The local free publication dig [Vol 7+Issue 44] contains an editorial about letters to the editor. It notes that often they get a bunch of similar letters from groups that try to make it look like more people are upset about a topic than actually are. It goes on to say: These are easily spotted, because the language used is alwaus similar letter to letter.

Then it continues:

On the joyous occasions when something we wrote winds up on, say, an Evangelical website somewhere provokes a disproportionate number of angry responses from places like Missouri and Kansas, riddled with typos and containing certain condemnatory buzzwords.'

Best Buy store names

2005-11-01T10:25:00.000-05:00

Evidently Best Buy has names for it's stores:

At Best Buy we have segmented our customer base. We have:

Ray - he's your "average joe" so to speak

Jill - your "soccer mom" type

Buzz - the techno-guy that thinks he knows more than you do

Barry - middle age, high income bracket - shops on quality - not price

And we have a segment called Best Buy for Biz which of course are business customers. Each best buy is segmented based on the demographics of the market the store is located in. For example, here in Florence, we are a Ray store, but they are about to open a store in Hilton Head that is going to be a "Barry" store.

I like the description of Buzz:

the techno-guy that thinks he knows more than you do

Not 'the techno-guy that wants the latest gadgets,' but someone who acts like he knows more than you do (though he really doesn't.) It seems to suggest a certain contempt for the customer.

Of course, maybe most people that come in looking for techno-stuff don't know what the heck they are talking about, but it's been rare - in my experience - that I've found anyone at Best Buy that even know's when something out of stock will be arriving, so their knowledge on most anything is suspect.

Ops! Am I showing my contempt for Best Buy?

You're Getting Old

2005-10-28T01:11:00.000-04:00

Sign you are getting old:

The tunes they used to play on the rock stations when you were young, they now play on the classic and soft rock stations.

Sign you are really getting old:

The tunes they used to play on the rock station when you were young, they now play on the folk music station.

Really.

Falling Bush

2005-10-26T13:20:00.000-04:00

Stressed out waiting for the Indictments to fall? I know how you feel. It's a stressful time for all; Democrat and Republican.

That's why you need a little something to take your mind off things, and (thanks to a pointer from Salon.com) here's a fun little game; watch the President fall through space and bouncing off large white balls as he goes. You can control the direction he moves in by clicking and dragging on him.

Not to sure what it all means, but it's a clever bit of Flash programming, and oddly satisfying to play too...

The 'Good Luck' Detour

2005-10-26T12:02:00.000-04:00

Driving to work I got detoured because there were some power lines down and they had a bunch of power company trucks in the street working on fixing it. Police cars at each end of the block stopped you from proceeding further, but offered no suggestion as to what you were supposed to do.

This is what I call the 'Massachusetts Good Luck Detour'; they block the road, put a sign sending you off in some direction, and with a wave of the hand wish you good luck; because you're on your own. No more signs are provided to mark your way.

Where I grew up, if there was a detour, they'd carefully place a series of signs you could follow. Here, they just wave you off, or they put one sign pointing in a particular direction. And nothing more.

One time I got detoured and it was a five mile detour with three non-obvious turns. The only reason I got through it without difficulty is that there were a bunch of other cars and I just followed them.

Good thing they knew where they were going. Of course, such a strategy doesn't always work; once a friend and I got lost driving around Lowell, and my friend decided to follow the car in front as 'they seem to know where they are going.' The certainly did know where they were going and we nearly followed them into their drive way.

I wonder why Massachusetts police feel no obligation to assist you in overcoming a detour?

Fortunately, this detour was pretty simple: one block over, turn left, two blocks down, turn left, one block across, turn right, and I was on my way. The car in front knew where they were going, and it happened to be the same direction I was.

O' Canada

2005-10-25T14:06:00.000-04:00

From the Uncyclopedia by way of Matt:

"The tragedy of Canada is that it could have had British culture, French cuisine and American technology. Instead it got American culture, British cuisine and French technology."

2005-10-25T12:21:00.000-04:00

I like this post in another blog featuring an exchange between an MIS support person and a user:

Me: What would you like your password to be?
User: Oooh......ummmm......geeee.... How many letters does it have to be?
Me: 8 characters.
User: Oooohhhhh.... 8 huh? (under breath) 1..2...3...4...5..6..7......... Hmmmm......wow.....uhhhhh......

Dr Browns' Car

2005-10-23T19:12:00.000-04:00

I saw a Delorean in the parking lot today when I was picking up a pizza.

It had the following license plate: DOCBRWN