educating eric

Now featuring Kari "Cannonball" Byron!

2011-12-07T14:48:00.005-06:00

Years ago (when the series was new) we played with posts related to Kari Byron (of MythBuster's fame) here on the "educating eric" blog because, having mentioned her in passing once, we started getting tons and tons of related hits from people looking for more information about her. I moved all that conversation over to the att.ention.net blog but every once in awhile something comes up that's just too interesting to pass up.

From the laslow.net blog which is having all sorts of loading problems right now (I wonder why?), here you go...

Why is this a big story right now? Because:

"Put Your Arms Around Me" lyrics

2011-07-26T14:03:00.003-05:00

I heard a hauntingly pretty song by some nameless young woman on the Muzack in the coffee shop and wanted to look it up. But what was that lyric?

"You put your arms around me and hold"?
"You put your arms around me and fall"?

I couldn't make it out, and there sure are a lot of songs out there about arms doing hugging-like things... but I got lucky:

It's Christina Perry singing "Arms" and the lyric is:

"You put your arms around me and I'm home."

Which is beautifully poetic... but since she turns "and I'm home" into one melodic syllable it's really hard to figure out what she's singing.

Now you can Google "Christina Perry Arms" and see what you can come up with.

You're welcome. :)

When comments go bad

2011-07-14T00:12:00.004-05:00

I'm so angry at the StarTribune.com comment process, I could spit.

That's what I get for bothering to engage on their site.

It was Paul Walsh's story about the Farmers Airship arriving in the Twin Cities (lifted from the AirshipVentures.com press release) that got me interested in watching the landing with my daughters. In the article, Walsh wrote that "In a nod to its sponsor, the airship is scheduled to pass over the Farmers Insurance regional headquarters in Bloomington."

If you don't know where that is, Google the phrase and you'll find:

http://maps.google.com/maps/place?&cid=14673487912694924028

That office is easy to find; it's at the corner of 494 and 100 which, to my non-local readers, is a major intersection north of the Flying Cloud airport where the airship was heading.

We watched the tracking site from our home in Eagan and I left with my girls at what seemed like a reasonable time, and saw the ship in the distant sky to our south-west. That meant that we should head up 77 to west-bound 494 and meet up with it at Hwy. 100. Perfect.

Except, it didn't go there. It stayed south and went straight to the Flying Cloud airport.

Paul Walsh then updated his Star Tribune story to the present-tense without changing the planned fly-over or noting that it didn't happen, saying, "In a nod to its sponsor, the airship passed over the Farmers Insurance regional headquarters in Bloomington."

But it didn't.

It didn't, it didn't, it didn't.

And I don't mean "I expected it to fly so close that they could drop a beanbag out the window and onto the roof." I mean that it was nowhere near Bloomington, as far as I can tell.

So I wrote that in a comment on the StarTribune.com site that night:

emlarson Jul. 12, 11 8:55 PM

I don't usually complain about news articles, but as far as I know the Farmers Airship didn't go anywhere near the "Bloomington headquarters." I can understand that this morning's article was just pulled from the press release and they might have intended to fly there... but to just switch that poetically phrased plan into the past tense and write "In a nod to its sponsor, the airship passed over the Farmers Insurance regional headquarters in Bloomington" (which has to be the district office at 494 and 100) is just downright wrong and means we have a news story misrepresenting the facts of an event. Not cool. (I know it wasn't there, because I swung north and cut across 494 with my kids as we ran late and drove west, hoping that we could catch a glimpse of it before it landed. No luck because, as far as I can tell, it actually came straight across Burnsville and Savage up to Flying Cloud.)

The next morning, there were promotional spots on the morning news shows and the zeppelin started flying back-and-forth between Flying Cloud airport and downtown Minneapolis. That's what prompted this comment from "bigj111":

bigj111 Jul. 13, 11 11:50 AM

emlarson: "I know it wasn't there, because I swung north and cut across 494 with my kids as we ran late and drove west, hoping that we could catch a glimpse of it before it landed. No luck because, as far as I can tell, it actually came straight across Burnsville and Savage up to Flying Cloud"-----In fact, you ARE wrong. I watched it out my office window near Hwy 100 this morning. Get yourself a new map.

See the problem here?

Airship Ventures sends a press release saying they're coming to the Twin Cities and plan to fly over sponsor's headquarters as they arrive.

Newspaper reporter quotes that verbatim.

Zeppelin arrives late and avoids sponsor's headquarters by several miles.

Newspaper reporter simply updates now-inaccurate schedule to the present-tense without verifying that it happened.

Commenter points out this error that evening.

The next morning, Airship Ventures does fly over the headquarters. The scheduled event did happen, but not on the schedule that Paul Walsh said it did.

BigJ111 then lifts my comment from the night before, quotes me by name, mocks me with the insult of "Get yourself a new map," and puts my words in the context of that morning's zeppelin trips (which were completely different things on completely different days).

So, I wrote a comment on the StarTribune.com story pointing out that my concern was about the reported events of July 12th and the bigj111 sighting was the morning of July 13th, which are totally different days.

The Star Tribune chose to not publish that correction. They published another comment made a couple hours after my comment, so it's not that they're not publishing anything on articles that are a day old. But, for some reason, they left mine unpublished.

We'll see if they publish my second attempt (which I re-wrote from scratch in case they didn't like some particular phrase or punctuation, not that I can imagine what might have been wrong with it). A few minutes ago they just updated the story with a video, so I know that there are at least night-owl interns working on it. But I doubt I'll be given the chance to clear my name.

So, what's my point?

We're talking about the basic facts of reporting a story. That's something near and dear to my heart. When someone attempts to correct the record, and is unjustly attacked for it... and is blocked from defending himself... what kind of platform is a business building for itself?
Will I ever comment on the Star Tribune site again? Probably not under my own name. Not because I don't trust my own words, and not because I don't believe I can defend the facts, but because I don't trust the Star Tribune to allow its readers to defend themselves and I know nobody from the Strib is coming to my defense in my place.

Is this what "journalism" has come to?

Rascal T. Peppercorn...

2011-05-14T22:43:00.001-05:00

...is gonna be big...

And I wonder if I'm still ranked in Google. :)

SMBMSP #31 de-brief

2010-11-19T11:14:00.006-06:00

Not that anyone's interested in reading about me or my thoughts (that's not self-deprecating false humility; it's proof that I have a firm grasp on reality), but I figured I'd expand on a couple comments or lines-of-thought from this morning's Social Media Breakfast.

And, if nothing else, you can learn something about the grateful (but reserved when not on Twitter) guy who won the MixMobi give-away.

First, brief background: I've worked at the University of St. Thomas full-time since 1996 in one form or another of "academic technology support". When I finished my M.A. in Human Resource Development (a field that you can steer in the "career coaching" or "instructional design" directions -- I went with the latter) I moved over to the Web and Media Services department as a Business Analyst, where I first encountered the Social Media Breakfast (and attended meeting #3). I've attended off-and-on (mostly "on") ever since. I've dabbled in all-things-web ever since Gopher (how's that for an obscure reference?) which explains the odd Kari Byron references on this particular blog; I mentioned her in passing once and checked my stats only to find that there were lots of geeks desperate for information on her, so I figured I'd have some fun with it... and it's still my #1 search result.

I'm also a Capricorn and like long walks on the beach.

And long sentences.

Usually.

Anyway, my SMBMSP interest today was to see how we can move beyond (not "instead of" but "in addition to") the "typical" mobile conversation about retail sales and physical check-ins. I totally "get it" for that kind of business relationship... But what about using mobile technology to mediate relationships that aren't "sales" oriented?

And, I'd argue, "donations to non-profits" is really just a different spin on "sales".

But what about building relationships through the mobile side of "social media"? What about getting people more engaged in causes that they profess to value -- and probably do value, if only they can be nudged in the right way at the right time.

Churches and other communities of faith relating to their members?
Faculty connecting with their students... and students to each-other?
Charities who want people to engage with them using more than their checkbooks?

What does that look like? Once people check-in with Foursquare or scan their QR code... then what?

I'm the first to admit that maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Maybe the answer is, "Dude, you're talking about getting people to engage in relationships. The tools are irrelevant; once there's a relationship there, it will be 'brokered' through a variety of technology and non-technology means and people will figure that out just fine."

Maybe. But I don't think that's all there is to it; I think there's some sort of layer of "social engagement" that we (or, at least, "I") haven't yet fleshed out.

Ideas?

A mystery poem...

2010-11-04T21:15:00.002-05:00

Years ago when Ruth and I were first married and eBay was in the realm of "somewhat popular," I bought a set of inexpensive vintage Haynes prints of Yellowstone National Park. They were very nice (four still hang framed in our living room) and arrived with their original envelope...

...on the back of which was written an old "poem" of sorts, in all capital letters, pencil on brown paper:

SMILE WITH ME
MERRILY
SING TO ME
DREAMILY
LOVE WITH ME THE COLOR OF HER EYES
AND ENJOY WITH ME THE SMELL OF HER THIGHS
AND GIVE TO HER THE SONGS OF A THOUSAND MINSTRELS
THE CHIRPING OF BIRDS
A SOFT BLUE LULLABY
SMILE WITH HER AND I'LL BE SMILING TOO

TASTE HER WARM LIPS
SMELL HER RADIANT HAIR
TOUCH HER SMOOTH WHITE SKIN
LISTEN TO HER WORDS +
SHE'LL DANCE LIKE AN ENCHANTRESS
WITH HER HEAD IN A RAINBOW AND HER FEET
~~SURROUNDED WITH~~ LILIES
AMONGST

I'm no poet (though I'm pretty sure that lines like "smell her radiant hair" are... bad. Unless her hair was giving off those comic-strip "smell squiggles"?)

But, seriously, I wanted to capture this here (as I'm about to pop four more of the prints into frames I got free at Menards -- you new there had to be some sort of timely connection to this, didn't you?) to pay homage to some anonymous guy (we assume it was a guy?) who was moved to scratch out these thoughts a few decades ago.

College as "mandatory personal growth"?

2010-10-29T13:20:00.004-05:00

A friend said something interesting this morning as we had our weekly breakfast meeting to help steer what our church calls an "adult bible fellowship" (also known as an "adult Sunday school" though I think "Sunday school" has too much baggage and that title's acronym isn't one you want to use in church).

As we talked about the challenge (for the class and for ourselves) of helping people engage in the material and stay motivated for personal growth, we realized something:

At our stage of life (parents of young kids) we now have lots of competing time pressures and priorities. Conversely, our college years were marked by an externally applied "demand" that we learn and grow; even if we didn't enjoy sitting through calculus class, we couldn't help ending that semester having been "changed" in some way. Today, we no longer have a mandate of personal growth imposed on us.

Maybe it's just me, but I found this really profound. Is this a key role for higher education today -- to "impose personal growth" on students? Faculty have joked that we ought not underestimate the "value of custodial care" at a university; I think that the value of a structured "demand" to learn a specific curriculum carries quite a bit of weight, too?

My immediate reaction is a mental tangent on the topic of home-education -- a term that my parents preferred to the more common "home schooling" because the entire principle was one of self-direction, contrasted with the imposition of a "school" structure.

For highly self-motivated individuals, this is all fine... but for those of us who need a nudge at times, being left to explore on our own means we'll stagnate.

So, our question for next time will be "how do we improve self-motivation"...?

Why isn't podcasting easier?

2010-10-28T08:37:00.005-05:00

My first podcast was recorded in 2005. More than five years later... recording, editing and distributing a podcast isn't any easier.

Isn't that a bit surprising?

I've lamented the loss of GigaVox Audio Lite, which became Podango ShowBuilder Lite, which became totally nonexistent. I figured something would step up to take its place.

Nothing has.

Phone-to-podcast solutions came and went -- Gcast, Garageband, etc. I finally became excited about the idea again when I discovered that drop.io offered the service... only to find they discontinued it. (The phone number reference still appears on accounts but it doesn't seem to do anything.) The few I've come across so far (UHaveAudio.com, ipadio.com -- which has nothing to do with the Apple iPad -- and Yodio.com) don't seem to match the ease/simplicity of Gcast -- nor do they have the posting speed. (I don't want to have to wait a few hours to see if my call was successfully recorded.)
Paul Colligan image by Neezee via Flickr
Paul Colligan offered PremiumCast.com which seemed to do some of the same things as ShowBuilder, but that's now become "Nanacast" but from its features list I'm still having a hard time figuring out what it can do for "automatic show assembly". And with it starting at $97 a month, it's not really good for the academic/hobbiest market.

And for what it's worth, years after I first mentioned it to Paul, both the PremiumCast terms of service and Nanacast terms of service still list as one of its "Restictions on Use" that "you may not (and may not authorize any other party to) ... (iii) hyper-link to this site, without the express prior written permission...." I don't know about you, but if I'm offering a podcast at a site I should would like to be able to link to that site. (I know that's not what they mean, but that's what they say, and the fact it's still not fixed causes me to worry about what else might be lurking in the TOS...)

I figured, "Maybe I can do the 'best of breed' thing and use multiple services, then combine those different feeds into one..." but the only tool around (other than the "running out of some guy's basement" level of developer service) is Yahoo! Pipes and reports are that it's flaky. In my experience, it works fine except that it won't sort the feeds by date and just tacks one onto the end of the next, which isn't very helpful.

Is there something out there that I'm missing?

Still trying to collect my life

2010-08-23T11:46:00.006-05:00

I mentioned in passing on a recent Ericast that I've owned emlarson.com "since 2002". I have... but I bought it in December of 2000 so I've owned it for longer than that. Why was "2002" stuck in my brain? Because it's this Blogger blog that I've "owned" (have been writing at) since then.

But what should I write here?

This "home" pre-exists Posterous, Twitter, Facebook, etc. etc. etc. I bumbled into the popularity of mentions of Kari Byron and Ginger Alexander (which I moved over to att.ention.ne t once I realized that there were people out there who were searching for them) which really have nothing to do with me as a person, but which became hyper-popular.

I've dabbled in Google AdSense here... and found that people might read about TV starlets but that doesn't mean they're motivated to buy anything that someone might want to advertise with those starlets in mind.

Looking back eight years, this blog started out as a "web log" of links and interesting sites... but that's a role better served by Delicious.com now (which also appeared on the scene after 2002)...

So part of me thinks that I should just stop writing here (hence the "folding up the blog" post)... but the other part me thinks that I should write more here and get back to a "journal of thoughts" view of blogging.

Though I'm sure anyone's reading... but I always advise bloggers to write for themselves (in the sense of "writing for your own good and benefit" as opposed to "write as if you're your own audience" -- the latter might not make sense) so maybe I should take that advice and write more?

Anyway way I slice it, I think I need a new design. :)

By the way, Zemanta analyzes text and brings blogging to a level that borders on auto-blogging; let's see what they recommend based on a couple minutes of dashed-off thoughts here:

Related articles by Zemanta
Sexy Geek Kari Byron Gets Own Science Show: Head Rush (geeksaresexy.net)
7 Key Factors to Build A Successful Adsense Income Blog (quickonlinetips.com)
10 Tips for Better Blog Monetization & Profit - Part Two (zacjohnson.com)
Your Personal Learning Environment - Presentation to JumpStart 2010 (andremalan.net)
How to Consistently Un-motivate Yourself (garrickvanburen.com)

That first one isn't quite NSFW but is a bit "frisky" for my taste. That last one is a good suggestion -- I've been consistently impressed with Garrick's writing (and thoughts in general) since I first encountered him on the Minnesota podcaster scene in 2005.

Living the Lightbulb?

2010-06-23T19:04:00.002-05:00

Some people are "adrenaline junkies" and do bungee jumping or rock climbing for the thrill of it.

I'm not one of those people.

In fact, I'm WAY not one of those people. I'm an anti-adrenaline junkie; I like things peaceful and quiet.

But... I think I get the same feeling as those "junkies" from "learning new things" or "exploring new ideas," and by helping others to do the same.

For me, there's a tingling emotional rush when "the lightbulb goes on" -- when you're pondering or struggling with a concept and you "get it." I see it in myself, and in my daughter, and in my clients...

I guess this is why teachers like teaching, right?

So, if I'm right about myself and that's true... how can I structure my life to experience more of that? Conversely, how can I structure my life so I'm not just "living for a high" -- that I maintain a healthy and realistic balance?

Our Children's Hospital Minneapolis billing experience

2010-06-15T19:00:00.007-05:00

While everyone who asks me has then turned around and shared a horror story that's equally bad (some much, much worse), I'm getting tired of explaining this over and over... so I'm going to write up the state-of-the-state and point folks here when anyone wants details of our billing limbo at Children's Hospital.

Here's the personal backstory as to why I get ticked off in the midst of receiving the world's best health care: I'm a customer service guy at heart. Anyone in customer service has plenty of opportunities to be stuck with (or to even perpetrate) some major screw-ups. So I usually give people a lot of latitude.

But when something that ought to be trivial becomes impossible to solve, I get frustrated.

And when that something is grounded in a power differential that has the capacity to really victimize an innocent citizen (typically found in cases of police misconduct, but also in unethical billing practices that corrupt credit ratings and land people in court), I get downright angry.

Even if it's not happening to me personally, "It's the principle of the thing."

We're not there yet with Children's... but at the rate we're going, I have no reason to think we won't be in a few months. Yet I really have no idea; Rule #1 is "Keep the victim guessing."

Since those in authority always claim that HIPAA keeps them from saying anything useful, I'll disclose right away that our daughter Chloe was born with a cleft lip and palate. Because that basically means that her head wasn't knit together quite right in the womb, she also has fluid in her ears and needs to be assessed for hearing loss -- a standard cleft-related issue.

We go to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis and have had great luck with their "Cleft and Craniofacial Clinic" -- Dr. Sidman's team is nice (though his partner Dr. Lander has better bedside manner than he does) and Dr. Rich did a good-looking lip surgery. We haven't had much experience with the rest of the team (and, given our current experience, we're not going to if I have anything to say about it...)

Much more than just "fixing a lip," clefts involve speech therapists and dentists and orthodontists and ENTs and audiologists, so the "cleft clinic" will schedule one annual appointment where you come for a whole day and rotate from one doctor to the next to the next and get a "team report" at the end.

Our appointment was in early April, we're still dealing with billing problems, Children's has promised four times to fix them, and we have no idea when the problem will actually end.

We've got insurance -- "Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota," which says it's "the largest health plan based in Minnesota, covering 2.7 million members in Minnesota"... so I would have thought that Children's had dealt with them before.

It doesn't seem like it has.

When hospitals submit an insurance claim, they "code" it so the insurance company knows what it was. Cleft stuff is coded with some sort of "cleft code" that reveals it's mouth related, and hearing stuff is coded with some sort of "ear code" that reveals it's hearing related.

Blue Cross Blue Shield apparently doesn't look at "secondary diagnosis" when they process claims... which I think is strange, but that's how these things work.

So when Children's billed the audiology session at our team clinic appointment (in three separate bills for some reason?) as "cleft" (with a secondary diagnosis of hearing loss) Blue Cross rejected it outright. To their computers, that's like seeing someone get a foot exam because of their heart attack; maybe it was medically necessary for some reason, but the computer sure doesn't like it.

So, we make a call to Blue Cross: "No problem; we don't look at secondary diagnosis, so just have Children's re-submit those audiology bills with the audiology code as the primary diagnosis and they'll be covered."

Call #1 to Children's Minneapolis billing department: Wife is told "We don't have any record of that submission." Wife explains it's in paper right in front of her. Wife is told to call back in a couple weeks when it's in the system.

Wait. Bill comes.

Call #2 to Children's Minneapolis: Wife is told outright, "I don't understand what you want me to do." Wife spends 20 minutes explaining to rep, who promises to send it off to the billing department. Wife is also promised that the account will be flagged as under revision so we don't get any erroneous bills.

Wait. Another bill comes. Same amount.

Call #3 to Children's Minneapolis: "Would you like me to transfer you to the last rep you spoke with, ma'am?" No, please don't do that. Rep promises to re-submit the claim to their "coding department" but "depending on whose desk it lands on, it could be two or three weeks". Okay. Could you please note it in the system that this is actually in progress so we're not treated as deadbeats who won't pay our bills? "Sure, I can do that."

Wait. Another bill comes. They're getting angrier. Same amount.

Call #4 to Children's Minneapolis: "No, ma'am, we can't make those kinds of coding adjustments; that has to be made by the Dr.'s office." Wife: "Do you have any idea why it is that after four calls you're the first person who has told me that?!?" "No, ma'am, but that's who you have to talk to."

(Why do they put the number for the billing department on the bill if the billing department isn't the right place to call, they're not even going to tell you that secret until the fourth time you call them?)

Call #5 to Children's Minneapolis: Wife talks to the coordinator in the Dr.'s office, who promised to look into it and call back with news.

We're waiting for that call.

So were the first three reps... Incompetent? Liars? Or were they correct, the fourth rep was wrong, and we're going to be dealing with this all over again in a couple weeks?

Here's my issue: People screw up all the time. Companies screw up worse because they're composed of bunches of people. I understand that. But for some strange and magical reason I've never seen a billing mistake in my favor. Hmmm.

So, here are some rules:

When I point out your error... If you promise to fix it, then you'd better fix it!
And if you value me as a customer or client or patient or victim or whatever term you prefer, you'd better not threaten me while you take your time fixing your problem.
And if your employees have given me the run-around, then you'd better not give me more runaround while telling me that if I'd known your process I wouldn't be in the mess I'm in.

There's one really, really good thing about this experience: It's teaching me exactly how not to treat any of my clients. I wish I weren't living through it myself, but that does make the experience more memorable.

I had Tweeted that the Children's billing department is either criminal or criminally negligent, and here's why I put it in those terms:

Either they're a) intentionally botching the billing process in the hopes that they can scam patients into paying their full bill rather than the negotiated reduced insurance rate (which is quite possible, but would be criminal)...

Or b) they've put my family's personal and private medical information (and insurance information, and bank account information, and the power to send me through a collections process and corrupt my credit rating... or worse) into the hands of a series of employees who are so profoundly incompetent with basic billing procedures and basic communication that Children's Hospital staffing rises to the level of negligence that should be illegal.

At some point before now, the answer of "Yes, they made some mistakes" would suffice. It doesn't anymore. I don't have to take my daughter to Children's Minneapolis; why am I putting up with this?

The struggles with "rewards" programs

2010-05-05T13:41:00.010-05:00

I heard back from the good folks at StaplesTweets who asked for details on the problems I've had with rebate programs, since I mentioned them as part of a tweet on my less-than-fun experiences:

"I'm amazed at how companies (@bestbuy, @officedepot, @staplestweets) make their "rewards" programs so convoluted & frustrating"

So, in brief (but not as brief as 140 characters that I'd be limited to on Twitter), here's my Staples experience in particular:

In March, I had two "Staples Rewards" certificates -- 20-some dollars that expired that month, and 30-some dollars that expired a month or two later. I made a $30-something purchase and paid by handing over my $20-something certificate to pay most of it, then handing over my $30-something certificate to pay for the few dollars on the balance.

When I got home, I took a close look at the receipt; instead of there being nearly $30 left on the certificate, it said that there were only $4 or $5 left. It's as if the first certificate didn't exist.

I got the kids to bed and rushed back to the store before their 9:00 closing so they could dig out my first certificate from their bag-of-certificates (which, of course, I had no evidence of having given them once I gave it to them).

Long story short, it turns out that Staples "rewards certificates" are actually "coupons" (according to the store manager) and you can only use one at a time. When I handed over the second one, it applied to the entire purchase and the first one (which expired earlier) was ignored (but not handed back to me).

So, the manager voided the entire purchase and re-rang it all, then took just the first certificate, and I paid the balance in cash.

I specifically asked, "Is the second certificate still good, or will the computer consider it to be 'used' now?" She said it would be fine, but if I had any questions she'd be sure to remember me and fix it if it didn't work the next time I used it.

Fortunately, I made sure to go back on the same day and time when I used it a week or two ago because -- you guessed it! -- it didn't work.

My wife had sent me to get some batteries that are supposed to be free (or super-cheap or something) "after rewards"... but now, not only do I not have any idea if I'm really going to get the rewards on something that I bought with a rewards certificate... but even if I'm supposed to, I don't know if I really will because I don't know what the manager did to the system to make sure that it actually worked that night.

And, from what I understand, it's going to be weeks before I know whether the sale "posted" to my account properly. What I do know at this point is that the purchase of a chair mat on a day I wasn't there has shown up just fine... which doesn't give me much confidence in the system.

So, here's the point. Eventually, it'll all work out fine (though it might take a few phone calls from my wife)... but I don't "feel good" about Staples, and isn't that the purpose of a "rewards" program? When my wife says, "Can you swing by Staples and pick this up for us?"... I don't feel excited.

I feel worried.

Isn't that a bad thing?

To be an equal-opportunity complainer, here's a response I sent last night to someone else about a the Best Buy rewards program:

With rebates, there's kinda the understanding of "If you jump through these hoops, we give you an insanely good price on something". But the "rewards" stuff is branded as "You're a loyal customer so if you buy things with us instead of our competitors, we'll treat you as 'special' and give you some money or coupons once in awhile."

So, let's take Best Buy as a hypothetical example... I bought a Wii and a cheap Insignia camcorder for Christmas. No points showed up, for weeks. When I re-entered the receipt number, it said it had already been entered. So I just went back in [to the Best Buy rewards site], found that I had a $5 certificate waiting with one month before it expires, but that $89 and change had been "forfeited" on 2/5. And when I checked my preferences, I found that "e-mail me coupons and things" had been unchecked, which I know I'd had checked before -- and which I'm sure is why I didn't get any sort of "birthday coupon" in January.

Thus, what's my feeling about Best Buy? Certainly not the warm, fuzzy, "I like shopping here" thing that they're going for. With rebates, I understand that it's a "game". But the "rewards" thing is supposed to make me happy and make me like them, isn't it?

Sometime soon I have to podcast about the opposite -- the AWESOME way the Burnsville Hope Depot handled their Saturday morning kids program (in contrast to the Apple Valley one).

Anyway, it's just frustrating -- not personally, but in that "No, squirrel! Don't run under that car that's speeding toward you!" sense.

And, rounding things out... I bought some stuff at Office Depot using a gift card that I'd received, and they were supposed to end up "free after rewards"... but the system says that rewards aren't given when purchases are paid with a "merchandise card". A "gift card" isn't supposed to be a "merchandise card"... but that's how it showed up on the Office Depot rewards site. But Ruth called and asked and they said that the free-after-rewards program was "totally separate" from their standard rewards program. Will my free stuff be free? Maybe. Of course, they said if it didn't come through, "all we'd have to do is call them"...

Somehow, I don't feel very "rewarded".

A solution to the Adobe Acrobat Error 1500 when updating

2010-04-28T10:26:00.001-05:00

Just had a bunch of problems with trying to update Adobe Acrobat in a computer lab; I'd get the error:

Update Failed
Cannot install the update
Please run Adobe Acrobat Repair
Error: 1500

Running the Adobe Acrobat Repair from the Help menu gave me an error that my U: drive couldn't be found... which is what gave me the solution.

Long story short, our computer labs map the My Documents folder to a network drive but my administrative account doesn't have a network drive so its "My Documents" folder is invalid.

The problem is that the Adobe Acrobat update requires a valid My Documents folder.

Right click My Documents on the desktop, choose "Properties," choose "Restore Default" and get a working path to My Documents, adn the update ran fine -- I didn't even have to run the Adobe Acrobat Repair utility.

Folding up the blog?

2010-04-26T22:40:00.002-05:00

It's been... quite a few years (7? 8?) and I'm pondering whether I should basically "archive" off the Blogger blog here and move to something different like Posterous (which I'm using at the moment for my "random thoughts that don't fit into Twitter" -- emlarson.posterous.com, if you really want to take a look).

I've also put out a call on Twitter for design advice on emlarson.com in general; it always was an "aggregate of various things and interests" but, at this point, all of those things and interests will fall under a different site (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Posterous, PicasaWeb, YouTube, att.ention.net, etc.) or not at all... right?

Any ideas or suggestions? Drop me a note or leave a comment here... not that it's easy to find the place to comment given how much I've broken the template to get it to conform to the old emlarson.com look-and-feel... but that's a different issue. :)

What's a yellow cross mean on a WWI uniform?

2010-03-23T18:26:00.003-05:00

UPDATE: We found the answer -- in less than 15 minutes, thanks to friend and colleague Jess who apparently knew the magic keywords that I couldn't find. The remaining mystery is why Chuck, who grew up in Minneapolis, was tied to a division based out of Illinois...

This is Ruth's great-uncle Chuck. Chuck didn't have any kids so when the old photo eventually ended up in our hands, we sold it off for the frame.

Maybe a good idea, maybe a bad one. But what are you going to do with a big picture of someone who nobody really knows (or knew)?

Anyway, from a geneology perspective the mystery is: what does the patch on his shoulder represent? It was a yellow cross on a black background, which seems rather unusual.

Whatever happened to Greg and Heather Mroz?

2010-03-16T23:57:00.003-05:00

This was a big story back in October: "I Thought I had Insurance"

But whatever happened to them?

United Healthcare admitted it was wrong... but did it ever "fix the glitch," or are Heather and Greg Mroz still on the hook for a half million dollars of costs that they don't really owe?

According to a cached copy of a page from Health Care for America NOW,

Heather Mroz, 24, Coconut Creek, Florida, and her husband, Greg, face $480,000 in medical bills after United Healthcare canceled Greg’s $1,260 a month policy he had through his construction job for “failure to negotiate” new premiums prior to the premature birth of their twins, Hannah & Wyatt, in June 2009. Greg‘s company went out of business in March, and the family arranged to pay UHC directly while COBRA was being worked out. UHC gave the hospital approval in writing, saying it would pay for everything connected with the pregnancy even if it was high risk because she was having twins. Heather was hospitalized at several points to stop premature labor, and the babies were born premature and needed extra care. Heather then learned during a doctor’s appointment that UHC had canceled the policy - though there was no notification, and UHC continued to accept their premiums. UHC demanded reimbursement, and then the family was “bombarded” with bills from the hospital and doctors. The family is facing bankruptcy and had to move in with Greg’s parents. The strain of the situation has contributed to the couple’s recent separation and pending divorce.

That doesn't look good...

LiveScribe pens and "community notes"?

2010-02-18T10:52:00.002-06:00

I've yet to see a LiveScribe pen in action and I don't like the idea of being stuck with specialized paper... but a faculty member mentioned a couple weeks ago that a student had one and took notes with it during the entire semester.

That got me thinking: Can you play back LiveScribe notes as a "movie", with animated writing paired up with the audio recording?

If so... could you tie multiple note-taking movies together (merge them on one screen?) so that you can see what different people were jotting down at the same time?

I think I have "Social Media" figured out!

2009-12-18T21:21:00.008-06:00

Okay, after a full 24 hours of soul-searching, I think I've got it. Bear in mind that I live in a mental world of metaphors... and that's what it to come up with the following, with full props to Rick and Mylk and everyone who works on the excellent Social Media Breakfast here in the Twin Cities...

We're looking forward to the upcoming CPBMSP #23! This month's Breakfast will continue to explore the new (but rapidly maturing) phenomenon of "Cocktail Parties" with a multitude of topics:

Drambuie vs. Glayva: Bringing Variety to your Cocktails!
Marketing plastic storage containers through Cocktail Parties
How to mix Selling Candles and Sipping Cocktails
Cocktails and Cooking: Hold a Pots and Pans Party!
In planning our upcoming meetings, we're also hoping to have a discussion about some emerging uses of Cocktail Parties:

Some religious groups will gather in homes in what they call "Bible Studies;" since the consumption of cocktails at these gatherings is more limited than usual, are they truly "Cocktail Parties"?

Art galleries are begining to hold Cocktail Party gatherings where the focus is on discussion of the art rather than monetizing the relationships with the artists.

And on the artistic front, actors will sometimes greet theater-goers after a performance; is this kind of activity something that we'll see more of in the Cocktail Party space?

See where I'm going with this?

It really boils down to one big "DUH!": "social media" is just one means or venue for conversations -- for engaging in relationships. There's a little bit of value in talking about venue itself, and it's inevitable that (some) people will jump to the "how can we make money from this?" question. But if probing of "social media" as a definable, tangible "thing" ends there, there's not much point.

Today's SMBMSP discussion of social media in health care was a great example of the (potential) value of "social media" as it's used for some sort of societal benefit -- to make people more healthy, in this case. For me, the hope of these tools (or any technology) is that it can be used for some sort of "good" rather than used for its own sake... and that hope is either really hard or really easy to get a handle on.

What is "social media" good for?

2009-12-17T21:58:00.002-06:00

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow’s Social Media Breakfast because its topic (health care) has the potential of talking about something that actually means something.

Let me back up.

I’m a fan of the “get rich quick” internet stuff (ever since the pre-internet magazine ads attracted my attention in the 1980s; I was too cheap to send in the $19.95 to find out the “secret to millions,” though I suspect the answers lay along the lines of “Run ads in magazines asking people to send $19.95…”). The problem is that most of the “get rich quick” marketing appeals to others who are marketing the same thing – “buy this $1000 seminar so that you can learn my secrets that have gotten me rich as I sell seminars”.

There are a few “real products” like weight loss or stock tips but, aside from Russell Brunson’s star pupil Joy Anderson (who sells information on how to start a preschool out of your home), it seems there’s very little “real content” to be had or sold.

I feel the same way about “social media”.

What?!?

It seems that the folks in the “social media” space are either 1) using social media to talk about how great social media is, or 2) using social media to sell something.

The latter is fine – we live in a capitalist society and I realize that “sales” is what makes the world go ‘round – but you have to remember that I’ve grown up and have always lived and worked in an “academic space,” which has the opposite problem: people charge (sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly) that academia doesn’t live in reality either, and nothing we do is “real”.

So, somewhere, I’m hoping to find the “happy medium” where we can talk about “social media” (or any technology, for that matter) used not for its own sake, and not to just sell something or other, but to do some real good for a genuine purpose.

Two questions:

Does that make any sense, or do I need to work harder to try and raise this thought to the level of basic coherence?

Do you have any suggestions/alternatives/examples of social media being used outside of basic marketing (typically for a product or service but, in worst cases, merely for itself as a concept)?

Fumbling with Foursquare

2009-11-30T10:43:00.002-06:00

I keep hearing how cool/revolutionary/hip this "Foursquare" thing is, so I figured I'd give it a try.

Perhaps part of my problem is that I've got a Blackberry which, for some reason, doesn't yet have a Foursquare client. It works fine from its web browser, I'm told, but... this doesn't make much sense to me.

Question: Does the Foursquare client for other smart-phones have some sort of geo-location feature (using cell towers or such)? Because, when using the web browser on the Blackberry, all it does is narrow my options down to the "Twin Cities" (which, if you don't know, is pretty big).

I'm 0 for 3 in the Foursquare locations I've searched for, and the search process seems really awkward. When it finds something, the results seem random; that's probably because the locations are manually entered by other Foursquare members, but it seems to lead to a mess.

For instance, this morning, I was at the Holiday station in Eagan. There are three Holidays in Eagan, in fact, but none of them appeared in Foursquare search. What did turn up was permutations of "Holiday Gas," "Holiday Station Store," etc. -- some with locations in their title and some without, some with complete addresses and some without.

What I want is an app that behaves like your contacts on your phone: Based on cell-tower location, a list of known sites is populated, and as you type parts of the name ("Holiday" or "gas") it would narrow down the list.

Plus, I'd like some sort of "scrubbing" of the data on the back-end, so that duplicate entries are matched and removed.

Is that something that other incarnations of Foursquare do and I'm just suffering on a bad client, or is what I'm dreaming of just way too complicated for today's technology?

Pairing YouTube with other website content?

2009-11-26T10:55:00.002-06:00

Here's something I'm pondering in my spare time -- and I'm hoping that some of my web geek friends can pitch in with some suggestions.

The background: I love the 1980s. And 1990s. And nothing captures the spirit of those times like commercials and TV news clips. Thanks to my pack-rat tendencies and the miracle of home DVD burning, I've been able to go through my ancient VHS tape archive and put clips up for all to see on YouTube.

But I also own the BigHair.TV domain (where nothing sits at the moment) and I'm hoping to build out a site that features (but isn't limited to) that video content. For instance, I'd love to track down some of the old TV personalities for "Where Are They Now?" interviews... but if it's written rather than video, it would need to be posted somewhere other than YouTube.

But, I don't want to be manually "maintaining a blog" -- I don't want to have to post something to the YouTube channel, then go to the blog and write a post about it. Somehow, I want the YouTube content to be pulled into the site automatically (though, admittedly, I don't really know what "the site" would look like at this point).

I can't be the only person thinking about this kind of thing -- a web site whose main (but not only) content lives on YouTube. How would you build something like that?

Any help with the Exchange Web Services edition of Entourage 2008?

2009-11-25T15:36:00.003-06:00

For Mac users who are trying to get their e-mail from a Microsoft Exchange server, the new (new-ish) Exchange Web Services of Entourage (Entourage EWS) held a lot of promise.

And it works great... as long as you don't need your calendar or contacts.

That's quite a limitation... and I don't think it's supposed to be that broken.

Any suggestions?

Here's the situation: If a contact or calendar item is "born" in Entourage EWS, it syncs to the Exchange server just fine. And if you delete that item from another client -- from Outlook Web Access (OWA) or Outlook 2007 on Windows, then it disappears from Entourage EWS on the Mac.

But if you create a calendar item on something other than Entourage, it never makes its way into Entourage.

That's bad.

You can watch Entourage EWS "poll through" all your calendar and contact items -- it says it's downloading them, but they never actually appear anywhere.

I turned on logging and see a lot of the following in the huge resulting log file:

m:GetItemResponseMessage ResponseClass="Error"
m:MessageText
An internal server error occurred. The operation failed.
/m:MessageText
m:ResponseCode
ErrorInternalServerError
/m:ResponseCode
m:DescriptiveLinkKey
0
/m:DescriptiveLinkKey
m:Items /
/m:GetItemResponseMessage
...
[ 689611us, d 0us]
Entourage Exchange Web Services: Engine
[Exchange folder Calendar]: Reading remote record 722
[ 689611us, d 0us]
Entourage Exchange Web Services: CSyncEngine::
FetchRemoteRecords Continuing from recoverable error

On and on and on it goes.

So, obviously, there's some sort of error cropping up as it tries to read these calendar (and contact) items. Is anyone seeing the same kind of behaior on their Entourage EWS?

Or, put differently, has anyone actually gotten Entourage EWS to work with calendar and contacts?

Another Blogger RSS hiccup?

2009-11-24T13:44:00.001-06:00

Yes, it's been ages since I've posted anything here -- sorry!

A quick update which will be meaningless when examined decades from now... but which makes for a slightly pertinent question at the moment: Did anyone see all of my old posts re-populate the RSS feed a few days ago? When looked at from my Yahoo! feeds page, it says that everything I've written in the past year was written "5 days ago"... which it wasn't.

Odd...

Goodbye, Half.com!

2009-07-17T17:09:00.004-05:00

Today, my wife forwarded me an interesting e-mail she got from Half.com (a.k.a. eBay.com a.k.a. Mean Faceless Corporate Giant).

For starters, you should know that I've been buying things on eBay since 1996. No, that's not a typo and I'm not off by a decade; back when the auction site was named "AuctionWeb" (the reason that eBay e-mails had/have "aw" in them) tucked under the domain "eBay.com" (which was the "holding company"), I was buying brochures and guidebooks from the 1939 New York World's Fair there. So I know eBay pretty well, and have seen it shift from a cooperative community to a bloated money-making-venture for its owners to a dying site that has driven away its sellers by victimizing them in the name of "buyer protection".

Which brings me to today's topic. Years ago (just shy of four years, to be exact), we listed some old books for sale on Half. There weren't many sales... though one notable one went to "peaceandhope060" who gave Ruth her first and only negative feedback after claiming a book never arrived. For some reason, "peaceandhope060" didn't bother to contact Ruth and tell her about that before permanently messing up her eBay feedback rating. (Knowing Ruth, regardless of things like post office delivery receipts, she would have just refunded the purchase price and shipping cost just to avoid the hassle... but, hey, the experience taught us that it's the ones named "Peace and Hope" that you have to watch out for...)

Anyway, point being, the Half.com experience was never a good one for us. We took that set of books, set them to "Suspended" so that they were no longer included in the Half.com database as available, and figured we might get back to selling them someday.

Today, having paid very little attention to Half.com for a very long time, a surprise appeared in the Inbox. Before reading, note a few things:

The book in question wasn't for sale. It was tied to our account in "suspended" state, but nobody could buy it. (In fact, it was part of a collection that we gave away last year.)
We have no way of knowing what the problem really was. The book has already been deleted. eBay and Half.com: Judge, Jury, Executioner, Sender of Form Letter -- in that order. In a nutshell, the message is "Trust us; there was something wrong, but we already obliterated all evidence of it."
If we do it again (what, exactly?) the punishment will be worse. "You don't know what 'it' was, but so help me, if you do 'it' again, we're going to 'escalate' on you, though we won't tell you what that means, either." Nice.
None of the suggested issues could possibly apply. The only comments that we added to our listings are regarding quality (e.g. "Name on inside" or "Some highlighting"). It wasn't an international edition or teacher edition. I'm pretty sure it wasn't an 8-track tape.

Look, I'm all in favor of having policies and standards. But when you're trying to be a decent, honest, law-abiding (and TOS-abiding) citizen of the Internet, and you go through the pain of matching up ISBNs and making sure everything complied with Half.com standards... how are you going to react when out-of-the-blue you get a snippy e-mail like this:

Hello ----- (-@-------.com),

We are writing to inform you that the following item(s) were removed from your Half.com inventory:

12357068252 - Sociology : David M. Newman (Paperback, 1995)

When creating a listing at Half.com, sellers must match the ISBN, title, author, edition, binding format, publisher and publication date on the catalog page exactly. It is not appropriate to use the seller comment field to change any of this information. If an item your want to sell does not match an offering in our retail catalog, you will not be able to sell it on Half.com. Your item was ended because it did not match the catalog page exactly.

You can request that your item be added to our catalog by using the form below. If your book is not in our catalog and is out of print, published before 1990, from an out of business publisher, or vanity press we strongly suggest that you list the item on eBay instead of requesting a catalog edition.

http://pages.half.ebay.com/help/wizard/result_2_7_20.html

The following items can not be listed on Half.com and should be sold on eBay. In some cases you must be in possession of distribution rights.

- International edition books
- Teachers editions books
- Book club publications and Music Club releases
- Prepublication editions books (ARCs, galleys, proofs, etc)
- Promotional music cd's (including items with drill holes and saw cuts)
- The cassette, LP, and 8-track music formats

We have already deleted the item from your inventory. If you have any specific questions regarding your recently ended item please reply to this email and include the ended ITEM NUMBER and ITEM TITLE indicated above. We do ask that you find some time to review our list of prohibited items and compare it to the items in your inventory. Please delete any prohibited items from your inventory. If Half.com is continually ending your items it may escalate into stronger administrative action against your account.

Sincerely,

Half.com Trust & Safety

Well, Half.com, here's the scoop: I "found some time" and I just deleted all the items from our inventory. Happy now? Every last one of them. I started with the "suspended" ones, which left just five active books... but you still said that I had 36 listed out of the 90+ I started from. I'm no math expert, but I think 36 is greater than five.

It was awfully helpful of you to show that I had a second page of content... but when that page just duplicates the five books that really are there, I realize that you can't manage a database... and you can't write a civil form letter... and history shows that you can't be trusted to broker someone's online reputation.

So... Goodbye, Half.com!

Matthew Lesko (the "Free Government Money!") guy

2009-06-11T00:05:00.000-05:00

Just came across an article about Matthew Lesko (Marked Man - washingtonpost.com). The guy knows his niche -- and does the "get rich quick" sale really well. But my favorite part of the article?

To create his first infomercials, Lesko spent a lot of money hiring
Hollywood professionals. Now, he hires eager young kids who shoot cheap and edit
on laptops. "They're terrific," he says. "They work for dirt and they're excited
and they have good ideas."

Lesko found Fleg, his latest director, by putting an ad on Craigslist.
Fleg answered it and agreed to produce ads for $1,500 apiece. At that price,
Lesko can afford to shoot an ad, then test it on cheap rural cable stations, and
toss it out if it doesn't sell.

It's in the same vein as "crowd-sourcing" work -- the fact that, depending on your standards, a lot of work can be done a lot less expensively than it could be done a dozen (or even a couple) years ago.

We don't care what you can prove; you're denied anyway

2009-06-07T22:03:00.002-05:00

Here's the text of the message that I just sent through the whitehouse.gov comment form; I think it speaks for itself:

Hello, dedicated staffer or intern! :) Just a quick head's up
that there really are thousands of us out here who are deeply concerned about
the Airyn Bell case; she's the wife of Art Bell who was denied citizenship
because the USCIS seems to have lost (or is choosing to ignore) the paperwork
that the USPS has proven that USCIS received. (USCIS case WAC0900851515;
details at Mr. Bell's website: http://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/art-bell-s-wife-denied-u-s-visa)

Yes, there are much (MUCH!) bigger problems in the world today.
President Obama has "more important" things to focus on. Far bigger
travesties of justice happen every minute. But this case strikes me as
noteworthy; how can we trust a "reformed" government that holds people's lives
in its hands but ignores Constitutional concepts of due process... and whose
employees lie to congressmen when faced with incontrovertible evidence that a
citizen has followed all proper procedures and fulfilled all the legal
requirements asked of him?

The same concept (of "lying in the face of evidence") comes through in my latest podcast. As I say there, there are some things that really get to me, and people who say "I'm going to ignore or deny your proof and falsely insist on something untrue that now negatively reflects on your character..." ...well, that really gets to me. Check out the podcast and let me know what you think.

More police brutality, this time in Seattle

2009-05-26T23:41:00.002-05:00

Stay away from Seattle, Washington. Actually, you can go there... but if a couple big thugs wearing black start chasing after you while people are yelling that you stole something (which you didn't), stop in your tracks and hope that whatever they do to you isn't as bad as what Christopher Harris suffered.

The story (and surveilance video) is available at the Seattle Times. Long story short, he was falsely accused of being a crook, and rather than grabbing and cuffing him the cops decided to teach him a lesson and shove his head into a wall.

And let me explain something: You don't come back from skull fractures that put you into a coma and leave you in critical condition. You might live, but you'll never be "normal" again.

Once again, as I always say here, most cops are good people who are trying to do the right thing. And after a long day of busting bad guys, only to see judges give them a slap on the wrist, you'd probably want to bust a few skulls too. But the whole point of this pesky thing called a "judicial system" is to keep innocent people like Christopher Harris from having their head bashed into a wall for making the mistake of going out in public in the presence of police in Washington State.

Go forth and scan!

2009-05-21T23:03:00.000-05:00

I'm giddy, giddy, GIDDY that I have a new (to me) HP Photosmart 3210 All-in-One that I can play with; apparently, there are printing issues with it... but what I really wanted it for was for scanning the tons and tons of old family photos I have.

A pleastant surprise is that this particular model has a slide scanner. What I don't know is whether I can get it to accept medium-format slides (the large 2" x 2" ones that nobody knows about these days); Mom has several boxes of those from a trip to Europe.

Anyway... fun scanner-related times ahead! :)

GoDaddy's hosting terms?

2009-05-09T11:09:00.003-05:00

I've turned on some free GoDaddy hosting for one of my not-yet-used domains, and spotted the following terms:

Notwithstanding anything in this Agreement to the contrary, in no event
shall Your web site consist of the following: search results, registration,
"thank you", error, email or chat pages, pages comprised primarily of other
advertising

That seems kinda restrictive, doesn't it? Hmmm.

The strange, ongoing saga of Vahid Sedaghat

2009-04-23T21:01:00.004-05:00

With a name like "Vahid Sedaghat"... well, it stands out when you see that in the paper. Twice in the past week I've come across it. And the very first time, I thought, "Ummmm.... I think I know who that is..."

Back in my pre-blog days, I wrote up a response to a KMSP-TV news story on Vahid. My basic premise, which I still stand by, is that this guy was no angel but the news story wasn't very fair or informative.

To repeat, I also stand by my "this guy was no angel" assessment....

Used-car salesman charged with fraud
A Little Canada businessman also has been charged with receiving stolen property, in addition to theft.

By PAT PHEIFER, Star Tribune
Last update: February 13, 2008 - 9:53 PM

A used-car salesman from Little Canada who allegedly sold defective vehicles to unwitting customers -- often immigrants with limited English proficiency -- has been charged with five counts of theft by swindle and one of receiving stolen property.
Vahid Sedaghat, 52, would become physically aggressive and hostile when buyers complained that their vehicles broke down shortly after the sales, said the criminal complaint filed Monday in Ramsey County District Court.

So, what happened to the case?

Alford plea offered by salesman who cashed check sent in error

Last update: April 17, 2009 - 12:57 AM

A former used-car salesman was sentenced Thursday in Ramsey County District Court to five years of probation for felony theft...

...The remaining charges were dismissed by District Judge Rosanne Nathanson at Thursday's hearing. In return for the plea, prosecutors agreed to not file charges in two other cases.

Whose cases were dismissed? I assume this young couple's story applies...

If Lord forgives, a couple decides, why can't they?

Burned in a car scam, a husband, wife learn an eternal truth: Give, and you get

By Emily Gurnon
Updated: 04/20/2009 11:32:32 PM CDT

Kyle and Ellen Hopson, of Burnsville, say their Christian faith has guided them in deciding to forgive the man who scammed them into buying a salvage car. So it s really nothing for me to say, You don t owe me that anymore, Kyle Hopson said. Because I hope this brings you to a place where you understand how you ve been forgiven by Jesus. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)What would possess an otherwise normal, sane young couple to forgo $6,400 they could have recouped from a calculating thief?

Call it temporary insanity. Call it blind idealism.

Or call it forgiveness.

Kyle Hopson was 22 and living with his wife, Ellen, in her grandmother's basement in Lakeville in December 2006 when he answered an online ad in the Pioneer Press for a 2002 Honda Civic. The asking price — $6,400 — seemed incredibly low, so he put in a call to Little Canada used-car dealer Vahid Sedaghat.

Wow. That's all I can say. Wow.

To be 100% accurate, let's note that Vahid didn't "admit guilt" with his Alford plea -- what's commonly known as pleading "no contest" to a charge. It's the plea that Larry Craig should have made in 2007, rather than his "Guilty... but I don't really mean it" plea that he attempted.

Nevertheless, if you're looking for a used car, you're probably better served by avoiding Vahid Sedaghat.

Justice for Sam Salter in the Trooper Carrie Rindal case

2009-03-20T19:05:00.003-05:00

This made my day! According to a story yesterday in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Trooper Carrie Rindal was reprimanded and Sam Salter will be given the $9,500 settlement that he proposed for what the Strib terms a "bungled traffic stop".

The State Patrol on Wednesday announced that it had reprimanded trooper Carrie Rindal after a review board found that she had made several errors while stopping and arresting Salter along Interstate 94 in St. Paul.

Kudos to Salter for proposing a reasonable settlement and moving on; while it would be entertaining to watch the typical "I'm going to sue for hundreds of millions of dollars!" court case unfold, that doesn't help anything and isn't the way that grown-ups ought to behave. Ironically, the settlement sounds a lot like what I originally suggested on this blog.

Sam Salter continues to demonstrate that he was in the right and continues to handle himself well. And has proven that, sometimes, you can fight city hall!

Miley = Britney? Really?

2009-03-10T22:57:00.003-05:00

Okay, I walked in to Barnes & Noble the other day while I had a few minutes to kill... and was stopped dead in my tracks by the display in front of me.

I don't usually think things are "creepy"... but this was... "creepy".

Correct me if I'm wrong; people do realize that these are the same, right? Or am I the only one old enough to "remember the past" and make the comparison?

Does Miley Cyrus really want to be Britney Spears? Really?

THAT's what those were!

2009-02-24T21:15:00.000-06:00

Came across the article "Minnesota Aims to be Model for Wind Transport" and when I saw the photo of the nacelle (don't ask me how to pronounce that) on the flatbed semi I realized, "That's what we saw coming down the freeway!" On at least two separate trips, Ruth and I spotted these coming the opposite direction, and had no idea what they are. They look like a missile cone, except that no missile would have things jutting off the side of it...

Trooper Carrie Rindal

2009-02-04T22:12:00.004-06:00

UPDATE: 03.20.2009 Carrie Rindal has been reprimanded!

The KARE-11 story disabled comments after at least 62 came in (according to the homepage), so let's see if we can get a conversation going here. Longtime readers of my blog know that I have a passion for pointing out police incompetence, arrogance and abuse of power -- not because I hate police, but because I have so much respect for them and their jobs (having both friends and relatives on the force) and I can't stand it when a few bad apples freak out and do something stupid that gives their uniform a bad name.

Carrie Rindal is one such "peace" officer.

When driving his kids home on New Year's Eve (as I was doing with Ruth and our girls a month ago), Sam Salter made one mistake: He followed the same instructions I've read dozens of places. If you're hit with lights and sirens from a squad car, you to find a safe place to pull off the road and should get off on the nearest exit if you can. (And, as I'll advise my daughters when the time comes: If there's any question about the squad car or it seems "unmarked," you drive to the nearest gas station or other store that has personnel and security cameras present so you're not attacked by an impostor.)

Whatever you do, you don't stop in the middle of traffic and put your life (and, more importantly, the life of the officer who needs to leave the minimal protection of his/her vehicle) in danger. "Don't worry," we're told; "No officer is going to punish you for maintaining safety."

Sargent Carrie Rindal, hyped up on a bit too much testosterone thanks to the rock music she was blaring in her car, decided to bash this guy's minivan van (to the tune of $1,500) because his pulling over wasn't fast enough for her.

There's more out there on this story, including the completely nonsensical argument that Carrie makes to the driver. Read the Star Tribune's transcript of the in-car recording:

Rindal: Well, that's why we are in this spot that we're in, Samuel. When you see red lights and sirens, you don't keep on driving and driving and driving [so] you decide here you are going to stop. We decide that.
Salter: I understand that, but I feel that I [didn't] have a safe place to stop between
where I saw your lights and here.
Rindal: OK, well that's why we're at where we're at, OK? Next time, maybe you'll realize that we decide where the safe spot is.

"We control the horizontal. We control the vertical..."

Oh, sorry.

So what Sgt. Rindal is saying is that the moment you see lights and sirens, you should immediately pull over. Immediately. But not to the left -- only to the right, according to Carrie on the recording. (This isn't true; it's actually much safer to pull over to the left if there's a clear line of sight behind you, because then you and the officer get to exit on the median side rather than into traffic...)

Why not just lock up our brakes if there's an officer behind you, hope he or she doesn't rear-end you, and then use the "Carrie Rindal defense" that you were afraid you were going to be dragged off to jail with your kids left in the car? Bad move, but isn't that what she's teaching our kids?

According to WCCO's story, Sam was told not to bother trying to fight this because, to be blunt, you can't fight city hall. Very true. But common sense and the court of public opinion might prevail here, if we can raise enough visibility to the fact that Carrie Rindal is a threat to safety-minded dads driving their kids home.

Anyway, let's go back to the full Star Tribune story, which includes more detailed video. Sam gets out and, over the noise of a siren still blaring at him, yells to the cop, "What are you doing?" (because she just rammed into his car as he turned onto a side street at five miles an hour). From off camera, she yells "Get your hands up!" He immediately puts his hands up, turns, and puts them on top of the van up above his head. Carrie's reply? Again, "Get your hands up!"

I thought Sam showed remarkable patience when he yelled back over the sound of the still-blaring siren, "They are up!" Any reasonable person would realize that he's dealing with a cop who's not playing with a full deck here. Up is up, right?

In the recording she insists that Sam, while driving on the freeway, should have pulled over to the right, not the left. But as anyone who has driven that area knows, there isn't anywhere to pull over to the right; as you move right on I-94, Highway 61 merges in with extra lanes from the right, and as you move further right there's no shoulder because the exit ramp is there. When you come down the exit ramp, Burns Ave. is at the bottom, which is where he turned and pulled over when she rammed him.

Various commenters on the Star Tribune site have said, "He drove for an entire mile! What took him so long?" At 55 miles an hour, that's one minute: not very long at all. As you watch the video, that "entire mile" mostly consists of him moving further and further to the right (as Carrie agreed was appropriate) as he worked to avoid being boxed in by the other cars in those lanes.

And one more thing: Though we don't like to stereotype, you don't see too many high-speed chases through residential neighborhoods by crooks in minivans. It's just not a very hip vehicle for the criminally-minded. Come on.

At the risk of being overly dramatic here... what do you do with this? All of the public statements from the State Patrol so far are very clearly saying, "We protect our own". Why do they say that? It's not like crooks are paying attention to news articles and are going to stage their next heist using a coasting minivan as their getaway car because it's the new secret to a successful crime spree. It's not like choir boys are going to turn into drunk drivers once they realize that there are cops who disagree with ramming minivans full of kids. "They said that this Carrie Rindal cop was wrong and that traffic stops should be done safely, so that means we're free to tank up and go looting!"

Why not be honest here? She screwed up, big time. Pay the guy his $1,500 for his bashed sheetmetal. Mail a formal letter of apology. Give Carrie a token suspension and put her through a documented aggression-management course. And send a high-ranking officer (make Carrie stay as far away as possible) to the kids -- maybe at their school with a really cool special assembly -- to tell the truth: Their dad loves them and was trying to keep them safe, and our officers of the law try hard to do the same thing but make mistakes sometimes. Real peace officers have the integrity to stand up for what's right, not for what can be excused and hidden and ignored because it's an embarrassing failure of a fundamental institution.

The only thing gained by the ongoing cover-up in the Carrie Rindal case is that good citizens and their kids start wondering if cops really are the bad guys. And that's the real tragedy here.

Considering suicide's effects...

2009-02-03T12:58:00.007-06:00

For those of you who keep up with my Twitter feed, you already know that I'm lamenting the loss of one of our young guys from our church congregation. (Details of his suicide are at his school's site.)

I didn't know Eric Harms well. When I was doing video work at our church, he was occasionally singing on worship team or performing in a drama. Everything that people have said in his Facebook group seems true -- he was nice and funny and talented.

So, a whole bunch of various thoughts come to mind, all jumbled together:

Suicide is really, really hurtful for the people left behind.
Are we "glamorizing suicide" by the outpouring of love for Eric and support for his family?
Was Eric's happiness a "shell" or an act? Or did something change recently?
Is suicide prevention really possible? I'd bet money that suicidal people thing something like, "It was a poor choice for him, but it's the only option for me."

And a more "academic" question: How does the "virtual community" of Facebook, blogs, e-mails, etc. help or hinder people who are struggling? The actual answer is that it probably just acts as a "magnifier" for feelings of support or isolation or glamor (much like Michael Wesch's argument in a totally different context).

For some of us, I guess we blog through our feelings.

Pondering Posterizing Pictures

2009-02-02T21:25:00.003-06:00

Image by Tea, two sugars via Flickr

I don't usually pay much attention the the Sunday circulars, but the one from Office Max caught my attention: They're offering 24"x36" prints, which are usually about $40, for $9.99.

Being the fan of infrared photography that I am, part of me wonders if I should risk hyper-vanity and print some of my photos that size. The resolution of my photos really can't handle something that size, but then again, what can?

Note, by the way, that the photo here isn't one of mine; it's one that was recommended by Zemanta, which is a Firefox plug-in that goes out and finds content that's related to whatever you're writing about. I wanted to play with it, and had to write about something that made enough sense that it had a chance of finding some content. So far, so good. :)

Are we talking infanticide here?

2009-01-17T10:16:00.003-06:00

There's a story of a horrible case in Texas which, I'm sure, repeats itself all over the country each day: 6-month-old child abused by his parents. And terribly abused: "A physician noted that David Coronado Jr. had 42 skeletal injuries."

So, a court-appointed guardian has asked that he be removed from life support because it's "in his best interests".

His parents don't agree, but I think they forfeited their rights somewhere before the broken bone count reached 42.

Anyway, the AP article makes a really odd reference:

"If he survives his injuries, he will have severe and permanent disability as a result of these injuries," a doctor wrote in one report, the newspaper said.

So, because the child will be disabled, we should kill him now?

I understand the notion of removing life support if there's no hope of living... but isn't the act of removing life support because of future disabilities akin to an abortion about 7 months too late in this case?

Are we okay with that in this country today?

Miscellaneous 2008 Updates

2008-12-01T09:49:00.002-06:00

Walking in to the office this morning, I realized that it's been ages since I've thrown an update into this blog. Most of my day-to-day updates are in Twitter now, but I've got a few "ponderings" that wouldn't make sense to put there... so, here they are.

The Thanksgiving break was outstanding -- a good stretch of down-time to reflect and catch up on various projects. (Even simple things like getting the oil changed in both vehicles and making sure the snow blower starts are nice to check off the "to-do" list.)

Today is a "December with integrity" day -- it's not "bitterly cold", but it's cold enough to trigger the "winter is here" response. Winter isn't my favorite season, but I can handle it just fine. Unfortunately, the side streets up here in St. Paul are incredibly slippery thanks to the light snow we got yesterday.

Last week I had coffee with Albert Maruggi, which started out as a conversation about business names and turned into an impromptu coaching session (which was great -- "coaching" is something I've always believed in but I've had trouble "connecting" with someone who I could resonate with on that level). I've always been a fan of Marcus Buckingham's strengths-based approach to work/life/career (even before I knew it under that label) but Albert asked a few questions that really got me thinking along those lines.

I'm pondering how to flesh out my "I Support Learning" personal motto with the reality that I'm energized by exploring solutions that are in search of a problem -- "Professional Dreamer", perhaps?

Speaking of, there are a few more things on the home front -- FTA satellite options, remodeling ideas, and the like -- but that will wait for another day.

If you're reading this, drop me a note (you know where to find me) and let me know you're still out there. Whoever you are, I hope all's well! :)

"A solution that doesn't exist"?!?

2008-08-20T20:18:00.006-05:00

Okay, I had just the strangest conversation with a very nice young woman at a research firm who called to pre-qualify me for a study. It was on "digital media," and I figured I'd probably have a good shot at attending something like that given my life and job.

That is, until we hit the last question, which was so incoherent that I had to ask what she meant:

"Have you ever hacked a web site, or created an internet solution that doesn't exist?"

Huh?

I think I know what they mean by "hack a web site", and I can say "No" to that in that I've never cracked a web site... though at work I've had to "reverse engineer" some of our web applications or repurpose them for a different class/program, and if you define "hacking" as "innovatively adapting," that probably qualifies.

But, anyway... what does it mean to "create an internet solution that doesn't exist"?

Like, "Are you a web developer"? No, but I've worked on web applications.

Or "Have you built things that no longer exist"? Well, that PostNuke site I ran a few years ago isn't around anymore. And that old ColdFusion stuff probably isn't running now...

Or maybe they mean "Have you created something that didn't really exist, but existed only in your mind?" And it was a mental brain-teaser, like "Can God make a rock heavier than He can lift?"

Regardless, I "failed the test," because she said I wasn't a good candidate for the study.

(That was after she put me on hold to ask her supervisor what that last question was supposed to mean.)

And, really, we'd gone through all the questions -- down to the "do you or your family work for a retailer or electronics firm," which is either right up front or right at the end of these kinds of surveys.

So, head's up to the rest of you geeks out there... if a research firm asks you whether you've "created a solution that doesn't exist," the appropriate answer isn't "That doesn't make any sense." The right answer might be "Yes," or it might be "No," but whatever I said, I think I answered wrong.

Thoughts on my leadership style

2008-07-15T18:09:00.002-05:00

Those who've been keeping up with my Twitter posts know that I'm at the EduCAUSE Learning Technology Leadership program right now, which is giving me plenty of opportunities to introspect -- one of my favorite activities! And what I'm pondering right now is my "personal leadership style". I found in today's "project meeting" (we've been put into a "team" and were given just under 47 hours to bang out and deliver a proposal) that my natural inclination is to listen to the "vision" of those around me and then start reaching into my miscellaneous knowledge to find a way to implement that vision.

(For instance, we discussed the idea to find low-cost ways of engaging students in the community. I immediately thought that one low-paid university staffer could serve as "volunteer community coordinator" and work with the volunteer groups in the city -- organizations that would love to have students help them and would probably even help develop ways of documenting the particpation.)

Does this mean that I'm not a "leader" because, instead of casting a strategic vision, I'm looking for ways to ways to tactically implement others' vision?

(I don't think that's the case... but that's the rhetorical question I'm pondering...)

Hey, if you're reading this and know who I am, you know how to get in touch with me -- drop me a note and say "Hi!". :)

Automatic home-building?

2008-06-10T20:15:00.000-05:00

Concrete isn't a very eco-friendly material, but the blog posting of Next Big Future: Built for Speed: Printing Buildings is really interesting on the "how to build more homes for people, better and faster" topic.

What I don't get yet (and, yes, that's because I haven't read about it in detail) is how you can build on top of concrete when you have the issue of curing it -- unless you build really slowly. But I'm sure I'm just missing something...

So I'm listening to...

2008-06-03T17:28:00.001-05:00

So I'm listening to a podcast and I got an idea, there's a reference to a competitive ecosystem being more healthy for innovation. The contacts being cable companies where there's competition the prices are lower if there is no competition prices are higher, and that's harmful for start ups like Utube sort of organization. Well I wonder if the same thing applies to biological ecosystems, where if you have competition the ecosystem is healthier over all. I have no idea. And I wonder if jott will handle this long if it gets posted to blogger. listen

Powered by Jott

Driving home, and using...

2008-06-02T18:22:00.001-05:00

Driving home, and using Jott supposed to blogger. Apparently, I have 30 seconds. I don't know if it puts in periods or not. Now that I've mentioned period maybe it will actually join an extra period. But I've been using this for twitter. It's been working pretty well. I'm trying to carry on so much, so I can squeeze into 30 seconds. Maybe it's the way I can give back eventually(?) blogging heamit(?). listen

Powered by Jott

Alive and well but not blogging...

2008-05-30T21:06:00.002-05:00

It's amazing how my life in Twitter has taken over all my blog-related tendencies; hard to believe that it's been almost four months since I posted anything here.

Out of curiosity... is anyone still listening here? :)

Belated hot air balloon update

2008-02-08T13:27:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday, Candela and I got up at the crack of dawn in hopes that the Hudson Hot Air Affair would go off as planned... and it did! So Candela got to experience the same thing that Dad and I did nearly three decades ago (only once or twice, as I recall, because they were often cancelled).

Playing with Picasa Web

2008-01-22T14:32:00.000-06:00

For a long time we've been hunting for a good "throw a bunch of photos on the web" solution. Looks like Picasa Web Albums might be an option (thanks to a tool called Migratr, which helped move a bunch of photos that I had on Flickr).

Here's an example of the embedding function; let's see how it turns out.

Do interviewers pay attention anymore?

2008-01-04T09:24:00.000-06:00

Years ago, Larry King was interviewed (on 60 Minutes or some such program) and noted that people don't pay attention when conducting interviews. There was a quote like, "Someone does a man-on-the-street interview, 'What brings you here today?'; "Oh, I'm here to [do some terrible thing]"; "Great! And are you planning to have lunch anywhere?"

Fine... but I expect better from David Frost, of all people!

Osama bin Laden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "November 2007

In an interview with political interviewer David Frost, taken on November 2, 2007, the recently assassinated Pakistani politician, and Pakistan Peoples Party chairwoman, Benazir Bhutto, claimed that bin Laden had been murdered by Omar Sheikh. During her answer to a question pertaining to the identities of those who had previously attempted her own assassination, Bhutto named Sheikh as a possible suspect while referring to him as 'the man who murdered Osama bin Laden.' Despite the weight of such a statement, neither Bhutto nor Frost attempted to clarify it and no other mainstream media appears to have further inquired about it."

The interview in question is on YouTube, at about 5:10 into this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO8B6fpFSQ

Now, perhaps Bhutto simply misspoke and meant to refer to Omar Sheikh as the man who murdered someone else... but, gee, Frost should have caught this at the time and clarified it!

Sadly, it's a bit late to ask Bhutto what she meant.

Interesting article on competition

2008-01-02T12:35:00.000-06:00

Can competition (against your business -- not, like, running in track and field) be a good? Read Why Starbucks actually helps mom and pop coffeehouses. - By Taylor Clark - Slate Magazine: "Starbucks has been about as lethal a killer as a fluffy bunny rabbit."

In a nutshell, if you have Starbucks around, that gets people thinking about spending $4 for a cup of coffee, and if that's the field you're playing in, it's good to have people thinking about that.

So, I suppose it depends on what your business field is; if you're selling something that's really necessary and important, competition might hurt you... but if you're trying to sell snow to Minnesotans, the more people shouting "Snow is great! You need snow! Buy snow now!", the better off you'll be.

Maybe? Thoughts?

Eric's Podcast Rant (or, "Why PremiumCast.com's Terms of Service are frustrating")

2007-12-28T00:19:00.001-06:00

I'm sitting here in my den, putting off going to bed, and thinking that I really should get out a podcast before we're in 2008. But Candela is literally three feet in front of my face, separated from me by only 1/2" of drywall, 3 1/2" of dead space, and another 1/2" of drywall. So, I don't think I'm going to try recording anything tonight.

But that got me thinking about podcasting, and the fact that, at least for me, right now, insert other qualifier here, it's somewhat difficult to pop out a quick podcast. There's recording, then assembling the different sweepers and phone clips, then compressing, then normalizing, then saving, then uploading to the server, then writing and publishing the blog entry to populate the RSS feed... at which point I remember that I left out "update the ID3 tags" from the process and wonder whether I should even bother.

There's got to be a better way, right?

So, that got me thinking about what used to be called GigaVox Audio Lite, which is now Podango Show Builder Lite. An awesome concept, but (at least in its GigaVox days) was a bit too limited to be useful to me. (What I need is a really basic "show logic" that says, "If there's a segment 2 present, then throw in a sweeper, then throw in segment 2". Last time I checked, if you told the assembly script to expect a "segment 2", it would error out if it wasn't present. And, if you know me, you know that nothing I do is in a perfectly regular format -- certainly not a podcast!)

So, that got me thinking about one more thing: Paul Colligan's "PremiumCast.com". This is the first functional, viable, "yes you can do this without paying a fortune to some big production company" implementation of "individualized RSS". Basically, every subscriber gets his/her own RSS feed that has a unique identifier, so you can get awesome stats and even target a particular message to a certain user.

It's a great concept!

My first concern was raised in a comment on Paul's blog. When you TOS says that you can't link to a web site... well, that's a problem in my book. Paul said that he'd look into it, but I just checked and it's still there. (You'll have to dig to find it.)

But, in that TOS report is something much worse for the typical podcaster (in my opinion). It reads (emphasis mine):

TERMS OF SERVICE FOR ALL MUSICAL PUBLISHERS

In addition to conforming to all of the GENERAL TERMS OF USE and the PUBLISHERS TERM OF USE, as explained above, you hereby certify that you have read, understand, and agree to completely conform with the following:

If you submit a podcast or videocast that contains music of any type, either as the sole content, background content, introductory content, or ending content, you certify that the following statements are true:

1. You are the legal author of the musical content OR;

1a. You have requested a Compulsory License for Making and Distributing Phonorecords, as mandated by the U.S.Copyright Office, from each copyright owner of the particular musical work.

2. You have submitted payment of royalties to all copyright holders of the particular musical work.

You agree that you will indemnify and hold PREMIUMCAST.COM AND COLLIGAN.COM, INC., its subsidiaries, affiliates, licensors, content providers, service providers, employees, agents, officers, directors, and contractors (the "Indemnified Parties") harmless from any infringement of copyright that your submission to PREMIUMCAST.COM AND COLLIGAN.COM, INC. causes.

You further agree that PREMIUMCAST.COM AND COLLIGAN.COM, INC. reserves the right to sue you for any actual damages any copyright infringement by you causes us. We also reserve the right to sue you for any punitive damages that your actions may cause to our business and reputation.

BY REGISTERING AND ACCEPTING A POSITION AS A MUSICAL PUBLISHER ON PREMIUMCAST.COM AND COLLIGAN.COM, INC., YOU AFFIRM THAT YOU HAVE READ THESE SPECIAL TERMS; UNDERSTAND THEM; CONFORM TO ALL OF THEM; AND AFFIRM THAT ALL OF YOUR STATEMENTS ABOVE ARE TRUE.

I know that nobody reads Terms of Service anymore... but there's one example of why you should!

I play music from Tim Lemmens and Elizabeth Hunnicutt in the Ericast. They're both local Christian artists; I've talked to them personally, they're very nice people, they're happy to have me play a song of theirs once in awhile. I have no "Compulsory License for Making and Distributing Phonorecords" from them, nor have I paid them royalties (even a token dollar). They're fine with that. Paul's not.

I've used Freeware loops from Flashkit.com's loops. (Ones that are genuinely marked "Freeware", which isn't the case for everything on that site.) While I could, in theory, track down Elizabeth and Tim to make them give me a form from the U.S. Copyright office, I have to take it on faith that the loops that are publicly available as Freeware are, indeed, Freeware.

And what if I get a cease-and-desist from some loop-maker (or the musician who got ripped off)? Even if I desist and/or cease right away... if some blogger gets wind of the story and writes about it... I've given Paul Colligan and his team express written (or, at least, click-through) permission to sue me for punitive damages because I made him look bad!

If you're a reasonable person, you're thinking, "Come on, Eric; Paul's not going to do that!" And I'm sure you're right; he seems like a nice guy. But, in that case, he needs to remove those kinds of things from his Terms of Service! Since "it was just boilerplace so I decided to ignore it, Your Honor" won't fly in court, I don't want to sign off on it!

So, I'm left without the ability to even play with PremiumCast.com... which sounds awesome, and I respect Paul's right to protect his company... but I think this little podcaster, for one, will have to wait until a less encumbered service comes along -- one that understands the realities of podcasting and appreciates that not all of us are living behind a corporate shield that can fend off (or at least withstand) a lawsuit.

Candela not only needs a wall to sleep behind, but a roof to sleep under.

Discovering "Asterpix Interactive Video"

2007-12-17T22:21:00.000-06:00

Thanks to a tip from a blog reader, I've now got a new interactive video site to add to the toolbelt: Asterpix Interactive Video.

It seems to fall in that Click.TV or Mojiti or Viddler category, but also seems to feature a "tracking" function so your clickable "hotspots" will stick with objects as they move on the screen. Awesome for home movies or any long shot that has an object of interest; I'm not so sure it's a good fit for collaborative commenting on a produced video, but I'll have to play with it more to get a good handle on its strengths.

Three cheers for the blogosphere and the answers it can provide! :)

Mojiti is dead; long live Viddler!

2007-12-12T19:40:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure people beleive me when I say in presentations, "Here are some interesting third-party online services... but be careful, because they could disappear at any time."

Well, that's what happened to Mojiti, which was AWESOME (and now rumored to have been bought out by Hulu.com). So I went on the hunt for an alternative.

I think I found it: Viddler.com. Here's a sample from a project we're working on right now: Augustine test video.

I'm not embedding the video here (though that does indeed work) because, to have it show up, it has to be "public". What I included above was a "secret link", as they call it -- security by obscurity, which is totally fine for these purposes.

The Future (circa 1984) is now

2007-12-10T17:06:00.000-06:00

Someday, there'll be a good balance of reasonable DRM (after all, intellectual property is worth something) and fair use. In the meantime, we can read things like The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts) [dive into mark] and hang on for the ride.

P.S. Yes, I'm back to blogging! We'll see how long it lasts this time 'round.

Where to turn for "breaking news"?

2007-08-03T10:50:00.000-05:00

Sadly, it takes a local tragedy to drive me back to blogging... but I'm carrying on a conversation over Twitter right now and 140 characters just ain't cutting it.

Full disclosure: Dad taught Journalism for 32 years so I have that running in my veins, still know lots of folks in the field. But I'm much more "techie geek" and "social media proponent" than I am "journalist" at heart, so I think the family/personal background makes me balanced rather than biased.

That having been said... I'm having a good-natured debate with folks over... well, what Jon Gordon described on Twitter as "bloggers' etc. response to 35W bridge collapse for Future Tense".

So, first of all, to clarify, "blog" does not equal "citizen journalism". I'm thinking of "blog" as the delivery medium and "citizen journalism" as the source.

And given that... I think that "citizen journalism" is useful and good for breaking news situations like this one... but I also think that blogs are a lousy medium for delivering that jounalism.

In other words, we really need to broker breaking news through the "main stream media".

Now that the news is no longer "breaking", we'll see more use of social tools to point people to interesting stories, supplementary information, etc...

But when a bridge falls down in Minneapolis, I'm not going to fire up Chuck Olsen's blog to find out what happened. It's time for WCCO, KSTP, KMSP or KARE -- all of which had choppers in the air and reporters on the ground within a few minutes. Those choppers showed me the scene, and the reporters on the ground "got the story" from people who were actually there.

Could blogs provide a "personal connection" to the situation? Yes... but only for the people you already know. I hopped on Twitter, told everyone that I of course was all right because I'm almost never near that bridge. Was glad to see that Garrick was alive and well and Tweeting, sure. But that's not where the "news" was at.

Here's an example of my "social media" experience with this particular news. I figured that someone would have cell phone or security camera footage of the collapse. So I popped on YouTube and did a search. Someone claimed to have just what I was looking for. What was it? Archival footage of the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse from 1940. Because you can't block files on YouTube as SPAM (just comments, as far as I can tell), there was no way to warn away the rest of the planet from the bogus and inappropriate content other than rating it with just one out of five stars.

So, relying on the wide open world of social sites to provide your news is very unwise. Main stream media makes its mistakes (lots of them), but at least they don't intentionally polute the stream with garbage.

Now that the dust has settled (literally and figuratively), I think some of the best conversation about the related issues will be in blogs... but two nights ago, that's not where you wanted to be if you needed to know what the real story was.

Thoughts?

Why I'm glad I sold my Apple stock...

2007-07-03T10:55:00.001-05:00

Today's update comes from a report by Heather Mcgowan to the good folks at MacInTouch.com (direct link: http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/iphone/index.html#item.48909)

Diary of an iBrick

June 29th-8:30pm purchased 8G Iphone at the Apple Store-Chestnut Hill

June 29th-9pm-completed activation in Itunes, Your activation will complete in 6 minutes

June 29th 9:20 Your activation requires additional time. You will receive an email at xxx@xxx.com when your activation is complete

June 30th- Your activation requires additional time. You will receive an email at xxx@xxx.com when your activation is complete

July 1st 4:30pm-visited AT&T Store in Dedham, MA. We cant do anything about that. You should go to the Apple Store, it is their responsibility

July 2nd-9am-called the AT&T transfer team (1-888-898-7685).

Automated System-We have no record of your account, please hold while we transfer you to a customer care agent. We are experiencing unusually high call volumes, your expected wait time is 14 minutes

July 2nd 9:20- Speak to person #1 to which all information was given-number on the account, social, billing address, IMEI number and SIM card number. SIM card number required removing SIM card, which is not designed for removal with a paperclip. Person #1 I am going to send this right over to our escalation team which is managed by our vice president. Your phone should be activated within 3 hours. If more time is needed you will receive a call shortly

July 2nd 12:30pm Iphone still an Ibrick-called AT&T again and remained on the phone for 3 hours.

12:30- all information was given again, no record of prior call

Person #2 you should try canceling your activation and trying to activate under a new number then we can port your old number (T-Mobile) over.

Me-How do I cancel the activation process?

Hold on while I transfer you

On Hold-listening to AT&T describe their fabulous service

Person #3 You should NOT cancel the activation process as your Tmobile number will be lost and unrecoverable. Hold on let me transfer you.

Person #4 Can I just get your social security number, your IMEI number and your Sim card number? What is your mailing address? What is your mobile number again. Ok, now is your phone working?

Me-NO that is why I am calling you

Person #4 Hold on let me look at your records. Did you enter a credit approval at the time you entered yor information into Itunes?

Me-NO, where would I have gotten credit approval?

Person #4 They should have run a credit check on you when you bought your phone at the store.

Me- No they didnt, I bought it at the Apple store.

Person #4 They should have, it would be on your receipt.

Me-Ok, I have my receipt where would it be?

Person #4 -I dont know, I have never seen a receipt.

Me-Ok, I will read you all the numbers on the receipt.

Person #4-No, none of those numbers are the right number of numbers. I think you need this credit approval for your activation to begin. Did you get to the end and were you told of any errors

Me-I got through the activation and it told me it needs more time. Did you activate a phone as part of your training?

Person #4-no we were not trained on how to activate the phone. We did not go through the process in itunes. Perhaps you should reset it and start the process all over. Push the rest button

Me-where is it?

Person #4-I have no idea, I have never seen a real iphone

Me- you dont have an iphone? You have never held one or even a fake one to know where the buttons are?

Person #4-no they would not let us see the phone.

Me-how can you try to help if you have never seen the phone. You dont know what you are doi ng do you?

Person #4-(voice shaking) let me transfer you

Person #5- Hi can I have your social security number, billing address, mobile phone number, IMEI number, and SIM card number? How can I help you today?

Me-I am trying to activate my iphone

Person #5 we have no record of you in our system. You need to go to an AT&T store to get your account set up. Because it is the iphone we cannot do it over the phone.

Me- can you call the AT&T store in Dedham to confirm this before I go there as I went on Sunday and they said they can not help and they gave me this number

Person #5-ok, please hold

Person #5 Ok, I was wrong about that I was just advised this is apples problem. Please go to your nearest apple store

Me-here is the number from the apple store where I bought it, can you please call them and confirm that if I go there they can actually help?

Per son #5 Ok, hold on

Person #5-Ok I was wrong about that too, they said it is our responsibility and you must be lost in the system. Hold on while I check on something

Person #5, Ok, I have done all I can do here I am going to transfer you to someone else

Person #6-Ok can I have your mobile number, IMEI number, SIM card number, billing address and social security?

Me-yes but I have given that several times

Person #6-all our departments are separate so I have no records on you. I dont know what they told you but I am going to try and help

Information given

Person #6-Ok, it seems you are not in our system. I can tell by searching your social that you do in fact exist, it is not a fake social but I cant find your in our billing which means an account has not been set up yet. The request may be between Tmobile and us but I have no way of knowing

Me- can I call Tmobile, will they know or can they help?

Person #6-no, they have nothing to do with this

Me-OK so who is actually responsible

Person #6- you are

Me-how is that? I filled out the activation and I have now spent nearly 3 hours being passed around your various fragmented departments

Person #6-ok maybe we are responsible but I dont know where you are. I am going to take these notes and send your information to our escalation team. They should be back to you in 3-5 hours

Me- I was told that at 9am this morning

Person #6-honestly I have no way of assuring you anyone will call you

Me-so I am completely wasting my time

Person #6-I dont know what to tell you I am just going to pass this on to the escalation team and I will note your frustration. I am sorry for any inconvience this has caused you. Hold on while I type up these notes

20 minutes on hold

Person #6-ok I have passed this on, someone should call you

Me- can I speak to your supervisor

Person #6- My supervisor can not help you

Me- Can I speak to your supervisor

Person #6-(hostile) hold on

Supervisor (surly) How can I help you?

Me-I have been on the phone with various departments for over 3 hours. No one can help me. What is going on?

Supervisor (angry) we have done all we can for you. You are not the only person with this problem. You are just going to have to wait like everyone else.

6:45pm (AT&T customer service shuts at 7pm), left my house after waiting since 9am for a call back

6:48PM cingular wireless called, no message and the number is a non working number, please call back between 7am and 7pm

July 2nd

8:00 am- called AT&T customer service

We are experiencing unusually high c all volumes, please call back. If you want to wait your expected wait time is 15 minutes

8:25 Person #7- How can I help you? Please give me your mobile number, no record of you in our system.

Me-do you have notes from yesterday? I spoke to your office at 9am then again from 12:30 to 3:40. I was told twice they would send my concerns to the escalation team and my issue would be resolved and I will receive a call back in 3-5 hours.

Person #7-we are having so many problems I cant even tell you. There are thousands of problems with our systems and our servers are very backed up. Can I get your social, SIM card number, IMEI number and billing address?

Me- YES (frustrated)

Person #7-ok I am going to make a note of this and send it to our escalation team. I have to be honest with you it could be 24-48 hours before they even call you back.

9:00 Call Apple Care line

Person #8- This is A T&Ts fault. This is a network problem. We can help you once your phone is activated. Have you kept your phone tethered to the computer? If you unplug it even once you could have missed your activation.

Me-I was told by AT&T to unplug it a couple of times yesterday to reset it

Person #8-that is completely wrong. You might have missed your activation. I really cant help you until it is activated. This is AT&Ts network

I hung up, I couldnt listen any more

So I have a beautiful I-brick and if it ever works I will be charged $36 for activation.

Plastic: Good, evil, or something in-between?

2007-06-01T22:21:00.000-05:00

Just last night I was talking with friends about the fact that burning our oil in internal combustion engines isn't the best use of it, and when we run out of oil we're going to regret that we can't make plastic anymore. But, now I read Best Life Magazine: Our oceans are turning into plastic...are we?

How can we help Donald Hurd?

2007-05-11T07:44:00.000-05:00

Here's a really sad story: TwinCities.com - Mugging victim leaves jail with nowhere to go.

I'm as "law and order" as the next guy and don't think vigilante justice is a good thing... but people should be entitled to not think 100% clearly when they've just been beaten and mugged by some punk kids.

Why haven't the suspects been arrested yet? Sounds like the police know who they are -- especially the one who was shot, right?

Cool Cat Teacher Blog

2007-05-03T14:47:00.000-05:00

An interesting blog, and I'm having trouble posting it to del.icio.us, so here it is, just so I can keep track of it:

Cool Cat Teacher Blog - powered by FeedBurner

Check off your news!

2007-04-25T13:48:00.000-05:00

Checkbox News (Scripting News) What a great idea! What I don't know is how you'd handle competing tags, but we'd eventually figure that out. (For instance, the example is un-checking news about Anna Nicole. Which I would do. But the problem is that if Anna Nicole's partner's gardener's father says something insulting about Billy Graham, I might want to know about that, even though I'd never go out and check "Billy Graham" news as something I'd like to know about. So the automated system would drop that article out because it would see the Anna Nicole tag, even though it's not about Anna Nicole. It gets complicated.)

Sounds like...

2007-04-20T22:37:00.000-05:00

Thanks to a memory-jog on Twitter by "Ariel Waldman", a friend of Jon Gordon, I got to thinking...

Did you ever compare Saint Etienne's cover of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" with White Town's "Your Woman"?

Maybe everything in the early 90's sounded the same?

Seriously, don't those two songs sound a lot a like?!?

Mythbusters vs. Newton's Apple

2007-04-18T21:14:00.000-05:00

Just watched an episode of Mythbusters where they busted the myth that flying birds in a truck weigh less than resting ones. Tested with birds, and confirmed with a model helicopter on a scale.

So?

Some of us are old enough to remember that Newton's Apple, produced by our very own KTCA-TV and hosted by Ira Flatow, did this exact same experiment in the 1980s.

Down to the model helicopter on the scale.

Anyone else remember this?

(The result was the same back then, by the way; it's a myth.)

Comment triggers a marital crisis

2007-04-18T13:29:00.000-05:00

So, now I have a problem. Comments are few and far between on this blog, but "casedog" gave me some advice in response to an old post:

get a girlfriend, kari doesnt like your loser a**

The problem is, my wife doesn't want me to get a girlfriend. Should I listen to her over "casedog"?

And I'm confused; would "getting a girlfriend" cause Kari Byron to like my "loser a**"? Does "casedog" have inside knowledge that Kari already likes some other part of me (spleen, kneecap, etc.)?

UPDATE (June 2006): I've moved all my Kari Byron commentary over to a different site; you're welcome to browse around here... but for anything new, check out the Kari Byron category on att.ention.net.

Shiny, happy Kari Byron

2007-04-17T22:54:00.000-05:00

Okay, guys (and gals... no, it's 'guys')... if you haven't seen this one, you need to. Believe it or not, I missed it when it aired.

Editorial comment: At the end, she must have powdered her hair. Personally, I think it looks best just before she does.

UPDATE (June 2006): I've moved all my Kari Byron commentary over to a different site; you're welcome to browse around here... but for anything new, check out the Kari Byron category on att.ention.net.

Cognitive Labs: Anomalous Image on Google Maps

2007-04-17T22:36:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: Alternate photo is now working. Skimming over the Coast to Coast AM web site, I found a reference to Cognitive Labs: Anomalous Image on Google Maps

Basically, there's some strange shiny starbust on a picture. And folks wonder, "What's really there?"

Well, thanks to www.terraserver.com, you can find out. Here's a [BROKEN]link to an alternate high-resolution photo, which may or may not work (because I took it from their "shopping cart" engine).

UPDATE: That link doesn't work, so I'm just posting the photo here, risking the wrath of the Terraserver folks. No offense, guys -- I love you a lot! Give me a link so people can see (and maybe even buy) this photo, and I'll send them your direction!

Image Size = 500 x 500 pixels

Ground Resolution = 0.5 Meter

(ul = upper left) - ulx = 4.947711693793586; uly = 52.512580909946806

(lr = lower right) - lrx = 4.951287799174984; lry = 52.51042524349497

(cp = centerpoint) - cpx = 4.9496189499969985; cpy = 52.511431221172494

The "flare" in the other photo is present below the middle "Terraserver.com" in the third row, right below the "er." part.

Looks like a building to me... though there is, indeed, something on top of the building, so maybe it's a reflection of the sun? Like an Iridium Flare, but in reverse?

If you criticize a conspiracy theory, does that mean you're a part of it?

2007-04-17T13:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, conspiracy theories are fine and there's probably something to some of them... but this? School Shooting: Another Government Black-Op?

Pearls Before Breakfast - washingtonpost.com

2007-04-16T22:40:00.000-05:00

What a story! Pearls Before Breakfast - washingtonpost.com

My personal take on why people ignored Joshua Bell as he performed in a subway station is because he had a case open looking for money and people didn't want to make eye contact and feel obligated to pay... but 1) maybe that's just a Minnesota perspective, and 2) who wouldn't be willing to chip in a buck or two for a performance like this one?!?

Hobbies, Communication and Community?

2007-04-09T11:27:00.000-05:00

So I'm thinking about what I might be able to throw in a podcast while Chloe's sleeping (and Ruth and Candela are at McDonald's), and I think I'll title the next one "Hobbies in Community". I fired up Twitter this morning, saw something from Garrick Van Buren, and started reading. The interesting thing is that, intentionally, I'm Tweeting my initial thoughts rather than analyzing the whole situation and composing a blog entry (or something else).

Maybe there's a continuum like... Whitepaper > Blog > IM > Tweets

But I realized that there are some hobbies (podcasting being one) that only make sense if you do them in a community. They have a strong social aspect to them. If others aren't interested, the hobby loses its "purpose".

Some hobbies are enhanced by a community -- you can knit alone, but it's fun to knit with friends (so I hear). But some don't make any sense if you don't have others involved. And some, like selling on eBay, simply can't be accomplished if others aren't participating.

Anyway, back on the Twitter front and the fact that I'm Tweeting my scattered life, be sure to listen to the Steve Borsch Connecting the Dots podcast from last month. (Click here for the March 11 podcast post). He's talking about ADD/ADHD and the fact that it's not a horrible "deficit disorder" -- that it gives you the advantage of seeing connections that others don't. A very, very good listen. I've never been diagnosed ADD/ADHD and, comparing myself to some who have been, I don't think I qualify at that level... but I do have some of the tendencies Steve talks about.

By the way, if you add one more feed to your feed-catching program, make it Steve's podcast. It's not terribly frequent or regular, but it's always interesting.

Mikael Rudolph and "Swim Home" is back!

2007-04-03T22:58:00.000-05:00

The FridgeFest site has information on a series of performances by Mikael Rudolph of his "Swim Home" show.

If you listen to my podcast, you might remember this episode where I interviewed Mikael and talked about the "history of mime" (among other things).

I can't believe that after months of not blogging, I'm back with, "Dude! You gotta go see this mime!" But, seriously, this is a remarkable performance and a really interesting study in non-verbal communication, personal interation... all sorts of good "instructional design" or "usability" stuff. (A slight stretch, but not by much.)

So, for my hip friends who can pop up to the Loring Playhouse on an afternoon (you know who you are!), you should check this out. Here's the update from the e-mail Mikael just sent out:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Minneapolis-based Vaudevillian Mime Artist/Physical Comic Mikael Rudolph, who for much of the year tours nationally to fairs, festivals, theatres, colleges and other venues, is making a rare local public appearance - performing his highly acclaimed solo show "Swim Home" in a limited run as part of the 2nd Annual "Fridgefest" at the Loring Playhouse in Minneapolis on six weekend afternoons in April and May at 4 pm.

Featuring Vaudevillian Mime Artist/Physical Comic Mikael Rudolph and Rocky

Dates & Times:
April 14th & 15th, April 21st & 22nd, May 5th & 6th
Saturdays & Sundays - All Shows @ 4 pm

Tickets:
$15 @ door
$12 (advance/paypal/seniors/students/fringe button/groups of 8+)
For Reservations:
612-870-3880 or mailto://MikaelMN@earthlink.net
To purchase now (only $12 paypal/credit):

Quicktime highlight reel from "Swim Home": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOjE6ltf3oY (Please vote and make a comment!)

For Directions and other details: http://www.fridgefest.org/

"If you're looking for family friendly fun...Mikael Rudolph is an ideal choice."
- John Townsend, Minnesota Association of Community Theaters

"Mikael Rudolph is skillful and funny enough to change your opinion about mime."
- Dominic Papatola, St. Paul Pioneer Press

"In this style...he is a master. Absolutely. It could not have been done any better."
- Marcel Marceau

Twitter

2007-04-03T15:37:00.000-05:00

If it's good enough for Jon Gordon of Future Tense fame, Twitter is good enough for me! Checking it out to see if it might be a good way of keeping up on work-related activities. Of course, one could argue that a blog update isn't a work-related activity and shouldn't be Twittered (is that the past tense of it?), but when you're an Instructional Process Analyst, that's the kind of thing you have to keep up with!

It worked! I think...

2006-12-28T10:44:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm back, with the brand new Google-ified Blogger blog. The conversion seems to have gone okay, though it did push every one of my Ericast episodes back into the Ericast.com feed (so my subscribers got something of a surprised the last time their feedcatching program ran).

If I run into any problems with the new interface, you'll read about it here first. :)

Switching to Google login...

2006-12-27T13:34:00.000-06:00

Blogger is pushing the new "Switch to our new and improved Google-based blog stuff!"... so I figure I'll "push the button" and see what happens. If you never see another post here, you'll know that it went poorly. :)

For you Rube Goldberg fans

2006-12-27T13:33:00.000-06:00

I didn't even know that Yahoo! has a video service to compete with GooTube (or whatever the Google Video and YouTube combination is)... but I guess it doesn't surprise me. Here's a clip they're featuring -- nothing terribly unusual, but at least it's intersting...

What causes fights and quarrels among us?

2006-11-21T21:22:00.000-06:00

Interesting little article that argues Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history | csmonitor.com

John Murtha on Abortion

2006-11-16T09:08:00.000-06:00

They're not common, but pro-life (or, at least, "not really pro-choice") Democrats do exist. Check out John Murtha on Abortion -- something particularly interesting considering his potential political clout if Nancy Pelosi gets her way.

One year later, YouTube saves the day!

2006-11-15T22:29:00.000-06:00

Faithful readers of my blog might remember my post about Limited Warranty (and the spectacular music-related memory of my friend and former roommate, Drew).

Well... as I'm waiting for a DVD clip to encode, I started poking around YouTube looking for things related to the "Twin Cities" and came across THE ACTUAL CONCERT!!!

I can't believe it!

Blast from the past...

2006-11-12T22:40:00.000-06:00

Not only do I remember this event, but I sure remember these newscasts! And the anchors! Okay, I admit that I didn't see the 10PM report very much and was more of a 5PM or 6PM report kind of guy at the time...

(For those who can't see this or don't want to play it... it's the first few minutes of the 10PM Report from 1981, updating the Twin Cities on the condition of Ronald Reagan after his assasination attempt, anchored by a very young Don Shelby and Pat Miles.)

Kari Byron is back!

2006-11-08T18:48:00.000-06:00

Ever since that FHM layout, I don't think there's much interest in the standard old Kari screen captures... but, this being Wednesday night, I know there are lots of folks out there who are going to be hitting my blog looking for Kari Byron information!

Sorry -- I don't have much for you at the moment. I've been on a Kari break for awhile, but just started watching Mythbusters again. So I don't even have any good Kari gossip.

How about you? Leave a comment! :)

UPDATE (June 2006): I've moved all my Kari Byron commentary over to a different site; you're welcome to browse around here... but for anything new, check out the Kari Byron category on att.ention.net.

What does MCCL want?

2006-10-31T16:23:00.000-06:00

What could drive me back to blogging after crippling sciatica and a new daughter in the house? What else but... politics.

I just got an anti-McGinn mailing, which says that Mike McGinn is a "leading voice" for Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life -- MCCL. (Good! I'm all in favor of their work!) They apparently are an "extreme group" (I'm glad someone is extremely concerned about innocent lives!) "that wants to ban abortion" (Absolutely!), "prohibit stem cell research" (actually, only embryonic stem cell research, but we'll let that one slide), and... "force terminally ill patients onto artificial life support indefinitely -- despite the wishes of a spouse or family."

Wait a minute.

That doesn't sound right.

Well, long story short, the Minnesota DFL Party (which paid for the mailer) dozed through their "Deception 101" class. They never learned that you're supposed to make your lies subtle so that they don't raise red flags with the dumb tired new fathers who read your fliers.

What does MCCL actually support?

Nutrition and hydration are not medicine: "This legislation would enact a two-year public education campaign to encourage people to make their health care wishes known by completing an advance directive. After the two-year campaign, a presumption for nutrition and hydration would take effect for those whose wishes are unclear."

Ummmm... Yeah. Starving someone to death is not "artificial life support" in most people's eyes. And I don't think it's particular intrusive for the government to assume that, absent documented evidence to the contrary, the citizens of a particular state wouldn't want to be starved to death.

Sheesh.

Time Travel with Windows Live Local

2006-09-15T23:54:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure that this will work for you, but try these two links: House before development, versus House after development.

Weird, huh?

Bad Vista Experiences

2006-09-05T07:03:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to think that neither Vista nor Microsoft is ready for prime time.

I've been "beta testing" the public release (Build 5384) for awhile now, off-and-on, and thought I'd make use of the holiday weekend to play with it more.

Bad idea.

Long story short, there's a "Release Candidate" out there for Vista, but I sure can't figure out how to get it. As a registered "beta 2" person, you'd think maybe they'd tell me about it. But, no. And when I go to the Microsoft site to download it, it says that the beta is closed.

So, I'm stuck with Build 5384, which has issues.

After fighting with graphics problems since the very start -- the mouse pointer shows up bright white, but the rest of the screen is a dim grey, like it's half-faded; ATI's brand new drivers for the Release Candidate seem to have fixed it in my beta -- I'm now stuck with Remote Access problems.

Long story short, there's no way I can connect to this machine remotely. Instructions on the 'net don't do any good because Microsoft has apparently changed titles and names of control panel stuff. (A blog post entitled XP remote desktop into Vista seems hopeful, and there's a suggestion to change "Control Panel > Network Connections > right click your network card > Configure > Share > Settings". The problem? In my build, there isn't a "Network Connections" control panel. There are several network-related control panels, none of them named that, and none of them have that kind of functionality. The only think I can think is that this was there in an earlier build and has now been replaced with the "public" or "private" network choice that I get to make. I've tried it both ways -- no luck.

I can't get a Remote Assistance invitation to work -- it goes out but the connection from the Vista machine is refused.

And what started this whole thing was my attempt to get VNC working, but apparently Microsoft broke that as well when they "secured" Vista.

If you read Vista reviews on the 'net you'll see complaints about how many clicks it takes to accomplish anything... and they're absolutely right. It looks like Microsoft has "secured" Vista by breaking anything useful and making you triple-confirm that you really want to use any of the remaining functionality.

As soon as I hit "Publish" on this post, I'm booting into Ubuntu!

Jericho vs. Warday

2006-09-03T22:13:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else out there think that the early info on CBS's Jericho sounds a lot like the premise of the Whitley Strieber/James Kunetka novel "Warday" from the 1980s?

"Free Speech" slightly more expensive

2006-08-26T17:20:00.000-05:00

This is a good trick; if you don't like what someone says at a public forum, just send the FBI his way.

From a Washington Times article: "Jim Bensman thought his suggestion during a public hearing was harmless enough: Instead of building a channel so migratory fish could go around a dam on the Mississippi River, just get rid of the dam.
Instead, the environmental activist found himself in hot water, drawing FBI scrutiny to see whether he had any terrorist intentions."

Eleanor Mondale is okay!

2006-08-21T07:19:00.000-05:00

Months and months ago I made a post here about the fact that Eleanor Mondale was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Every so often someone searching for more information would show up in my web logs, and I felt bad that there wasn't anything more out there. (Not because I like to gossip, but because I was genuinely concerned about her health.)

Imagine my happy surprise when I read this morning's Star Tribune article Eleanor Mondale coming back to WCCO-AM!

Long story short... she's okay! Yay!

Technology and Worship

2006-08-12T22:19:00.002-05:00

A good article on Technology and Worship from byFaith Online. I particularly note the comment that:

Young people witness some of the cheesy video and computer "art" in worship and they see it for what it is: kitsch. Stock clip art. Old-fashioned, 19th-century background images under song text: the sun shining on the Cross, running streams, baby faces -- all of the stereotypical images that say, "Christians are crummy artists and naive sentimentalists." To them, such kitsch is like handing out illustrated kids' Bibles to high school students and telling them that these images represent the depth of insight and excellence of the Christian faith.

Which is why, in my opinion, we need to empower more artists like Jeff Holmberg, who are 1) young enough to "get it", and 2) artistic enough to "get it".

Driving without insurance

2006-08-09T22:36:00.000-05:00

The story at kare11.com :: KARE 11 TV - Jail inmate killed fills in the blank that what landed Carl Moyle in jail was "driving without proof of insurance for the third time in seven years".

Still not worthy of death, but at least it brings a little comfort that Sherburne County deputies aren't jailing people for no reason.

Death sentence for a misdemeanor

2006-08-09T22:31:00.000-05:00

Sherburne County inmate beaten to death

Unbelievable story. I'll have to follow up on our state law a little bit, because I'm surprised that you'd be arrested for not having proof of insurance. Apparently he was booked for "allegedly driving without insurance", and maybe he just didn't have enough answers to satisfy the sheriff (because the truck wasn't his).

Anyway, here's a case of some guy, driving a perfectly fine insured vehicle, sitting in jail because of a traffic stop... and beaten to death by another inmate.

Wow. I wonder what will happen with this one.

Kim Possible and Erin Esurance

2006-08-06T22:24:00.000-05:00

What happens when Kim Possible grows up? You get Esurance - Erin's World.

Just thought I'd mention that.

Heather the opera singer with a Tonight Show popsicle

2006-08-04T23:05:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder how long it takes for a motorcycle to melt a popsicle? I have, for years and years. Okay, you're right -- it's never crossed my mind. But Jay Leno thought of it, and pulled Heather Higginbotham out of the audience to guess how long.

Her choices were 19 seconds, 28 seconds, or 37 seconds.

My recommendation? When in doubt, always aim for the middle. She said 19 seconds, and while the popsicle was substantially melted at that point, the sticks weren't dry until 28 seconds.

She saved the day for the audience, giving them Jay's popsicles, by hitting a high note on command.

Why do I post this? Because 1) we know an opera singer and it's a sorta interesting topic for me (though we've never asked her to hit a high note on command), and 2) I'm sure that there are all sorts of people who are going to be search for combinations of Heather, Tonight Show, and Popsicle; I wonder if they'll get here.

If so... Hi!!! :)

And hey, Heather, if you read this, call my podcast listener comment line (for the Ericast.com podcast) at 206-339-ERIC and join my "brush with fame" collection of callers!

Microsoft's 360-degree Webcam

2006-08-02T19:31:00.000-05:00

I want this I want this I want this I want this I want this!!! Meeting Recording

After years of dreaming about cool "telepresence" technologies, it looks like they're finally coming!

(Microsoft Photosynth is another one out there that's really promising!)

Wired 14.08: Pinch My Ride

2006-07-31T21:03:00.000-05:00

Unbelievable story here: Wired 14.08: Pinch My Ride. What I like is the attitude the insurance companies take: "We've been told that a piece of technology is perfect, so if you give us a story that requires our technology to have failed, we'll call you a liar." Yikes.

How to fly a flag?

2006-07-31T12:21:00.000-05:00

An interesting article on the standard(s) for flying a flag at half-staff, at St. Paul Pioneer Press | 07/31/2006 | A flag at half-staff, but who died?.

(I hate posting news articles, because that link is gonna be dead in a couple weeks... but if you're here, reading the lastest breaking news, it'll be there for you.)

I remember as a kid that Dad was always pretty particular about our flags -- when to fly them, when to take them down, folding them in that neat triangle with the stars on top, making sure they didn't touch the ground. Probably a combination of his Boy Scout and Navy training?

More Police Misconduct

2006-07-26T21:48:00.000-05:00

Kinda sad that, after a long break of blogging, this comes up and it's what I have to return with: NBC10.com - Local News - Cell Phone Picture Called Obstruction Of Justice

Celebrating Independence Day

2006-07-03T22:12:00.000-05:00

On the eve of the United States' Independence Day, this seems like an appropriate article to post from Nashuatelegraph.com.

File it under "bad cops giving good cops a bad name".

The subtle points of "wiretapping" law are interesting to ponder... but the entire case and the conduct of the officers involved is what's really telling.

This could be the one!

2006-06-19T08:44:00.000-05:00

I just got an exciting e-mail! Sure, it's to my "feedback" address that's published on the Internet, and she got my name wrong, but I think this could be the one! It feels like she's my soulmate! I hope Ruth doesn't find out that I have such an enticing and legitimate interest from a young woman in Russia:

Hi, Curt

I'm a very young and energetic lady! I have very positive attitude to life and people. I do enjoy new experience life can offer me: to see new interesting places, to meet new people.
I do try to enjoy every moment of life and accept everything the way it comes without complaining.
Though my life seems to be quite enjoyable there's one important thing missing. It's LOVE!
Without my beloved one, my soul mate, my King my life is not completed.
I wish i coud find him very soon so that we could share together every momement of the life-time romance!
What about you? Could you be my King? If answer is "yes" - you can find more about me http://web-site-that-doesn't-deserve-to-be-given-free-publicity.net/

so long
Galinka

With this opportunity available to me, maybe I can get Ruth to start calling me "King" -- and that's with a capital "K", don't forget!

Southern Baptists, Alcohol and Legalism

2006-06-15T21:52:00.000-05:00

For those of you interested in theological side-trips and denominational differences... check out Between Two Worlds: The SBC Resolution on Alcohol.

(Do note that "Baptist General Conference", of which Berean Baptist is a part, is not the same as the "Southern Baptist Convention", of which Justin's post speaks.)

Red Rain has returned?

2006-06-14T21:33:00.000-05:00

In one of those "mysteries of the unexplained" books from the 1980s, I read about a story of weird reddish rain falling on people with a variety of bad effects. Here's a more current version of the same thing. If it turns out that some guy in India has the Andromeda Strain sitting in his laboratory... well, you heard it here! CNN.com - Mysterious red cells might be aliens - Jun 2, 2006

A "myvu" review

2006-06-09T15:33:00.000-05:00

An excellent review of the myvu display, including a comment (but not much detail) about something of particular importance to me. From Mobility Site - myvu – a personal media viewer: "One concern you might have is whether or not you can wear glasses with the device. The answer really depends on the size of your glasses. I have several pairs of eyeglasses and found that I could use ones that had smaller frames although it would not be optimal for comfort. However, there is a prescription lens snap-on option (integrated with nose pad) that you could get to aid in viewing."

Making video-podcasts bearable...

2006-06-09T15:01:00.000-05:00

As soon as they come to a local retail store so I can check them out personally (or, I suppose, as soon as someone I know buys one and lets me look at it), I'm gonna play with the myvu personal media viewer.

Finally, the concept of video podcasts makes sense. Yes, HMDs have been around for years, but something this light and inexpensive? Now that's new!

Google Speaks!

2006-06-08T21:43:00.000-05:00

WOW! I actually heard back from Google! I still hate that more and more companies consider it "customer service" to send out form letters without any thought to whether they make sense or not... but I give huge credit to Google that, when you say "Your form letter makes no sense!", they have a real live person respond with something that you can actually understand!

So, Kudos to Google!

What was the problem? Well, here was their response:

Hello Eric,

The language we were specifically referring to was: "So, if you're into
giving your opinion for money (i give mine for free :)) go ahead and click
on the ad :) Questions, problems, worries? Go ahead and post a comment.
:)"

We felt that it is misleading to your users as the most prominent ads on
your site are from Google.

Now, before you think that my wife is some evil person who's telling people to click on Google ads... here's the actual post in question (which we've now removed from Ruth's blog to appease the Google gods) -- and just a hint that the sentence you're looking for is at the very bottom:

Real survey money! Who'd a thunk it?

If you're a regular to this blog, you'll notice a new banner ad for American Consumer Opinion (on the right . . .flashing green). I was going to recommend this anyway and then I found out they had an affiliate program, hence the new banner. Anyway, if you're into making free money off the internet this is an EXCELLENT way of doing it. I joined about 6 months ago. Here are some things to know:

1) You get paid for answering survey questions online so companies can make their products better.
2) You will not get rich or get an iPod or a laptop or whatever, because this is a legitimate business that really does pay you for your opinion. What you will get is a little bit of money. So far I've earned $18 and a free month of feminine hygiene products to try out. The $18 came in the form of 2 real live checks. One for a $12 survey and one for a $6 survey. In both cases I knew how long the surveys would take to do and how much I would get paid.
3) It doesn't cost anything to join.
4) They do ask for personal information like how many people are in your family (to figure out your demographic) but they don't ask for anything that could hurt you (like your credit card or bank account numbers).
5) They don't send out SPAM. With the exception of a eBirthday Greeting (which I thought plain old nice) every e-mail I've received from them has been survey related.
6) They don't send tons of e-mail period. I'd say I hear from them about once a month.
7) They don't sell your e-mail address to others. I have a unique e-mail address for them and the only e-mail that comes to that address is from them.

In general, I've been very happy with them, which is why I'm recomending them. So, if you're into giving your opinion for money (i give mine for free :)) go ahead and click on the ad :) Questions, problems, worries? Go ahead and post a comment. :)

Remember that American Consumer Opinion isn't PPC (Pay Per Click) -- performance on the ad is based on whether people sign up or not, so the company is perfectly happy to have people click on the ad itself as much as possible. That means there's nothing unethical with Ruth telling people "Click on the blinking green American Consumer Opinion banner".

Personally, I think the context of the post was pretty clear and people weren't very likely to get "confused" -- and it's especially moot considering this is a year-old archive page that gets almost no traffic.

But, as I say, I'm extremely impressed that, when pressed, Google came up with a quick and coherent response in less than 24 hours. You don't see that much these days!

(If you're curious, the page where this reference appeared was Sleeping Toddler - Allergies to properties: July 2005; when you see how much other stuff is on there, you'll understand that one passing reference to a non-Google banner is a surprising reason to claim a violation of Terms of Service... but, hey, they make the rules!)

Bye Bye Ads!

2006-06-08T01:22:00.000-05:00

After reading sites like Google-Adsense-Sucks.com Class Action Law Suit, I realized something: I'd better make sure there weren't any ties between this site and Google, or else Google could ban me for saying bad things about them.

You'd think they couldn't do that, but they really can do anything they want.

So, now we have an interesting ethical situation. Given that I'm not a Communist nation, will Google choose to censor my free speech or not? They can't ban me from AdSense based on what I say about it on this blog, because this blog isn't related to my AdSense account in any way, shape or form. So are they going to ban me anyway, or are they going to try and figure out a way to ban me based on my wife's fully compliant blog... or will they drop the issue entirely?

For what it's worth, their M.O. seems to be a letter stating that a site is banned because of "invalid clicks" -- which is misleading, because it's not that someone is sitting at a computer clicking on a bunch of ads. Their argument is that, since you're not following the TOS, the clicks you received are invalid.

The problem in my current case is that I am following the TOS, so we'll see where it goes.

Anyway, in the past -- in my pro-Google days -- you might have seen ads here as I was testing things out... but no more! My speech won't be stifled! :)

What does Google use?

2006-06-08T00:05:00.000-05:00

By the way, as I await a response from Google (which I probably won't get)... if anyone's interested in the specs of the systems that Google uses to make false accusations against blog authors, here's what our log turns up. We got just one hit, going straight to the archive, and then it took them a day to craft their form letter to me:

VISITOR ANALYSIS
Referring Link: No referring link
Host Name: 216-239-45-4.google.com
IP Address: 216.239.45.4
Country: United States
Region: California
City: Mountain View
ISP: Google Inc
Returning Visits: 0
Visit Length: 0 seconds
VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
Browser: Firefox 1.5.0
Operating System: Windows XP
Resolution: 1600x1200
Javascript: Enabled

Navigation Path
6th June 2006 08:38:54 PM ralarson.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_ralarson_archive.html
No referring link

Oddly, it seems there was a Google image search that brought up the same archive page the day before, by someone in Anchorage. We have no way of knowing what their search string was, but what they got (and clicked on, to end up at Ruth's blog) was this photo:

Are these two hits to the same page related? Who knows -- but it sure is odd that anybody cares about an archive page from nearly a year ago... and that it's the only page that Google looked at before sending me a note that something (which they can't yet describe) doesn't comply with their Terms of Service?