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| Thursday, March 19th, 2009 | | 11:31 am |
Why I'm leaving classmates.com
Trying to reconnect with someone, I was pleasantly surprised that it would let me email him without upgrading to a paid account. But after it let me compose a note to him the catch is that it then said "Your message was sent! Become a Gold Member so XXX can read your message!" Talk about bait and switch, it is unconscionable! | | Friday, September 26th, 2008 | | 1:46 pm |
"teeny weeny" term capital gains?
Here's a question. The government distinguishes between short-term and long-term gains on the order of years. Why don't they tax the really short term gains at a higher rate than the ones held for many months? | | Sunday, September 21st, 2008 | | 3:27 pm |
customer service as brainstorming tool
OK, this makes twice in the past few weeks that I've been in a situation with my PC where I felt I needed to contact customer service for technical support, only to solve the problem during an interactive chat or phonecall before the tech could do so. The first time was when my vista machine stopped letting apps like IE connect to the net, and it turned out I needed to completely uninstall Norton 360 to get past the issue. So I bought and installed Norton 360 v2, and noticed after a while that my backups weren't running at all. Tried various things, gave up, went to Norton online support. They wouldn't let me email a question about it so I had to do interactive chat. 20 in queue, and when after 20-30 minutes someone came to help me, he lost the connection and disappeared after "hello". Back to square 1, 15 in queue, another long wait (but not AS long), and the tech tried to help me sort out why it said it couldn't "connect" to my external drive. As he poked around it hit me, I'd had v1's backups set up, but could it be that v2 didn't work with the same config and didn't update? Sure enough, I'd already moved the old config directory out of the way, but I hadn't tried telling 360 to use a *different* drive and then go back to the one I was really using. The switch back and forth tricked it into reinitializing the drive, and away we went. What. A. Waste. Of. Time. Hard to believe a product could fall over on its face so badly over a version upgrade. | | Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 | | 1:57 pm |
Get Well Soon, Arthur Bisguier
Because my son has started playing in chess tournaments, I have been following the USCF blog, and a recent posting caught my eye: Get Well Soon, Arthur Bisguier. In fact I was just discussing Mr. Bisguier with another parent at the National Elementary championships because I recalled an incident when I was about 9 or 10 and playing against him in a simultaneous exhibition in NYC. He was playing about 50 boards at once. I was at the end of a row of boards and so, and someone knocked over many of the pieces. I wasn't keeping score and wasn't sure of the layout, but I did my best. When he returned, I pointed out the possibility that the board was wrong, and he looked at it for just a few seconds, cocked his head, and shifted a piece. I looked at it and had to agree he remembered it right. He did better remembering the position while playing 50 games than I did while staring at it the whole time. Granted I was only 9, but still it was clear what makes him a grandmaster and me a patzer. Get well soon. (And yes, I plan to send him a card, at the address in the blog, recounting this.) | | Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 | | 5:32 pm |
kudos to cablevision
I never thought I would be in this position, but I have to give Cablevision a pat on the back. In February I switched from verizon to voice over cable. While ordering the "triple play" I was asked (a) do I want a free DVR ("yes") and (b) do I want flat rate international calling ("no"). When I got my first bill I was charged $20 for international calling and $10 for DVR service. Turned out the box was free but the service (like a poor man's tivo) was $10/month. It took me about a half hour of bouncing around through customer service hell before I finally got my worldwide calling plan canceled and a credit on my account, and I filed a complaint with the NJ utilities commission about the deceptive information and attempt to add a service I explicitly denied. I thought that fell in a black hole, but the other day I got a postcard from the state acknowledging the complaint and voicemail from Cablevision wishing to deal with it. Took until today to connect, but after I explained my complaint I was given one free year of DVR service. Very nice, and quite reasonable compensation for all the hassle. I'm not happy that the situation arose, but I think they deserve acknowledgment for handling it very professionally. | | Friday, May 2nd, 2008 | | 4:11 pm |
| | Thursday, March 13th, 2008 | | 9:38 pm |
Wait Wait redux
If you skip the "draft Al" blog posting, the two before that are about Gary Gygax and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. So it's amusing that on this week's episode, they tested the US Secretary of Education on her (lack of) knowledge about the late great D&D god. One of the questions posited that someone from my hometown of Basking Ridge ran for city council on the platform of being a 39th level paladin .. or something like that. Fortunately that wasn't the right answer :). | | Saturday, March 8th, 2008 | | 2:33 pm |
Draft Al!
There's a Newsweek piece that suggests that if Hilary and Barack are virtually tied, maybe the delegates will go to a compromise candidate, and the natural choice is Al Gore. Since I fervently hoped he'd run in the first place, I would be dancing in the streets if it turns out this way. | | Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 | | 4:07 pm |
Gary Gygax, R.I.P.
Gary Gygax, creator of D&D, has died at the age of 69. May he rest unmolested by umber hulks and the many other creatures he brought us. | | Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 | | 5:14 pm |
| | Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 | | 10:14 am |
Why does Network Solutions pester me?
My personal domain is registered with Network Solutions. They've been sending me renewal notices about once a week for ages -- even though my domain doesn't expire until next summer. Shut up already! Current Mood:  infuriated | | Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 | | 10:25 am |
the fine print
Imagine that you get a credit card that gives you some bonus for each multiple of some amount you spend... and then you find out that the fine print says that the count resets to zero on the anniversary date of your card? It seems to me that if one knew this and tracked the running total, there would be a strong incentive to try and make that extra purchase that would put you over the top -- and conversely, if you knew you were already over the top, there would be a disincentive to keep buying more that wouldn't count toward this benefit. The Continental "Presidential Plus" MasterCard has this feature and the bonus is elite-qualifying miles that never expire, a really nice perk for anyone who has just missed making silver or gold elite. But unless they change this policy, I'll be keeping watch on the ticker and acting accordingly. Current Mood: annoyed | | Monday, October 22nd, 2007 | | 1:20 pm |
| | Monday, October 15th, 2007 | | 7:39 pm |
Krugman on Gore
Paul Krugman has a very nice op-ed piece in the NYT about the right-wing's reaction to Gore's Nobel. Current Mood:  excited | | Thursday, October 11th, 2007 | | 8:48 am |
thunderbird RSS broken
It hit me that I wasn't seeing new RSS items in thunderbird. And I couldn't subscribe to new feeds either. I thought maybe my firewall was at fault so I disabled it for a minute -- no change. I tried reinstalling -- no change. I looked for things online - couldn't separate the wheat from the chaff because there are bugs going back years. It broke on 9/26 or so, and I suspect this was around the time I processed an automatic update for thunderbird. Ring any bells? | | Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 | | 10:09 pm |
fender bender
I was the passenger in a minor traffic accident this evening. The driver was merging on to a parkway and was stopped in an area just wide enough for one car, but another driver attempted to get around us, then sideswiped us. The other driver was more clueless than anything else, and didn't attempt to avoid blame when we called the police. But it occurred to me that if she had claimed it was our fault, all the witnesses had already taken off without volunteering contact info. 20 years ago I was broadsided by someone running a traffic light. He admitted guilt right after the accident but changed his tune by the time the police came. Fortunately a witness stood up for me (at 12:30am in Berkeley no less!) and I got the insurance for my totaled car. Be a good witness. | | Thursday, September 20th, 2007 | | 9:52 pm |
Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!
I have been a great fan of Wait Wait since I discovered I could download its podcasts and listen on my long commute to work. I submitted my name to compete and this weekend you can tune in to hear my play the bluff the listener game ... my very favorite listener game (though "not my job" with the guest star is usually the best overall piece) but also one i usually do terribly at. Updated 9/21. OK, I will confess. I won the segment, and I have to come up with a quote for Carl Kasell to leave on my answering machine. Some examples from a few years ago are online.... anyone have an even better suggestion? Also, it's possible the segment won't actually appear, since they drop one each week. | | Monday, August 6th, 2007 | | 9:56 pm |
Pandora Radio
My daughter turned me on to Pandora, a system for letting people identify music they like, and then finding other music with similar attributes ... not from others with similar tastes as much as from the "genomics" of the music itself. Very very cool. | | Monday, July 2nd, 2007 | | 12:16 pm |
live earth
My daughter and I will be going to Live Earth Saturday .. who knows, maybe Al will announce he's running after all? If one of the five people who read this blog is actually attending, please leave a comment. | | Friday, June 29th, 2007 | | 7:05 pm |
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