Chase = suck, still

Banks are greedy, that is how they make money. But JP Morgan Chase Bank is VERY greedy. I paid my United Mileage Plus Credit Card (division of Chase) last month on March 9th about 5 days before it was due. I paid it online by logging into Chase.com, clicking on pay credit card link in the credit card box. (I also have Chase bank accounts). Using this feature initiates an ACH pull by the credit card from my bank account. Virtually 100% of my payments over the last few years to this card have been from the bank account side, initiating the ACH push from the bank to the credit card. This time, I noticed the easy link (been there for a while, I think I even used it once before), clicked on it and setup the payment. At the bottom of the initial screen, it gave me the option to set the date I wanted to pay, and it was defaulted to March 10th (next day). At the time, I said to myself..."Why would I want to pay this tomorrow? What is wrong with today?"I forced the date to the 9th, and neglected to notice that there would be a '$15 FEE ASSESSED FOR THIS PAYMENT'. Yes! Well. $14.95 to be exact. I didn't notice the fee, I just clicked submit, why would they ever charge me for MOVING MONEY BETWEEN DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS AT THE SAME BANK!!!!!

I got my statement last night, noticed this fee (it was obvious actually, a charge that didn't look like the other charges right in the middle of the statement, and right under the payment for the previous month's statement), and I was concerned to say the least. So this morning, when I was good and ready for a fight, I called Chase, told them that I never saw any warning(I didn't really see it at the time), and there was no way I would have agreed to a $15 fee for doing something "rush" when the payment was not late (true). There are at least 2 or 3 other ways I could pay the statement without incurring any fees. It would be rediculous to think that I agreed to this fee. Lady phone rep stood her ground. She said the warning (pop-up she called it, but I figured out today it was a 'somewhat' clear warning embded right above the payment confirmation information, and displaying the $14.95 as part of the payment) is always displayed, that the "charge" was valid, and that she could not reverse it. After 5 minutes of arguing with her, telling her it was rediculous, etc...I finally pulled the supervisor card. I was transferred to phone rep guy. He explained to me the fee again, said that it is clearly shown, and said that I probably just clicked right through and didn't notice (well...I did...but not that this guy would know). I went on to say that the guy was calling me stupid because I can't read (classic for me really, I never really read things completely). The guy gave a half apology, saying of course he wasn't calling me stupid and saying he wanted to 'work with me'. Good one phone rep guy. I offerred to meet him half way, but he was already ahead of me, saying he was going to waive the whole thing. He obviously didn't care to argue. Good for you Chase phone rep guy. You realized that I am not some dumb ass who would blindly accept being nickel and dimed to death by the giant mega-corp that you work for.

I was "" <-that close to having him transfer me to retention so I could get them to waive the fee or cancel the card I don't really need. There are a thousand credit cards out there, all of which would glady have me as a customer. I don't really need United miles, I don't fly that often, and any other card's rewards program is probably just as good for my personal financial situation.

--

I deal with people at Chase a lot through my own personal banking, but mostly through my job. Our company has extensive dealings with many different areas within chase. Generally I find the different departments to have varying levels of suck. I will list them in reverse order of most suck (#1=best at sucking):

#5 - Chase treasuery services. These people are in charge of wiring money. They have to deal with huge sums of money changing hands in split seconds. The average rep knows exactly what is going on and exactly what they are doing. They get annoyed with you when YOU don't know what You are doing. The people that setup these services have 95% clue and %5 suck, because they work at Chase, duh. Chase treasuary services suck the least of any people I have ever dealt with at Chase. They sent me a survey after my last interaction with them. I wanted to give a glowing review, but realized that their service wasn't really anything special, but in comparison to the bone heads I will mention below, they were OUTSTANDING! So I gave them slightly above average marks, with a extra note telling them as much.

#4 - Chase Credit Card services - Historically, I haven't had huge problems with these guys. They typically are easy to reach on the phone, speak Midwestern english fairly well, and can almost always fix your problem. They have even introduced a few GOOD services, such as improved fraud filtering, where it calls you to verify if some charges are against your normal pattern - annoying at first, but I appreciate it. However, over the last 1-2 years or so, even simple things have started to suck. My story above is the most recent example. Another great thing they have started to do is make you listen to a long advertisement for something you don't want while you are on the phone waiting for your new updated expiration date credit card to become "active." And finally, after several years now, they have still failed to intergrate at any meaningful level with the larger Chase organization, leading to the stupid problem I experienced above.

#3 - Business Financing - I appreciate these guys for the work they do with my company. Most of them are career financial guys just trying to make a decent living and support their families. However, they like to take their sweet time when processing your requests. Individually they don't have enough power to really help you with very much besides acting as a go between to their underwriting department (who, surprising I don't really have any problems with, they simply evaluate risk, not hard for people that specialize in that). They could probably do a bit better in their customer service I think.

#2 - Business banking - With the exception of a handful of people that work the business banking call center, the peope who work in the Chase Business banking divisions only care about how many new accounts/services/features they can get you to sign up for. They see businesses with nice fat wallets that they can milk because people in business say "oh I need that!" These people are former branch VPs who have successfully moved up the chain because they probably have really good sales (or some other equally revlent) skills. Of course, they are lacking a lot of clue when it comes to resolving simple issues your business faces, having to esclate to some person or department. They rely on other departments and staff below them to research your issues. I really wish I could say nice these about Chase Business bankers, but they just don't ever help me when I need them to do something.

#1 - Consumer banking - With the exception of the average teller (who couldn't give a shit about you, but is mearly concerned that their drawer blances out at the end of their shift, but they are usually very friendly and rarely make mistakes), peope who work in the Chase consumer banking division (similar to the business bankers) only care about how many new accounts/services/features they can get you to sign up for. The average "Branch VP" (age 25 and everyone is a vice president of course) only wants to get paid on new business, and could give two shits about servicing you after the account is open and they got their comission or promotion or whatever. They are also generally clueless on just about everything besides "opening a new checking account." These people are the very epotimy of everything that is wrong in corporate culture. I dispise everyone I have ever dealt with.

#0 - Higher-ups at Chase - These guys really take the cake in the suck. They get a 0. Worse than my scale even goes. In their ever present drive to inflate their own portfolios by getting that stock price up just another dollar, they force every department to nickel and dime and every angle. Bait you with enticing advertising and sell you crap you don't want. They dictate general policies on funds holds, fees, random stuff that generally makes my life more difficult and all for their own personal gain. They see their SMB and consumer customers as numbers. Numbers that they can squeeze on an anual basis for more $$. These guys are responsible for general customer disatisifaction that is RAMPANT among everyone I have ever talked to that has ever dealt with Chase.

In conclusion, I hope Chase can improve. Though I have strong doubts. Giant corporations generally grow and grow and get bought and sold and become big unwieldy giants until eventually they are split up and you are now apart of someone else, who equally sucks, but in a totally new and exciting way!

Photoshop express?

Adobe launches free version of photoshop called Photoshop Express. My first impression?

Loading, saving, startup, etc... are all really slow.
Lacking any useful that any previous user of photoshop would want to use.

However, one good thing, it appears to save your edit history...forever. Well the reason it can save your edit history for ever, is that your edits are not really edits, rather they are filters. You can do a bunch of filtering stuff, cropping, color changing etc, but you never actually change the original file.

Firefox 3

I just installed Firefox 3 Beta 4 and I am certainly impressed.

When they released Firefox 2, I thought all my memory leak problems would be solved...but sadly, they were not. After installing F3B4 I noticed an immediate difference in several areas.

Overall memory usage is probably cut by 50%
Closing a tab, reduces memory usage (shocking, I know.)
Restarting Firefox is OMG fast.
General web surfing is a lot faster
Specialty programs that I use at work are a lot faster.

So congratulations Firefox team, you did well!

update on comment diggs

Update to my post from yesterday, my comment now has 376 diggs, vs 328 for the next most dugg comment.

Most Comment Diggs

While browsing Digg today, I noticed an upcoming story about where spam is coming from these days. The story focused on which botnets were responsible for the most spam. Interesting story, and I thought worthy of a digg, not that I really care which botnet sends the most spam. Since the story only had 40-50 digs at the time, it had only one comment, which wasn't very funny. I decided to comment with some dialogue from the Red vs. Blue video called "The Internet vs Real Life".

What do you know? The story was eventually promoted to the front page, and my comment rose to the top of the dugg comments! 162(and rising) comment diggs as of this posting. It hasn't gotten me any new digg followers or really anything at all. I guess this internet video is either through of very fondly by the digg community or nobody remembers it and thinks I am fucking hysterical! Either way, this makes my day....

Amazing how something so simple makes me happy these days...

T-shirts, t-shirts, t-shirts...

I have blogged before about the Messerschmitt t-shirt that I created on Zazzle. Well, I just sold another one! That nets me another $2.15!

Of course I am not getting rich of these...but I still think the concept is good. A little better than Cafepress, because the site is geared toward individual artists instead of "stores." It is also better than Threadless, because the designs you create are available forever, and you always get the comission on each sale. Zazzle is not as good as Threadless in the marketing respect, as Threadless has a huge customer base and really strong brand.

Great new game

Stumbled upon this great new game called Crayon Physics. The original version is pretty simple to understand and play, however after the first few levels, it becomes really difficult (at least it was for me.) He is apparently releasing a much more developed version sometime in the future...

Need help restoring *.QIC backups?

I have been trying to restore information from a backup CD made with the Windows 9x backup utility. Unfortunately Microsoft changed their software so you cannot use anything after Windows 98 to restore that backup. Since I don't have any old Windows 9x machines, I was stuck.

I eventually found Will Kranz and his MSBackup Restoration Utilitys. The QIC utility seems to have been written well and extensively debugged and updated. Will was also kind enough to take a look at my file when I couldn't seem to get anything out of it. Unfortunately, the file was both corrupt and contained zero usable data.

So this is a lesson to anyone who relies on backups to archive data.
1) Don't use proprietary Microsoft data formats.
2) Review your archives regularly to ensure that the data is still readable
3) If you keep things on physical media, ensure that media is kept in pristine condition.

Anyway - Thanks Will for your help.

I'll have $100 in September of 2011

A few months back I added Google Adsense to this blog. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about replacing the battery in my ipod mini. Apparently this post got some good google placement or something. About a week ago I was checking my adsense reports to see if anyone at all clicks on my ads. The ipod battery post seems to have triggered at least a small handful of people to click those ads.

If you are reading this, why don't you click an add right now!?

Anyway, over the last 3 months, I have built up a balance of about $10. At this rate I should be able to get that $100 check sent to me around September of 2011.

Of course I have no way to really monitor any of this, because I can't run analytics on blogger. I am really going to have to work on my web presence. Specifically I need to put all of my various websites (this blog, mattarata.com, and aratalighting.com) all on the same server and link them all together in a much more elagant way then they are right now. The first goal is probably to find a really good template to use for aratalighting.com and then completely overhaul that site. Making a new mainpage for mattarata.com shouldn't be all that hard. I will probably make a half assed attempt to mirror blogger Dannyman's or Leo Laporte's homepage, as I really appreciate the fashion in which they present themselves. Then I will need to dump this blog (or link it to a template or something) that I can host locally instead of on blogger.

Dreams really...all of this...I'll probably just go back to playing Call Of Duty 4.

One Million Donors for Barack Obama

As reported by many outlets today, Barack Obama's Campaign has amassed over 1 Million individual donors, many of whom have given as little as $25. Congratulations!

Hopefully, the March 4th Ohio and Texas primaries will cement Barack's nomination and finally give a crushing blow to Hillary.

Xobni making your computer run slow? Uninstall!

Xobni is a Outlook add-in that allows you to view data about your email in new ways. When you are viewing an email, the sidebar inside the outlook window shows you all kinds of useful information such as:
-all email sent to/received from that person
-all files exchanged with that person via email
-a graph of the time of day that you get email from that person
-people linked to that person (cc'd in an email)
-information about how often you email with that person

All of this is great stuff.....if you want to know the information. I personally have very little need for any of this information. The only thing that is even remotely useful is the 'files exchanged' function. However this can be displayed by sorting your email by person and then by attached files.

All of this functionality comes at a great price. My outlook was SEVERELY slow almost to the point of non-usability. Probably due to the fact that I have 4 years+ of business email that it is working with, and I wouldn't call myself a heavy emailer. If Xobni can't deal with even a modest amount of email, then it will probably fail.

I un-installed today after running the program for several weeks. Presto!, no more slowness!

john.he.is

About 3.7 million people have seen the will.i.am video supporting Barack Obama. I appreciate that video, I do. It's pretty good.

But a group of comedians got together to make a parody video, which in my opinion is MUCH better than the original, as parodies usually go. This video guest stars Kevin Douglas, whom I have worked with a few times on productions in Chicago. Kevin is part of the team kevINda. They do sketch comedy shows at Second City and elsewhere including steppenwolf. Kevin apparently also recently became an Artistic Associate at Lookingglass Theatre.

Here it is:

The new iPod battery

The first run on the new iPod battery from ipodjuice.com yeilded upwards of 18 hours of run time on a various mix of music and podcasts at an average volume of about 50-60%. This...is...awesome. MUCH better than the old battery. I can't believe I lasted so long on the old battery.

Replacing your ipod mini battery

I am going to 100% recommend ipodjuice.com as the best place to get a replacement battery kit for your ipod mini. Here is the story:

I got my iPod mini in October of 2005. At the time I wasn't ready to dive into a full scale iPod but I wanted to try it out and see if I could deal with iTunes and everything that goes with it. Plus this was a 6gb iPod mini, which were harder to find and more expensive. Regardless, I got a great deal on it because a friend had just purchased it, used if for a few weeks and decided to get the new hotness, the nano, which had just come out.

I have used the iPod Mini just about every single workday, 5 days a week, back and forth to work on the train/bus/bicycle for 2 years and 4 months. Plus I took it along when traveling and such, so it got extra use there. During the last 3 or 4 months I was experiencing very poor battery life. So poor that it often could not go more than 48hours without getting recharged, and I am talking 48 hours of mostly standby time, with 30 minutes to an hour of playtime in between. I was tired of this. I tried a reformat of the drive, but that didn't help of course. This was clearly a battery problem. Apparently 2 years of daily use is all these batteries are good for, which really sucks.

I decided to look online to find a possible replacement, or even how complex the task of replacing the battery would be. I found ipodjuice.com and I couldn't be more pleased with the experience. I ordered the 750 mAh battery kit and paid an extra $3 for UPS shipping. Everyone should know by now that USPS sucks the biggest fatty ever and they know it. Anyway, I ordered it on 1/30 and had it in hand on 2/4 - great turnaround.

The installation was simple enough. They include a full color instruction sheet with a very detailed description and many photos. They also have a videos on their website showing exactly how to do the installation. There were a few tricky parts, so if you don't have steady hands or tend to break things you try to fix, perhaps you should just send your ipod to them and they will replace the battery for you for an additional fee.

And now, I have the same 6gb iPod Mini, which is more than enough storage space for me. I don't need to be watching videos on the bus anyway. I honestly cannot see a time when I would want to upgrade this iPod. So a replacement battery is by far the way to go.

Thanks iPodjuice.com! I will tell everyone I know about your great product/service.

Growing Hops, my experience

A guy on the Chicago Beer Society mailing list asked:

I am considering growing a couple of hop vines this year on the back deck of
my condo using a couple of planters and some wood lattice up the brick
wall. I've got the fiancee in on it for the "look", but I want a good crop
come August/September as well.
Has anyone tried to grow their own, particularly in a more confined space
like a patio with planters?
I'm hoping to hear pros and cons of such an undertaking, and I would
appreciate any input.
Thanks,
Mike

So I decided to write up a quick summary of my hops growing experience to date.

Max and I each attempted to grow hops in the city during the Summer of 05. He put his in a small pot on a 2nd floor balcony facing north. He neglected to water, and he got....not much. A few sprouts and a foot or two of vine and then nada. He probably could have done a bit better if he watered some more, but even then the lack of full sun made it a non-event.

I had better success. I grew a couple of shoots out of a single rhizome in a 5 gallon sized pot on the South side of a house on the 1500 block of Walton St. The location got 6-8 hours of full sun a day, and when the plant grew above the railing it got even more. I watered almost daily for the early and mid summer and fertilized a few times as well. At the peak of growth I got 3.5' of vertical growth in a week and about 18' of total vertical growth. In the end though, I only
yielded about 1oz of final product, and the cones I did get were on the small side. Taste was difficult to discern because we had to mix them with other hops in the brew, though I could clearly smell the lupulin.

I chronicled the experience here. There are some good pictures of the final results and you can get an idea of the height.

I have done some reading on growing hops and just about everyone says you don't get much the first year because the root system needs to develop. I was surprised that I got what I did, but if you compare what I got to an established plant, you can see multiple years of root
growth is what is needed to produce decent results, like this guy's.

After the season ended, I moved my pot to a 13th floor condo balcony. I got a lot better sprouting at the start of the 2006 season and I thought I was off to a good start. It started with probably 10-12 shoots and I think i pruned back all but the best 4. However I had nothing for the plants to really grow up vertically. I used a bit of cotton line from the pot to the railing and then I decided to try to grow them back and forth across the balcony railing. This did not
work. Though I got much the same the vertical (er horizontal) growth I got the previous year, I had MAJOR trouble with the wind. And I got virtually zero hops cones. Zero. Nothing for a whole summer of daily watering and coaxing and monitoring. I was pissed. I had to move in
September of that summer, but it wouldn't have mattered because I wasn't going to get anything anyway.

So I moved the pot again. This time my balcony was on the 9th floor facing east. Well, something must have happened while the pot sat there from Sept 06 to March/April of 07 because nothing came up. Not a single shoot. The roots must have frozen too much or rotted or who knows what, but there were no hops in the summer of 07. I doubt if anything will come up this summer, but I guess I can hope.

I think I am done trying to grow hops in planters on balconys. My limited experience has shown me that hops need:

1) lots and lots of sun
2) lots and lots of water
3) lots and lots of verticle room to grow.

If you don't have these, you will probably be disappointed with the results. I don't really want to talk you out of trying something, but just be warned and don't get too frustrated if you see poor results.

Steve and my brother in law both have plants growing in yards out in the suburbs. This summer it will be the 2nd and 3rd seasons for those plants, and hopefully we will see some real results.

Mitt Romney you are dumb

Mitt Romney was recently at the Detroit Auto show where he gave some comments regarding the state of the auto industry in the US. While he was more or less correct in one aspect, that the auto industry in Michigan is an economic indicator for industry in the rest of the country, he was WAY off in another of his comments.

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, Romney also blasted a new energy bill that raised the fuel efficiency standards for cars to 35 miles per gallon, saying it was an "anvil" that will weigh down the domestic auto industry.

"All of the vehicles that you're making now are outmoded. You're going to have to build new engines, new transmissions, new axles. All of these things have to be changed at the cost of tens of billions of dollars. Good luck. Now, it's a benefit to the entire nation paid for by one industry that's already in trouble," Romney said.

A mandate on higher fuel economy does the following things:
-reduces, however little, our independence on foreign oil
-reduces our impact on the environment
-requires all automakers selling cars in America to follow these standards, thus negating any unfair cost to one country's industry
-enables the American auto industry to compete at a higher level in places where these higher standards already exist.
-forces the American auto industry to innovate, one of the main factors that has caused the industry to lose money as consumers shift toward foreign cars that are more innovative, get better mileage, are better built etc...

Lets take each line of his comment and dissect it a bit more:

"All of the vehicles that you're making now are outmoded."
:Well not exactly, some may be outmoded, but the standard applies to the entire fleet. Meaning you either have to produce one really fuel efficient car or raise the efficiency on the worst car. Either involves innovation which the industry is lacking anyway. And the auto makers should want to continually be making newer and better cars and abandoning their old ways. It is the only way to compete in any market.

"You're going to have to build new engines, new transmissions, new axles. All of these things have to be changed at the cost of tens of billions of dollars. Good luck.""
Sure, goes along with the implications of the first statement, sans the axles part....axles? really? And the industry is going to be spending that much anyway on R&D in the next several years. So are you just stating the obvious for political gain? (answer=yes).

"Now, it's a benefit to the entire nation paid for by one industry that's already in trouble..."
Sure is. In fact when any industry or market is regulated in a manner intended to improve the good of society, that industry has to pay for it. The point is to encourage innovation, lessen reliance on oil, and force the industry to complete better in the world market. Unless their are subsidies, which in this case would only harm the nation and the auto industry in the long run.

Romney seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill and to his own benefit. You may be able to persuade some blue collar workers that they will get their jobs back if they vote for you, but the only way they can get those jobs back is if they industry makes cars that consumers want to buy more than the foreign makers. And there is nothing Romney can do to make that happen. And the fuel efficiency law only helps the industry to make cars people want.

Nobody wants SUVs anymore Romney! You drive a 2005 Ford Mustang convertible, and go figure, you are against raising fuel standards, but offer nothing in return.

Vote Obama!

More Soulja Boy

A few days ago I blogged about the Soulja Boy dancing phenomenon. The videos I posted there were topped by Bo Ryan, Wisconsin's basketball coach, contributing his dancing skills to the world.

Fart Sandwich also blogs

My friend Fart Sandwich also blogs! Well, his xbox blogs automatically it would seem. It keeps a running tally of when he plays, what he plays and such. Written as if the xbox itself was alive and keeping a verbal record of how often he plays.

The real Fart Sandwich does in fact have a blog, but it is really too serious to have a link from this post I think...

The great fart sandwich gets voicemail!

I blogged before about some of the accomplishments of the great Fart Sandwich. Well now he has voicemail! You can leave him a message by using his SayNow service below or on his newly created blog.

SayNow is free, but your cell phone carrier may charge you for receiving text messages.

This.....is a sport!

I was blown away again today at the sport known as.... "Sport Stacking." Yes, this does in fact exist.

This kid is the best at this:


Apparently this is an actual sport...want to learn how to do it? Watch some training videos here. Or buy a stacking kit at Target!

Dancin to Soulja Boy

I think the song pretty much sucks, but just like the Macarena and the dance that went with that, 2007 has its very own. Crank That by Soulja Boy

Here are 4 video's that capture the phenomenon fairly well.

The original video for "Crank That"


Texas longhorns football dancing before a game.


Little black kids dancing at home.


Little white kids in ballet class. (by far the best one I have seen so far)

Top 10 Flash Videos/Sites

The whole idea of flash is pretty cool. You combine elements of animation, multi-track layouts, scripting language, vector objects all into an amazing multimedia design environment. The possibilities are endless really. Here I have assembled my Top 10 list of the best flash Videos/Animations/Sites I have run across so far.

#1 - Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART
A fun take on the use of the flash creation environment.



#2 - http://producten.hema.nl/ - Pretty simple animation, but another take on products on a online shopping page interacting with each other.

#3 - The guys over at Neostream are awesome. Some real talent there.

#4 - What list of flash animation would be complete without mentioning Homestarrunner, specifically the emails. The animation is pretty basic, but as a basis for cartoon animation, flash allows the animator to work more on the story.

#5 - Ok, so I only have 4 for now, but I will add more later.

Net Neutrality with Timothy Wu

On Saturday I attended a forum at the University of Chicago presented by The Triple Helix club. The speaker was Columbia Law Professor Timothy Wu, who works in the area of copyright and telecommunications policy, and is currently writing a book about the current state of affairs on the internet related to net neutrality. He spent most of the talk discussing aspects of his book, which basically covered the history of the common carrier; organizations like Western Union and Ma Bell. It was interesting to learn how closely the current debate follows these previous situations. I ask Professor Wu what his thoughts were on the perception that regulation limits innovation. He responded by referring to the fact that we can now plug any device into a phone jack (cheap telephone, modem, anything else) and be connected to the phone network. This was because of regulation and is pretty much why the internet even exists today.

Nobody uses Discover Card anymore

Upon quarterly review of my companies accounting, I have noticed that out of all higher dollar spending customers, nobody uses the Discover credit card to pay us. The last time a customer used Discover card was back in January 2007. And that was a $250 monthly recurring charge. That customer was the ONLY one paying with Discover card out of the XXXXX number of customers we have. In fact, even in the previous year (2006) that customer was still the only one paying by Discover card!

Luckily the cost of accepting discover card is virtually zero. They charge no ongoing fees for keeping an acount open (cough AMEX).

One of our other divisions has a large number of customers paying by Discover card. This division concentrates on services that are more targeted to smaller businesses and consumers in general. I would guess that either 1) Discover prefers to concentrate on consumer spending or 2) people in business dislike using Discover card.

getting screwed....again

More than 3 years ago I blogged about an awesome new practice that Caterpillar was instituting. It is somewhat complicated, so just read that post to understand more about what why this sucks.

This week, I received notices from Caterpillar via email. These notices basically said the following:

---
Dear everyone who pays us money for things we buy from you,

We will now be screwing you in yet another new and exciting way. Some of the big wigs here decided we could fire some people and generally cut down on some of our administrative overhead (read: healthcare costs) by using some 3rd party accounts payable software. We also cut a deal with the postal service so they no longer have to deliver mail to our offices! From now on:

1) If you want sell us something, we will generate a PO and send it to you via email or fax. All electronic eliminates paperwork and the cost of processing the paper. You will actually probably appreciate this aspect.
2) (The best part) We won't accept your paper invoices anymore!!!!

To accomplish this, YOU must PAY a 3rd party for access to this software. You will pay them about 1% of your revenue passed through this system. So remember, like before, if we are your biggest customer (or only customer) you are basically screwed! You are now losing another 1% of your already low profit margins. (By the way, if you are one of our super large suppliers who we really depend on, please just work with us to use this system...the fee structure works in favor of larger companies.)

Also. EVERYONE THAT WE ARE SENDING THESE EMAILS TO IS STUPID! THOSE OF US THAT STILL WORK HERE ONLY WANT TO DO THE MINIMUM AMOUNT OF WORK! SO READ ALL OF THESE 15 EMAILS THAT WE ARE SENDING AND PRINT THEM ALL OUT AND DON'T LOSE THEM!!!!1111oneoneone YOU KNOW WE WILL TAKE OUR SWEET TIME FIXING YOUR PROBLEM IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE.

Again, please note: This is how it is going to be from now on. We can do this because we are a huge giant company, we don't care about the people we do business with, and everyone else is doing it so we figured we should jump on board.

For those of you that only have very small contracts with us, this will probably be of benefit to you, as you will get your payments even faster. However, those of you that do a large percentage of your business with Caterpillar, you will be screwed in a new and exciting way.

-Sincerely
-The lamers at Caterpillar

---

Reason #2370492 why big business sucks.

New Radiohead album for $1

I just downloaded the new Radiohead album "In Rainbows." A few days ago i "pre-ordered" it, and then today they sent me a link to download it. The best part about this process, was I paid $1 USD for it. (.01+.45GBP). I could have paid $10 or $100 or $1000 or whatever I wanted to pay. I tried to pay 0, but I couldn't seem to get that to work.

As ARS Technica points out...this is the future of music and entertainment. Give stuff away and people will pay for stuff they really want. Radiohead's goal was to get people to buy their $80 "disc box" which included the In Rainbows album, a 2nd disc with additional material, 2 LPs and a bunch of assorted artwork and other crap. Radiohead claims "the free-download experiment is working out very well so far, driving an 11-fold traffic boost to the band's Web site and converting plenty of those hits into sales of premium boxed sets for £40 a pop." That assumes everyone paid .01GPB! I assume that a good amount of people paid $10 or $15 or more for the album.

Anyway...not that I like Radiohead all that much, but I wanted to be a part of the experiment.

Google maps updates street views for Chicago

Google maps just updated its Street View system for the Chicago downtown area. So of course the first thing everyone at the office did was look to see if anyone got 'caught on film.' Turns out, one of my co-works was spotted riding his bike to work early on a weekday morning. I, on the other hand, do not appear (at least not that I found). My bicycle, though, was parked in front of my office building.

up to $50

I just made my second donation to Barack Obama's primary campaign. They are getting really creative in the way they are getting people to donate.

Since I had already donated several months ago, I have been getting messages once a week or so with different political statements from Obama or his campaign manager. Most of these emails contain some kind of plea to donate money. This week's email contained a new tactic that I thought was really interesting. If you are a previous contributor and you donate again, they will match your donation with that of a first time contributor. They give you the option of sending a personal message to that person when they make their donation. It was kinda fun. Within a minute or so I had been matched with another person and I received a nicer personal message back from them.

Another interesting thing that Obama's campaign is doing is you can get on their text message list. Every so often something is happening, Barack is on TV or giving some special speech somewhere and I get a text message telling me about it.

With all of this interactivity going on...how can he not be leading the money race! Yes I think Hillary would probably be a decent choice...but she is certainly no Obama. So anyway...if you are stumbling upon this post...and you want to donate visit Barack Obama's website and make a donation. You can donate as little as $5! Really...it will be worth it to join this movement.

Vista won't use Firefox as default browser

Going along with the theme of my last post, this is my short story about getting Vista to recognize Firefox as the default browser for all applications.

When I upgraded to a workstation with Vista, I had several problems with getting things to run smoothly. I previously blogged about my problems using Trillian. But I could never figure out why Vista would not recognize Firefox as the default browser for things like Google Desktop search, or when clicking a link from within an Outlook email. I spent time several months ago trying to solve the problem, messing with all kinds of settings in the control panel, to no avail. Then a few days ago, I decided to try again. I googled for "vista defaulting to IE not firefox" which returned this result from a cnet forum. The post describes how installing Safari, and then using Safari to manage the global browser preference will make my problem go away. I install Safari, then go into Safari's preferences and set the default browser to be Firefox. Presto! Everything now uses Firefox as the default browser including the two main problems areas of Google Desktop Search and Outlook. Thank you to Safari, no thank you to Vista.

I am sure there are other ways to fix this problem, but this one was quick, simple and painless.

Trouble with imbeding images...InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc...

I have been having a hard time attempting to make a credit card authorization document for use internally to my company. The main problem is that I want to display our company logo inside the document. This is easy enough for a word file, but I want to turn the word file into a PDF. Here comes the hard part. How do I make the logo appear in sufficiently high quality on the PDF? I tried exporting the logo in several different formats, originally from .ai, and then into other formats uncluding .eps, .jpg etc... The best result I could get was with a PNG file...however even that had problems when displayed in the PDF format...jagged edges on the lines of the logo. It looked acceptable when printed on paper...but still I thought I could do better.

I decided it was time to ditch Microsoft Word and attempt to build the document from something more suited to graphics. Using Adobe Illustrator would take too long and I would have problems with text formatting. I decided to use Adobe Indesign (formally Adobe Pagemaker). I have Adobe CS3 Web Premium installed on my computer, and I figured it would be included....but no. InDesign is not included with CS3 Web Premium. Luckily I had upgraded from CS2 Standard...which included InDesign. Unfortunately, I had uninstalled the entire CS2 suite when I upgraded to CS3. I had to reinstall standalone InDesign from the CS2 suite...which appears to work fine.

Then I was easily able to setup the document using InDesign, and import the logo in vector format, which looks really sharp. Now the problem became that the credit card "placeholders" which were in the original word document were generated with "word art" whatever that means. Even though I could copy and paste them into InDesign, it would not translate them onto the printed or PDF versions of the file. In a quick fix effort to get the project done, I took a screenshot of the word document, imported the card placeholder imaged into Photoshop, tweaked them a bit, and then sent them over to InDesign. Should I decide to spend a bit more time on the project, I will re-do these placeholder images in Illustrator and replace the low-rez ones.

RealArcade can suck it

So a guy who sent me an email from yahoo had their standard advertising link at the bottom. For some reason, I noticed it and saw that it was an add to download an updated version of Monopoly to play on the computer. Turns out it was an add for RealArcade. Regardless, I downloaded and started playing the game, only to get about 3 minutes in and have the game stop the free trial...please fork over $20!!! I can get the actual Monopoly board game for $17.66 and have something that I will never accidentally erase or lose interest in.

RealArcade = Real Networks = Real player = all worthless crap...

Do I really look like any of these people?

Trillian doesn't work well with Vista

I have been having a lot of problems with Trillian on my new Vista machine. Basically it refuses to retain a lot of my preferences and history and stuff when I restart my computer or restart the program.

Reason?: From the start I believed it to be some kind of permissions problems or something related to Vista's OMG SOMEBODY IS HAXXORING YOUR COMPUTERZ security features. Reason 32703944 why Vista blows...

Solution?: Install directly to C: instead of within C:/program files. Everything seems to be working perfectly now...did several restarts and it is now retaining everything I need retained!

Now...I love Trillian...but please, please go faster with your new Trillian Astra.

Distractions

I got distracted about a bazillion times today for one reason or another...mostly because I was covering for Sales, who had nobody in the office today (lucky me.)

One of the things I found was this image of what Wikipedia looks like....I think it is probablyh fairly accurate, though you could substitute the yellow circle for Star Wars certainly, or WoW or something similarly enthralling that geeks pursue in their spare time.

Anyone need an Industrial Ultrasonic Cleaner?

I want to talk a brief minute about Ultrasonic Cleaning Technology. Companies make ultrasonic cleaning systems and generators for precision cleaning applications. How does it work? Well think of high frequency sound waves that shoot through water to create bubbles between particles of dirt and the surface of the part. The bubble forms and collapses creation a detergent action and cleaning the part.

Barack Obama for President

Today I donated to Barack Obama's campaign. It is the first time I have ever donated to a political campaign. I hope that Obama can bring change to America and lead the country into a prosperous future.

I think that everyone should check out his campaign and be a part of an experience like no other.

Best Animated Movie Ever

Most people don't care for it too much, but I feel South Park, The Movie was the best animated movie of all time. For these reasons (and probably more):

1. Lines like these:
"Mr. Garrison: Eric, did you just say the F-word?
Cartman: Jew?
Kyle: No, he's talking about "f(beep)k". You can't say "f(beep)k" in school, you f(beep)king fat-ass!
Cartman: Why the f(beep)k not?
Mr. Garrison: Eric!
Stan: Dude, you just said "f(beep)k" again!
Mr. Garrison: Stanley!
Kenny: F(beep)k!
Mr. Garrison: Kenny!
Cartman: What's the big deal? It doesn't hurt anybody. F(beep)k-f(beep)kety-f(beep)k-f(beep)k-f(beep)k.
Mr. Garrison: How would you like to go see the school counselor?
Cartman: How would you like to suck my balls?
Mr. Garrison: What did you say?
Cartman: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Actually, what I said was...
[picks up a megaphone]
Cartman: HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUCK MY BALLS?
Stan: Holy shit, dude."

and

Terrence: You're such a pig-fucker, Phillip!
Phillip: Terrance, why would you call me a pig-fucker?
Terrence: Well, let's see. First of all, you fuck pigs.
Phillip: Oh yeah!

any many more, some of which can be found here.
The social commentary is the best I have seen, ever. No subject is left untouched.

2: It is a musical...and the songs are sometimes better than the quotes. Also Robin Williams sang Blame Canada at the Oscars when the song was nominated. It didn't win, though it should have. They gave the Oscar that year to the Phil Colins song from Tarzan. Disney movies always win, even if they suck. Does anyone even remember Tarzan? Yeah, I didn't think so.

3: more to come.

Jarrett writes about how he became a music pirate, but at least he tried. A clip

"...But alas, my suspicion is that anyone who would have been cool enough to work at Rhino in their heyday some twenty years ago would never be so callous, foolish or shallow to allow these kind of absurdities to occur.

Since I've resigned myself not to waste any more time with the music business, I suppose I'll have to resort to purchasing used CD's & records, or having my friends occasionally make me a copy of one of their newer CD's.

Call it piracy. Call it whatever you want. But at least I tried. I gave you several chances and you failed miserably at every level."

Verizon payments by check? ummmm....no

A "Need-to-Know" bit of informaiton included on the latest Verizon Wireless bill states:

"Your check authorizes us either to make a one-time electronic funds transfer (EFT) from your account or process as a check. An EFT may be withdrawn from your account the same day you make your payment and your check is not returned to you. ...If payment is returned unpaid you authorized us to collect an additional $25 fee through EFT from your account."

Really? I don't see anywhere on a check where if says you have open access to deduct whatever funds you want from my account through the ACH. I also doubt that is within Verizon's rights to debit through ACH more than the account holder has specifically authorized. I don't have a problem with them converting a check to ACH, as it cuts down on processing time for them, makes for less waste, etc... However, if my check bounces through my own fault, and Verizon decided to deduct some extra $$ to cover the cost of dealing with my bounced check, then they can forget it. There would be no way in hell a bank would allow that to happen to a customer account. Also - use of my cellphone does NOT constitute agreement....FU Verizon!

we are already screwed...how depressing...

I used to call this blog, La fin du monde est..., which basically means "the end of the world is..." Well I guess we are more closer to the end than I really thought.

Nick Monahan writes (almost 5 years ago!) a very moving story about a horrible experience in dealing with airport security. He relates the events that he believes led to the breech birth of his son. His most profound comments show us that we need to stop worrying about the impending loss of personal freedoms and the slippery slope that we will go down if we don't do something. We don't need to worry anymore because it is already too late. He writes

"...this country has changed for the worse and will continue to change for the worse. There is now a division between the citizenry and the state. When that state is used as a tool against me, there is no longer any reason why I should owe any allegiance to that state. And that’s the first thing that child of ours is going to learn."

I hope that I will be able to prevent the brainwashing of my children into thinking that our country is a wonderful place. That freedom is the very essence of our society, because by them time they can even learn what freedom is, they will have lost the chance to have the experience. Yes the United States is better than some places, but it is no longer the land of opportunity and hope that my great grandparents came here for.

So do we stop worrying now? Will we be screwed no matter what we do? Can anyone do anything to make really make a difference anymore? Will voting for a new president make a difference? What if i get 5 friends to all vote for him, or 50 or 500 or 5000 or 50000? That just means another guy gets to deal with all the shit that the last guy let happen, and perhaps the guy before him as well? It is depressing really, how little any one person can really do to change anything.

drupal fix, nerdcore for life,

Stupid Internet Explorer and their strange interpretation of certain code. Had a slight formatting problem with a site I manage using Drupal. IE was reading a cell spacing tag in the CSS file and inserting a tab at the first line of the page. Firefox had no such problem. So removing the spacing in the css eliminated the problem...for now. Thanks to brenda003 and archivschachtel both drupal forum members for their solution(s).

*****
In other news, ytcracker, a nerdcore rapper and friend of Server Central recently released an album called Nerdlife. On the album, on the last track #17 at about 1:55 you can hear him give props to the best datacenter around! I don't think he will mind if I promote his album some here by linking to the track in question.

Fart Sandwich Takes 3rd

I previously posted about the Lumines competition in which my friend was competing. It took them the better part of 60 days to finally post the results. Though they have not yet contact my friend or sent him his prize.

All hail the LEGENDARY FART SANDWICH!

Cubs tickets on sale today

Last year I blogged about the first day of ticket sales for the Cubs. By 3:45pm last year, 21 games were sold out. Of course "sold-out" doesn't really mean all tickets int he 40k+ stadium are gone, just most the general seating. They reserve blocks for group sales, and the remaining "close to the field" seats that aren't season tickets go on sale at a later date to kind of even out the rush I guess. This year, by 5pm only the following 15 games were sold out:

April 9th – vs. Houston Astros
April 21st – vs. St. Louis Cardinals
April 22nd – vs. St. Louis Cardinals
May 18th – vs. Chicago White Sox
May 19th – vs. Chicago White Sox
May 20th – vs. Chicago White Sox
June 2nd – vs. Atlanta Braves
June 16th – vs. San Diego Padres
June 30th – vs. Milwaukee Brewers
July 14th – vs. Houston Astros
August 4th – vs. NY Mets
August 5th – vs. NY Mets
August 17th – vs. St. Louis Cardinals
August 18th – vs. St. Louis Cardinals
August 19th – vs. St. Louis Cardinals

I think the discrepancy between this year and last year can be attributed to some of the following:
-The Cubs has a worse season in 2006 than they did in 2005.
-There is one fewer home series against the Cardinals this year (last year even had 1 four game series)
-Last year had Ryne Sandberg jersey retirement day.
-The Braves played a series in Chicago, which doesn't happen very often, and I guess some people like the Braves.
So those four factors, plus others I am sure, led to games not selling out as quickly. Plus I think their system was not functioning very well today, as I will explain below.

My personal ticket buying experience was pathetic. I was granted the opportunity to buy tickets online only twice throughout the day, running with 2 different web-browsers. The first time I caught window right as it flipped at around 11:30 am or so, but was unable to actually "purchase" any tickets because it said the system was busy - this did not happen last year, perhaps they reduced system capacity to lessen the ability of people to snatch up tickets? The 2nd time, I didn't catch the window in time and it kicked me back out. The 3rd time was a repeat of the first, but it was 5:23pm and still I can't buy a ticket!??!?!

Finally around 5:40pm I was able to buy tickets. I choose the 9/19/07 night game against Cincinnati because it is the final night game of the year. Should the cubs be doing well at that point, it might actually be a fun game to go to. Also I got bleacher seats...hoping for a drunken good time. Then I got in again about fifteen minutes later and got some terrace reserved tickets for the 6/26 night game against Colorado. Finally at aound 6:20pm, I bought my final set, Saturday 4/14 against Cincinnati again. Much cheaper tickets but decent enough seats in the upper deck infield. Figure I will invite the family to come in (and bring jackets.)

I really wish it was easier to get cubs tickets. Perhaps next year I will bite the bullet and go to the field to get tickets in the morning on the first day. I figure I would get a better shot to get decent seats.

Zazzle - It really works!

I previously talked about Zazzle.com. Zazzle is a site where you can create merchandise like t-shirts and hats and stuff, with your artwork printed on it (similar to a lot of other sites like threadless). Zazzle lets you earn a commission on every item you sell. Well a total of 4 people bought my t-shirt and Zazzle sent me a check for about $10. I was going to make the t-shirt anyway, so now I recouped about 60% of the cost of the original t-shirt for doing absolutely nothing! Now...if only I can find a way to get people to buy other fun t-shirts I make....

Farewell Chief Illiniwek - Goodnight Sweet Prince

Last night was the final halftime performance of Chief Illiniwek at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The NCAA has decided to discard its stated mission of "governing competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner, and to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount." Instead it has decided to regulate politics and free speech in America. Mascots and symbols have nothing to do with "fair safe equitable and sportsmanlike competition." The despicable and underhanded way the university and the NCAA handled the situation is deplorable. Adding fuel to the fire, schools such as FSU can retain their "symbol" because they have a relationship with the Seminole tribe. So because there is no existing Illiniwek tribe, Chief Illiniwek has to go. Dumb...really dumb.

After years of battle the politically correct left have finally won by using the almighty dollar! Since the UofI was prohibited by the NCAA from hosting post-season championship tournaments and competitions, they would be losing sponsorship, brodcasting and general revenue from these events, and I guess they couldn't bear that loss anymore. I assume that there is some financial considerations going on with the Seminole situation...so again they win, we lose.

While I couldn't make it down to the game last night, and also couldn't watch it on tv (stupid local broadcasting combined with crappy Illini record this season), I was able to scrape some videos off of Youtube showing the halftime performance. An honorable end to a longtime tradition. The curtain call at the end was probably the best part (probably the only time the Chief has ever acknowledged his own performance).


*Full performance with the pre-roll video, from higher up in the stands.

*"Official video" by Illini Productions including high quality pre-roll footage, continues until Chief stops to wait in the hallway for the team.

*Full performance from television feed. Shows Chief exiting into the hallway.

*Courtside view of whole performance, little shaky, but good enough.

*Better quality courtside view of whole performance, 1st half.

*Better quality courtside view of whole performance, 2nds half.

Apparently there was also a large movement to coordinate a switch to black clothing for the 2nd half of the game. Partially documented by this picture.

RIP
Chief Illiniwek
1926-2007

Update: illinoishomepage has some good videos and news coverage as well. Though their streaming sucks right now (probably because they don't use Cachefly). Should be better tomorrow or in another day.

Chris wanted these books

Chris wanted these books, so I decided to get them for him! (Please file under professional dev :)


MySQL and Perl for the Web

and

CGI Programming with Perl

Enjoy Chris!

Train-ing While Tired, Tax Refunds

I seem to have a problem with commuting in the morning.
This is the second time that I have not paid attention while riding the CTA trains in the morning and suffered a commuting mishap. Probably due to being tired.

The first time I got on the right train, but didn't pay attention when the conductor said the train would be going the wrong way due to problems with switching. I was counting the number of stops without paying attention and quickly got off at the appropriate numbered stop. Then I realized the stop looked different. I was confused and disoriented. I didn't know where I was for a minute or so. Eventually I went down to street level, and figured out which way I was walking and walked the rest of the way to work, turning a 20 minute trip to a 40 minute trip. I could have walked directly from home to work in less time.

Today I was waiting at Roosevelt for the orange train. Normally the trains come through there alternating between green and orange. A green came and went and I thought the next one would be the orange. Stupidly, without looking at the sign on the train, I got on. I didn't pay attention when the train went the wrong way and found myself going around the loop the wrong direction. So I decided to just ride around the loop the opposite direction. By the time I realized that the green line does not go around the loop, rather straight west, it was too late, so I got of and decided to go the other way, but again the green line does not go to Quincy in that direction either. So I ended up walking to work again. And again it would have been faster if I walked directly from home to work.

The moral of this story is, I need to pay attention to the trains in the morning.
---
While walking to work today, since I screwed up my train rider, I want past the Thompson Center. In the plaza H&R Block was holding a "National Tax Advice Day," which was simply a media stunt with obvious H&R Block employees standing in a tight pack cheering about tax advice or something. I believe they were getting people to sign up for some kind of tax service. It was ridiculous and almost not worth writing about here. If only I didn't have a major beef with their current ad campaign "I got people."

I am certainly not an English scholar, in fact Alyssa was berating me last night about they way I spell certain words (I 'am' getting better...slowly). However, the "I got people." campaign, discussed here, is only contributing to the dumbing down of society. Do the lower income people in Chicago, those being targeted by H&R block, really need to be spoken to at their level of literacy as well? In addition, an income-tax refund loan is at exactly the same level of a payday loan. 30% or so annual interest rate isn't much better than the 40% loans offered at the local Currency Exchange. These loans take huge advantage of people that can't manage what little money they have.

Another big FU to H&R block.

My first video game console

Knuttz has an interesting graphical history about the evolution of the video game console. My first video game console was the Gemini system (pictured right), which played Atari cartridges. It was fun and provided entertainment for years when I was growing up.

I later purchased my very own Nintendo Entertainment system (pictured left). I saved a lot of loose change and did loads of odd jobs around the house to get this gem. My sister was still playing hardcore on the NES through to the late 90's.

My Neighbor had first an Atari 2600, then the Coleco Vision, then a fully tricked out NES with running pad and all, then he eventually got a SNES (then I moved away). I thought the Coleco was cool because you could play some games that were slightly more advanced than the Atari. Plus it had the older school paddels.

Current I have nothing, but if I was to buy something, it would probably be an Xbox 360.

Fart Sandwich got Youtubed!

My friend, aka Fart Sandwich on XBox live, is currently in contention in the Lumines competition. He normally sites at 1st place in the weekly rankings, but this week they are doing a contest where 1st place gets a 42" plasma tv. As luck would have it, he is currently riding 3rd place, with 2 unbelievable scores above him. He did beat his person best last night by 4 points, but that still leaves him 15 points or so down on the current 1st place person. The whole game only lasts 60 seconds, but it is lightning fast.

Unknown to him, someone posted one of his previous 1st place games on Youtube a month or so ago. Apparently he is LEGENDARY in the Lumines circle.

blogging from the toilet

I have had my new Blackberry Pearl for about a week now and I am really starting to get the hang of it. I am getting better at shuretype and typing long sentences is starting to come naturally.

I just spent a few minutes looking on amazon through the phone's browser. It was pretty easy to search for what I was looking for but unfortunately they did not have the exact item. So I will have to open the laptop to find it.

I am now done on the toilet, I guess I will post this and get off the pot!

Got my first BlackBerry

Got my first BlackBerry Pearl on Friday. Don't quite have it fully working yet, as I have to wait for the work email server to get upgraded. But in the meantime I guess I will have to Accessorize! Including a 1gb MicroSD Card, some Screen Guards, and a Case

Goodbye Bell's - How we loved thee

It is a sad day in Chicago and all of Illinois really. Bell's Brewery, after a falling out between the brewery and distributors, is pulling out of the Illinois market. I have often chosen a fine Bell's draft over many macro-brews simply because they taste good and I enjoy drinking them. Oberon, one of the most beloved summer choices, will now just be a faint memory. The choices expected to fill the void, Two Brothers, Three Floyds and Dogfish Head are decent alternatives, but nothing really compared to Bell's. I guess my next favorite would be Three Floyds, then Dogfish. I don't really care for Two brothers, as I think most of their beers taste too "homebrewed" and they generally lack character.

The real tragedy is the state of distributorship's in Illinois and the laws that enable their monopolistic ways. The laws are anti-competitive and need serious attention. People should be allowed to sell their products to whomever they wish.

Here's to Bell's. May your return to Chicago be just a sip away. Salud!

A big fuck you to Cnn.com's videos

I have a big problem with Cnn.com's streaming news videos. They always play a 15-30 second commercial before the news clip, which is annoying itself. Honestly I don't want to be forced to watch a stupid commercial for a 1.5 minute long news clip.
Though the commercial itself is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that often the commercial loads and plays fine, then when you get to the video, it craps out, fails to load, is jerky or otherwise doesn't play. This is unacceptable. In fact I have decided right now that I will no longer visit cnn.com. They suck in general. Their news coverage is always sensationalistic and they takeup way too much space on their site with entertainment news. I don't give a fuck what katie holmes is doing, but i do kind of care about wars, economics etc...
I will take the bbc news over cnn anyday!

1st time with Critical Mass

I rode with Critical Mass for the first time on Friday. I joined Fred, as he has gone several times and is much more hardcore of a biker than I. I thought of this first time as an experiment more than anything else. I might do it again, but this time was just to see what it was all about.

The wikipedia article on critical mass is good and fairly accurate from my knowledge of the event.

I was once stopped by the mass, (2-3 years ago) while in a cab going someplace. The mass had entered the polish triangle area (division/ashland/milwaukee) and had decided to ride around the triangle. We were 2 cars back from the edge of the intersection and Alyssa decided to jump out of the cab and go talk/yell at somebody and find out wtf they were doing. The guy that she talked to was obviously not a spokesman for the group and his answer is basically bikes are trafic too. I was somewhat amused by the situation, though I guess i would be slightly pissed off if I was held up while going somewhere important. Then again the point made in the wikipedia article about motorists causing most traffic jams is probably the greater truth.

So I rode with the group on Friday. There was probably around 1500 people i would guess, though i often over estimate...but i tried sampling sections and then estimating...1500 is probably a good guess. About 2/3 had some kind of halloween costume on, which was kinda fun. Generally throughout the route I observed the following:

-The majority of the participants are good willed and pretty much just there to participate. They shout things like "happy friday" or "happy halloween" to people in cars, bars/restaurants, on the sidewalk, etc...

-There are a handful of jerks throughout the group, who think everyone in the LP neighborhoods are stupid rich fucks etc...

-A good bit of drinking goes on.

-A handful of riders have some form of music playing, ranging from a handcarried boombox, to a full stero system with a large woofer on a bike trailer.

-A lot of people in cars are more or less content to wait the extra 5-10 minutes while the group passes. Most bus drivers (and other city workers) are in full support of the group, honking their horn in celebration and waving as the mass passes.

-There were a handful of bike cops present for a majority of the ride. They were slightly dickish, but generally attempted to prevent scuffles between the bikers and motorists.

-Occassionally, someone, usually a woman or young lady, will roll down their window to yell and scream at the bikers...this usually only serves to make more bikers stop and surround the car until a majority of the mass passes...the both the bikers and driver are left to go on their way.

-There was one major incident, which basically caused the entire mass to surround a single car. I was about 20 feet away from this car when i saw this blonde chick jump out of the passenger side of a car and confront/attack a girl who was "corking". I stayed right at the front of that car for most of the duration of the incident...pretty much because i couldn't move my bike through the mass that was surrounding the car. Eventually the blonde chick pushed the corker away which caused the corker girl to push back, which caused the dodge neon guy to get out of the car. Once the guy got out of the car, he started randomly going off on people...throwing punches, though i didnt see any land. Anyway it went on for a while and I would assume the mass eventually passed through as they got tired of watching the guy be an asshole....
The incident was documented in these flickr photos:
http://flickr.com/photos/jessipervola/281704229/in/photostream/
http://flickr.com/photos/jessipervola/281704254/in/photostream/

-Overall impression: A big party on bikes that happens to frustrate a few drivers for a few minutes. Eh, you got time....slow down, relax, wait for the group to pass and then go on your way.

DRM is bad for you

These are some of the best anti-DRM stuff I have ever seen.

http://freeculture.org/blog/2006/10/13/contestwinners/

Crazy Ray Lamontagne

You probably heard the anthem of the summer of 2006, Crazy, by Gnarls Barkley (Cee-Lo/Danger Mouse). British musician Ray LaMontagne recorded a much better version.

Courtesy of Village Indian you can download the MP3 of Crazy

I also scooped up Ray's album Till The Sun Turns Black

The last 8 years in 155 words

Lets see, last 8 years recap:

-Attended and graduated from UIUC with a degree in Theatre Lighting +/- lots of beer and general shenanigans.

-Worked on probably 25-30 or so shows during college.

-Worked professionally in Chicago on about 6 shows with 2 different companies.

-Met Alyssa in 2000 and married in 05 (she is now in her 2nd year at University of Chicago studying Diabetes)

-Met a guy who started a company, I was his first employee, I still work for him. 6+ years

-Moved to Chicago in 2002, moved in with Alyssa in 2003, and we just bought a place in Chicago's South Loop neighborhood a few weeks ago.

-Traveled to Australia, Costa Rica, California twice, Vegas twice, Colorado twice, Kansas, Philly, all around the Midwest.

-Went skydiving 7 times (it got expensive and i more or less stopped)

-Got into website design and consult with a handful of companies now on that.

Air travel and your luggage

Bruce Schnider writes about a way to better ensure your luggage is not lost during air travel. He says to simply pack a starter pistol along with your luggage, declare it, show it and then tsa/airline will better hold on to your bag so as to not LOSE a GUN. I think this is a fantastic idea, people always say, i have flown tons of times and they never lose my bag. etc etc...well the fact is that bags are lost all the time by everyone.

lets count my experiences and those of my immediate family and friends.

1) Lost my bag on a weekend trip to Vegas, delivered to my hotel room around 2am.

2) Sister lost her bag while traveling to italy with my family.

3) Grandma also lost her bag on the same trip, cept on the return flight.

4) While living down at school, a neighbor returned from a school break and apparently had lost his bag. Sometime late at night a courrier, having driven several hours from Chicago, knocks on our door and asks to leave this heavy-ass bag with us, as our neighbor is not currently at home. Ummm sure?

5) I will bet $20, $50 or $100 that at least 50% of the people in my office will have a similar story or related experience. This is wayyyyyy too much lost luggage and just a terrible way to do business for the airlines.

Things learned while buying a condo

I recently bought a condo and I have completed moving. I have learned a few things through the process.

*Clothing inside the washer does not mean that the washer works. Remove clothes and test.

*Always look behind furniture during inspection.

*Aim high when asking for credits for repairs, painting, etc...

*Retention of a good lawyer is awesome.

*Movers want to be tipped, but it is hard to tip them if they break something.

*Empire Carpet (588-2300) is a decent place to get carpet, but probably not the cheapest.

More to come if I think of any.

Jansport To The Rescue

Jansport doesn't make the nicest or best quality backpacks in the world, but at least they stand by their lifetime guarantee. They promise to repair or replace any pack or part of a bag or pack that has failed before the bag had generally worn out from use.

Well I had a backpack that I got back in highschool - probably around 1994 or 1995. It served me well for a few years but eventually the zipper got stuck a few too many times and eventually would not stay zipped. So I kicked the bag under my bed for a few years, and moved it around a few times mixed in with other various bags and packs. Then finally I was going to throw it out in conjunction with my current move, but I decided to investigate Jansport's guarantee which I had heard about. Their website says to send it in to an address where they will repair or replace it for free if they deem it to be broken to their standards. I concluded that the bag was still in fairly good condition except for the zipper and that it would be worth $1 of company postage to see if I could get a working bag or perhaps even a brand new bag. (I was really hoping for a brand new bag.)

So I sent it off and about 3 weeks or so later I got it back int he mail, they replaced the zipper...and the bag is back in working order. So Jansport makes good on its promise, and I might consider buying another Jansport backpack or luggage if I am so inclined again in the future.


(I was really hoping they would send me a new bag or like a certificate for a new one or something as i don't particularly like the one I had. The main zipper goes all they way down about 80% of each side making it somewhat difficult to get something out without spilling the entire contents of the bag. Oh well)

buba69 8 out of 10 on google

Google is showing 8 out of 10 of the top results to be my own for searches for buba69. Good news I guess in that someone is not parading around the internet as me. Though this does not bode well for any of the places I that I try to use buba69 anonymously.

F U Joe Liberman

What the fuck happened to this guy. Joe Liberman saying his oppents call for phased withdraw from Iraq gives the edge to the terrorists!!!!! WTF? I thought you were a democrat Joe. I thought you were generally against the war? Yes i know that since we are there we have to ensure stability, but that doesnt mean that pulling out gives the terrorists the win. This is going to make it very hard for you Joe, siding with Cheney is never the right thing to do.

Get your Messerschmitt T-shirt!

Buy My t-shirt!

I created this t-shirt on zazzle.com. Zazzle is a website where you can design custom t-shirts. You can even take your designs and let other people purchase them. If someone buys your design, they pay you a small amount. They also have an affiliate program so you can get paid even more.

I found this logo while running through pages on wikipedia and I thought that this logo would make a good t-shirt. It turned out ok, but I think if i were to do it again I would take the logo and re-do it in photoshop or something. Clean up the hard edges and then take some kind to noise filter to it to make it look "fake" old.

Buy My t-shirt!

Liquids, gels, etc...banned on airplanes

God fucking damnit. Just when it couldn't get any worse for air travel, some fucking asstards decided to blow up water bottles filled with alcohol or something... and because of a handful of terrorist assholes, the rest of the world, the millions of people who fly every day, will have to deal with an even more unpleasant experience. Flying already sucks...so what if you can get across the entire country in 6 hours...I am not willing to pay a dime more than it actually costs. Now the airlines, TSA and all the rest of the assholes inbetween are totally free to lose my luggage and I am totally fucked...totally. I can't bring toothpaste, contact solution, a bottle of water, diet pepsi, probably even spreadable cheese...all of this will probably now be banned forever!!

I refuse to believe that inconveniencing everyone in the name of security or with the goal of screening out a handful of terrorists is WRONG. I would rather drink my diet pepsi on the plane, the one that I brought with me in a bottle, instead of drinking a small can of diet coke or whatever crap they happen to have left over. If some asshole wants to blow me up, well go ahead and blow.

WE CANNOT LIVE IN FEAR!!! Why should we fear them? Why can't we just go on about our business. If we ignore them, pay no attention to them, stop fighting them on all fronts, then they will have nothing to fight against....then perhaps they will just go home.

Gifts from abroad

A few years back Alyssa found a website called Novica. It is sponsored by National Geographic and is a great place to find one of a kind gifts. The company finds artists from around the world, usually those that could not get exposure on their own, and sells their artwork through the website. You see who the artist is and often the artwork listed on the site is one of a kind...AND most of the money goes directly to the artist instead of middlemen as the products are shipped directly from the artist. It is really a neat idea.

Alyssa bought me a necklace from the site a while back, and also bought something for her sister or mother or something.

from the site
"In association with National Geographic, Novica today serves as an online arts agent for more than 1,700 artists in countries around the world. Visitors to the Novica Web site can read about the artists, explore their cultures, view photographs of their work and select from more than 8,500 handcrafted works. Novica arts and technology teams (staffing Novica offices in El Salvador, Brazil, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, Peru, Thailand, Venezuela and Zimbabwe) interview each artist, photograph their artwork, post the interviews and photographs online, and handle all packing and shipping on behalf of the artist. International couriers deliver the artwork directly to customers, eliminating numerous middlemen and transferring the savings to creator and customer alike."

Read more

Follow up to original ideas

It would seem that at least several people liked the shirt design that I came up with. I would suspect that much of the reason they liked it was due to the good illustration, by Holly Gindlesperger The original idea is shown first The final version is second.

Customer service calling me!

Just got off the phone with American Express. Some lady calling me, the administrator of our corporate account, to ask how our "Amex Experience" is going (paraphrasing). I told her that we are getting along just fine, with one exception. As the administrator of the account I have no power to actually pay the bill. If i call and say I am me, then they refuse to let me make a payment, even though I can verify every single bit of information associated with the account or any of the cardholders. So I tell them that I will just call back and say I am one of the cardholders and then make the payment. They don't seem to care, so that I what I proceed to do. Granted I have not done this process in several months, wishing not to waste anymore of my time than is needed. I tell the lady all of this and she tells me that she shakes her head at these types of things.

Hopefully she will call me back to say she has resolved the issue...but I doubt it.

Google maps, a setp backwards

Google updated their pictures of downtown Chicago sometime in the last few days. The previous versions were more than a few years old, lacking the 'improvements' to Solider Field, the area on the corner of Wacker and LSD was a golf course, Millenium Park was under major construction etc...

So now they have newer pictures, taken Fall of 2005 or so I would suspect judging from the progress on the Trump Tower site, lack of boats in the harbor, sand humps on the beaches...

Google maps used to have a pretty good view of the new condo as it was a shot from the southeast, instead of the current southwest view. You could clearly see our balcony and our whole side of the building, now...nothing. Perhaps google will come out with some kind of mapping revision thingy where you can see how places looked every few years...yeah that would be cool. (btw, original thought of the day...).

One of the biggest problems with this update is that the images are of a somewhat lower quality, perhaps taken with a different satalite than the previous pictures. Which is unfortunate because they sacrificed quality for the more up to date pictures.

Also the old apartment has lost its good southern shot favoring a more northern view. Naperville was not updated and there is still no closer images of Freeport.

Original Ideas

I have had very few original ideas in recent months, but lately things have just been coming to me. I am now on a streak of...two. Two original thoughts in as many weeks.

1) A t-shirt design for a trade show. Idea just popped into my head, didn't see it anywhere or try very hard to come up with the idea. Just needed an idea and I thought of one.

2) An idea for a certain type of insurance/add-on service. This one is also original. In the never ending quest to get people to pay for things they will never need or receive this insurance idea really takes the cake. Too bad we will never be able to get the people who could really benefit from the insurance, the fucktards, to signup. We would only get people to signup who have a very low chance of ever needing the service.

More ideas as they come...but breath should not be held...