Entries from October 2007 ↓

Warning: This is a rant.

If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends. JEFF BEZOS

As a self-employed programmer, I work from home a great deal and rely on a solid and fast Internet connection. For years, I’ve used Time-Warner’s RoadRunner service because it seemed to be the best value for speed and reliability. That’s not to say I haven’t had issues with them over the years. I recently decided to switch my broadband service from RR to DSL. RR costs $45/month and the local telco offered a deal of $29/month for a DSL connection with 6Mbps download speed. My cable connection is normally about 3.5Mbps but degrades severely in the afternoons and evenings when all of the neighborhood kids get out of school and online. DSL does not share bandwidth with the neighborhood, so I figured I would take advantage of a two-fold increase in speed with a savings of $16/month. So, I accept my telco’s offer and sign up for DSL. I give them a username and password for my account and am told I will receive a package with my modem and software within the next couple of days. Cool. They call back the next day with apologies and say they have "lost" my information. After having them verify they are indeed from the telco, I again provide them with a username and password. Again, I’m told the modem package is on the way. Today, I received my goodie package. I’m excited to try the new service. The first thing I notice is that the username/password combination is not what I provided and is instead a obviously system-generated username with a password of "changeme". Yes, that is the real password. It’s incredible that an ISP would not provide a strong, random password. Oh well. I hook everything up and am immediately online. I quickly change my password to something much more secure. The next thing I do is perform a quick broadband speed test. WTF?!? I only have 1.8 Mbps download speed — less than 1/3 the promised speed! I unplug my router from the DSL modem and plug it into the cable modem. Hmmmm…the cable connection is running at 3.5Mbps. Continue reading →

Last weekend at this time, I was at a friend’s 40th birthday party getting my dose of yoostas.

At the party, the birthday boy’s wife was telling a story and made the comment, “we all know that guys have to give up their brain when they get a penis.”

I immediately responded, “Jan, it’s a fair trade.”

The Argentine ant is one of the most invasive species in the world. Normally a very aggressive insect, this ant has formed supercolonies in various parts of the world. A supercolony is a group of nests where individuals from different nests do not view each other as invaders and instead actually tolerate and aid each other.

The definition of a supercolony as a “group of nests” is an unbelievable understatement. The largest of these supercolonies is in Southern Europe and stretches for over 6,000 kilometers! Another 600-mile long supercolony exists in California. And yet another 100km supercolony has been discovered under Melbourne Australia.

And the Argentine ant is not the only ant that forms supercolonies. Apparently the yellow crazy ant (yes, that’s the real name) has invaded the Christmas Islands and is forming supercolonies that are decimating the famous native migrating red crabs.

Scientists “discover” these supercolonies by collecting ants from different areas and pitting the ants against each other in a miniature version of a gladiatorial arena. If the ants tolerate each other, they’re exhibiting the same behavior as ants from the same colony; therefore, scientists classify the ants as belonging to a supercolony.

At first, scientists speculated that supercolonies were largely due to a lack of genetic diversity; ants invade a new area with no predators and lots of food and spread like crazy, so all of the ants would share a common colony lineage. At least, that’s the idea.

As it turns out though, the ants do vary genetically. Scientists now speculate that when the ants invaded and found no competition, they lost the diversity in the genes that are involved in recognition and thus don’t recognize each other as different.

As someone who lives in the South, I pray fire ants don’t learn this trick.

Marla Olmstead is a little girl who has taken the art world by storm; she has been hailed as a Picasso-type prodigy and also compared to Jackson Pollock. Her paintings have sold for tens of thousands of dollars. Marla began her painting career just before her 2nd birthday; she is now 6 years old.

When she was featured on 60 Minutes however, questions were raised about whether she actually did all the painting. A child psychologist, Ellen Winner, who has studied gifted children and specializes in visual arts studied the paintings and videos of Marla painting, has grave reservations about whether Marla is the artistic force behind the paintings. According to Winner, videos of Marla show an young girl painting in the manner of ordinary young children, essentially pushing the paint around, playing and experimenting with the paint. Prodigies exhibit a feverish “rage to master”, working with an intense focus and drive. In addition, Winner says, “I have never seen a child prodigy paint in art abstractly. I’ve only seen them paint realistically or representationally. I have a drawing of Picasso at age 9. It shows that Picasso was struggling to draw realistically, and he was way ahead of his age.”

So, who is the artist doing the paintings for which people are paying many thousands of dollars? Some people think it’s her father, an amateur artist who is present when she paints. Her parents, of course, dispute the accusation. They say that while the father does help Marla by priming her canvases, she does all of the painting. The only help they provide Marla is love and encouragement. The 60 Minutes reporter says that while he has a hard time believing Marla created these paintings, he also believes her parents are good people and wouldn’t use their little girl to deceive the world.

So which is it? Are Marla’s parents horrible monsters using an innocent little girl to commit fraud on the art world? Or, in a “the nail that sticks up is the one that gets beaten down” scenario, is the world so coldly cynical that it cannot accept the explosion of a extraordinary talent in one so young? Either way, the situation is a somewhat sad commentary.

I know that the truth will eventually win out, and that I, for one, hope there is indeed a superlative new artist in the making.

I went to a friend’s 40th birthday party this past weekend. Of course, everyone at the party was reminiscing and reflecting on middle age. Personally, I have found my years since 40 (all 5 of them) to be my best; for the most part, I have thoroughly enjoyed my forties. Even so, I heard myself and a lot of the people at the party show the symptoms of a bad case of the yoostas. You know what I’m talking about.

I yoosta:

• Throw a football over 60 yards.
• Bench press 315 pounds a few times.
• Recover from a strain or bad bruise in a couple of days.
• Never buy any type of liniment.
• Party all night.
• Play sandlot tackle football with no pads.
• Eat anything without considering the consequences. Indeed without having any consequences.
• Get out of bed without any aches or pains.
• Not have to trim ear and nose hairs.
• Attempt physical stunts with no thought of injury.
• Read fine print in dim light.
• Not really know what hemorrhoids were.
• Never reflect on what I yoosta do.

Warning: this is a rant.

I have a vice of absolutely loving good coffee so I’m familar with Starbucks’ The Way I See It campaign, which is, in their words

a collection of thoughts, opinions and expressions provided by notable figures that now appear on our widely shared cups.

And I admit, I’ve seen more than my fair share of Starbucks’ cups. The cup I received yesterday had the following thought on it.

The Way I See It #252
Give me world politics, gender politics, party politics or small-town politics … I’ll take them all over the politics of youth sports.

Brenda Stonecipher
City council member and Starbucks customer in Everett, Washington.

This cup’s communiqué conveyed a colossal conjunction of coincidence (I couldn’t resist the alliteration). My son’s football team has been the stage for truly ugly politics this season.

Before I begin truly ranting, let me say that all of the coaches in his league are purely volunteers and –having been a youth sport coach myself– I applaud them for their huge commitments of time and energy to what is largely a thankless job.

OK, now let the rant begin.

My son plays football in a league for 11-13 year olds; his team is a brand new, expansion team in the league. Before the season, all new players participated in workouts so that the coaches could grade them. The coaches then held a draft, allotting new players to each team. Normally, this would be a fair system.

But it’s not.

Continue reading →

My son and I went running this morning before dawn. We normally walk for a few minutes to loosen up before running. While we were walking in the dark, I sleepily stumbled through a spider web that was strung across part of the road. No biggie, just a few strands of web that I casually brushed off.

About 30 seconds later, I suddenly realized there was a BIG HONKIN’ SPIDER CRAWLING ON MY NECK!!! Whoop! Whoop! Alert! Battle Stations! Man the adrenaline pumps! I slapped at the spider to brush it off, but it got caught in the collar of my t-shirt and I ended up having to grab it and throw it off of me. The spider, fearing for its life and rightfully so, bit me at least twice on the back of my neck to the left of my spinal cord.

At first, the bites didn’t bother me; in fact, I didn’t realize I was bitten for a couple of minutes — probably thanks to the wonders of adrenaline. However, it’s now been an hour since I was bitten and it feels like I’ve been stung by a wasp (albeit without the swelling) and the site has an infuriating fiery itch. So, just to be safe, I googled the spider, an orb weaver, and am assured that there’s no danger.

Thank God for that, it would s u c k t o . . . . . . <thud>

I ran across this today and found it interesting. Do you see the dancer spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise? According news.com.au, you use more of the right side of your brain if you see the dancer spinning clockwise.

Personally, I first saw the dancer spinning counter-clockwise (no big surprise there), but by looking away and back again, I can see her spinning in either direction now. Although, try as I might, I can’t see her change direction while looking at her.

Update: The animated dancer illustrates an interesting browser difference. In Internet Explorer, the dancer moves jerkily, leaves blips on the screen, and consumes an inordinate amount of memory. Firefox, on the other hand, displays a smooth animation with no blips and only uses 20%-25% of memory compared to IE.

I was recently asked as part of an exercise, to list 25 things I would like to do before I die. What a waste of time, I thought, this exercise will be trivial drivel.

However, once I got past the initial impulse of glib responses — what glib responses, you ask? Well, a few that tickle my sense of humor would be:

• place huge beanie/propeller caps on Mt. Rushmore
• slip a Whoopie cushion into Oprah’s chair
• set a bratwurst on a rotisserie over JFK’s eternal flame
• save a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico

So, as I was saying, once the initial glib responses were past, I found this exercise to be no small task. It’s quite easy to list a few things, but 25 becomes difficult. And I found myself scratching out some items just as soon as I wrote them down. On the other hand, some items jumped onto paper with a will of their own and actually surprised me when I saw them.

Here’s my list in no particular order (except numerical, of course).

1. Achieve financial independence.
2. Learn to speak Spanish fluently.
3. Learn to weld.
4. Visit Italy.
5. Visit Spain.
6. Act in a movie.
7. See my son hold his son.
8. Learn to fly.
9. Watch a sunrise from the top of Mt. Fuji.
10. Visit the Bahamas by boat.
11. Weigh 225 lbs. (or less) the rest of my life.
12. See the Aurora Borealis.
13. Take up photography as a hobby.
14. Become a writer.
15. Learn to really drive my Porsche.
16. Read a book per week for the rest of my life.
17. Fish and hunt more.
18. Help solve a truly major problem. A world-changing solution.
19. Become proficient at magic.
20. Receive a black belt in karate with my son.
21. See my wife truly and finally quit smoking.
22. Taste the perfect vodka martini.
23. Change someone’s life for the better.
24. Try a different career.
25. Find time to do all these things.

Try this exercise and see if you don’t find it to be an interesting activity. And if you care to share your list with other people, 43things is a web site dedicated to this type of list.

Since the passage of the Brady Law, the U.S. imposes a three day waiting period to prevent impulse purchases of handguns. In Amsterdam, the mayor has just proposed a three day waiting period to prevent impulse purchases of hallucinogenic mushrooms.

And in other news, an original issue of the comic book that introduced Batman was found in an attic. The issue is worth $250,000! Holy windfalls, Batman!