Category Archives: Wondering - Page 10

Service Standards

Posted by on September 6, 2016 No comments

It’s a new month, so I need to keep my post stats active every month – here goes nothing.  This is something I’ve mulled over for some time, but never gave it much internal analysis until recently.

Restaurant kiosks are starting to proliferate.  My reaction to them ranges from indifferent to disgust.  The first kiosk on the scene was at Chilis.  And at this place, I am indifferent to the presence of the checkout device.  I use it without any issue and I’m out.  Next up was Olive Garden.  This one irks me.  I try to pay for my meals through the waitress, and if I’m made to pay through the device, I always leave a comment that I hate using it.  The most recent arrival is at McDonalds.  This one really irritates me.  After a few interactions with these huge devices, I gave thought to my feelings.  Why do I not mind kiosks at Chilis, dislike them at Olive Garden, and hate them at McD’s?

In the Chilis/OG setup, I know that I disliked OG’s more because it cheapened the dining experience.  Go ahead and laugh that I think OG is a “dining experience”.  But it is a full service restaurant.  So is Chilis, but the atmosphere at Chilis is definitely less formal.  Go ahead and laugh that I think OG is “formal”.  Whatever.

So if I don’t mind that Chilis is informal and has kiosks, then why do I have an issue at McDs?  It sure isn’t more formal than Chilis.  I gave it a lot of thought and this is what I came up with.

At McDs, a part of my satisfaction of the meal is the service.  You can laugh and say that’s a pretty low hurdle, and you’re right.  And you’d be surprised how often it isn’t met.  Or maybe you wouldn’t.  But when it’s good, it makes things pretty awesome.  Think of it like a shitty baseball team.  You want them to win.  You know it’s a long shot – a really long shot.  But when they put up a good fight and still lose, you can still have some pride.  You know they really tried.  They’re just not good.  Doesn’t that sound like your typical McDs experience?

Oh wait, I had a better example that explains how I feel about this.  Imagine a band playing at a concert.  There’s an awesome song you want to hear because it has this really technical, difficult part in it.  Even if the band messes up the part, it’s still great.  You know they can do it (because they did it before, when they recorded the album), so you give them a pass.  Maybe they mess it up at every concert you go to, but you still love them for trying it.

Now imagine the band determines that they just can’t play the song like they did in the studio, so they decide to cut out that section.  They just don’t play it.  Yay, no more mistakes.  But you get no satisfaction out of seeing them try and maybe they’ll actually kick ass and get it right.  That would be awesome after so many times of seeing them get so close.  But, they cheated.

And that’s what McDs is doing.  They’re cheating.  They know they suck at the service part, so they’re cutting it out.  But they don’t always suck!  A lot, yes, but not always.  And I want to be there when they don’t suck – that makes it awesome.  But they’ve taken that potential away.

So now when I go to McDs (3 out of 4 of the locations I go to have kiosks now), sometimes I get a cheerful person introducing the device and how to use it, and sometimes I get nothing.  Either way, I’m in no mood to talk to a person.  That’s not what McDs wants, clearly.  And that ruins my meal.  It’s like buying food from a machine.

Currently, they are bringing the food to your table, but I expect that practice will probably stop and you’ll just get your number called and you have to pick it up.  Then they will probably just wall off the kitchen and serve you through a small window.  Maybe you won’t even see a person back there anymore.  Maybe there won’t be people there anymore.  Time will tell.

Coming Soon, Housing Crisis 2.0

Posted by on August 9, 2016 No comments

This guy I know, well, I know him because he’s the one who used to own my house, but anyway, he keeps me around to do computer work for him.  And I do it.  And I get compensated handsomely, despite me telling him I don’t really need the money.  Well, anyway, I was at his house the other night doing computer stuff and he and his GF were having a conversation in hushed tones.  But I was right there beside them, and I was the only other one in the room, so I don’t know exactly why they were talking like that.  Except, I kinda do.

But let me first say this about the guy.  He’s successful.  Quite so.  He runs his own business in a subset of an industry where there is little to no competition and he is sought out for that skill and expertise.  He’s down to earth, but at the same time, he’s got plenty of money to spend.  You name it, he’s got it.  Boat, Corvette, camper, truck, huge house on a large plot of land, huge TVs everywhere.  Just got a divorce and is swallowing multi-thousand dollar alimony payments without slowing down.  Has someone who runs over right away when he has a computer problem and pays them much more than necessary.

And he’s pretty business smart.  I mean, he has a very successful business of his own, but he also had the sense to buy the land his house was built on when it only had a couple of trailers on it.  He now rents out the trailers and that pays his mortgage and then some.  So, I guess you would say he’s a successful landlord as well.

But now, in whispers, he’s talking to his GF in front of me about an opportunity to become a house flipper.  He has heard of an opportunity to buy a distressed house and he thinks he can flip it without investing any time or effort and learn how to do it correctly.  He may be right or he may not be.  But when I hear, “I just want to be the middleman”, it kind of rubs me the wrong way.  Maybe he’s been watching too much Flip or Flop.  Maybe he’s been inspired from stories from his GF (who’s a property appraiser).  Maybe he’s just got too much cash lying around (what a problem to have). 

The thing is, experts say that when the rabble starts acting like experts, it’s time to make for the exits.  I’ve been reading stories about the increase of flipping and I’ve seen the HGTV shows that are promoting this more and more.  It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that we were here.  But here we are.  I’m going to have to get myself prepared for this.

Leasing Your Life

Posted by on April 8, 2016 No comments

A couple issues came up around the same time, so of course, I feel like I need to give this consideration to see if it’s a “thing” or not.  It’s all about giving up control for various reasons.

The first item is some recent news that people who bought some home automation system called Revolv are going to find themselves out of luck soon because the company that owns them (Google, pretty sure) is shutting it down.  This is ridiculous.  How and why would you ever want such a critical device dependent on another company.  And why would they make a product that couldn’t function on its own?

This seems to be the promise, that you trust a company and they will take care of you and manage everything.  Why is this accepted?  You aren’t buying a product, you’re buying a service.  Yes, that sounds correct, but I don’t think people really get it.  They purchase a physical device and think they own it, but they don’t.  It only works while you keep the subscription active.  In this specific case, the subscription cost is zero, but it can still be terminated at any time.

Along the same lines, I’ve noticed my employer is getting sucked into more and more subscription services and that bothers me.  Our time clock software runs on some other company’s web servers.  Our printers have been outsourced and are managed by an outside company.  Our wireless network is managed through some cloud-based application.  And I hear we are changing our security badge system soon.  I have a pretty good idea how that arrangement is going to be.

So, how vulnerable is my employer to downtime?  After researching the time clock system, I can’t tell if our time clocks will work if there is an internet outage or if the time clock company is down or hacked or out of business.  It’s obvious that we’re paying a monthly fee for this service, but if they go out of business, we have nothing usable.

The printers may continue to function if their company goes under, maybe not.  I don’t know how new users would be granted access to the printers.  The Wireless system is probably the same way.  If the supporting company closes up, we’d probably be frozen in time until we replaced the system.

That’s a lot of trust to be granting to multiple companies.  Gone are the days where you buy something and run it into the ground.  Now everything is subscription based with an unknown lifespan.  It’s a terrible way to live.

SpamBastard–1aauto.com

Posted by on March 5, 2016 No comments

I had an application idea at one time and actually finished writing it, but ended up never doing anything with it once it was live.  It was spambastard.com and its purpose was to catch companies that would sell, lose, or otherwise mishandle your email address info.  The concept was simple.  You sign up for their site using their domain name @spambastard.com and if any email comes in with a mismatch between the FROM domain name and the TO domain name (as the username, before the @), the email address would be considered compromised.

That domain and application is long dead, but I’ve been able to replicate the same concept with my personal email domain.  That eliminates the hassle of creating a second account for every site I sign up for (one with my real email and one with a spambastard email).  To date, I’ve only had a few cases where I’ve had to take action.  Those cases are:

  • albumartexchange.com – There are many people including myself who posted on their forum and complained that they received PayPal phishing emails to their unique email address.  The website did not respond.
  • lakelandlelectric.com – That debacle was chronicled already.  The utility company did follow up with an explanation of how it happened and how the process was unfortunately legal.  They said they would push for tougher laws on keeping customer information private.  This prompted a follow-up email from the spammer who was incredulous that government would try to reduce transparency.  See, transparency is only good when it works in your favor.
  • paypal.com – This got compromised after only nine people knew of its existence.  Whether it was sold or stolen, I don’t know for sure, but I am pretty confident that some eBay seller has a compromised account and a spammer is looting their customer list.

Now we can add to the list – 1aauto.com.  I placed an order with their site in January (remember when the punks broke the mirror off my car?).  Today, I get a political email from John Kasich’s New Day For America to that email.  So I immediately send a message to 1aauto.com saying they’ve either sold or given away my info or their customer database has been hacked.  So which is it?  I got a pretty quick response.

Hello and thank you for your email.

I do apologize that you received a spam email to your account. I can assure you that your information is secure and we have not experienced any kind of hacking. We do keep our customer information confidential and secure and have several measures put in place to prevent against fraud and stolen identity.

Thank you for notifying us. We will keep tabs on this and look into what we can do to prevent this from happening in the future.

So, I guess the answer is the owner sold out his customers to promote his choice of political candidate.  The fact that this happened at all negates the statement “We do keep our customer information confidential“.  As far as what they can do to prevent it from happening in the future, that’s simple.  Don’t do what you did again.

Thanks to spam law requirements, the spam email footer confirms the email address that it was sent to.  It tells me that I was added to the list on 2/24/16 via opt-in (gee, I don’t remember that), and gives me ways to unsubscribe.

There’s no sense in unsubscribing.  The email address is out in the wild and is now worthless.  Do I want to spend my life unsubscribing from every email campaign that gets that email or do I want to kill off the email?  The choice is pretty simple.

This scenario makes me pity people who only have a single email address, like @gmail.com or @outlook.com or @yahoo.com.  They don’t have the option of closing their account or changing their address.  Consider how easy it is for me, every email (except my personal email) is known to exactly one company.  Email gets compromised, only one place to change it.

The Way Things Used To Be

Posted by on February 17, 2016 No comments

Today at work, I was CC’d on an email for an upcoming project involving some work with some company or other.  Someone on their side had a bunch of “technical” questions that didn’t make a lot of sense to me.  I don’t doubt that they were relevant questions, but they seemed to be in another language.  It reminded me of a time long ago at an old job when I sometimes had to work with pharmaceutical companies who were in regulated environments.  They used words and phrases in a way that meant something very specific.  If you weren’t in the industry, you wouldn’t understand, and they would use that against you.  You wouldn’t get to work with them unless you spoke their language.

So that I could try and understand this company, I visited their website.  They are a multi-national finance company, and as such, you can imagine they are the least Internet-savvy company ever.  They may actually be the least marketing-savvy company ever.  But, I remember these days.  I remember when sites like this were normal.

Back in those days, the metric for a good site was how much information you could get online.  Well, that is still the metric, sort of, but today, that information is the customer-useful type, like inventory, pricing, technical manuals, warranty status, you know, exposing your internal data to the world.  But, when you don’t have that type of data, like if you’re a bank and not a retailer or manufacturer, you still want your site to look huge.  What do you do?  You fill it with bullshit – lots and lots of bullshit.  And this site delivered.

I was amazed at the volume of verbiage on the site and how vapid it all was.  It was more than I could enumerate myself, with links going all over the place and a navigation menu so large, it had its own close button.  I downloaded a website copier and set it to work on their site.  It found 95 pages!  And that was just on their home domain.  They had a couple of other subdomains, too.  One was 65 pages and the other was a WordPress site, so the site downloader downloaded author pages, archive pages, individual pages, etc, so the pagecount was unusable.  Still, being a webmaster for 150 pages of content has to be a nightmare.

And all of these pages said nothing.  And some pages said even less than that because they were grammatically incorrect.  Maybe I can give a pass on that because the site is multi-lingual.  Anyway, my original reason for going to the website was to find out what they do.  On one of the four (FOUR!) pages of the About Us section, one of the paragraphs reads:

The goal we have proposed is that in each of the many contacts we have with our stakeholders a differential experience to provide sustainable value is conveyed. So we have established our vision as a company and some guiding principles defining our commitment towards those stakeholders.

That is what the entire site is like.  What kind of zombie composes page after page of meaningless, worthless garbage?  Well, a long time ago in another job, that might have been me.  Not likely, though.  That old company got some decent contracts, but not big enough to write hundreds of pages of dreck.

I also remember when I could think and write in that nebulous language.  My early websites for my own consulting work may have been like that, trying to make my one-man shop sound like a large company (it didn’t work).  But everyone’s grown up now.  Being a lone consultant doesn’t have a stigma and businesses can be proud to be whatever size they are.  But some companies still seem to be stuck in the past.

Where Have All The CDs Gone?

Posted by on January 28, 2016 No comments

I’m probably really late to the party on this one, but I was recently thinking about the availability of used CDs and came to a realization.  My insight is certainly nothing earth-shattering, it’s just that used CDs are approaching a value of zero.  As such, they can’t be sold for anything of value.

Here’s my brief, one-sided view of the used CD marketplace.  When CDs first came out, I was there.  They were expensive and there was no used CD market at all.  Expensive was $18 back then, which is like selling a CD for $39 today.  Then, before a used CD market blossomed, there was the “bargain bin” at the local CD store.  You could get CDs for as little as a dollar.  “Cutouts” were included in these, where the CD case was notched or drilled to identify it as discounted.  Then, some stores started selling used CDs, but the real place to go for deals was pawn shops.  Pawns shops would have walls of CDs, most always unsorted, which was a real PIA, but really rewarding when you found something you liked.

Now, pawn shops can’t make any money on CDs (and DVDs are quickly approaching that critical mass as well).  What’s the next step after a pawn shop?  A thrift store.  People can’t even sell their CDs, so they just give them away.  That’s where I’ve been having better fortune – at thrift stores.  Yes, I am lucky to have a local used CD store with three locations around me, and their values are usually really good.  But I’ll tell you, if I owned those CD stores, I’d be making regular rounds of thrift shops and picking up well-known albums for super-cheap and selling them in my store.

The one other place you might have some luck is at flea markets.  Sometimes, it’s just some person selling off their personal collection, along with all their other household junk.  Sometimes, it’s a budding business that can’t afford a retail space.  The downside of flea market shops is that there is a very low turnover and new product comes in very infrequently.  So usually, you hit them once and you can be done at that place for a year or so.

How Staples Is Enticing Me

Posted by on January 28, 2016 No comments

I get emails from Staples because sometimes they’re pretty good with coupons and whatnot.  They show up just about every day.  What isn’t very good about them (aside from the frequency) – and this is a rapidly deteriorating condition – is their subject lines.  I have a pretty deep-seated hatred for click-bait headlines, and running close behind that is a distaste for pointless headlines.  Here’s a bunch of recent examples:

  • ⌛ You hit it big! Open asap for a COUPON!
  • We need your attention! 20% off toner
  • Access: GRANTED.  Buy 1, get the 2nd 50% off!
  • Don’t waste this ☞ You’re first in line to get this COUPON for 20% off…
  • We dare you to miss out: Your sneak peek is here.
  • You’ve unlocked it! It’s official, you’re in. >>Save 60%<<
  • You were chosen: Last-minute gifts inside.
  • You checked your inbox just in time: Get up to $280 off.
  • Let’s see you resist this: COUPONS inside! You hit it big.
  • You rock! You checked your inbox just in time: Get up to $300 off laptops!
  • 🙂 Yes, it’s true! What are you waiting for?

This goes on and on.  Each time I think I have enough examples, they just keep coming…  Who the hell is writing this garbage?  Are they speaking to children?  Is anyone going to be fooled into thinking that they are getting some sort of exclusive offers?  So many questions.

You know when this started?  10/16/2015.  And it was identifiable by the first emoji ever used in the subject line of their emails.  This suggests that the marketing person is young and hip.  Young and hip doesn’t always mean smart.  Just as the younger generation is failing to learn proper composition in its many forms, they are woefully ignorant about business communications.  Staples is a business supply company and primarily communicates with professionals.

Regardless of the target audience, which is being completely ignored here, there are some simple rules with regard to correspondence, whether electronic or physical.  The rule being shat upon here is: “The subject line identifies the context of the letter”, as in “This letter is regarding…”  This is not achieved with “You were chosen” or “We dare you to miss out”.  Seriously, you, a company, are extending a challenge to me, a potential customer, to not purchase something from you.  I don’t think you realize just how easy that is to do.

Ok, I’ll admit, I don’t know if the marketing person/people are “young”.  But they definitely seem to be “young” in experience.  To be honest, the subjects really seem like they were written “offshore” by spam/scam professionals.  I can say that Staples trying to portray itself in this fashion is definitely a turn-off.  If I want to shop at a goofy store, I’ll go to Ollie’s Bargain Outlet.  Not even Big Lots has such corny emails.

Schrodinger’s Lottery

Posted by on January 14, 2016 No comments

This morning, I woke up and I had won the Powerball jackpot.  And at the same time, I did not win it.  I was, for a brief while, Schrodinger’s cat.  And I could have remained in that state for as long as I wanted, provided I did not seek the truth or have it exposed to me by some means.

That period of time lasted longer than I thought.  I checked the news and learned there were three winners.  No change in status yet.  One of the winners was in my state.  Still no change in status.  I made it another couple hours all the way into work until I overheard a co-worker saying the ticket was sold in another city in the state.  Then, I knew my status.

Still, the idea of Schrodinger stuck with me.  Not being a quantum theory expert, my understanding is that anything can be in an infinite variety of states and doesn’t become actuality until it is observed.  The idea can really mess with your head especially if you have a good imagination.  There could be a skeleton behind you right now, but you won’t know until you turn around and confirm that.  If you wake up in the middle of the night, you could actually be dead.  You won’t know until someone can confirm to you that you are not.  Validate me!

If you have heard of or studied Theosophy, there is the idea that our spirit, or astral body (yes, the same astral as in astral projection), is so like our physical body and the astral world is so like the physical world, that upon a sudden death, many people aren’t even aware they are dead.

Quantum theory also suggests that there are infinite universes where all other alternatives exist.  Who observed them, I have no idea.  but whoever observed this one didn’t win me any Powerball.  Thanks for that.  But congratulations to my quantum fellows who did win.  See if you can get someone to observe some of that stuff my way.

Late Night Thoughts (But Torture Is Discussed)

Posted by on December 18, 2015 No comments

I’m coming down with a cold (I don’t get sick).  Last night was the transition from a scratchy throat to a runny nose.  Obviously, I was kept awake.  During one of my wake-up sessions, I had a thought:  Getting death threats from people could be pretty scary.  But if you got a death threat from a death metal band, I don’t think it would be scary at all.  How could you even take it seriously?

“I’ll rip out your guts!” – Yeah, ok.  I hear ya.

“I’ll murder you while you sleep!” – You said that on your last two albums.

“You will be tortured for years and years!” – Blah, blah, blah.

And threats like that, whether you hear them from a death metal band or from someone who is trying to express how they don’t like you, are, by-and-large, empty.  It’s what I will call a “smorgasbord of torture.”  The person has no clue what they are going to do to you, so they say they’re going to do it all.  Break your legs, crush your skull, rip out your tongue.  Yawn.  Do they even know how much effort those things take?  Do they even know how a body works?  Clearly, you can’t rip out someone’s guts and torture them for years.  It’s not realistic.  And what, in the realm of death metal music, is ever realistic?

Now, what you have to watch out for is someone who makes a threat and then starts making the threat more and more specific and detailed.  This person knows.  This person has a plan.  This person is the one to be feared.

So yeah, I hope I feel better soon.  It’s the holiday season, after all.

The Way It Is

Posted by on December 8, 2015 No comments

Recently, I was at a thrift shop, shopping for CDs, and I picked up Bruce Hornsby’s The Way It Is album.  I’ve heard the title track plenty of times on the radio, but I’ve never really listened to it.  When I did, I was disgusted to hear that the song has the same 4-beat drum machine pattern playing through the entire song: four and a half minutes.  No rhythm changes, no drum fills, no cymbals, nothing.  Just the same beat.  You can almost imagine Bruce playing the intro, then reaching over and pressing Start on the drum machine.  The song even fades out since there’s no programmed drum ending.

Absolutely horrible.  And that song was a hit!

But, that’s not what this post is about, even if the message of the song is somewhat relevant.  This morning, I was reading a news story about a police officer shooting an armed suspect during what may have been a standoff.  The details of the situation aren’t important.  I was struck by the reporting of the story.  When I finished reading, I had the thought, “was the guy black?”  I went back and re-read it and there was no mention of the suspect’s race.  Huh.

Well, we can probably assume he was white, then.  But that made me wonder, why do news stories always indicate the race of the people involved when they aren’t white?  The person’s race has nothing to do with the story unless it involves race, and sometimes, not even then.

This reminds me of a time I was reading a local newspaper from my hometown area.  I had moved away a long time ago and come to the understanding of how prejudiced that tiny area was.  The story was more or less, “Police are investigating a report of an assault on a white female by a black male that occurred late Friday night.”  Take out “white” and “black” and the story is still accurate, but doesn’t stir up any racial biases. 

There’s a natural tendency for people to call out differences.  Like if you give directions, you reference places that are different and easily identifiable.  I think this has something to do with the fact that we crave novelty.  But to specify a person’s race in a news story is almost saying, “this person is different and easily identifiable.”  And I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t work the other direction, too.  In black culture magazines, they probably use “white” a lot, because it’s different than the “normal”, their majority black readership.  I honestly don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised, nor would I be offended.

What I’m trying to say is what is being treated as a detail is not a detail unless it is a detail.  For example, in that news story from my old hometown, the man’s identity is known, so his race is irrelevant.  That would be different than “Police are asking for help finding a man involved in a fight yesterday at The Local bar.  The man is white and balding, and referred to himself as Chuck.”  That’s something you need to know in order to take action.

So, as an exercise for all of us, next time you read a news story, look for the race card being played, say to yourself, “that’s not necessary”, and self-censor it.  See if the story reads just as well without those details.