Serving You More By Providing Less

Posted by on April 17, 2013 No comments

Long after I’ve stopped using Quicken, the emails still continue to amaze me.  Here’s the quote to start off this topic:

“Many of our customers ask why we discontinue certain services and the answer is simple—to better serve you.“

Today I got an email from Quicken stating that I had to upgrade to Quicken 2013 because they were shutting down services for Quicken 2010.  Which services? 

  • Transaction downloads
  • Online Bill-pay through Quicken (not sure if that’s different from banks’ EFT-style payments)
  • Stock quotes and portfolio management through Quicken
  • Technical Support (except online self-service)

Well, 3 of the 4 items are Quicken-provided services, so if they want to shut them down, I don’t have an issue with that.  It’s the first item that bugs me.  The transaction download portion has a server component and a client component.  The Quicken software is the client.  The banks run the server component. 

I know how banks operate: slowly.  There isn’t any way Quicken could force banks to update their software by their imposed deadline.  Many banks will have these libraries integrated with their own software, so there would need to be some rewriting involved and major amounts of testing and documentation.  Not going to happen.

What option does that leave?  Time-bombing the client so that it will become inoperable on a specific date.  Downloading transactions is what the majority of people would use.  The bill-pay, I’m not sure of.  But, in order to better serve you, we think it’s best to not let you do this any more.

I can’t remember if I still have Quicken installed somewhere or not, but I’m going to be testing this out.  First, if they did manage to get all the banks to upgrade their code and change the format of the QIF file, then it should fail to import into MS Money.  Otherwise, I’ll guess that you can manually download transaction files and import them.  This is a slight inconvenience, but it’s not rendering Quicken unusable.  However, at that point, you have the same level of functionality of MS Money Sunset, so why not use a better application?

Here’s the bottom line.  There’s nothing new in banking.  There’s no reason to upgrade banking software.  Quicken is milking this cash cow for as long as they can.  By practicing forced obsolescence, they are forcing their customer base to choose between paying forever or leaving them.  I made my choice.  Mint.com is certainly helping people make a choice. Hmmm.  I think I need to revisit mint.com and see what’s happened since the last time I gave them a try.

Change For The Good, Right Now

Posted by on April 10, 2013 No comments

In the “these things happen to other people” news, I’ve been a target of a hacker.  As hacks go, it was fairly significant – my EBay account.  The hacker bought a whole bunch of stuff, surprisingly not using my linked PayPal account.  EBay locked my account quickly, notified me, and took care of most all the issues with fees and listings.  Regardless, I felt obligated to apologize to a bunch of people who got caught up in the mess.  One person had actually shipped the product by the time I emailed them.

I’ve been online a long time and my password strength has grown with the ever-increasing threat.  I’ve felt I’ve had a decent password, but I suffer from what a lot of people probably do, and that is password entropy – using the same password on every site.  Well, that’s not entirely true since I do use a variant of my main password for those sites that don’t support the special characters I used.

Now it’s time to get real.  Just before I discovered my eBay account was hacked, I had dealt with some spammer sending me over 7000 emails of random text.  So I was giving consideration to changing my email address, and why not have a different email address for every site?  So my email address for Bank of America would be bankofamerica.com@mydomain.com and for Expedia it would be expedia.com@mydomain.com.  This would be relatively easy to remember and would identify if anyone sold my email address to another company or if my email was stolen or harvested.

But at the time, I felt a bit overwhelmed with the task of changing ALL my emails.  Now, since I have to change ALL my passwords, I might as well go through with it.  In addition, I’ve decided to use a password manager, KeePass.  It seems to be a pretty slick utility and I’m surprised I never gave it a chance before. I think my main reason for avoiding it was that I never wanted to be unable to access a website because I didn’t know my password.

But upon closer inspection of that fear, it is very similar to other fears that keep you from (positive) change.  The fringe cases override everything.  It seems everyone is afraid of the word “can’t,” because it is only interpreted in its absolute and permanent sense.  It’s not “I can’t do this,” it’s “I can’t do this right now.” And the “right now” part is what makes the modern time so awesome, hectic, and dangerous.

So, with KeePass, I can have a password file on my home computer and there’s a version for my phone that I can keep synched.  That should be well enough to let me do what I need when I need to.  And for the other cases, it’s going to have to be the other person disappointed when I say “I can’t” because I’m not going to let it control me.

Quit It

Posted by on April 8, 2013 No comments

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/why-quit-job-now-151346969.html

Now here’s a real doomsday article:  Quit your job or get fired.  And this speaks to the heart of the problem – 24-hour news, which has certainly caused a serious decline in people’s outlook on life.

Let’s start with the basic problem of 24-hour news.  You need to fill up your time with something. So you pull anything that will attract an audience, which usually means extremist positions.  Putting the sensationalism aside for a moment, watch the news for a while and see how much of it has any bearing on your day.  Miners trapped somewhere?  Landslide in South America?  Violence in the Middle East?  What’cha gonna do about it?

So you hear about this every single day.  There’s always a crisis somewhere, why do we have to absorb the world’s misery?  How long can we do it before we become tainted by that misery?  It’s too late.  When did this change?  1980.  The start of CNN.

Older generations remember “the nightly news”.  You had an hour, maybe two hours of news.  And the harsher news was the 11 o’clock news, which was reserved for adults who stayed up that late.  When CNN came, there was news all the time, which then spawned competition, and we go from there.

It’s no surprise that since that time, people have become less trusting, more cynical, and more paranoid.  If you hear a story every single day about rapists, it doesn’t matter that every story is in a different city thousands of miles away from you, the news makes it sounds like it’s local.  You act more defensively, which makes other people act defensively.  Then you end up where no one will help anyone.

But anyway, back to the story.  Here’s a person listing the reasons why your job is worthless and if you don’t quit now, you’re just going to get fired.  It’s a terribly narrow-sighted view of employment.  Is he right?  Sure, for some positions in some industries.  But he applies the fear to everyone, pitting employees against their employers.  He fosters distrust, which become material when it is fully believed.

I read a line somewhere that said “Nobody ever gets fired.  They always fire themselves.”  When someone starts suspecting that they are being targeted, they’ll behave in a way that invites suspicion.  “What I fear most has come upon me.”  If you want to take that further, you could apply it to all of the negative news that is programming people to expect the worst.  Personally, I’ve never been happier since giving up on TV and news.

In this article, the pundit says some pretty silly things, like  “If you’re stuck in a cubicle, you have a target on your back.  Temp staffing is sweeping the nation.”  What business operates fully on temp labor?  A business has processes and rules.  Why would a business bring on a bunch of temps, train them, dispose of them, and then do it all over again?  From a meeting I just had yesterday, my employer invests about 50k to keep an employee for one year.  That’s why we want to hire the right person the first time.

The 10 reasons to put in your 2-week notice list is so random and contradictory that I can’t even address it.  “Money is not happiness” and “Abundance will never come from your job” are a couple of head-scratchers.

So, with all of this doom and gloom talk, what’s the proposed solution?  Not sure.  A “compromise” is offered where you can keep your job (while you can, I guess) and do side work or start a new business of your own.  But the actual solution?  The title says to quit your job.  The pundit says temp staffing is sweeping the nation.  The pundit also says that companies are replacing employees with cheaper temp staff.  So, the solution must be to quit your job and work as a temp for less.  Which works out well for the pundit since he’s in with a temp staffing company.

What kind of gall does it take to help companies destroy their workforce and then tell the remaining workers, “Just give up, already.”

Deviation

Posted by on April 6, 2013 No comments

In a Talking Heads song, there is a line, “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.”  In statistical terms, the enjoyment level of heaven would be 100% with a standard deviation – or variance – of zero.  The song tries to express that as long as the deviation is zero, the enjoyment level could be 100%, 80%, 40%, or 0% and it would all be the same.  Because, without variance, how would you know any different?

An oft-used phrase, “It’s all relative,” has more meaning than we typically intend when we casually toss it out.  Any evaluation of any experience is based upon past experience.  Our report of that experience is either expressed in relative terms or, failing a basis of comparison, a threshold evaluation.  How was your day yesterday?  “Good.”  Good, relative to other days I’ve had.  How was your skydive yesterday?  “Awesome!”  Awesome, compared to other activities like working.  Or maybe, “Good.”  Good, compared to dying.  Living through an experience is an example of a threshold evaluation.

I bring all this up in memory of getting over a nasty cold.  I don’t get sick.  Well, although that sounds like an absolute, I mean I don’t get sick with any regularity.  Less than once a year.  Living like that, you forget and take for granted how good it feels to be healthy.  My standard deviation was falling.

This can apply to just about anything in life.  You don’t know how bad (or good) your relationship was until you start a new one.  You don’t know what life can be like when you’re suffering chronic pain.  You don’t recognize how convenient having a car is until your car doesn’t start.  Breaking out of a rut is nothing more than adding a deviate sample to your population in order to increase the mean.

Acknowledgement Received

Posted by on April 4, 2013 No comments

Sometimes it’s difficult to determine what the norm is for service in the current day.  For such a long time, I’ve been told that customer service is the differentiating factor in successful businesses.  Businesses that sell products compete on price, selection, and service.  The way I look at it, you can get anything at any time, thanks to the Internet.  Then it becomes a matter of convenience and time determining what you’re willing to pay.  And with products, service is almost an afterthought, especially in this self-service age.  But what about when the product is a service?  You’re competing on price, quality, and service.  This is the tradeoff triangle, Good/Fast/Cheap – choose any two.

The other day, I called a car dealer near my workplace for some service.  It would be more convenient for me to go there since my local dealer is farther away and I’d need to schedule for a Saturday.  Asking for the service department, the phone then rang a few times and went to voice mail.  I found this odd.  I was expecting to wait on hold for a tech to pick up.  So I left a message.  That was at 12:30.  When I left work at 4:30, I hadn’t gotten a call back.  I called again and ended up in voice mail again.

Like I said, it’s difficult to tell if this is normal, modern customer service.  Personally, I think it’s terrible.  Maybe I’m a snob, maybe I’m unrealistic.  When someone is calling you and they want to give you money – and my voice mail message listed the services I wanted, which would be a decent sized bill – you should jump on the opportunity.  Further, I am a new customer, so this is my first impression, however, I can’t think that an existing customer would feel any differently.

So what was I expecting?  I was expecting to sit on hold.  And I think at some point in the past, this would have been unacceptable for some, but I was fine with it.  Being in a phone queue is pretty normal nowadays.  If things were average, I would just sit and wait for a long time.  If the service level was better than usual, I would ring back to the receptionist, who would ask if I’d like to leave a message or keep waiting.  If the service was even better than that, the service manager would jump on, explain he was busy and ask if I’d like to wait or leave my callback info.  The key here is being acknowledged by a person.  This is why it is very quickly becoming commonplace to be greeted by the whole staff when you walk in the door.  “Welcome to Firehouse!” “Welcome to Rita’s!” “Welcome to Subway!”  It sounds hokey, but it really does work.  But for my experience, I spoke to no people and I ended up talking to a generic voicemail box.  I wasn’t even acknowledged.

It seems that a phone system upgrade could fix this issue, for me, anyway.  My suspicion is that the service dept. knows that calls get kicked to voicemail after 4 rings, so there is a lack of urgency and unless they aren’t doing anything at that moment, they’ll just wait it out.  The phone should keep ringing and not give them an opportunity to ignore a customer.

At this time, more than 24 hours has passed, so I guess they don’t want my business.

Hidden Windows Features

Posted by on April 2, 2013 No comments

Windows 8 has gotten a lot of press, mostly negative, for the Metro Start screen and the lack of the traditional Start menu.  In all that debate and discussion of the pros and cons of the new design, a few obscure features that are new to Windows 8 have been overlooked,  These new functions show that Microsoft continues to innovate and improve the Windows product.  Some features may not be available in all Windows versions, so your experience may be different when attempting to use these.

Morse Code Entry

This functionality was added to Windows in response to a demand for increased security, especially in the military space.  A recent news story discussed how the US government was investing in major upgrades, including Windows 8.  The Morse Code Entry (MCE) system is designed to allow secure data entry for sensitive communications.

One of the most effective ways to steal information on a computer is to install a key-logger application.  These applications capture each keystroke and store it to a file for later retrieval.  This means username and passwords that are typed in are captured, along with emails, chats, URLs, and all other typed in data.  MCE defeats this by allowing text entry using Morse code.  Open up Notepad and begin a message by pressing the . key as you would on a Morse transmitter.  Windows detects the patterns and converts the dots and dashes to characters for display.  The keylogger simply records a series of periods, with no timing information between them to indicate a dot or dash.  The keylogger has been defeated.

Internet History Sync

This feature was added for US markets, but ironically was requested by some specific governments in Asia.  The simple description of the new service is that all Internet addresses accessed by a Windows 8 computer are synchronized with a central server.  It’s like your normal Internet History in IE or Chrome, but extending system-wide.  By default, this data is transmitted to a facility in an undisclosed location, operated by an unknown organization, but Microsoft is quick to point out that the data is secure and there is nothing to worry about.

From a technical perspective, this feature was extremely easy to implement, since all DNS resolution occurs in a system module.  Initial reports show little to no performance impact from this enhancement.  Although it can’t be confirmed, this feature may not be new for Windows 8, but may just be getting announced with this version.

Subliminal Mechanics Framework (SMF)

For developers, this new framework API is long-awaited.  It provides a way to inject messages into the video output that are only perceived at a subliminal level.  Most computer monitors operate at 60hz and higher, so displaying an image or a message for one of those frames would hardly be noticeable.

According to the API documentation, SMF is a great tool for any of the following:

  • Display motivational messages to keep the user working
  • Display religious messages to inspire a user
  • Display corporate messages to improve worker loyalty
  • Display “targeted” advertisements to improve sales
  • Display messages of national importance to improve compliance

SMF is currently only active when using Metro applications, which explains the urgency to deprecate all classic Windows desktop applications and replace them with Metro versions.

Internet Simplification

If you are unable to find any information on these new features on any other blog or news source, then Internet Simplification (IS) is enabled on your Windows computer.  This enhancement is being back-ported with each update to Microsoft software.  So although it’s new with Windows 8, it’s not exclusive to Windows 8.  The purpose of this application is to make the Internet easier to navigate by reducing the number of sites that have redundant information.

The Internet Simplification service leverages the search results from the Bing search engine and will redirect a web browser to the best (or first) source for the information being searched.  Since this blog post is the first source to discuss these new Windows features, it will be considered “authoritative” by IS, and will be redirected to, regardless of what search engine originally performed the search.  It’s also possible that this whole post is bullshit, but the IS service has been through a few revisions already, so the chances of a bullshit posting being flagged as authoritative by IS are pretty slim.

Talk About Growing Pains

Posted by on March 22, 2013 No comments

It was a little while ago I installed Windows 8 with great visions of developing Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 applications.  Because of an issue that I suspect was caused by Hybrid Sleep mode, I ended up rolling back to Windows 7.

That’s worked out well for me.  I continued to update my CarTracker Windows Phone 7 app for my use.  Meanwhile, I waited for the Windows Phone 7.8 update.  Since that doesn’t seem to be coming anymore, I went to T-Mobile and got myself a new Windows Phone 8.  It’s great.

So then I need to install my CarTracker app on my new phone.  I try to install the Windows Phone 8 SDK on my Windows 7 install.  Nope, you have to install it on Windows 8.  So I fire up my Windows 8 virtual machine and install Visual Studio 2012.  Then I try to install the Windows Phone 8 SDK.  Nope, you have to have a 64-bit install of Windows.  So then I scrap that VM and create a new VM, install Window 8 64-bit, install Visual Studio 2012, then the phone SDK.  That’s working now.

After getting VirtualBox talking to the phone (tip: enable USB 2.0), and getting the virtual machine to talk to TFS on my host PC (tip: bridged networking), I got the CarTracker source loaded.  Then I had to install 3rd party controls.  Finally, I could build and deploy the app.  But I couldn’t deploy to the phone, only to the emulator.  This was a simple mistake on my part. (tip: set the phone app as the startup project)

Before I converted the project to a Windows Phone 8 project, I wanted to branch the source code and get a working deployment on my old Windows Phone 7.  Windows Phone 7 requires the Zune software.  Zune software require .NET 3.5 (tip: install .NET 3.5 from Control Panel>Turn Windows Features On/Off).

It’s been many years since I’ve had to do so many steps to get something working.  This is like Linux-grade configuration and setup.  I’ve been so spoiled by well-working Windows software and such a degree of compatibility that this seems incredible.  And I think this behavior is encouraged.  Everything is all “disconnected” “loosely-connected” “loosely-coupled” whatever.  I don’t think, actually, I’ve very sure that if I wasn’t a programmer and that I hadn’t been here many years ago, when you had to take care of yourself, I would be lost.

Windows 8 is a huge gamble for Microsoft, much like XP was when there weren’t any drivers and DOS applications weren’t compatible anymore.  I guess in a couple years things will be good, but we’re in that painful time right now.  Windows Phone 7=Windows 7, Windows Phone 8=Windows 8.  Don’t try to mix them.

YOLO

Posted by on March 19, 2013 No comments

Just a little behind the times on this one.  I’ve heard a lot of this “YOLO” thing going on, and after some consideration, I’ve chosen to redefine it.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of Theosophy, the main point of it is that, as souls, we are constantly evolving through the process of reincarnation.  With each life, we are put here to learn lessons and pay back Karmic debt built up over previous lives.  As you go through these lives, you build inherent skills, which are displayed as natural talent; wisdom, which is shown as common sense; and other intangible skills like spirituality and tolerance.  “You can’t take it with you” is only for material goods.  Your soul’s qualities persist.

So, accepting the teachings of Theosophy,  you can imagine there have been souls who have been through many different lifetimes.  Some have learned their lessons well and gained all the skill, wisdom, and wholesomeness from each lifetime.  Others haven’t learned and still continue to be cruel, greedy, and intolerant.  The world is full of both types of people, you can’t doubt this.

But the world is also full of many more people.  More people on this Earth than ever before.  More bodies, more souls.  These bodies must be filled with young souls, those who have not had the experience of many lifetimes to learn how to be good.  Many that have to pay back Karmic debt through lack and suffering.  Some that are learning from their current situation, and a lot that are not.  It takes a long time to learn some lessons.

You can see this in the attitude of the younger generations.  You can see it every day in so many people.  It’s a sense of desperation.  Even driving in the city, you can sense the desperation in how people drive.  They must pull out in front of you, because they feel if they don’t, they will never get in.  Never.  That’s how the world is behaving.  Now or never.

These people don’t understand that this life is nothing.  There will be so many more lives to enjoy if you live this life right.  If you don’t, you’ll make up for it next time.  And hopefully, you’ll learn it that time.

So, for all the desperate people and their rally cry: “You Only Live Once!” I respond knowingly, “No, You’ve Only Lived Once.”

You Like It, You Buy It.

Posted by on March 19, 2013 No comments

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to overspend on a pair of shoes.  I thought of the saying, “who would ever pay retail prices” and realized there are some circumstances where it may be warranted or at least justified.

First, I was in an upscale mall.  Obviously, this is going to command high rent for the tenants.  Things haven’t been so great for the retail sector, so it was good to see the shop even still in business.

Second, the store was not a chain store, just a mom-and-pop.  If not being a reason to shop there, at least it’s a reason to give them a pass on higher prices since they can’t compete with the volume of a chain.

Third, and what I felt was the most compelling reason, was that the store had a selection of product that I had never seen anywhere else.  It was very boutique-ish, but still had a good selection of sizes and colors for each model.  There were a lot of high-end shoes – actually they were sandals – from brands you don’t see in all the chain stores.  It was as if the owners deliberately chose to not stock anything you could get somewhere else, which might have been a wise decision.

Because of that uniqueness, I chose to patronize the store in order to preserve its importance in the retail space.  Without business owners taking a chance like this and making obscure, high-quality brands and specialty models of better-known brands available, everything would be the same everywhere.  Total homogeny.  Plenty of people complain about the generic landscape of retail, but is anyone willing to put their money where their mouth is?

Mainstream Pawn, Not Just Yet

Posted by on March 16, 2013 No comments

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pawn-shops-mainstream-141414562.html

I’ve been doing pawn shops long before it was cool.  I’ve always been on the buyer side except for one time in my reckless youth, which I swore I would never do again after seeing my article with a “sold” ticket on it for $300, when I had received $30 for it when I pawned it.  In the many years I’ve been visiting pawn shops, I’ve seen some changes and some things that never change.  I’ve been in small mom-and-pops, large mom-and-pops, and chain/franchise shops and they all need help in some way.

No matter where you go, a clean pawn shop is a rarity.  They may start out clean, but they fall into disrepair faster than any other retail location.  A Cash Converters in PA used to be a pleasant “shopping” experience, but returning to it a few years later, it had become scary and depressing.  It just doesn’t seem possible to hire a staff that can overcome the futility of the pawn industry.  There is no incentive to make things nice, because it doesn’t seem to matter.  My biggest pet peeve and the issue I least understand is why doesn’t the staff at least clean the items before putting them on display?  Seriously, it’s maybe 15 minutes of time.  Surely there’s 15 minutes in a day where there are no customers needing assistance.

The next issue is that you frequently have a dozen of the same things, which is usually the same thing you can buy new anywhere else for only a little bit more money (which is point #3).  You can have six or seven Nintendo Wiis and XBoxes and PS3s.  All kinds of generic DVD players.  Bunches of power drills and other tools.  In the smaller mom-and-pops, it’s like sifting through a garage sale.  Larger mom-and-pops are like indoor landfills.  One shop I visit has bins of wrenches and sockets.  Bins.  As if someone who needs a 1/4” socket will root through the 60 or so 1/4” sockets in the bin until they find the exact one they want.

The last issue is value.  I know first-hand how little a pawn shop will pay for an item and I have seen some internal reports on the profit margins of pawn shops.  The reason pawn shops become incubators of worthless junk is because the owners or managers don’t understand turnover.  The chain that does understand this is Cash America.  They discount items based on how long they’ve been in inventory.  Other chains and mom-and-pops don’t do this.  So when I see a generic MP3 player that is priced higher than a current model would cost on Amazon, I know that item will never be sold and it will end up in the display case forever.  For as big a deal is made over pawners over-valuing the item they’re pawning, pawn shop managers are just as much at fault for hanging on to unrealistic pricing.

See, if I ran a pawn shop (and it is a possible fallback venture if I ever became unemployable), this is how I’d do it.  Obviously, the standard pawnbroker guidelines are followed, but…

  1. The store is clean.  And by clean, I mean floors, windows, counters, carpet, and seating.
  2. The pawning area is separate from the sales area.  This gives pawners some dignity and makes things less uncomfortable for buyers.  I first saw this idea at Cash Converters and it stuck with me.
  3. Items are cleaned before being put on the shelf (see #1).  Items are organized well, like CDs and DVDs.  You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to just offer to alphabetize a pawn shop’s DVD shelves for free.
  4. Believe it or not, a sparse sales area is more disconcerting than a jammed-to-the-walls area.  There is a balance that has to be found.  At the same time, there is no reason to have seven of the same model of anything on display when three will suffice.  This is especially true with CDs and DVDs.  No one wants to see The Matrix 20 times when browsing.
  5. Items are discounted by age and social media would be used to communicate the discounts. 
  6. Online inventory searches would be a must.
  7. My secret marketing trick: if there are multiple of an item, price one or two at the price you want to get, then mark all the others up at a higher price.  When the cheap one sells, mark down one of the others.  The buyer feels they got a better deal relative to the other ones offered.
  8. Secret marketing trick #2: Bundling.  Like in the example of the tool bins, bundle them.  Find all the sockets to make a full set, match them up with some other tools and sell a whole tool set cheaply.  Sell ladders with electric pruners, sell air compressors with bikes, sell matching component stereo pieces.  Come on, all these pieces are your inventory, they don’t have to be treated as individual items.  This reminds me of an estate auction I was at where if the auctioneer didn’t get his minimum bid, he’d throw something else in with it.  If you wanted that new thing, you’d have to take the other stuff, too.  Turnover.  Do it or get buried.