bogen.org

As I wrote months ago, the government was seriously kicking around the idea of forgiving the mortgages of people who bought too big a house for their incomes.

For a while, it seemed like that moronic idea had been laid to rest in the cesspool of bad ideas from whence it came. Well, surprise! It’s back and with a vengence.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the current economic situation, you have to be a complete and utter moron to be living within your means. As someone said in a recent NY Times story:

“Why am I being punished for having bought a house I could afford?” he asked. “I am beginning to think I would have rocks in my head if I keep paying my mortgage.”

If the government is seriously thinking about forgiving mortgates, it seems like I should be one of the first in line. After all, I haven’t been part of the current problems’ causes, so shouldn’t I be rewarded for being part of the solution and not the problem? Well, maybe in Normal-Things-Make-Sense World, but not here in the USA, circa 2008.

Oh, and clearly, Sarah and I are stupid for operating without a month-to-month credit card deficit. After all, people who are behind on their mortgages and up to their ears in credit card debt can now get their credit card debt forgiven. How great a deal is that?!?

Apparently, the new American Ideal is as follows: First, you buy a house you can’t afford, with money you don’t have, and then fill it with big, flat screen TVs and stainless steel appliances that you finance solely on credit cards. Then, you take the equity you haven’t earned out of the house, combine that with more credit cards, and go on some pretty ass-kicking vacations around the world. Finally, you wait for the financial system to collapse around your head due to your bad decisions and those of your friends and neighbors. When that happens, your debt will be forgiven, you’ll own the house and the stuff outright, and you can start the whole process over again!

Work 9 to 5? That’s only for chumps and losers! Why work to pay your debts when the dummies who pay their debts can pay yours too through higher taxes? You’d have to crazy not to sign up for a program like that.

The more I hear about so-called rescue plans for distressed homeowners and banks, the madder I get.In the lastest crackpot scheme to come down the pike from Washington, our beloved Fed. chaiman Bernanke urged banks to forgive enough of the equity due on many mortgage loans so that homeowners with those loans will no longer be underwater. In many cases, that would be a forgiveness of tens of thousands of dollars.

Call me greedy, but I’d like ten to twenty thousand knocked off my mortgage, too! Where is the line for free equity forming these days? Knocking that much off my mortgage would save me thousands of dollars in interest payments over the life of the loan and give me a nice little cushion should I ever need to take out a home equity line of credit.

Why can’t I get a free mortgage principal adjustment, too? Why should I be penalized for managing my money and failing to get into debt well over my head? Hey, give me a chance! I can spend wildly and injudiciously like the best of them! Then, when I’m done, I want my Congressman to bail me out of my own misguided choices.

The bailout of greedy banks and stupid borrowers (or is it greedy borrowers and stupid banks) just makes my blood boil. How dumb did you have to be to believe that housing prices would continue their stratospheric climb forever? Did anyone actually believe that we’re in a new economic paradigm? Time and time again research has shown that there is no such thing. But somehow, someway, people always believe that this time things will be different.

Maybe these millions of borrowers assumed that they would all hit the lottery if they ran into trouble with their mortgage? Well, they were right. They were playing the Congressional Lottery, however, and not Powerball. And, just like any other Lottery, you can’t win if you’re not playing.

The United States Postal Service is determined to enter a profound and probably fatal spiral towards obsolescence. With its latest rate hike, Americans can now pay more for the same wildly uneven service.Most Americans don’t write many letters any more and sending a handful of birthday and thank-you cards every year isn’t exactly going to keep the Postal Service coffers full. That leaves monthly bill payments as perhaps the last regular first-class mail generating routine in the average American home.

Being the Postal Service, however, they are trying hard to shut themselves out of that market, as well. Now when you mail a twenty dollar check to someone, you have to slap a forty-one cent stamp on the envelope, a 2% surcharge. Sure, forty-one cents doesn’t sound like much, but if you start thinking of it as a 2% increase on a twenty dollar item, you might sit up and pay attention when your bank or credit union talks about paying your bills online.

What will we get for our forty-one cent stamp? The same wildly uneven Postal Service delivery and mail handling. For instance, the Postal Service regularly delivers Newsweek to our home on Tuesdays. It does that with a fairly high rate of predictability.

The delivery of Sports Illustrated, another weekly magazine, is highly unpredictable. The magazine should arrive in my mailbox on Thursdays and just less than half the time, it does so. The remainder of the time, it arrives on either Friday, Saturday, or Monday, depending on lunar cycles, the direction of the prevailing winds, and whether or 15 across in the local paper’s crossword puzzle begins with a consonant.

I can live with Friday deliveries; Saturday deliveries are less-than-ideal. There is no excuse for Monday deliveries. That leaves me with just two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) before the next issue is supposed to land in my mailbox. In addition, the magazine often covers events due to occur over the weekend. There isn’t much point reading about what might happen when the event has already come and gone.

I’ve been after the Postal Service on multiple levels to find out what’s going on. Clearly, they are able to deliver magazines with some predictability and regularity if Newsweek is any guide and that’s all I’m really asking for. However, no one at the Postal Service can explain their wildly uneven delivery record. In fact, I’ve started closely tracking the delivery of magazines so that when I next speak to the local Postal Service gurus, I’ll have hard data about actual delivery times to present.

If the Postal Service is going to charge us more, it seems only fair that we hold them up to a reasonable standard for delivery service.

Would all the Derek Jeter worshippers please catch the next train to ShutYourYapsVille?As we recently learned, it was possible for a Minnesota Twin to win the AL MVP award and not have the universe instantly collapse in upon itself in a spasm of righteous anger. However, the more I hear about how Jeter was “robbed” of the MVP award, the more I come to realize that a sudden cataclysmic end to civilization as we know it would at least quiet the shrieking furies that are disappointed Yankee fans.

What Jeter apologists forget is that not everyone in America worships at the alter of the Pinstriped Devils. It’s all well and good that Jeter is a good player on a good team, but does that make him an MVP? Apparently, the majority of baseball writers in American League towns don’t think so. And that is where the story begins and ends.

The MVP award, like the Cy Young, is handed out after votes are counted. Hence, if you don’t like the outcome of the vote, then perhaps you ought to look at what influenced the voters.

Morneau and the Twins didn’t buy the award (they squeeze nickels until the coins bleed) and an army of Washington lobbyists certainly weren’t dispatched across America to put their formidable powers of persuasion to work. In fact, deep down, the Twins probably wish that Morneau hadn’t won the award as it will now be harder to keep him for the long term due to his greater potential earning power. Winners of an MVP award simply cost more to retain.

Jeter was simply held to a high standard of performance and found wanting by MVP voters. The story is as simple as that. All the carping in the world about how Jeter should have won doesn’t change the fact that he had, at best, a good but not great year. If a good, but not great, year is now the gold standard for MVP play, then the award probably isn’t worth winning anyway and the Yankees could hand them out in the locker room like towels for all I care.

Until then, AL MVP voters clearly have stated a preference for awarding the trophy to players who have great years. Even if they don’t play for the Yankees.

It took just a bit over four days to get military assistance in any sort of meaningful numbers to New Orleans. Are we supposed to be impressed when it finally arrived?!?What can learn from the unbelievably slow military response?

• First, that most of the military folks were coming by highway or ocean from distant parts of the country.

  It is roughly 1100 miles from Madison, WI to New Orleans, LA. Google estimates that distance can be driven in just a shade under 18 hours. So, if you ordered up the local National Guard Military Police unit (which has happened) and told them to hit the road, they could be in New Orleans in under one day.

  And yet, those folks weren’t scheduled to leave until yesterday.

  One good question might be, “Why didn’t they fly?” Let’s assume there is a shortage of military transport aircraft in the United States (a valid assumption given the number currently employed in Iraq and elsewhere). How much effort would it take to charter a few commercial planes to fly troops to New Orleans? Was United Airlines realistically going to say, “Well, we’d like to fly troops to Louisiana, but we’ve got this half-full flight from O’Hare to Boise that we need to fly instead.” Sure, they’d have to land somewhere like Baton Rouge and the troops would be bussed into the city, and they probably wouldn’t have their heavy equipment with them, but they would have themselves, their uniforms, their radios, and their guns, and that’s what important. New Orleans didn’t need a company of field artillery, they needed 10,000 guys with guns interested in law and order.

  But, it seems obvious that most of the National Guard units drove to LA.

• If you look at the list of resources being sent to New Orleans, it is reasonably pathetic considering the wealth of this nation and the amount of money spent each and every year on the military. We’re supposed to feel proud that four helicopters from Pennsylvania are being sent? The 823rd Red Horse squadron is coming with fifteen vehicles? Wow. Fifteen whole vehicles. Eight airlift helicopters? That’s what we get for our multi-billion dollar defense budget?

  The DoD operates about 5500 helicopters [pdf]. Not all of those aircraft are capable of picking people off rooftops or evacuating hospitals, but even those that aren’t capable of such things could be put to use. If looters are shooting at helicopters, why not simply use Apache helicopters (armored against small arms fire) to direct rescuers and troops on the ground? Helicopters traditionally used for scouting or artillery spotting could be used to assess damage, direct traffic, and the like. But, wherever the military has those 5500 helicopters stashed, it isn’t about to send more than a double-handful to New Orleans.

• There was absolutely zero planning on the Federal Government’s part for what might happen after the hurricane hit.

  Look at what’s happening at one of the Louisiana military bases. The SeaBees, also known as the United States Navy Construction Battalion, were evacuated from one of the local bases prior to the storm’s arrival. Apparently, they were told, “Don’t call us; we’ll call you.” The military is now asking the Seebees to call-in because, gosh, we could use their services and the military doesn’t know where they are.

  What colossal dimwit sends the Seabees away from a hurricane zone without clear instructions on how to communicate once the danger has passed?!? That’s like misplacing the 101st Airborne in the middle of a war.

  The Seabees. Their motto is, “Can do.” Builders of uncountable earthworks, bases, and the like in warzones and peacetime alike. Sure glad we don’t have them on the job right now. It’s not like there is a couple thousand giant civil engineering problems to be solved.

• One of my new favorite people is Lt. General Russel Honore. He’s spoken with CNN several times via telephone, and I love it when he ends his response to a question with, “Over.” That’s just too cool.

I never knew living outside the fashion mainstream could be so rewarding.Sarah and I were (unfortunately) at one of the large local malls this weekend. Our business there required us to walk from a store at one end of the mall to a store nearly at the other end (clever planning by those mall organizers; making us walk by every store in the mall). As we walked along the mall corridors, we started to wonder just which department store had suffered a massive explosion of perfume bottles. The smell was absolutely overpowering. It seemed like nearly everyone under the age of thirty that passed us in both directions exuded an odor that could be best described as “unholy.”

As we learned later, the males of the species are partially responsible for this problem. As this column points out, usage of Axe body spray is extremely popular amongst teenagers and young adults and it has a particularly strong scent:

“Thomas, like a bull to a red rag, headed straight for the cans of Axe, squatting like an arsenal of stink bombs on the drugstore shelves.

One by one, he tested the different ‘scents’ — Orion, Voodoo, Apollo, Phoenix — with macho names better suited for Marvel comics heroes or wrasslin’ stars than pheromone babe magnets.

A few squirts later, Aisle 5 looked less like Rite Aid than a World War I trench after a mustard gas attack. “

Let’s face it. No one wants to walk through a haze of B.O. By the same token, no one wants to carve their way through a cloud of airborne chemicals and perfumes as they walk past the front of Pottery Barn.

Where did Moderation go and how do we get it back? If it’s on vacation, we’ll just have to cut that vacation short.

I’m not a body spray user and I don’t play one on T.V. I don’t own any cologne or aftershave and don’t want to. I use a minty toothpaste, Ivory soap on my skin and hair, a mildly scented deodorant, and that’s about it. At the same time, no one has ever complained to me about my odor.

You probably can’t find six women alive who actually like the smell of an Axe body spray. Heck, you probably can’t find six women alive who don’t have bed memories of horribly misused and abused male cologne in high school or college. It’s just another example of the power of marketing. Marketers somehow convince people that they need a particular stench to cover up their natural scent. Of course, these same people are wearing so many other scents created by the cosmetic industries that their natural scent hasn’t been smelled in public since 1993.

On another note, I was flipping through the newspaper this weekend and I saw that Walgreens is advertising a special on Curious Britney Spears Deliciously Whipped! Body Souffle.

What the Hell is a body souffle?

I know what a regular souffle is. Heck, I think I could even make a souffle if I liked them enough to bother. That doesn’t mean I’m eager to go smearing it all over my body.

What, exactly, separates a body souffle from more prosaic items like lotion? Is it a whipped lotion? Does it actually have egg whites in it like a true souffle? Can it be eaten? Should the user bake him or herself after applying the souffle like one would a normal souffle?

Britney is far from the only transgressor here. A Google search turns up many other products calling themselves body souffles. My guess is that cosmetics companies had trademarked just about every conceivable plant, animal, and biome for their existing products and they needed a new genre from which to draw their names. And what do all people do? Yes, they eat.

This has got to be stopped before I see things like Body Barbeque Sauce, Thigh Tenderizer Rub, and Soy Sauce for Oily Hair on my store shelves.

That assumes, of course, that I could see those products on the shelves through the clouds of heavily perfumed air.

Williams Sonoma is pushing the idea of giving men across the nation personalized branding irons for Father’s Day.Without any context, I saw the irons in the paper this morning and my only thought was, “What on Earth would I use a branding iron for?”

I’m certainly not about to brand the dog, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find ten men across the nation who think that branding their kids with red-hot irons is a good idea.

Even people who might have a legitimate use for a branding iron (cattle ranchers), most likely either have a longer, stronger, better branding iron already, or they use plastic tags and the like instead of branding irons. Are there cattle ranchers out there yearning for a Williams Sonoma branding iron? (Cut to a scene of a Wyoming rancher holding his new branding iron and saying in awed tones: “This Williams Sonoma branding iron makes me feel so…New York.”)

As it turns out, the product is supposed to be used for branding steaks and chops. Right. I’m sure that all this time, my steaks and chops have been just ever so slightly below average because they haven’t been branded with my initials just before being placed on the plate. That’s definitely a product I need.

At some basic theoretical level, I always understood why open records laws were important.The idea that anyone can wander up to any governmental agency, demand information, and get it is a good idea. After all, our tax dollars pay for the generation, collection, organization, and strorage of that data. Our tax dollars pay for the bureaucrats who use that data. In the end, that data belongs to us.

Now that I find myself writing a story for one of the local newspapers where I am trying to get data from a relatively mundane city agency, I fully appreciate how important open records laws are to journalists.

I’m writing a story about automobile crashes in the city of Madison and how one of the intersections that used to be very dangerous is now quite safe. Changes made to a highway underpass a full 1/4 of a mile away from the problematic intersection freed up traffic to flow better through the intersection which reduced the number of accidents at that intersection by over 80%. Obviously, that was a change for the better. That is why we pay tax dollars for a traffic engineering department.

The Madison Traffic Engineering department publishes an annual crash report every year in late July or early August. This report contains a variety of information about crashes around the city between motor vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians. Quite frankly, it is an excellent piece of information that is freely available to the public.

In the course of working a different angle of a story, I learned that the vast majority of the data for 2004 is sitting on Traffic Engineering’s computers. They just don’t release it until later in the summer for two reasons:

1. They like to check their data against data they get from the state DOT, even though the two data sets vary little.
2. They like to stage manage the release of the data later in the summer so that all the newspapers get the data at the same time.

So, when I found out that I could get the data sooner than everyone else, and just by asking, I went for it.

My requests for the data were met with stonewalling and lame excuses. Clearly, they were trying to put me off until later in the summer when it wouldn’t matter if they gave me the data I wanted.

So, at the urging of a local newspaper editor, I filed an open records request for the data.

Again, I got more stonewalling from the staff of Traffic Engineering. Now, I was just getting it from someone higher on the totem pole.

So, I’m still working on getting the data I (partially) paid for with my taxes from people whose salary I (partially) pay.

Hopefully, this goofy soap opera will end soon.

Recently, we purchased a digital camera from Circuit City. They offered a good price on-line, so we ordered the camera from their website, and picked up the camera from one of their local stores. All in all, that should be the end of the story right?Wrong.

Ever since that day, I get at least one call a day from 804-747-6434. When I answer the telephone, the person on the other end of the line never speaks and when I don’t answer the telephone they never leave a message.

So, I called the telephone number in question the other day and who should it be but the Circuit City Extended Warranty department.

Apparently, since I opted not to be voluntarily ripped off at the time of purchase, Circuit City has employed a building full of trained weasels to telephone me once a day. Now, it’s not clear to me what purpose that serves since the monkeys never speak or make any other noises on the other end of the line. If they were trying to sell me an extended warranty, it might help if they spoke or otherwise attempted to communicate in some method that I could understand.

Really, what’s it gonna take to make Circuit City die the death it so richly deserves? The company has been on the brink of bankruptcy for years and yet every year it just barely hangs on and lives to torture us all with shady business practices that are just this side of outright fraud.

If they’re going to employ hard-sell and shady sales tactics, at least they could have the courtesy to be a successful company. Instead, they let their competitors like Best Buy (who is being sued by the state of Wisconsin for underhanded and illegal business practices, by the way) gobble up their business.

The moral of the story is that if you purchase something from Circuit City, you should expect them to start harrassing you at all hours if you decline the Extended Warranty. After all, someone has to keep that building full of weasels busy.

Today, I got a letter from my alma mater, Tufts University. The letter was a warning that information about 106,000 alumni has probably been stolen off a computer.My first thought was, “WTF?!?”

My next thought was, “That is so Tufts.”

Let me expand those obviously highly condensed thoughts for those scoring the game at home.

Identity theft by electronic means has been prominently reported in the news for the last year or more. Almost every single week, one organization or another reveals that information about tens or hundreds of thousands of people has been stolen. Does the word “ChoicePoint” mean anything to anyone?!?

And yet, here are the nitwits at Tufts, motoring along in their business as usual mindset. Most likely, they thought that no one would ever target a small liberal arts college for computer crime.

One part of the letter reads:

Recently, Tufts detected abnormal activity on a server managed by an external vendor which supports the University's Advancement telefund operation. We immediately took steps to strengthen security for electronic records containing credit car and/or social security numbers.

Hey, nice work folks. I like how they strengthened security after someone had already cracked the system. How’s that for shutting the barn door after the cows have already gotten out? That’s like watching every house on your street suffer burglaries but doing nothing to increase the security of your home. Then, when your home is robbed, you express shock, and immediately run out and install a series of deadbolt locks on all the doors to your now empty house.

Did the dim bulbs in the Tufts IT department ever think about strengthening security before one of their systems got cracked? Did the thought that perhaps they should audit their security systems and protocols in light of the theft of information from Boston College, ChoicePoint, and others ever cross their little minds? Does Tufts offer a remedial course in network security and what will it take to get the Tufts IT department enrolled?

Learning from the experiences of others and assessing your own vulnerabilities are such utterly basic principles of security that I question exactly what the folks in Tufts IT do know. Clearly, they’re not terribly familiar with network security.

Of course, no one will pay for their simpleton IT work with their jobs because the high muckety mucks (who don’t know the difference between CAT5 and “Cats: The Musical”) will be fed some stupid whitewash story by the IT head honcho. There will be some disappointed mumbling, a few pointed fingers, and the whole thing will disappear into the morass of college bureaucracy.

That leads me to my second thought.

Tufts could be a great university. It won’t be, but it could. What ultimately holds it back is a general attitude among the students and faculty that nothing exciting or interesting ever happens there. Students leave campus to party at BC, BU, Harvard or MIT. Faculty run the gamut from great to University of Northern Antarctica rejects. For every competant staff member, there are four members of the bureaucracy that are so awful, I would gladly drop live weasels in my underpants if I could avoid dealing with those staff members ever again (hello, Bursar’s Office).

Even while we were there, the IT department was struggling. This was back in the early, early days of the Internet when you pretty much had to be at a University to get online. All students got their e-mail through one mainframe and yet, you never saw such trouble getting one mainframe working. They had complete control of the computing environment and yet they just couldn’t get things to work consistently and well.

There was never any real campus uprising about the problems. You never heard anyone complain. It was always just, “Oh, bummer. The mainframe is down again.” There was no pressure put on the IT department to improve. There was no incentive for them to fix the problems once and for all. In short, it was as though no one cared.

That is what I mean when I say that this incident is so Tufts.

The Tufts IT department clearly didn’t care enough to audit their systems and protocols. They clearly didn’t care enough to reinforce their network security. They clearly didn’t expend enough effort educating their user base about what they, as users, could do to ensure the security of the network.

In addition, it is clear that the University’s administration didn’t care enough to question the University’s IT department after reading about information theft from other organizations. Competant administrators would ask questions, offer to clear roadblocks, and in general, do their part to make sure that the network is secure. My guess is that the Tufts Regents and the University President don’t have a clue what was done in light of the obvious threat to shore up the network.

So, Tufts paid for their malaise and incompetance. They spent $41,000 sending letters to thousands of alumni. They got written up in newspapers as yet another victim. And, they virtually ensured that every time they ask for an alumni’s credit card number, the alumni will say, “Why don’t I just post it on a billboard over a busy highway and save you the trouble.”

Some things that have gotten under my skin of late.Great.

For the longest time, whenever a retail clerk would say, “Thank you” while handing me a receipt, I would mindlessly respond, “Thank you.”

One day, this struck me as rather pointless. For what, exactly, am I thanking them? Thanks for not insulting me? Thanks for taking my money? Thanks for selling me things I either need or want?

So, I tried “You’re welcome” a few times. After all, that is the natural response to “Thank you.” That bombed badly. As a general rule, the clerks for some reason thought I was being snotty.

I don’t like to just take my receipt and walk away without saying something back, to give the conversation some closure, so I experimented with some other canned responses. “Have a good one” either resonated with the clerk or bombed badly. “You bet” was just a bit too sterotypical Midwesterner.

After a time I settled on, “Great.”

“Great” is positive, without being chipper. It is friendly without being overly friendly. It implies nothing about the clerk’s attitude or abilities. It doesn’t need any sort of verbal response. It makes just enough sense that no one thinks I’m a wacko, yet it is just dissonant enough that it short circuits further conversation. In short, I find it a great way to give closure to any sort of customer/clerk interaction.

X11 and Font Handling

For all the great strides that Free and Open Source software has made in the last ten years, the font handling of software like XFree and X.org is pathetic.

MacOS figured out font handling years ago. To add a font to the system, one simply dropped the font suitcase on the System Folder and the system took care of the rest of the work.

In X11, adding a font is only slightly less work than rewriting the OS kernel from scratch. Apparently it just hasn’t gotten through to the X11 developers yet that I don’t particularly want to take advanced classes in typography to use a couple more fonts on my system. I might know an awful lot about computers, but I struggle every single time with adding fonts to X11.

In the olden days, the X server simply mucked around inside the font directories that were listed in the XF86Config file. Then, we were graced with the X Font Server (xfs). Oh yeah, that was an improvement. That moved some of the complexity outside of the primary X server, but also left in all the original direct directory font munging code to confuse and muddle users’ minds.

Debian tried to address this with their defoma system. That was a mistake. Defoma is simply the same complexity masked with a layer of poorly documented obscurity.

The first person or group of people to simplify font handling under X11 ought to get some sort of award.

I’m poped.

Let’s bury the man and get on with our lives already. Twenty plus pages of Pope coverage in just one section of the Sunday paper? Does that seem excessive to anyone else?

Justice, Wisconsin style

What’s it going to take to end the Michael Jackson trial? I am tired of seeing his ugly mug every morning as I read the paper. The man shows up for court in pajamas and this is newsworthy?!? Were there people on the planet who were unaware that the man is loony?

I will say this about Wisconsin’s court system: it sometimes takes a little while for a trial to start, but once it gets rolling, we like ‘em short and sweet. Wisconsin convicted Jeffrey Dahmer in three weeks; does anybody think a Wisconsin jury wouldn’t make short work of Michael Jackson?

Nice Tights. Where were you in January?

Now that Spring is back from its vacation in Florida, many of my fellow bikers are on the road again. Of course, many of the two-wheeled hoard are the kind that the bicycle companies love.

These folks can be easily identified by their really expensive bikes and their full-body bicycling attire. Usually, I get a good look at these folks as I pass them on my twenty year-old, steel-framed, single speed. Riding through the winter gives me a definite advantage over these folks when it comes to Spring riding.

On the Madison Freecycle list yesterday, someone sent a pair of e-mails to the list offering up some dwarf hamsters for adoption in one e-mail and some computers for parts in the other.

Once they had some responses to their e-mails, they sent another e-mail to indicate that the various items were spoken for. That e-mail carried the following, unintentionally funny, subject:

PENDING: Hamsters and Computers for parts

Some random thoughts that are rattling around in my head.Heard on NPR tonight that certain individuals are concerned about the fact that Saddam Hussein might not face the death penalty.

Dummies.

Don’t they remember that our current President was Governor of Texas, the state that has executed more people in this country than any other? Shrub didn’t exactly have a lengthy record of commuting those sentences either.

The seed catalogs started arriving in the mail last week. I can only label them “vegetable porn.” Looking at all those succulent, fresh, ripe vegetables picked at their peak…You’ll excuse me if I relish a few dirty thoughts. (That’s a gardening pun, for those still wondering if what I wrote would pass FCC decency rules).

We had sixty degree weather on Sunday. It is difficult to contemplate the fact that we will probably experience another snowstorm before March is done.

Money simply cannot buy good taste. Money can rent good taste; money can employ good taste. But money cannot get you a good taste infusion.

What have we done to deserve being punished with extensive media coverage of the Michael Jackson fiasco, I mean, trial?

Why is it so damn difficult to get good Mexican food?

Last week, I visited a local dentist to get some fillings. As anyone who has ever had dental work might expect, that was a huge mistake.Before I went to see the dentist, I really had no issues with my teeths’ performance. I asked them to chew all manner of edible goods, and they did their job.
Since my teeth have always been sensitive to cold, I returned the favor by not to asking them to chew really cold foods like ice cream, ice, and the like.

So, last Tuesday, I showed up at the dentist office to get three fillings. I should mention that the dentist in question moved into a new building the day before I arrived, so no one was quite sure where everything was and how it was going to work.

However, after one and one-quarter hours, the dentist proclaimed his work done. He then gave me all sorts of onimous warnings about how he might have to give me two root canals because he had to drill so deep into two of the teeth. My reaction at the time was, “Then why even bother with the fillings? I know you have a new building to pay off, but this is ridiculous.”

Anyway, I went home and spent the rest of the day with a throbbing cheek and set of gums.

I noticed almost immediately that one of the teeth on which the dentist had operated was incredibly sensitive to cold. Even swishing water from the tap around in my mouth was a very unpleasant experience. I decided that might just be tenderness that would wear off over time.

Well, its now Monday, and the tenderness has only gotten worse, rather than better. In addition to cold, the tooth is very sensitive to sugary foods and acids (like those found in grapefruit). Of course, those are two classic signs of cavities. I didn’t have any problems with those foods before, which makes me wonder if the damn dentist drilled a bigger hole in the tooth than he bothered to fill!

So, this morning, I started calling over to the dentist’s office, trying to get an appointment.

The first call ended with me on hold for ten minutes before I hung up.

The second ended with me being transferred to a voicemail box that “has not been initialized.”

The third ended with me being given a different phone number to call that is supposed to ring at the “new building.” I was then transferred to a voicemail box that “has not been initialized.”

The fourth call ended up with someone who wanted to transfer me (probably to that same voicemail box) before I stopped them. They then told me that the person with whom I need to speak is “at the other building.” If they’re at the new building, what building is this and what good is the number that I got in call number three?!? They did take my number and say they would get back to me.

So, I took some aspirin for my teeth and started hoping that they will call me back.

Finally, they called me back and told me to come over in one-half hour. We’ll see what Satan’s drill-happy running dog has to say for himself.

Today, I called a US airline because one of their automated systems called to tell me that a trip I had planned on their airline had been changed.

You can only imagine my delight when I discovered that the airline in question had helpfully installed yet another voice recognition system to handle much of their call center chores.In the interest of full disclosure, let me start by saying that I hate automated telephone systems. In fact, if I could find a stronger word than hate, I would use it. I suppose I could string together a series of words to more accurately express my feelings, but since at least twelve of those words would be expletives, I’ll leave that as a mental exercise for the reader.

There is nothing worse than calling a company to accomplish some relatively well defined task and finding yourself ear to processor with a voice recognition telephone system (known as a “speech enabled telephone system” in the biz). Speech enabled telephone systems never work correctly. Amtrak’s, for instance, is funny if you don’t need it to do anything for you, but frustrating as hell if you need information from it.

The problems with speech enabled telephone systems (SETS, hereafter) are numerous.

SETS require you to speak in a manner that is wholely unlike regular conversation. You can always tell when someone other unfortunate has encountered a SETS:

• They start speaking various bits of information as incantations into the handset with no surrounding context.
• Their voice attempts to lose all inflection (since we all know how crappy SETS technology really is and how poorly it handles dialects and accents).
• Frustration immediately creeps into their voice. I’d love to put a voice stress analyzer on someone dialing up a SETS-saddled number. I’d wager money that nearly 99% of people experience increased stress when dealing with a SETS.

One selling point of SETS technology is that it supposedly makes it more “natural” for people to get information out of a system. After all, people talk all the time, so why not let them talk to a computer to get information out of the computer?

Unfortunately, speaking to computers is not easy for people to do, primarily because computers simply are not smart enough to process human languages. The interface glue, in lazy technical terms, between the human brain and the computer processor is the English language. The English language, as any foreigner will tell you, is incredibly complex.

In English, words can have multiple meanings and pronunciations depending on context. The human brain is incredibly skilled at taking a spoken sentence and deriving meaning from it without the need to first translate that sentence into text. However, computers need to translate spoken words into text that can then be lexically analyzed. From that analysis, some sort of meaning can then be derived.

If context is anything but crystal clear, computers have no choice but to make a computerized version of the WAG (Wild Assed Guess). If I say, “He’s wrapping it up right now,” humans can guess my meaning from the context in which the sentence is spoken. Computers have a much harder time than that. Their ability to judge context is so poor at this point, that attempts to judge meaning from context is more often than not going to lead the computer astray. So, the computer is left analyzing the sentence at hand without considering what has gone before it. The computer might have a hard time deciding if I meant that he is “rapping it up” (as in rhythmic vocal speaking), or if he is “wrapping it up” (as in finishing up some discrete task), or if he is “wrapping it up” (as in surrounding an object with some sort of decorative or protective packaging).

English, like all languages, also overflows with idioms. If parsing meaning from a sentence without a firm grasp of context is hard, deciphering idioms can be impossible. Even humans, with their innate grasp of language and decades of practice can be tripped up by idioms.

When I used to tutor a Korean fellow in California, he was constantly being tripped up by even the most common idioms. The guy was really smart and he was working hard to learn the language, but idioms were still far, far beyond his grasp. I noticed that even though I constantly made conscious attempts to simplify my speech around him, idioms still littered my sentences. Even really common idioms that I expected a guy in his young 20′s to encounter (“What’s Up?” for example) were completely outside of his experience.

How on earth can a computer that can hardly understand simple two-word responses or spoken letters hope to understand idioms? And, if the system cannot understand idioms, can it really be that speech enabled?

Of course not. People using speech enabled systems don’t have natural conversations with the system; they have stilted one-way question and answer sessions in which the humans attempt to modify their voice and inflections enough to satisfy the computer’s limited pattern recognition technologies.

Is that helping people? Is that making their lives easier? Do you really want the face of your company to be a brainless SETS that cannot understand simple sentences like “I changed my mind about going to Florida.”? Is that the first impression of your call center that people should get? A system that has trouble understanding clearly spoken letters and numbers?

Today, for instance, I called the airline, and immediately gritted my teeth when I recognized that a damn SETS had been installed.

The system started by asking for my frequent flyer number, which I didn’t have handy. I didn’t have that number handy because no human agent has ever started the conversation by asking for my frequent flyer number. So, right off the bat, the SETS was violating the human expectation of how a call should proceed. The process of reforming human behavior to fit machine needs had begun.

When I had to take, literally, less than twelve seconds to find it, the system responded to my silence by explaining that it could not find my number, would I please restate it? By this time, I had the number, so I spoke it into the telephone, slowly and clearly.

The system could not understand the digits I spoke into the telephone, so it prompted me to speak them again. (And how is this easier than pushing the buttons on the telephone, considering that my frequent flyer number consists entirely of digits?) So, I spoke the numbers again, even more slowly and clearly this time.

The computer gods took pity on me, found my record, and handed it to the SETS. Now, the SETS asked for my itinerary confirmation number. I spoke the six letter code slowly and clearly. I said, “L…R…G…M…8…Q.”

The computer responded, “Did you say ‘L…B…X…X…3…G’?”

No, you lousy piece of leperous water buffalo sphincter, I did not say that. So, I said my confirmation number once again, slowly and clearly. The system then responded with another equally, horribly incorrect number. I tried speaking the confirmation number three more times and three more times the computer asked if I had spoken a completely different number.

At this point, I reverted to my usual plan of attack when faced with a SETS: get to a human by any means necessary. So, I trotted out my dictionary of possible terms to short-circuit the damn computer, “Agent. Operator. Human.” I tried the terms in sequence over and over, regardless of the computer’s prompts until it finally said, “I think you want to speak to an agent. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” I practically screamed into the handset.

Once I reached an agent, the business end of the call took very little time.

Before I hung up with the agent, I asked her if she finds that customers are more frustrated when they reach her because of the new automated system. She laughed and said, “Actually, they are really nice because they are so relieved to finally reach a human.”

She explained that the new system was supposed to “help” the humans in the call center and to be a “tool” for them to use. By the tone in her voice (something else a computer could never hope to comprehend), I understood that she was clearly telling me how management had pitched the system to the call center staff it was designed to replace. Her tone also revealed that she didn’t believe a word of it.

The agent’s experience had been that, in general, most people did not get the information or help they needed from the SETS and that humans generally helped and understood the needs of humans much better than the computer. Of course, she is a biased source since her job would be one of the first to go if SETS technology were to actually be worth a bucket of warm chicken entrails. However, given my experience with SETS, and my general technological bent, I am inclined to believe she was telling the truth.

What is it going to take to rid myself of the Sierra Club and its minions?!?Several years ago, I made the unfortunate error of becoming a Sierra Club member. Generally, I agree with their projects and environmental outlook. However, much like the Eagles “Hotel California”, you can stop renewing your membership any time you like, but you can never leave.

During the weeks leading up to the November 2nd General Election, the Sierra Club called our house, no exaggeration, nineteen times. That’s nineteen times that we actually answered the telephone. If they started calling us and we didn’t answer, they called every fscking hour until we did answer. If that is not some form of harassment, I’m not sure what qualifies.

In addition to calling us ceaselessly, the Club helpfully added my e-mail address to multiple e-mail lists without first asking me if that was okay. Naturally enough, I am having trouble getting myself off of the e-mail lists. The club is decentralized much like any other outfit engaged in clandestine or subversive activities. It operates with a fair amount of autonomy with each local cell running its own servers, activities and the like. So, getting your name off of one list in one local cell does nothing to get your name off another list maintained by a completely separate local cell.

It goes without saying that we get torrents of junk mail from the Sierra Club, as well.

Some online sources report that a full quarter of the club’s membership rolls turnover every year. Given the Club’s overly aggressive money-grubbing tactics, such turnover is not surprising. People get tired of being constantly pestered with requests for more money, more money, more money. It would be like having a Salvation Army bell ringer in your bedroom.

It will be a very long time before I even consider joining the Sierra Club again. Such overly agressive hounding of former members does not deserve to be rewarded.

Recent actions by so-called Progressives really got me worked into a lather. So, I wrote a rant about it, and posted it to a local forum.

• “I could care less if Alan knows immediately how to find Paulina Street or Damen Avenue.”
• “It’s over with and I could care less to be honest with you”
• “Unlike some on the left, I’m not going to use this as an opportunity to call for a boycott on Heinz products, because I really could care less.”
• “I could care less. It’s not about me. It’s about creating wonderful places where people gather and want to live.”
• “How are lenders dealing with these unconventional pairings? ‘Lenders could care less.’”
• “To get right to the point: terrorists could care less who they kill.”
• “We’re seeing that the majority of those who send unsolicited e-mail could care less about CAN-SPAM”
• “I could care less and the sheriff could care less about where they get the authority for their cars.”
• “I can sell three records or 3 million, I could care less.”

An open letter to everyone that currently speaks the English language, may someday speak the English language, or is even aware that the English language exists:If, in the course of conversation, you wish to express disdain for a person, object, or concept, you may consider using the phrase, “I could not care less.” The use of said phrase implies that you cannot spare the tiniest iota of thought or concern for the health, well-being, or make-up of the phrase’s object.

As a general rule, the phrase “I could care less” is not what you seek. The use of that phrase implies that you do, in fact, ponder, reflect, or otherwise contemplate just how the phrase’s subject is faring. It also implies that you are personally affected by the well-being of the object of the phrase.

While omitting the “not” from the target phrase might be excused in conversation as a slip of the tongue, the same offense committed on the printed page is inexcusable and should be cause for a public flogging.

If the subtle distinction between the improper and proper forms of the phrase are too much for your feeble mind to handle, allow me to offer up some simple alternatives:

• “To hell with that.”
• “I don’t give a damn.”
• “Puhleeze…”
• “Whatever…”
• “It doesn’t matter to me.”
  Those of you watching closely may notice how closely that resembles the troublesome twosome mentioned above. However, for reasons completely beyond me, I’ve never heard anyone misuse the “doesn’t matter” form of the phrase. Well, other than swapping “don’t” for “doesn’t,” obviously, which fails to change the overall meaning, but certainly fails most grammar tests.

Please, folks. Let’s get this right. We’ve harnessed the atom. We’ve walked on the moon. We’ve cloned sheep. We’ve synthesized food colorings in our laboratories that have no analogs in the natural world. Let’s not look like shambling, mumbling mounds of water, carbon, iron, and trace elements just because we cannot remember to include a three letter adverb in a commonly used phrase.

Let’s look sharp out there. And no, I could not care less if you’re a prime offender of the nature described above and you were offended by the words in the space.

I am sick and tired of corporate lies.The next company that spams me and writes in the message that I “received this message because [I] registered to receive commercial e-mail messages” should be forced to move their entire headquarters operation to a vomit-filled North Korean alley that reeks of stale piss.

Note to corporate spammers: I’m not that stupid.

In fact, I’m damn near religious about seeking out your various not-so-tricky “Please, spam me.” check boxes and turning them off. Just because I once ordered an oven thermometer, baseball tickets, office supplies, or a garden gnome does not mean that I want to hear from you every *expletive deleted* day!

Yes, I’m talking to you Major League Baseball, Staples, Dutch Gardens, Griots Garage, Gardener’s Supply, and Kitchen Kapers. You’re all on my List at the moment, and if I were President, the military would have a slew of new targets for its ICBMs.

I get between two hundred and three hundred spam messages per day (on average). Do you honestly believe that I wanted to add to that total?

I’d like to meet the marketing genius that said, “Well, all our customers are idiots just functional enough to know which end of the mouse is up, so let’s just lie to them. They’ll never know the difference.” In fact, I’d like to meet him in a dark alley with a 2×4 in my hands.

What’s even more insulting is that you refuse to honor your unsubscribe procedures. You make up stories about how it will take “several days” to take my e-mail address of your list. Right, several days.

I’ll just make a note of that on my calendar. Let’s see, Monday, 26 Jul 04. “MLB.com takes my e-mail address off of their *expletive deleted* spamming list on which it shouldn’t have been in the first place.”

As long as I’m screwing around in my datebook, I’ll just pencil something else in for Tuesday, 27 Jul 04. “MLB.com sends me spam which also indicates that I asked to be spammed.”

Of course, these tactics are nothing new. The sub-humans most of us think of when we talk about spammers have been using these same tactics for years. It has just taken the so-called legitimate businesses a while to catch on.

Long before the Federal government got into the act, Wisconsin created a so-called no call list.

Having now been on the no-call list for over a year, it is time to examine just how effective that legislation has been.The executive summary to such an investigation might read like this:

          The no-call list is a joke.

Since we signed up for the no-call list, the number of calls we get from telemarketers has probably trebled. Not a day goes by that we don’t get a call from someone trying to sell us vinyl siding, replacement windows, local telephone service, long-distance telephone service, or other products and services in which we have no interest.

Wisconsin’s no-call list is the result of a particularly useless piece of legislation. There are so many loopholes that you would have a very difficult time finding some way to apply the list to yourself. The following are the built-in loopholes to the law:

1. Calls made to an existing customer – for example, calls from: the bank you have a checking account with, your phone company or your credit card company.
2. Calls made in response to your written or verbal request or permission.
3. Calls encouraging you to make a donation of property, goods or services to a “nonprofit organization.”
4. Calls encouraging you to purchase property, goods or services from a “nonprofit organization” unless sale proceeds are subject to Wisconsin sales tax or federal income tax.
5. Calls made for noncommercial purposes such as polls, surveys and political purposes.
6. Calls made to a business telephone number.
7. A call made by an individual acting on his or her own behalf, and not as an employee or agent of any other person.

As you can see, those are some pretty broad holes.

Easily the worst offenders are the various state trooper, firemen, police officer, and whatnot organizations. These people call all the time asking for money. Politically, no one is going to go after these supposed non-profits because the members of the organizations will just accuse the government flacks of persecuting valiant public heroes.

MCI (nee WorldCom) calls us every few weeks asking us to change our local telephone service over to “The Neighborhood.” Since we have no current business connection with MCI, my only guess is that they are calling in flagrant violation of the no-call list. However, I’m sure if they were pressed, they would indicate that we asked (per item number two above) to be pestered at all hours to buy a service we don’t want.

Let’s say, for instance, that I wanted the state to go after MCI for bugging me. First, I would have to gather the following information from the telemarketing-drone on the other end of the telephone:

1. The telephone number from which the telemarketer is calling.
2. The company for which the telemarketer works (this may not be the same company or organization for whom they are calling)
3. The telemarketer’s Wisconsin telemarketing license number
4. The telemarketer’s manager’s telephone number.
5. The physical address of the telemarketing company.

Why on earth would a telemarketers stay on the telephone with me long enough to provide all that information? If I was a telemarketer, and if someone started bugging me for all that information, I’d hang-up on them.

So, even if I could gather all that information, and if I then took the time to fill out a long form, and if I then submitted that form to the state, most likely, nothing would happen.

The reason is that the state only goes after flagrant violators that receive hundreds of complaints. Hundreds of people would have to waste the same amount of time that I did in completing the above procedure.

Even then, the chances of dragging a telemarketing company into court are vanishingly small. Usually, the state enters negoiations with the company. These negoiations then result in a generally small amount of money changing hands and an oh-so-solemn promise by the violator never to do it again.

That’s why I just shake my head whenever I hear about how the federal courts might strike down the sacred no-call lists. Let ‘em strike the useless things down. Clear the books of yet another toothless, worthless law.