Once upon a time, you could buy an appliance that just… worked. These days, it wants your WiFi password and a subscription fee. In this sarcastic breakdown of modern consumer tech, we’ll unpack how companies design for data collection, not for you. Spoiler: your smart fork has trust issues.

I believe there is a middle ground when it comes to AI. It is possible to see the value it can provide while also being aware of the harms it promotes, such as devaluing human input and the theft that many AI companies engaged in to build their models. I believe we should advocate for ethical use of AI models and seek to provide fair compensation to those who have been harmed by it.

Ever been caught off guard by a change in schedule that ruined your plans? Ever felt a surge of unfairness mixed with annoyance and the reluctance to confront it due to the fear of being labelled a complainer?

While I agree that the worst effects of AI are ahead of us, I do not agree that the concerns I have about AI are not valid. I got so annoyed at this article in Writers Digest that I had to comment on it.

Deciding to quit is tough for me. I was raised to believe that winners never quit. But in just the last few years I’ve realized that quitting things that aren’t working works for me.

I never used to like the phrase “it is what it is.” It seemed like something people would say when they were dismissing my very real anger or frustration. Or something they would say when they were trying to pretend they weren’t feeling anger or frustration themselves.

I know now that the reason I didn’t like the phrase was because I didn’t understand it. I hadn’t truly lived it.

Along came 2020.

I’ve known this for a while. I first learned it when I was writing a test for my TEFL students. I had to figure out questions that were hard enough to demonstrate that they understood the material, but not so hard that they would be completely demoralized. I also had to make sure the questions were on the material the students legitimately should know, and not just on English language in general. When I started teaching HTML, I created a course, complete with an exam at the end, to demonstrate that students had learned something. The first iteration of the exam was fill in the blank. This made the test easier to write, but a lot harder to grade. So the second version was multiple guess. But multiple guess problems are hard to write because often the questions can be way too easy. For instance, how difficult would this be to guess the correct answer?

“I give you my word, as a Spaniard.” “No good. I’ve known too many Spaniards.”

This was the exchange Inigo and Wesley said to one another after Inigo had cut the rope and Wesley continued climbing up the Cliffs of Insanity in the movie “The Princess Bride.” Inigo wanted a chance to fight the man in black, and he didn’t want to wait. But Wesley did not want to be betrayed by a Spaniard. I joined Ninja Writers, a group of writers who are going to write a post on Medium every day. I joined thinking that instead of writing on Medium, I would write here on my own site and reap the benefits of writing practice as well as some possible publicity if the other writers deigned to read any of my posts. But then I learned that the group has a rule that you can only publicize Medium posts. So I may be dropping out of the group, or not publicizing anything I write for the challenge. Because I am not going to write for Medium.

Insurance to cover what they won’t cover

This is fucked up. My insurance company wants me to pay them gap insurance for a gap in the insurance they are selling me.

What is gap insurance you ask?

Gap insurance is insurance that covers you if your car breaks down soon after you buy it. Your car insurance won’t cover your expenses if your brand new car gets totaled immediately after you buy it. You won’t be able to buy the same car again because they won’t give you the amount of money that you spent on the car.

Mark and I got a Christmas box from a relative who can’t be bothered to remember our last name. We’ve been married for 18+ years, and we both changed our name when we married. We combined the letters of both our last names into a new last name because we wanted to represent the blending of our lives in a more tangible way than just merging the linens and sharing the bills.

I was watching this TEDx video: Margaret Heffernan “Dare to Disagree” and it really made me think.

https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree

One of the reasons I suspect I was laid off from About.com was because I had the temerity to disagree with staff. I would point out bugs and flaws in their code or design. I had discussions with both editors and senior executives about how the site could be improved and what I thought was going wrong and right.

My son and I love Legos. He loves to build them, and I love to help. Plus I love the different scenes you can build and I’m especially impressed with the Hobbit and LoTR sets. We just bought the Smaug set and had a blast putting it together. Now Smaug can fight the Indominus Rex from Jurassic World and we’ll finally know which is more powerful—dragons or dinosaurs. When we bought the Smaug set, we were sent a survey asking us what we thought of the purchase process. So I filled it out. Our local Lego store is in a mall, and is like what I imagine most Lego stores are like—crowded and a lot of fun. So I gave them, primarily, 4 and 5 star ratings. But one of the questions asked what I thought of the store’s online promotions. I had to honestly give that a low rating (1 or 2 stars, I forget now) because the promotions have always been a source of frustration for our family. This low rating got me a reply from the store manager asking me what my specific issue was. I replied:

Or, How T-Mobile Gave Me Something to Be Mad At, When I Needed to Be Angry

tl;dr Today I was getting frustrated with my (lack of) connectivity in the back of my parents’ house and so I decided to check out T-Mobile’s site to see how much it would cost to turn my iPhone 6 into a mobile hot spot for the month. This was not easy. In fact, I still don’t know how much that would cost for sure. Some people in the forums said $15 a month, but I couldn’t find any way to add it to my account with any official pricing. I also don’t know if it’s a feature I can add on and then take off later when I’m back home and don’t need a mobile hot spot. (“Need” being defined as “I’m really really sad right now, and since I can’t seem to get online with my laptop I’ll go spend money I don’t have using my phone.”) T-Mobile was kind enough to let me do a survey after I finished using their site, so I decided that I would give them the benefit of my years of experience as a web designer and online systems engineer. Lucky them! [caption id=“attachment_1088” align=“alignleft” width=“249”] Form Screen 1[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_1087” align=“aligncenter” width=“249”] Form Screen 2[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_1086” align=“alignright” width=“249”] Form Screen 3[/caption] As you can see, the feedback form was quite long. There were over 20 questions all told. most were like the above screens with numerical answers where I rated my feelings. I tried to be honest. Then I got to the first “give us more feedback.” And I let them have it.

I get a lot of PR requests in email. Most of them I delete, periodically I consider doing a review or article about it, and every once in a while some PR person sends me something so stupid I just have to respond. This week I got a request to review a new “app for Moms.” This is stupid mostly because they sent it to me at my About.com address—where I write about web design and HTML. If you must send me PR pitches, at least spend two minutes determining if I write in your niche. Now, to be fair, I do sometimes write “mommy blogger” type stuff here, but the PR guy didn’t make any indication that he realized that. But this PR person lucked out. I wrote about their product and got it promoted as a guest post on My Happy SAHD Life. Of course, I suspect the PR person won’t feel lucky. It’s not a review, and if it were a review it wouldn’t be a positive one. Read the article here: It’s 2014, Why Don’t PR People Know?

I know, I know, they need more money, the stamps cost more, they are offering more services, Saturday delivery is going away, no it’s not, yes it is.

But seriously! What is UP with them?

I was very excited when they announced more tracking. It’s great to think that I might get a notice when a package is coming. When I do tracking with UPS and FedEx, I get a listing of where my package is almost up to the minute. I can practically watch the box as it moves from the sender, to the hub, out to a nearby city, then “on a truck for delivery.” That last bit can be the most frustrating as packages can get put on a truck at 5am only a couple miles from my house and then have no update to their tracking until after 9pm when they’ve been delivered to my house. But while I might be chewing my nails down to the quick waiting for my latest batch of Scharffenberger chocolate to arrive, at least I know that the box is out there coming. I have one package that was sent to me “with tracking” via the USPS back on April 26th. This is what has been tracked so far: [caption id=“attachment_816” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Tracking where nothing is tracked[/caption] Okay, I realize that this could mean that the company that sent this to me printed out a mailing label and then dumped all of it in the trash. In other words, the USPS never got anything. And neither did I. So I now have another package that I know has been mailed, because I mailed it. I printed out the mailing label on May 12th but then didn’t get a chance to mail it until today. Here’s the package: [caption id=“attachment_817” align=“aligncenter” width=“225”] the package[/caption] And here’s the tracking page: [caption id=“attachment_818” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] on USPS.com[/caption] What’s upsetting to me is how it was received at the post office. I walked into our local branch and stood in the line (2 people in front of me). When I got to the front of the line I handed the package to the postal worker and asked for her to scan it and give me a receipt. She replied “you already have one, you just go online and type in the number and it’ll show you the tracking.” Then, and this is the worst part, she takes the package, and tosses it over on another public counter. Then she smiles and asks to help the next person in line. She didn’t scan it, didn’t put it in a box, did nothing with it beyond putting it on a counter. And of course, three hours later as I write this post, it hasn’t been scanned. For all I know it’s still sitting on that counter. What is UP with the USPS? How is this considered “tracking?” When I have a box for FedEx or UPS, I take it to the shipping counter and they scan it into their system right then! Then when it’s moved off the counter and onto a truck it’s scanned again_!_ And so on until it is “on a truck for delivery.” And did you notice the other flaw? On the package it states that it’s being sent “Priority Mail 2-Day” but on the website it says that the postal product is “Priority Mail 1-Day.” Which is it USPS? 

[caption id=“attachment_771” align=“alignleft” width=“150”] This site displayed in a minimalist theme - very different from my last theme - and probably from my next theme. Click to view larger.[/caption] I’ve been trying out a bunch of new themes and frameworks lately, in an effort to determine what would be easiest for both me and my clients to use. In fact, this site is demonstrating that right now. Although I suspect as soon as I get some free time, I’m going to be changing it, probably drastically. Which is why I included the screen shot.

Our fence was crushed in several places today when one of the big trees next door decided to end its vertical existence. No animals, children, or adults were harmed in the creation of these photos. But there was a lot of adrenaline spewing about. [caption id=“attachment_704” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] fence #1 taken out by the base of the tree[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_706” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] middle of the tree took out the fence on the other side of the pasture[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_705” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] The top of the tree takes out the playset[/caption]

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of answering a survey about health care. Normally, when I get those types of robo-dialed call-center calls, I wait for the person on the line to say “Hello,” but for whatever reason, I said hello first. And then, when asked if I’d be willing to do a survey, I uncharacteristically said “yes.” It was interesting to take the survey both because of what I know about health care and my opinions on it. But what was more interesting was how the questions were phrased. I’d often wondered how one company could do a survey claiming that 87% of Americans love chocolate. And then another company could do a survey the next day claiming that 87% of Americans hate chocolate. After taking yesterday’s survey, I understand how this can happen. The questions (and supplied answers) can rig the results. For example, several of the questions had this format:

So, for some reason my blog has gotten targeted by comment spammers just recently. The comments on this blog are (were!) moderated so none of the lame attempts to spam my site were getting through. But I still had to deal with getting dozens of notifications a day. I received 48 new comments to moderate in just 12 hours. So I turned comments off. Who knows, I might turn them on again at a future date. But at this point, if anyone wants to chat about what I’m writing here, you’ll just have to do it via FB or some other location. Sorry for the inconvenience. And to all you spammers out there - F-OFF!

So, I’ve had an iPad since the first day the iPad 1 came out. And I’ve been reading books in the Kindle reader for iPad almost that long. I am a long-time book reader. In fact, when I got the iPad I didn’t think that ebooks would hold that much of a draw for me. After all, I love the feel of a good book in my hand, the smell of the glue holding the perfect binding of the paperbacks together, the crispness of the pages, yes, even the jolt awake when the hardback falls into my face while reading in bed. But in the two years since the iPad 1 has come out, I’ve changed. I like to think of it as growing. Now, I prefer to read books on my iPad, iPod, and in the cloud reader on my laptop. I love that when I get to page 110 on my iPad, I can open up my iPod and be right there on that page. This is better than when in Jr. High I learned how to almost subconsciously remember where I was in a book without bookmarks to combat the teasing people who would grab my books from me and move or remove the markers in an effort to thwart my knowing where I was. (I also learned the best hiding places for reading at my Jr. High—back in the library stacks on one of the lowest shelves where no books were stored was the best. No bullies ever venture into the library.) When Apple changed the rules and removed the bookstore links from the apps, I quickly bookmarked your site in my mobile Safari and made sure that that bookmark was synched to all my devices. And when you announced the Kindle Store, I saved the location as an app on my iPad so I could always get to it quickly.

So, this morning we got back from our shopping trip and walk and I brought in the grocery bag (in my reusable wolf bag) and the cat carrier we are using to transport our new puppy in. [caption id=“attachment_456” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Stormageddon the day after we got her”][/caption] I thought about being lazy and just put the kennel down and thought, “No, I’ll put it away right now, so it’s not cluttering up the kitchen.” I then walked to where McKinley’s leash and backpack go, put them away and then walked to the storage area and put away the carrier. Yay me! [caption id=“attachment_457” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“McKinley’s leash hung up by the door”][/caption] A few minutes later I realized that I hadn’t put away the groceries. So I went back to the kitchen where I’d left the bag to put them away. No bag. But Jaryth had moved the chair by the door so he could get a cup of water from the sink. So, I guess he moved the bag. Started searching the most likely areas a toddler would put a bag of groceries—in other words I looked around the kitchen floor. No bag. So I looked in the living room and dining room. No bag. “Jaryth, do you know what happened to the grocery bag? You know, the one with the wolf on it?” Blank stare, still no bag. Mark starts helping to look about then. He looks outside where Jaryth had been playing in the rocks, in the barn, in the shed, in the trash cans, in the car. No bag. I am starting to wonder if I imagined buying groceries. As the bag is no where! I give up looking, and decide to take Storm, who has woken up with all the commotion, outside to do her business. Mark comes out and says “I found it! Now you have to find it!” Of course, I’m thinking “I’ve been looking for it for the past 20 minutes, what makes you think I could find it now that you’ve found it?” He asks, “What else were you carrying when you brought in the bag?” For those of you playing along at home, go back and look at the second photo in this post. Note that BEHIND McKinley’s backpack is a bag with a wolf on it. [caption id=“attachment_458” align=“aligncenter” width=“199” caption=“what the leash rack should look like—sans bag”][/caption] Most of the time, I do the stupid things done in this household, much as I’d like to lay the blame on any toddlers or animals in the vicinity.

I know, I’ve ranted in here about email before, but seriously, the messages I receive sometimes send me around the bend. In the last week or so I’ve had the following (paraphrased) gems:

• One man asked me for some help in building a complex website. He sent his first message on day 1 and when I hadn’t had a chance to answer it, he sent it again on day 2. I finally responded to his question suggesting an answer and that if he had more specific questions, he should post them to my forum. Over the next 3-5 days he sent me numerous more questions, and if I didn’t respond within 24-hours, he would resend the message. Finally, after getting tired of answering his questions (he really needed to take a class on how to use a computer before he’d be able to build a basic website, let alone the complex one he wanted to build) I just stopped. After four days of no answers from me, he started over. Yes, he sent message 1 (which I’d already answered) to me again. Messages? Meet the spam filter…
• I got a long (LONG!) letter from a man who wanted to build a complicated photo-submission website. He seemed to have a good idea of what he wanted but no understanding of how to do it. I was getting ready to ignore his message when I saw that at the end he asked me if I knew anyone who could help him. Phew! I sent him my “hire someone” spiel talking about RFPs and Freelance Switch. He wrote back saying thanks. This one was unusual because of that thanks. Most people never respond at all.
• Then I got an email from someone asking a bunch of questions that indicated that he really had no clue how to use the interwebs or describe his problem. The questions were along the lines of “I tried for 2 hours!! to read your email, but I couldn’t open it. Um, buh? How the heck should I know what is preventing you from opening an email message? And telling me how long you flailed blindly at it doesn’t improve my chances of figuring it out, but it does improve my ability to ask the last question you asked—“Do you have to be a computer science major to understand this or am I an idiot?” Uh, I’ll take answer B!
• So, then Mr. Idiot answers my reply. His way of saying thank you “wow! I didn’t think I’d get an answer!” does not inspire me to great heights of desire to answer more stupid questions from him. Now he wants to know why my article doesn’t work on his web page. Of course, he doesn’t include a URL. Unfortunately my psychic powers are on the fritz, so I ignored that message.
• He emailed again today, this time with a URL, and to tell me that because of my site 2/3s of his entire site is gone. I think he also mentioned that he spent 16 hours working on it. Maybe I’ll answer this one, um let’s see… [DELETE].

Here are some tips if you want to get an answer from me by email:

It’s stupid how I fall for giveaways so often. When the reality is that they are done solely so that the blog or site owner can get more readers and more comments. They have no interest in you as a person, and are most likely going to give their products away to people they know (either IRL or because they’ve posted lots of times before). They may also give away to people who write the most “heartwarming” response. But of course, they say that they’re giving them away to a “random” person. The nice thing about Goodreads is that they don’t say it’s random. They even say that people who read and review books of a similar type are more likely to win. Unfortunately, giveaways end up making me feel bad. In one case, I commented for the first time on a post because I wanted to tell the author that I really liked her post. Then I realized it was a giveaway post as well (I hadn’t read that far) and wanted to remove my comment, as the fact that the post was a giveaway made it seem like I was posting some lame “I like your site” post just to get the crappy lavender chatchkies she was sending to “one lucky reader.” Whatever. In other cases, I think I have a good chance of winning something, either because there are very few posts, or there is a large number of prizes, and when I don’t win I’m disappointed. I’m reminded of the contests About would have where the person who wrote the most content in a month would win. The first one they did, I was on fire and submitted like 20-30 new pieces of content. This was easily 3-4 times as much as I normally did in a month. Of course the winner a) didn’t have another job and more importantly b) wrote about 20-30 glossary entries A DAY. In terms of word count or character count, I probably wrote just as much as s/he did. But because s/he spread it over 600+ one sentence pages means that s/he won. This was over 10 years ago, but it sticks in the head. Of course, staff saw this contest as a huge success and so held another a few months later. And no one in the computing channel competed. We all (or nearly all) had other jobs and couldn’t waste our time on contests we had no chance of even coming in third or fourth for. At least that was the reason I didn’t bother. Our editor was very disappointed. I’m sure that another giveaway will come along tomorrow or next week that I’ll really hope to win. And maybe I’ll have the strength to think “no, don’t bother” as I don’t need more stuff anyway… But I suspect that my willpower will be weak or the thing given away is sooooo cool that I can’t stop myself. All commenters to this post will receive a FREE copy of my eternal goodwill. :-) Of course, you’d get that if you comment on any of my posts.

I was reading an article yesterday about how facial recognition is getting so good that there are apps being built for cellphones that can identify random strangers from photos (taken as you walk along with your cell phone). The article was bemoaning the fact that this was a “further invasion of our privacy” and that pretty soon nothing we do would be private. I then moved on to another article that talked about how Google(?) was working on an algorithm that could evaluate the writing style of someone online and make a good correlation as to who actually wrote it. Even if the author had posted anonymously or with a pseudonym. The article was bemoaning the fact that this was a “further invasion of our privacy” and that pretty soon nothing that we do online would be private. But is this idea of “privacy” such a good thing? Ultimately, what it really is is the idea that we can go out in public or online and be anonymous. And some people see anonymity as the same as the freedom to do anything they want. And as we saw in London over the past few days, anything they want seems to cover a wide swath of things that most civilized societies consider wrong. Some examples of things anonymous people do:

I was hoping for a long morning alone with my writing. But instead I got to help clean up a flooded bathroom and attempt to fix the washing machine that hit it’s planned obsolescence date today. Mark thinks the pump cracked. We bought an expensive washer 3 years ago thinking naively that if we paid a lot for a good brand it would last longer than the cheaper model we’d bought 3 years before that. Nope. This time, if the repairs cost more than the cheapest model we can buy we are going out and buying the cheap, no frills model. At least that way in 2014 we will have paid less on our rental. In 2008, we did all this research, but the reality is that washing machine reviewers don’t have 3 years to evaluate a machine. So they really don’t know if they will last a reasonable amount of time. And no, I don’t think 3 years is reasonable. We had the same washing machine my entire childhood with a family of four. My three-year-old son has seen two machines die in this house! (Yes, the last one died about two weeks after he was born!)

Our current process with our son goes like this:

1. wake up between 7am and 8:30am
2. play hard all morning
3. lie down around noon for around 15 minutes, but don’t fall asleep
4. play hard all afternoon until about 4pm
5. fall asleep hard, and nap for an hour to two hours
6. play hard until mom is exhausted (any time after 10pm) and then lie in bed fighting with her because he’s not tired at all

8 hours of sleep is barely enough for me, and I’m not convinced it’s enough for him. We have determined that if we can get him to stay awake at 4pm he’ll go to bed and sleep around 7:30 or 8pm. But that period from around 4pm until 6pm is killer. We can’t seem to keep him awake. He has fallen asleep while eating, while playing, watching a movie, reading a book, and more. We then shake him (gently), talk to him, carry him around (hard when he weighs nearly 60 pounds), try to get him to play, and nothing wakes him. Yesterday he fell asleep on the couch, and when we told him we were going to feed the animals (a chore he loves to do) he woke up enough to say “I want feed animals” and then he was asleep again, and continuing threats did not wake him again. Any suggestions? How do you keep a toddler awake when he doesn’t want to be so that he will sleep when we want him to be asleep? I’m desperate (and tired).

The most common complaint I see about content farms is that they serve up lousy information written by under-paid (or non-paid) writers. I can join the ranks of people who will tell you of the lousy results they found on eHow (or insert your other favorite content farm to bash) here. Yes, I don’t like doing a search for “how to build a web page” and getting a result that says, essentially: step 1. build a web page, step 2. put it on the internet. step 3. there’s no step 3! But I am equally tired of the writers saying “I make a living writing and they are turning writing into a commodity!” And other such statements. Guess what, Virginia, writing has always been considered something anyone can do - and as such paid as little as possible for. Yes, every writer I know, including myself, recognizes that writing is hard. To get up in the morning, stumble to the computer and stare at that blank screen is a fate all writers share. To know that you may or may not get paid a living wage for whatever pearls make it to that screen puts even more pressure on. And to then go out and read about how some moron was paid 3 cents to write the above “article” on how to build a web page is both depressing and demeaning. Some days, I start thinking that I should just start writing tutorials that are that meaningless (and I’m sure some of my “fans” would argue that I already do…). After all, that “tutorial” took me longer to think up than it did to write. But ultimately I believe in market forces (says the woman who has been known to rant for hours, yes hours, on the evils of laissez faire capitalism). If the content that is created by these under- and non-paid writers is lousy people won’t read them. And if it gets too bad, people won’t visit the sites that generate them. Then the sites won’t make any money and they will either focus on getting more non-paid writers to flood the internet with crap or they will come around to the idea that paying good writers something slightly more than peanuts is a way to get better quality content. Personally, I am hesitant when a search result feeds up an eHow or wikipedia article. Not because the writers are underpaid but because I’ve found the content to be less than stellar. And the other thing to think about: how much are you paying for the content that you read? I have friends who are proud of the fact that they view all websites with ad blockers on. Others that refuse to pay any subscription fees for content. And others who think that buying a book that was “just their blog posts” is tantamount to complete idiocy. I had a discussion with my brother a while ago where he told me he didn’t want to work with a money manager because “they just want more money”. And I thought, “well, sure, who doesn’t?” I mean seriously, how can one complain that writers aren’t being paid enough when you aren’t willing to pay them yourself? I buy and read over 100 (probably closer to 200) books per year. I have donated to websites and blogs that I find valuable, and do so every year. In this case, I think paying it forward means literally paying. And I’m okay with that, because if I like a writer I want them to keep writing so I buy their books. And another thought: what makes Wikipedia so damn popular and “content farms” so not? I have found the content on Wikipedia to be just as questionable as eHow. And the writers there aren’t paid, in fact every year the Wikipedia founder asks them to pay him! But that’s a rant for another day.

I got an email yesterday from someone who wrote (paraphrased): “I read your top 10 list of best web editors, and it was interesting. I use ___ editor, and I was wondering if there was a better one than it available.” Really? The editor he mentioned was not on the list. I honestly don’t know what to tell him. I mean, seriously, if his editor was not on the list (and it does qualify to be on that list - it’s free and it’s for Windows), then chances are, I believe that all ten editors on that list are better than the one he named. The only thing I can think is that he doesn’t understand what a “Top 10” list is.

I decided last Thursday to take some time off from my About.com site (and clearly I still am…) because I was tired of HTML editors, didn’t want to talk CSS, wasn’t interested in updating old pages, wanted to finish a project for my art class, and was upset about a change in pay and how they tried to spin it to make it sound like it was chocolate-coated bad news. (It’s not really that bad of news, it’s just annoying how staff feels the need to spin things. Just be honest with us, most of us are grown ups, we can take it without the chocolate coating.) Anyway… So I arrived at my desk this morning chipper and eager to get back to work, or at least not as burnt out, and found:

I’ve been using Norton Antivirus (NAV) for a long time. Honestly. And not because I worked for Symantec for 9 years. I used it even before I worked there. And I continue to use it even though I don’t work there any longer. But let me tell you, every day, often many times a day, I’m annoyed by this software. I’ve even gone as far as finding a new product that I’m considering switching to as soon as my definitions expire (in a month or so). That’s how annoying this “feature” is. Here’s how it goes:

I’m hot, which is a nice change from the whole of June, where we had fall weather, but still, hot is no fun. Because it’s hot I’m furious that the post office can’t seem to mail my post cards. I’ve sent the below postcard twice already. And yes, i’ve added new stamps to it. And this is one of three that the postal carrier can’t seem to grasp DOESN’T need to go here. I understand that the post office is mostly automated, but where is the brain that my postal carrier is supposed to have. I mean SERIOUSLY, can’t s/he read? It says “TO” next to the to address and “FROM” above the from address. Also, why would I put 98cents worth of stamps on a postcard to myself??? I like the post office, most of the time, but sometimes their complete reliance on machines to the point of idiocy makes me mad. If there were a way to send post cards by UPS I would do it! [caption id=“attachment_155” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“I have already spent $1.96 to send this card twice! Stupid PO.”][/caption]

Memo to self: if you’re going to send a ranting email to a mailing list, it’s best to find out if the person you’re ranting about is also on that list… [[forehead slap]]

I have a form on my site asking for people to define what they feel a webmaster is. It asks:

“Share your thoughts. What is a webmaster?”

And I received this reply:

“Title: Webmaster description…OMG                 I just read several responses to what others opinion are regarding what a webmaster is and quite frankly, the grammar, spelling, and English are deplorable. If one cannot master the fundamentals of communication, then the game is over. Webmasters will become specialized because of their skills and not because of a simple desire and a minimal education. How would like to go to a dentist who was self taught and just got by in school? Ouch………..”

It’s really hard to not feel like everyone in the universe is greedy for more more more when most of the apps that I used regularly on the iPhone have new, bigger iPad brethren that cost more, a lot more. I’m starting to think that apps that are universal will get an extra star from me, or maybe that apps that have an iPhone version that is cheaper than the iPad version would lose a star (or half a star?). I feel like I just bought DDH Software HanDBase for my iPhone/iPod. And now they have an iPad only version for $9.99. I’m sorry, DDH, but you won’t get my business a fifth time. I’ve bought the Mac desktop version (which is crap), the iPhone version, the Palm version, and the Windows desktop version. No way in hell are you getting another dime from me. Sorry, but your app works fine in the version I have, and since you didn’t see fit to make a universal app I don’t see fit to give you any more of my cash.

If you’re asking me a question, and I reply saying “I don’t understand what you mean by this word.” Don’t reply saying “I just need information about the same word.” Last week I got an email that read:

I am a college student and I am having my thesis right now. I would like to propose a topic regarding CMS and my thesis should use an algorithm. Do you know any algorithms used for CMS?

So, I love my iPad, don’t get me wrong. I love it so much that I set up all my email to go there as a way to stay curent and up-to-date with my mail even when I’m not at the “big-big-computer” as Jaryth calls it. But holy spam insanity, Batman! All of my accounts have spam filters on them at the server level. And they work at about 3 different effectiveness levels:

I have been writing for the Web since 1995, and you’d think I would know by now not to engage the loonies, but every month or so I still attempt to interact with them. Today’s email gem was from a woman who found a typo/spelling error on my blog. A simple way to report a spelling error is to write: “I found a typo or spelling error on your site” and then point out the word and the URL where it was found. Short, to the point, doesn’t make any inane references. In fact, it’s hard to object to an email like that. When I get those, I typically respond with “Thanks! I’ll get that fixed as soon as possible.” But as you might have guessed, that’s not what she wrote. She informed me of the spelling error. Chastised me for not using a spell-checker, and then said that spelling errors like that bring into question all the facts presented on the site. I replied telling her that my spell checker (and I have two - one in the browser for blog posts and one in my editor where I write the blog posts first) did not object to my spelling of the word. But that I would fix it to her preferred spelling as soon as I could. I closed it with “Thank you for your feedback.” And I figured that was the end of it. I mean, I was polite in my reply, and I said I would fix it. What else could she want? Hahahahahaha! Apparently I wasn’t sufficiently cowed by her assessment of me so she replied to (in effect) call me a liar. She wrote, “I find it amazing how people don’t want to admit to their mistakes.” Then she wrote “look at the little red squiggly under the word, that means it’s misspelled.” And she closed with “I read your site every day and I daily find spelling errors on the Web.” Let’s take these one at a time: 1. admitting my mistakes: Yes, I don’t like “constructive criticism” but honestly, I don’t think her first email was all that constructive. It was rude and made implications about my abilities as a writer and fact checker. If she were my mother or my elementary grammar teacher, the tone would have been fine. But she’s neither. As far as I know, my only mistake was in using a spell checker that doesn’t conform to her dictionary. I did say I would fix it, even if I didn’t agree that it was an error. 2. looking at the spell checker. I told her in my first email that the “red squiggly” wasn’t there. If I accept her premise that I should use a spell checker, then I should trust its results, shouldn’t I? But in her world I must know what words the spell checker doesn’t know. 3. reading my site daily. If she really does read it daily, she would know that I don’t regularly make a lot of spelling errors or typos. And while I’d love to be “ruler of the Web,” that title has not been voted to me, so I can’t control the typos on pages that aren’t mine. As soon as I can, I’ll send electric shocks to writers who post spelling errors on websites. If you want to report errors to me, please do so. I appreciate it, And like most of my readers, I’m only human and do make mistakes. Just remember that even if you do read my site daily, we are not best friends, you aren’t my editor/mother/grammar teacher, and I don’t know you. Pretend you’re approaching a stranger in public when you write your email. Who knows, if you’re nice enough, you might even turn into a friend of mine (not making any promises). But if you’re rude, sarcastic, or mean, the best you can expect is a reply in kind. But I really should know better and not reply to you at all.

So Mark found some analysis of possible prices for upcoming iPad apps and they are insane!! apparently they appear to be planning to charge anywhere from 2 to 4 times more for an iPad app as for the same app on the iPhone. TUAW is falling down by not reporting on this (or not asking in their interviews). They posted a “first look” at Polyhedra XL which I have the iPhone version. What a joke!

I was reading TUAW this morning, and they were talking about the Apple.com site and how some people were reporting that the Downloads section was gone. In a nutshell their article was just saying that no, it’s not, it’s just not on the navigation now because they needed room for an iPad tab. My favorite quote from the article* was:

“Fortunately you can easily locate the downloads section simply by typing the word “downloads” into the search box.“

I’m currently reading Booklife and one thing that he mentions is the idea that school literature programs have made people bad readers. At first I was somewhat taken aback by this assertion, but as I read more about what his premise was, I started to agree with him. In a nutshell: in literature classes in high school and college we are taught to read literature with an eye towards what is not written. In other words, you’re supposed to find the allegory, the symbolism, the hidden meanings. Doing this is fun because for one thing it’s a pretty creative way of reading. If the meaning you are positing is “hidden” then the fact that no one else can see it just proves your point more. In fact, as long as you can argue your interpretation effectively it doesn’t matter that no one else can see it. If you’re persuasive enough, everyone will see it (if only to get you to stop harping at them). But what does this mean for reading later? If you’re always looking for the hidden meaning in something, then there’s a good chance you’ll miss the overt meaning. In High School, I had to read the Hemingway story “Hills Like White Elephants”. This story stuck in my head because it was the first time I ever really understood what people were seeing when they found these hidden meanings. (Thank you Mr. Duncanson.) I’m not saying that I really believed they were there, but we read that story so many times that I started to believe that the story might have actually been about elephants - not just descriptively titled. My question to that class is, do you remember what the story was about, what the text said? In other words, not the pregnancy, or the idea that the character was trying to talk her into an abortion. None of that was actually said. Do you remember what the scene was? My guess is that most people don’t remember, because we got so hung up in the hidden story. Where was it set? What were they doing? To badly mangle another quote: “sometimes and elephant is just an elephant”. Perhaps if we started reading things looking for the un-hidden meaning first we might have an easier time understanding what people are trying to tell us. Why I Like Science Fiction If you read most scifi books with an eye to what is said, and not what is not said, you’ll get the basics of most books. Literary snobs might argue that that makes the books less interesting - but I find them plenty interesting. And they don’t have to be obfuscated to hold my attention. Don’t get me wrong, in re-reading “Hills Like White Elephants” 25 years after my first read, I was profoundly moved by the story. Most of the allegory that we discovered in that long-ago class has disappeared into where ever memories go when they aren’t used. And I suspect that a lot of the reason I found it difficult at age 17 was because of my age and lack of experience. But I still enjoyed the story first as a description of a couple sitting in a foreign train station, waiting for a train, and discussing their life together (or not) and what they were going to do.

I’m currently reading Booklife by Jeff Vandermeer. One of the first chapters talks about Twitter and he says that he doesn’t really like Twitter because it “fragments [his] attention”. Like him, I don’t find Twitter all that friendly. Many of the people I used to chat with on Twitter now have so many people in their timeline that they never even see my posts. And I’ve never had the experience of asking a question or for help and getting more than a minimal response and often a snarky, negative one. I wish I’d had a better experience, as it was a lot of fun at first. But now I just sync my Web Design blog to the account and mostly ignore it. It’s less stressful that way.

Why do medical practitioners insist on treating their customers as cogs in a machine? Some offices use random numbers, others use parts of your social security number, and still others use your birth date. But what about something that is unique to me and I’m used to responding to, know by heart, and makes me feel like a person rather than a computer? I know this is going out on a limb, but maybe my NAME??? Add that to the office having their millions of systems that aren’t connected together and it doesn’t make me excited and happy to go to the doctor: «ring» receptionist: Hello XYZ medical clinic, how can I help you? me on phone: Hi, I’m in intense pain and was wondering if I could get in to see the Dr. today rather than on Thursday for my appointment. r: Sure! Let’s see, what’s your [ID number that they use]? me: ### r: [type type] Jennifer? me: Yes. r: Let’s see, I can transfer you to your Doctor’s receptionist. [click hold] me: (thinking) what are you then? «ring» receptionist 2: Hello, XYZ medical clinic, how can I help you? me: Hi, I’m in intense pain and was wondering if I could get in to see the Dr. today rather than on Thursday for my appointment. r2: Sure! Let’s see, what’s your [ID number that they use]? me: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! What is it about the medical community that they seem to confuse efficiency with lack of customer interaction? I don’t hearken back to the “good ole days” when the cure for a hangnail was to cut off your leg, but I wish I could afford a “concierge doctor” who would come to me and at least pretend to care that I’m scared, in pain, and upset. The end result was that I can’t move my appointment forward, they don’t have any room. But she was willing to cancel my appointment for me if I wanted. BUH??? Sure, I’m in pain, and want to move it FORWARD, but I’m sure canceling it completely will solve the problem. Perhaps you have a gun I can use to put myself out of my misery?