jalanco

I woke up today, and why you should, too.

One day, if we wait long enough, The Boring Company technology will be boring technology.

There are number of places in the US where it is legal to walk around outside with a drink. New Orleans is the place I'm most familiar with but there are others. Some people forget that the US is not a monoculture.

One of the truly greats. Perhaps my favorite short-story writer along with James Tiptree, Jr. Here are three stories you need to read right now if you haven't: 1. "Repent Harlequin," said the Ticktockman., 2. Jeffty is Five, and 3. I have no mouth and I must scream, which contains one of the most memorable similes that still sticks in my mind: "the sliding cold horror of a razor blade slicing my eyeball." I'm doing this from memory but I think it's pretty close. And Isaac Asimov, who couldn't have been a more different writer from Ellison, really seemed (from his writings) to love the guy.

Actually I didn't think of that. I was thinking more of a magnetic nozzle. But yeah if you can steer a fluid with embedded magnets you should be able to accelerate a fluid with embedded magnets, right? :) or maybe not. I have no idea.

I wonder if you replaced the abrasive material with a ferrous material could you direct the stream with magnets? I guess the material would first have to be charged. And would the water flow follow the [hypothetically] focused stream of ferrous material? I need some coffee.

Here's an actual chat transcript of me trying to cancel my membership. Yes I sound like a dick robot, but I become a dick robot when I'm forced to contact the company--instead of just clicking a button--to cancel my membership:

info: Hi, we are currently helping other customers in line ahead of you. We'll be with you as soon as possible.

While you wait, you can try our community forums where experts are online 24/7.

info: You are now chatting with 'Mahesh'

Mahesh: Hello! Welcome to Adobe Customer Service.

Mahesh: Hi there.

jalanco: Cancel my membership.

jalanco: Are you there? Cancel my membership. info: Your chat transcript will be sent to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx at the end of your chat.

Mahesh: I will check and help you.

Mahesh: I see that you have the Creative Cloud plan (one-year) annual commitment subscription with the monthly payment option under your account.

Mahesh: I am really sorry to see you go.

Mahesh: May I ask why you are choosing not to maintain your membership?

jalanco: Please cancel my membership. I don't have a lot of time.

Mahesh: An annual subscription requires a commitment for the full year and monthly payments.

Mahesh: If you decide to end a one-year membership before the 12-month period is over, you are charged 50% of the remaining amount left on your commitment.

Mahesh: In this case, if you are willing to cancel your annual subscription now, you will be charged an early termination fee of USD 250.00.

Mahesh: Is that fine with you?

jalanco: No it is not fine with me. Cancel my membership.

Mahesh: I see that you've purchased a subscription with an annual commitment with a monthly payment. Since you wish to cancel the subscription before the end of one year period, you will be billed 50% of your monthly rate for the remaining months in your annual commitment.

jalanco: Cancel my membership.

Mahesh: Okay, do you wish me to cancel the subscirption with the early termination fee of USD 250.00?

jalanco: No. Cancel my membership. I didn't agree to that.

Mahesh: http://www.adobe.com/misc/subscription_terms.html

Mahesh: Please view the above link to see the terms of the annual commitment subscription that you have under your account.

Mahesh: I understand that you would like to cancel your membership, and I will take care of that for you. However, would you be willing to maintain your membership through your annual commitment & avoid the early termination fee if I offer you the next month of your membership for free?

jalanco: No. Cancel my membership immediately.

Mahesh: I can understand your concern, please allow me a moment while I check for any exception for you.

Mahesh: I am happy that I was able to make an exception for you. I have successfully canceled your Creative Cloud membership (one-year) annual commitment subscription without any early termination fee of USD 250.00 as an one time exception only for you as goodwill gesture.

Mahesh: However this exception will not be done again for you.

Mahesh: Is there anything else I can help you with?

jalanco: Thank you. Nothing else.

Mahesh: Thank you for contacting Adobe. We are available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Goodbye!

Reading this made me think about the hard problem of "removing" yourself from the internet. I don't think it is possible. But I do think there might be an opportunity for a service that creates so much conflicting and false information about a person that it is not possible to know the truth about them: false addresses, phone numbers, credit histories, you name it. Just a thought.

It's been years since I've read it but "On Writing" is still one of my favorite books of all time. It's worth reading whether you write much or not. His description of the time he was struck by a van (and nearly killed) while walking down the road near his home with his head in a paperback book is alone worth the read. He said the guy driving the van was reaching into a box of raw meat and tossing chunks to a dog in the back of the van and didn't see him walking on the side of the road. He said it was like a scene from one of his novels. I recall that he also goes into some detail about how he struggled through a long period of near poverty with his wife Tabitha always supporting him and staying by his side. So she deserves tremendous credit for his success. For me the book was more about persevering through the struggle to create in general.

Bonus content from the article: "In 2010, residents who lived near the facility complained that their garage doors were randomly opening. The NSA issued a statement acknowledging that an antenna it was using interfered with garage door openers."

Watergate was about a group of powerful political elites targeting a rival group of powerful political elites. The present IRS scandal is about powerful political elites targeting nearly powerless regular citizens who were trying to organize, and in many cases prevented, or very significantly delayed, from doing so. So yeah, the IRS scandal is worse than Watergate.

From the article:

"The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to issue new regulations on website accessibility later this year that could take a broad view of the ADA's jurisdiction over websites. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

"That could mean websites will be required to include spoken descriptions of photos and text boxes for the blind, as well as captions and transcriptions of multimedia features for the deaf, said Jared Smith, associate director of WebAIM, a nonprofit group that trains and evaluates companies on Web accessibility.

"Mr. Smith also advises companies to ensure that people with motor disabilities can navigate websites without the use of a mouse, and to use plain language and a strong design to aid people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities."

If you're interested in the topic of ET life, I'd recommend Paul Davies book "The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence".

This caught my eye because a number of years ago I read a good book called "First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently" which detailed the results of a survey of 80000 managers (performed by the Gallup organization), in which a main conclusion was the point that "people never change". So, when hiring people, you should expect that people will continue to behave as they have in the past.

This may seem obvious, but I've seen that a hiring manager will often hire a candidate with an unsuccessful record on the believe that, for the first time in the candidate's career, he/she will be successful in the new organization, (yes, I've done this myself also), only to be disappointed later. In fact, this pattern is really very common in my experience.

If far as I'm concerned, you were definitely in an extended out-of-service period, but this morning it appears you decided NOT to extend the offer. That's too bad.

In case you're not able to get through right now: The offer is valid until Friday, 21 December 2012, 5:11 am CST (GMT-6)

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they they use "Britain" as a casual term for the UK, in the same way that people refer to the USA as "America". And yes, the word "country" is not properly used.

I was very surprised by the thrust of the article however; I had assumed that the US was much more violent. Especially given the dearth of firearms in the UK. If this is accurate, it is extraordinarily puzzling, at least to me.

Here are some things that I wish I could have shared with some of my people in the past:

1. I really cannot explain why there seems to be no long-term direction, and I'm leading you and the rest of the team on completely unrelated initiatives every single quarter. But I suspect it's related to the earnings calls.

2. I'm not thrilled either that there is no money this year for any office's annual Christmas party, despite the fact that the executive team just received huge bonuses.

3. Yes, it makes no sense that a company this small actually owns a private jet.

4. There's a very strong likelihood that in two weeks the company will announce an across-the-board 50% paycut for all employees for a period of four weeks, just so the company can meet some kind of payroll. And you and many, many others will of course resign. I, on the other hand, like a moron, will not resign.

5. You're absolutely correct. The CEO is quite possibly insane.

Now that makes it even more interesting (not shocking, but interesting). I wonder how many examples of referendum-style laws are approved in CA where voters are voting against self-interest (or at least with non-trivial skin in the game) for Utilitarian benefit.

This is interesting because, since it was a referendum vote, the people who passed it will likely not be affected by it, unless the average income in Calif. is much higher than I would assume.

Ouch! Please feel free to elaborate because I'm not sure exactly what you are disagreeing with.

I mean, are you saying that you believe that the people given the authority to invade your privacy always have good intentions? Because I don't believe that.

In the real world, these authorities are often driven by pressure to "find something", or to "make a quota", or to "prove our worth". And the results often harm innocent people.

I don't mean to pile on, but this comment reminds me of Eric Schmidt's comment that "if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear". There are at least a couple of things wrong with this sentiment:

(1) if you really believe that, then you would have no problem with a group of strangers searching your house, your bank records, safety deposit boxes, all your digital assets, etc. And by "etc" I mean also strip searching your family members or loved ones if "necessary". Did I go too far there? If so why? Because after all, "if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear". Who gets to decide how far is too far?

(2) And you might respond, "but these aren't strangers searching my stuff and family, these are duly authorized government officials." Well, duly authorized government officials are flawed human beings like all of us, and the ones doing the searching are most likely not elected by anyone.

And also, these people in power at the moment, whose motives you trust, will most definitely not be in power forever. One day, there will be authorities in power whose motives you don't trust at all, maybe for very good reasons. What then?

That's why the erosion of privacy rights is worth fighting.

A couple of key paragraphs:

"Now, NCTC [National Counterterrorism Center] can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans 'reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information' may be permanently retained.

"The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes."

Yes. It reflects a certain "intensity" at the keyboard which may involve the shift key finger spasming.

Yes. Chrome crashed for me too.

Definitely. I've got that same Katahdin and liked it so much I bought one for my daughter. It's got those little mesh/velcro pockets inside the pockets to keep your keys and such. A little warm for Dallas where I live, but when it's really cold I've loving it.

Thank you very much for the link. I posted the original link because I was genuinely confused about the story, and was hoping that someone would help shed some light on it. Frankly I had never heard of the ITU before.

I've hired hundreds of IT services salespeople in my life, through multiple recessions and boom times. So believe me when I say that a $32K base is not going cut it. Especially in a poor economy like now. Even now it is easy to find a tech sales job at that kind of base. Poor economies are when companies need superstar business developers the most. In bad times candidates want a higher base and are willing to take a lower upside. In growth times, like the late 90's, a good salesperson will want a high upside and possibly equity at the cost of a very low to zero base. So, to get a "star", you'll need to pay at least $100K base. Maybe much more in the NY area; most of my experience is in Texas. Any salesperson, in the current economy, who would even consider this type of offer is not someone that I would even talk to. (I have experienced exceptions to this, but they are so rare that you might as well hope to win a lottery.) Superstar sales people are exceptionally rare and often unusual people. But they can make you a lot of money if you pay them and lead them properly.

Regarding the "have someone send your resume" issue, unlike some commenters, I don't really have a problem with it. I think it is kind of fun and interesting. But I suspect that they did this because they are inundated with unqualified candidates.

Here is how to solve the problem. Get on the phone and call one of the groups like Aerotek or Lucas and Assoc. These companies tend to hire young sharp people but lose them after only a couple of years. Ask the receptionist who the top performers are. Invite those people to lunch. Sell them, then let them sell you. I've done this many times. It works.

Thanks for your kind comment. I've thought of Mr. Treese often during my life. Here's an anecdote about him that's always cracked me up: One time he called on a student who wasn't, as usual, paying attention, asked him a math question, and the student gave a rude reply, "Your guess is as good as mine."

Mr. Treese fixed his eyes on him, gave him that crooked grin of his and said, "No that's incorrect. My guess would be much better than yours."

I was raised in an abusive middle class household. My parents were not well educated. When I took the ACT test in 1975, neither my parents nor I even knew what the hell it was. I made a 23. I went to a unremarkable Tier 4 college because my friend was going there. I paid for it working as an "auger boy" on a gravel drilling rig for a concrete company for five years. I failed college algebra twice. I was put on academic suspension, and somehow talked my way back in. I made a C in algebra, a C in trig, and then took calculus from a handicapped polio survivor named Mr. Treese (not a PhD) who could barely walk or speak clearly. He had zero patience for bullshit but for some reason he liked me. After taking three classes from Mr Treese he suggested that I should enter the Math dept's annual calculus contest (I was a geology major). I actually won the contest (and a $60 check!). Afterward, I never made a grade lower than an A, and eventually moved on to earn an MS in CS. Today I think he was probably the single most influential person in my life.

Today we have two daughters who are both completing science PhD's funded with fellowships. I paid for their undergraduate education at Tier 1 schools but they have done the rest on their own without loans. You can bet your life that they knew what an SAT test was when they took it. All their lives we've told them that they were definitely very smart but that it just doesn't matter, that IQ is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what you do, not how smart you are.

(I remembered this story because Mr Treese didn't care much for the idea that a "number series" problem has a "best" solution.)