Failed at "Getting it done right"

Rob Bonta uses SafeUnsubscribe® which reliably removes one's email address from mailing lists.  Pity it doesn't work.

Back in July, I started getting political spam from the campaign of Rob Bonta, who seems to be mayor of another city in my general region. I don't live in that city, and don't know anything about him. He seems to be running for a state seat, and possibly could become my representative, but I am ineligible to participate in politics in this country so I frankly don't pay much attention to his or other campaigns or that level of political boundary.

Except when they are spamming me, in email or robot phone calls. Then I notice.

On July 23 2011, in response to an unsolicited campaign email from Bonta, I used the unsubscribe link to request my email address not be included in any future mailings. I continued to receive emails on Sept 5 and Sept 22.  The most recent email attempted to justify itself: "You're receiving this email because of your relationship with Alameda Vice Mayor Rob Bonta." I neither live, work, vote, nor even visit Alameda. My only relationship with him is that his campaign has started sending me emails, and has so far failed to respect my request to stop.

Beyond the immediate annoyance, the bait-and-switch of the ignored unsubscribe is frustrating. If you are going to publish an unsubscribe link, at least respect it. Sadly, political spam seems to be exempt from the California anti-spam laws.

My annoyance aside, this has also been an amusing example of Bonta's apparent (in)ability to "get it done right".  That seems, after all, to be his tagline. The unsubscribe link said:

"Getting it done right. Alameda Vice Mayor Rob Bonta uses SafeUnsubscribe® which reliably removes your email address from our lists."

I have since sent a note to the complaints address listed. I haven't heard back, but also haven't (yet) received any further emails.  Here's hoping. Kudos to the folks at SafeUnsubscribe for publishing this additional communications channel so they can hear about their clients who may be behaving unreasonably.

Google and Third Party Cookies

A few web pages I've tried to visit are refusing to load these days. One such is Google's account settings page. The others also seem to touch Google account-related services, eg viewing someone else's public calendar. When I hit such pages, Google courteously offers to help me correct my browser config by enabling 3rd party cookies.

How ... helpful.

Here's the thing: I disable third party cookies quite deliberately, and want them disabled.

Third party cookies are, to me, an invasion of privacy.  With a third party cookie, some schmuck who buys an ad placement in a site I visit can set a cookie in my browser tagged with the advertisers domain.  Then when they buy another ad presented in another site I visit, they can set another cookie. Since both cookies are 'owned' by the advertiser, they can then track my browsing history, at least to the extent of the subset of my browsing where their ads are presented.

I don't want third parties, especially any schmuck who can buy a few ads, to know my browsing history. For an example why, check out the ACLU Pizza Dramatization.

So now I'm kinda stuck if I want to tweak any of my Google account settings. I can't just clear my last hour of browsing history, because my work style means I currently have about 10 browser windows and 40 or 50 tabs open right now, some half of which I've touched in the past 20 minutes. I suppose I could keep a secondary browser on my machine just for pages such as these, set that browser with a relaxed security profile, and clear its cookies after each use.  Seems a pain.

And I can't figure why Google would want third party cookies on their account settings page anyway. I suppose they may have some number of internal domains, but it seems to me as if they are not being careful of their cross-domain cookies.

Ironic Spam

I blogged a few days ago about inane password reset questions, and now another amusement from the LA Times ...

I can't remember now why I ever went there - no doubt I was following a link to an article - but in that I don't remember and never go there, I ignored a recent flurry of emails requesting that I visit or my 'subscription' would be canceled. Well, I didn't mind them canceling it, and they said the cancellation would be on a date within a few week, so I gritted my teeth and ignored the (frequent) requests. The problem would solve itself.

My subscription is canceled now, so what do I get? Another email:

"Why have we stopped sending you e-mails?"

As if. I could only wish.

Between the password questions and now this, I'm not sure I'll follow a link to them if I ever get one again.

Lemonade for teachers

Remember lemonade stands? When I was a kid, if someone wanted to earn a few bucks on a hot day, they could make some lemonade and sell glasses to passing pedestrians or motorists. Maybe go a little further, and sell cookies or brownies or something. It was something of a cultural icon, featured in comic strips and so forth. Lucy even went so far as to sell psychotherapy.

Roll forward to these days of education funding cutbacks and I'm seeing lemonade stands with a difference: kids are selling lemonade and cookies just as before, but the money is being donated to a school PTA or Education Foundation (as the case may be) to help cover teacher salaries that can't be funded out of payments from the State. Sure, some of these 'stands' are bigger productions, organized by the PTA or school principal. But not all. Some of those little kids selling on streetcorners (now there is an image I didn't need) are donating their quarters to keep their favorite teachers in the school.

And it isn't surprising, seeing as they know exactly who is being cut. One morning last week when dropping my kid off at school, I saw a display of empty chairs with a teacher's name on the sidewalk of the drop-off circle. Some kind of post-economic performance art or something, apparently organized by some parents.

Even Brownies aren't safe. Brownies and Girl Guides have been selling cookies for ages to support their programs, but I saw an email yesterday afternoon saying the Brownies are going to donate part of the proceeds.

Please, support your local schools.

Flush with alacrity

One from the archives ... I wrote this in August 2009, lost it, and found it again this morning.

I very much enjoy reading the weekly Economist news-magazine - every issue invariably contains at least a few very interesting and informative articles on finance or politics, less dumbed down than any of the local media choices I enjoy living in The Land of the Free (Though Uninformed).

Every year I try to get away for a couple of weeks to my family's vacation property, a tiny log cabin on a remote lake in British Columbia, Canada. It is completely rustic - the nearest cell tower is some 30 miles away, nearest utility of any kind is 10 miles away, running water happens when the guy with the bucket is wearing sneakers, and those who like to think of their country as the "Home of the Brave" have never braved our outhouse.

It was therefore with interest and a certain bemusement that I, sitting on my throne in the woods, was reading "Face value - Flush with ambition" - Economist, July 25 2009, page 66 - about the Neorest, a high-tech Japanese toilet from Toto, which "... hides odours and plays sounds like running water or birdsong to drown out embarrassing noises," for a mere $5000.

Wow.

And I got to thinking: if Toto, an industrial powerhouse in Japan, could get their collective heads out of their, um, homeland long enough to see the opportunity provided by wilderness vacations, what could they offer the remote camping crowd? Birdsong I already have: a flock of loons, whiskey jack, chickadee, woodpecker, and hawk so far this morning. In fact, if the Japanese and Whoopi Goldberg are willing to plonk down $5K for these things, perhaps I can just rent out my facility with real, not artificial, birdsong.

Though I'd have a little more trouble with hiding odours and a heated seat. Maybe Toto's engineers could solve those problems together: somehow capture the various gases and run them through a small efficient burner to heat the seat? If they could do that without singeing something important, I'd pay for it.

Eyestrain and desktop colours

Maybe I'm getting old.  Ok, I know am getting old, proven by my kids insistence on having a birthday celebration for me today.  Also proven by that non-topical digression, I suppose.

As I get older, I'm having a little more trouble with eyestrain when using my computer. I've been in front of my monitor rather a lot over the past few weeks, and my eyes hurt. At least part of the problem is large white windows, so I've been fiddling with trying to invert my desktop colours ... white text on black gives me a lot less strain than black text on white.

But it is hard. Easy enough on the surface, but the Devil is, as they say, in the details. 

Desktop background, menu background and text, popups, text frames (like terminal windows) ... a lot of stuff is easy, just requires some attention to detail.

Even web browser colours were solvable, albeit non-optimally. In Firefox I could choose white text on black, but the pages still displayed white. I had to go the extra step of overriding the page's colour choices. Now I have white on black, but I've lost any shading the page author may have wanted to apply to a section.

And that hasn't helped HTML display in Thunderbird ... there I am currently getting white text on white background for HTML messages, which is a little rough for reading. Thunderbird doesn't present the same option to override a page's colour choices, perhaps because it isn't a web browser. Still, it gets plenty of HTML. and that HTML apparently has colours.

Even this editor I am working in now, writing this blog ... I'm in a lovely white-on-black screen, typing merrily away, but most the buttons at the top of the editing window are pure black, the little images don't show up. Most ... the "Media Browser" image shows up, and the pulldowns for Styles etc, but all the rest of the little boxes, all black.

Somehow I think this entry will be published without any special formatting or links.

What we need is some way for the user to specify colours for the broad range of situations that come up in all the content he views. Letting me override background and text colour isn't sufficient ... I also need a way to specify alternate background colours for sidebars, and for computer code boxes, and for table row highlighting, and ...

In fact, that's the problem - there are as many kinds of background as there are pages. Maybe not quite, but there are lots.

In part because there is no standardization. If I author a page with a table, and want to shade alternate rows of the table for separation, is there any standard name for that span? Will such a row on my page have the same style as a similar row on your page?

So me the poor user would need to separately override two styles for the same basic concept.  That sucks.

Where is the pretty UI that lists the styles I'm viewing or have viewed, lets me group them, and override portions, for example, override the colours while leaving font and size alone? Rules-based partial style overrides, similar to .mailfilter rules? Hmmm.


Or maybe something exceedingly clever that would let me click one checkbox to remap colours (for everything except images) to the opposite side of the colour wheel (0xFFFFFF- value).

My pet's name is too short

Sure, passwords are a necessary evil. And given passwords and fallible human memory, password reminders are also necessary.

What bugs me are predefined challenge questions for recovering forgotten passwords.

You've seen them. "Please supply answers to the following questions: 1) What is your mother's maiden name? 2) What was your first school? 3) What was your first pet's name?" etc.

So there I was, creating a profile at a newspaper's site, and got this response to one of my challenge answers:

Please correct the following error(s) before proceeding: Password must contain at least one character that is not a letter.
Enter name of your favourite pet. Response must be between 6 and 9 characters long.

Come on, folks. My first pet's name is only 5 letters long. My bad, I know, but when I was 5 I wasn't thinking about password strength as I chose my pet's name. All I was looking for at the time was a name short enough that I could finish calling him before bed time.

It is your predefined challenge list that is forcing me to use my pet's name, and now you won't accept my pet's actual name .. what do you want me to do, make one up? And then forget what I made up?

What if my mother's maiden name is 'Wall', is that ok? Or would I have to get her to legally change her maiden name?

Please, let me make up my own challenge questions, and let me put off explaining password strength to my kids for another few years. Maybe once they're walking.

Ok, in the interest of accuracy, my kids are in fact walking. But this was funny, and I hope it made my point.
 

Irony-R-Us: distraction

Driving to work this morning, I heard something about a new law against texting and emailing while driving. Unfortunately I didn't catch the details, I was checking email at the time.


Ok, for the record, I was at a stop light, and had only picked up my bberry after I was stopped, and put it away when the light went green. Still ... I was amused.

Double Barrel

Last Saturday marked the 15th homebrew competition in a friend's backyard, and as usual it was a lot of fun.  Last year I won the competition with a "Barack Obama Black Ale".  As that was my 4th consecutive win there was some talk at the judging table about asserting term limits.

This year we had a great turnout, 15 brews from maybe 10 brewers. I won "best name" for Double Barrel Palin Ail (puns intended).

The beer itself was only moderately popular (my other entry, "Red Head", did very well so far as actual beers went), but here is a recipe for the Palin Ail for those who might be interested, for a 5 US gallon batch:

• 8 oz 60L
• 6 oz Cara Munich
• 6 oz US Victory
• 2 oz Malto Dextrin
• 4 oz flaked rye
• Steeped 30 minutes at 150 F
• 6 lb light malt extract
• 1 lb dry malt extract
• Bittering: 1/2 oz Horizon 11.4 + 1 oz East Kent Golding 4.5
• Flavour: 3/4 oz East Kent Golding + 3/8 oz Nugget from my new hopyard
• Aroma: 1 oz East Kent Golding
• 3/4 tsp Irish Moss
• 1 tsp DAP
• Pitched a Nottingham dry yeast

iTunes and remote media via NFS, not SAMBA

Strange that I haven't posted for months ... and that one was about iTunes as well.

Anyway, I've been cursing iTunes for months. I have over 5000 songs in my home library (for the record, almost all ripped by me, a few from artists who supply downloads, links below), and rather than copy them to all the machines in my house and try to keep them all sync'd, I store them all on a terabyte+ RAID server on a linux box. The filesystem is exported through SAMBA and mounted into each of the Windows machines around the house.  Hey, it works.

But it hasn't worked well for a few reasons. One is that it is SLOWWWWWW! It took me ages to figure that it was Samba that was causing, or at least triggering, the problem.  It seems as if iTunes needs to read the files when just scrolling the file list in the iTunes library, which is quite insane.  But what I would see is I'd drag the scrollbar and a full second or more later the window would actually scroll. Ditto if I click for page down or something. It was desperately annoying. And going through SAMBA to read these files, well, it wasn't pretty.

So today I bit the bullet and figured out how to install MS' NFS Client for Windows, and I remounted the linux filesystem through NFS. This is a huge improvement. While still slower that local, the action is almost live now.

Of course, the real culprit is a broken design for iTunes.  Whether single-threaded, or just reading the files when it doesn't need to, simply scrolling the window shouldn't do anything but scroll information already present, either in memory or at worst already in the library file which *is* local.

For those with similar problem, here's how I did it.

1. stop iTunes 
2. Download Windows Services for Unix direct from MS
3. unzip into a local directory (just click the exe in explorer)
4. install in a cmd window per these instructions 
5. reboot - the mount command used below wasn't found until rebooting
6. unmount the samba drive
7. remount from the command line. I used: mount -o rsize=8 -o wsize=8 -o anon -o nolock \\server\media m:
8. move the itunes directory under My Documents | My Music to another name. You can delete it later.
9. start iTunes. In Advanced settings, I set the location of my itunes folder to the remote media folder (in my case, M:\mp3). Make sure "Copy files to iTunes folder" is cleared. The reason I set the library to M:\mp3, rather than keep the library local, is so when I rip more albums they are automatically saved on the server.
10. File | Add Folder and pick the remote media folder.
11. go have a beer or two while all the files are indexed, volume and gapless checks are done, etc

That's all it took, and now iTues is almost as responsive as I would like on Windows with all media files remote.

Enjoy.

I promised links to some artists who supply downloads of their music. Here are a couple:

• Children of the CPU supply mp3s of all tracks on their album for download here  
• SXSW'07, there is a torrent of 739 tracks on this page
• I love Milla Jojovich, and her site usually has some tracks available, usually demos.

iTunes store and country restrictions

Apple has come under attack again recently in the EU regarding restricting the sales of certain content to purchasers connecting from specific countries.

Cupertino's Apple operates separate iTunes stores for each European country, with its own prices and artists. Although Swedish shoppers can travel to Italy and purchase a CD from a retailer, they cannot shop online at Italy's iTunes store without a credit card issued by a bank with an address in Italy.

The complaint goes that this is anticompetitive. Apple's response is that they can't sell what they can't get, and their suppliers (the owners of the media IP in question) license specifically by country.

Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of iTunes store. I have never purchased anything from them, and don't plan to do so until my purchase will technically permit what I believe to be my fair-use rights: to copy and enjoy my licensed content on my various players and devices.

That said, I'm siding with Apple on this particular issue. Bemoan country restriction all you want, it isn't the fault of the channel. The fault lies with the content owner, in this case, the record labels. For arguably valid financial model reasons, vendors will sometimes charge different amounts for content destined for different markets. To justify the practice they sometimes (but not always) specialize the product to the market, but that doesn't change the basic picture.  DVD vendors do this with region-encoded discs. We can argue that this practice is self-defeating, that it only encourages illegal cross-region copying, and no doubt makes us grow hair on our hands, but the reality is that the owner the IP should be able to choose when and how to license what they own. Just as it is my choice whether to buy from them. Or, as it says in a restaurant near my home:

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. 

EU regulators can take the record labels to task on this one as they will if they want "to open the market so people can shop freely throughout the EU", but they shouldn't harass a store who is stuck with the terms the labels are willing to offer.

Unless of course the complaint is pure harassment.

Nash strategy and public health

A recent article (subscription may be required) in the Economist talks about semi-rational public behavior for vaccine for seasonal (not pandemic) flu. Those choosing the vaccine are those most at risk - mostly the elderly and to a lesser extent those (like me) on a short vector. Which makes sense. This is an example of what I might describe as a Nash behaviour, in which people who can't or won't negotiate will make purely selfish (motivated by personal cost/benefit) decisions.

But the classic vector for flu is to be brought into the home by kids, where the adults then catch it and subsequently spread it in their workplaces.  The Nash vaccination behaviour is calculated to result in 100 times more flu infections than what is called a utilitarian strategy, in which the immunization of at least 77% of kids would roughly eliminate the disease for lack of a vector with which to maintain itself. "When a critical proportion of a group is immune to a disease, too few individuals are susceptible for that disease to be passed from one to another".

This is where the article stops. Going a further step, I wonder at the net national financial impact of Nash vs utilitarian strategy for flu vaccination. What would be the effect of 100x fewer flu infections on productivity, GDP, trade balance, and eventually exchange rate? Qualitatively, would there not be an increase in productivity, causing a small increase in GDP (decrease in health and drug industries, increase in others), and disproportionate increase in trade balance? What would it do to an B$836.1 US trade imbalance?

I'm reminded of a story in Britain a few years ago, about parents who were opting out of universal vaccination for some diseases (smallpox and red measles come to faulty mind) because there was no practical incidence any longer. In essence, a selfish (in the Nash sense, not a value judgment) decision to benefit from the vaccination of others and counting on not enough folks opting out to create a new propagation vector. Not to pick on Britain - I'm sure this happens elsewhere as well, but I encountered the story while living in Britain.

The very odd thought occurs to me that if a group makes a public decision to eradicate a disease by semi-requiring global immunization, but only 70% immunization is required to achieve the goal, who should make the decision about which 70%? Should those excluded be the higher risk, or the more nervous/selfish?
If individuals, how do we incent (reward) private decisions for public goods such as disease prevention and national productivity?

Who me? Bitter?

My second-latest homebrew was enjoyed far more than I'd have guessed yesterday at our annual local homebrew competition, bringing me a win for the third year running.  The surprise comes from it being a very hoppy beer.  This crowd has traditionally seemed to enjoy lighter styles, though with my Porter winning last year and now this aggressive pale this year, perhaps there is a change in tastes going on.

This beer marked another change - I have always brewed in the kitchen, which is convenient but slow, and frequently unpopular with other family members (ahem).  For this beer I hauled out my big camp stove, which turned out to be very nice for bringing large batches to boil quickly.  I liked this so much I think I'll brew them all this way in future.

Anyway, here's the brew:

Who me? Bitter?

• 2 lbs 2-row malt
• 1 lb flaked wheat
• 1 lb crystal 75L
• 1/2 lb rye
• 1/2 lb munich

Mash in at 170 F with 1.5 gallons. Insulate (I used a cooler and a couple of sleeping bags) for about 50 minutes. Sparged carefully with 2 gallons or so at about 175 F. Brought to a boil, turned off heat

• add 7 lb light liquid malt extract

brought to a boil. Added

• 1 oz Magnum hops for 60 minutes
• Whirfloc for 20 minutes
• 2 oz Centennial hops for 5 minutes

removed from heat, let cool, splashed into primary fermeter and added water to make up 5.5 gallons.

• Pitched White labs California Ale yeast (WLP001) at 68 F

Fermentation started in about 18 hours (at 68 F), proceeded for approx 1 week. When bubbling had decreased enough to suggest secondary fermentation was underway, I added directly to primary fermenter:

• dry hopped with 2 oz Columbus
• 1 oz french oak chips (steamed for 15 minutes)

After another couple of days, the rate of bubbles dropped to roughly zero.  after 1 more day I racked to a 5 gal carboy, then crash cooled to 36 F in a cold freezer (took perhaps 12 hours).  Let stand for 5 days for yeast and other debris to settle out, then kegged and carbonated.

After aging for 10 days in the keg, this beer is medium bodied and a pale amber color, with strong hop characteristic and huge floral nose from the dry-hops. And yet it isn't so bitter as to rip the back of your throat off.

a Modest Proposal for child care

I've heard that bringing two problems together can sometimes create a solution. Let's test that.

Here in California, two industries are going gangbusters - housing and childcare. Housing because despite economic slowdown there remains a good deal of pent-up demand, so new developments are still going in on the outskirts of the large cities. This has become so bad that migrant farm laborers are switching to construction in the Central Valley bcause it pays better. Plus, aging homes in termite-infested areas means a lot of renovations and repairs. Put the two together and it becomes very hard to find contractors to work on ones home. Anyone with a positive reputation is booked over a year in advance.

Only quality childcare is harder to come by. Waiting lists are the norm. In fact, if you don't get on a waiting list when the child is one or so, it'll be hard to get into a quality preschool before the child goes on to kindergarten.

The solution is obvious: "Bob the Builder(tm) Preschool".

"Bob the Builder Preschool prepares children for life by building their self-confidence in performance of useful and lucrative home maintenance and construction skills. Your child will experience real job sites and and benefit from quality instruction delivered by professional builders and fore(wo)men. Attendees develop skills with a wide variety of hand and power tools, as well as gain teamwork and language skills. Projects include basic carpentry, drywall, electrical and plumbing. Projects in the final year include abatement of hazardous compounds such as asbestos and molds."

:)

"Bob the Builder" is a trademark or registered trademark of someone else.

[Comments from my previous blog]

1. Mother of your children left...

Wednesday, 5 July 2006 6:19 am

I cannot wait to see what *Language skills* the children develop. I still prefer the name "Camp Glen" to "Bob the Builder Preschool". Makes it sound like the kids have a chance of having some fun. I can just see the curriculum "Trench Making for the Energetic", "The Art of Pouring Beer", and "How to walk the dog up really big hills".

Glen responds:  Just pouring? Our local microbrewer-run preschool program is teaching kids to brew beer ... never mind. Yes, dear.

2. ms. L left...

Wednesday, 17 January 2007 3:10 pm

This would be perfect for the Montessori minded parents. "Practical Life" skills gone wild!

3. ＮＡＴＳＵＭＩ　ＫＡＳＵＹＡ left...

Sunday, 6 July 2008 3:19 pm :: <link deleted>

I write the diary of the child care. It is daily life being nice, a pleasant thing, a serious thing, surprising continuation. Please link this site.

4. Shazia left...

Thursday, 22 January 2009 6:11 am :: <link deleted>

Nice article. This article is provide useful and importnat information. These information is very workable.

5. careprovider left...

Wednesday, 3 June 2009 3:43 am :: <link deleted>

My child went there and it's a great pre-school. Feel free and trustful to take your children there!

Blogs again, and frequency

Yesterday I attacked a blogging 'rule' I'd been flogged with, and then I was thinking about it a bit more and realized I'd been flogged (or at least gently castigated) with another: how often one blogs.  A while back there was a survey of blogging by folks productizing open source, and it was noted that while I have a blog (true), I hadn't posted since November (at that time, true).  The implication being that this is bad.

While infrequency is no doubt bad for my Google ranking, I have to relate this back to my post yesterday, that, for me, blogging is about advancing an idea or discourse.

Have you ever been in a meeting, to hear a comment afterwards that the meeting took so long because we needed to give everyone a chance to say the same thing?  I have, once or twice.  It is one of those wry-giggle sorts of moments.

If posts are to advance an argument or carry on a discourse, then they probably should be infrequent.  Or at least, they should probably only be as frequent as one has something useful to say. Or at least, that seems useful to the one saying.

Anything more is probably blog-spam, flooding our aggregators with an equal measure of things found by roadside and dead-cat posts.

Dang, this is probably my shortest post ever.

[Comments from my previous blog]

1. Bill left...

Tuesday, 28 March 2006 11:21 am

No comment. 8-)

Rules about what goes in a blog?

First a disclaimer: blogs can no doubt be whatever you want them to be.
Now a recant: my disclaimer is actually my point.

From time to time I've wanted to create a communication channel at my work that would let me dig in and chew on a topic, or invite a guest writer to do so, but in a more colloquial way than in a paper or presentation or "standard" corporate sort of piece.  Something like a blog. Text. Long or short as it needs to be to make and defend a point. Relatively unedited - certainly no magazine-editorial-staff, but really edited only as much as the writer needs to self-edit for his own comfort.

But whenever I've tried to do this (and it has been 3 or 4 times over the past year or so), I get these blank looks.  I keep hearing "But, a blog is a diary, not a magazine."  The latest expression of this is within an email newsletter I read from time to time. Amy Wohl said [ed: not available online any more]:

I’d also be breaking a blog rule.  Sometimes I write at some length and blog pieces are usually pretty short.  I could write a summary paragraph up front when I’m going to do that.  That would break yet another rule – or maybe invent something new.

*sigh*

So, sticking my head in the lion's jaws: this diary notion ...does it make any sense at all?

No.

A diary is something I write for myself, not for others.  When I write for myself, I write in my own shorthand, something that will remind me of a state of mind or a thought process I'm going through.  I skip steps. Skip letters. Hell, skip whole words or even sentences. I flit around from point to point. I jot in the margin in a stream-of-conciousness sort of way.  And this works because I know sorta how my brain parses information.

And even more, all my diary need do is remind me - it doesn't need to convince me, or even explain to me.
I joke about my handwriting: it is so bad that even I can't read it, but that is ok because as soon as I see it I can remember what I wrote. Those who know me or my handwriting personally will probably agree.

Can I do the same thing in a blog? I don't think so. Even if I accept the 'short quip' sort of blog style that many bloggers use, what I would write *for myself* in such a quip is rather different than what I would write for others. What others would get from what I write for myself is an odd thing to think about.

So I think 'diary' is pretty nonsensical.

Some use blogs fire off more rapid notes. And that is ok.  Though personally I see the mini-postings descend into a sort of glorified bookmarks page, comprised of links and no especialy added value. It winds up looking like little blocks, each comprised of a phrase or sentence or two, and a link. Not always, but surely a good deal of the time. 

Frankly, that sort of thing isn't really blogging for me because it doesn't contain any or enough of *me* - that's the one bit of the 'diary' concept that works for me, that my blog reflects me, not others. My thoughts. Not just semi-mechanical mention of things found at the roadside.

And for me, at least, reflecting me means that it is a mini-article, or mini-essay, and that is states a problem, describes a thought, appears at least sometimes thoughtful and hopefully from time to time is a little thought-provoking.

I don't know. It seems to me that a blog is a tool, not a product. The tool is about lightweight publishing process, not about the shape of the finished product. You can use it for a diary if you really want, and you can use it for glorified bookmarks too. Or you can use it to advance a discourse or promote a point of view. And it is about the feed, not what is fed.

But the point is that you just do it.

[Comments from my previous blog]

1. Knowledge Process Outsourcing left...

Monday, 22 February 2010 12:35 am :: http://www.kpo.com/

Thanks for sharing this very inspiring post. Even if you don't think so, I think it is relevant for a blogger to be able to express herself to his ideas.

2. glen martin left...

Saturday, 24 April 2010 6:25 am :: http://blog.glen-martin.com/

I think that was my point ... a blog is about expressing ideas to others. Key words here being 'expressing' and 'others'.

Link blogs don't fit for me because they don't express your ideas, they're just bookmarks.
Saying blogs are like a diary doesn't fit for me because diaries aren't for others, they are for yourself. And then having said it is a diary, one can make up all sorts of rules about what belongs in a blog, as to how diary-like that would seem.

No, my whole point is that a blog isn't like a diary at all, it is really a tool for self-publishing, and there are as many kinds of content as there are bloggers.

And that's ok. Just do it.

Thanks for reading.

Phishing with integrity

Sometimes it is possible to find humour in tedium. Phish attempts rank up there in plain unadulterated tedium for me. But check this out:

To take an advantages of current updrade (sic) you should login your account by using CitiBusiness^® Online application. For the purpose please follow the reference:
<bogus URL removed>
Please note that changes in security system will be effective immediately after relogin.

Oh, I dare say.  I have to respect truth in advertising.

:)

401Ks and other registered plans are not always the best retirement savings vehicles

Disclaimer: I am neither an economist, nor a registered financial planner.  This is not investment advice.

The 401K and other registered vehicles operate under the assumption that future tax rates will be much lower than current. For many, especially comparing income while working to that during retirement, this may be a reasonable assumption.

But consider relatively younger or middle-aged folks with long investment horizons. With a very large federal deficit, underinvested social welfare, and baby boomers leaving the workforce, we seem aimed at a time in which overall tax rates must increase, possibly a lot, in order for the government to continue to deliver social services. If my retirement horizon were 5 years or so this will probably not make much of a difference. In that it is around 20 years, I’m not so comfortable that my marginal tax rate will actually decrease in retirement.

Another factor is deductible mortgage interest. Living on the San Francisco peninsula I have a rather high mortgage (for a modest house, thank you). Itemizing my deductions against income and working through my return, my marginal tax rate drops pretty dramatically despite having a pretty decent income. In retirement I hope I won’t have this high mortgage, but that really means that I won’t have artifically depressed tax rates either.

Add it up. The assumption underlying registered plans such as a 401K are not guarateed to hold. In fact, I'd say they are unlikely to hold for many who are currently working.

In fact, were the US federal government to show any signs of thoughfulness, I might imagine they designed 401Ks with these issues firmly in mind, and that they consider 401Ks an annuity they've purchased in today's dollars to help fund social services in the future.

It may still make sense to invest in a 401K, especially if your employer matches your contributions. But I’ve been directing a good portion of my long-term savings to non-registered plans. YMMV

[Comments from my previous blog]

1. Ralph Galantine left...

Monday, 30 October 2006 8:55 pm :: http://blog.quantmarkresearch.com

The usual advice now is to max out your Roth IRA contribution (contribute after tax dollars, returns and withdrawals are tax free) before you make any contribution to your 401K that isn't matched by your employer. You should also consider maxing out other tax favored accounts, like the education accounts, before contributing to 401K's or traditional IRA's. Regular IRA's and 401K's suffer from the tax issues you mentioned.
Roth IRA's are a good deal unless your income is too high to contribute. Also, if you have a low income year, you can convert some of your traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. The amount you convert is "income" so you have to pay taxes on it, but I don't think there is any other penalty although you will hit an income limit. Your retirement advisor can give details.
On a couple of your other points:
-In retirement, you may not have a big mortgage interest deduction but if you own your home clear you get your "rent" tax free. It is a benefit or "income" to you but it doesn't show up as monetary income so it doesn't get taxed.
-The idea that the 401K's could have been created to generate a tax annuity from the retired living off their pre-tax savings and interest is amusing and might actually help tax revenues as boomers retire. However, it would be a mistake to design that kind of program. 401K holders are also voters and clever people. Account holders may succeed in sheltering their accounts through various devices.

2. Jonathan Bruce left...

Wednesday, 6 December 2006 12:48 pm :: http://jonathanbruceconnects.com/jonatha

So what do mean by non-registered plans? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this...

Manuel, the put-upon Porter

This last weekend was the 12th annual Brew-Ha-Ha and All Round Good Time, a homebrew competition with ballon origami that is held yearly in a friend's back yard, and this year I won for the second year running. The winning beer was a Porter I affectionately named Manuel, after the British comedy Fawlty Towers (though scripts refer to Manuel as a waiter, and arguably he dresses as one, he seems equally a Porter in function)(and, Waiter not being a style of beer, the joke (and likely the beer) would fall rather flat were I to change the name of the beer to reflect literary reality).

I think I only won because of the Chicago Rules of Voting that applied, which have been described as:

• vote early
• vote often
• dead people's votes count twice for sheer tenacity to drag themselves to the poll
• underage voters can vote as well, though presumably they didn't taste. Knowing something about the subject is no more a requirement for our contest than it is for other elections in our experience

This follows because despite winning with my Porter, the weight of the kegs at the end of the day showed that my Pale was actually much more popular, at least in terms of consumption. Go figure.

I'm going to try for 3 years running next year, with a new ale called "Constitutional Challenge", because of course it will take a challenge for me to hold office for three terms.  I'm open to suggestions on what style such a politically important beer should be.

[Comments from my previous blog]

1. Jonathan Bruce left...

Monday, 24 October 2005 12:08 pm :: http://blogs.datadirect.com/jonathan_bruce

Nice work Glen. Are you planning on shipping your brew to the east side?

Planned obsolescence

Screams aren't a good way to wake up.

Or at least, not one I'd choose.  20 years ago I woke instantly, but nowadays I sort of meander into full attention. Screams from the other end of the house aren't, frankly, all that respectful of my lifestyle. :)

On arrival in the kitchen, I discovered that our coffee machine was on fire. Not smoking, but literally in flames. The plastic was melting, that melted plastic was running across the counter also in flames.

"Things aren't built the way they used to be" has become so commonplace it is more than a little trite. So many products fail pretty much exactly when the warranty runs out that we sometimes talk of planned obsolescence.

I see planned obsolescence as a failure of marketing, or more, as a flawed view of what customer relationship is all about.

Think about it this way. The goal of building a long term relationship is to encourage customers to do business with you again. In essence, to build a sort of annuity of goodwill that continues to generate revenue over time. But if we forget about the word goodwill, and focus on the repeat business, then it starts to make an odd sort of sense to make the product fail and so to force another purchase.

This attitude fails in that early or spectacular product failure doesn't maintain what goodwill the positive experiences with the product may have created.

Without a doubt, I'm not going to buy another of the same coffee machine. And, in fact, my new machine is a completely different brand.

PS. Out of respect the the aforementioend screamer, I'll admit that it was more of a yell than a scream, but I think the text came out