I didn’t really blog about it at the time because we had enough going on, but about a year ago when we first moved into the house where we lived now, I found myself really frustrated with the previous tenants because they kind of left us in a bind on a number of things when they moved out at the last minute. We ended up having to change the locks because they forgot to give us all of the keys back and then couldn’t be bothered to come back to hand them over later because “they didn’t even know which ones they were,” then I had to pay disposal fees for a couple of bigger items that they wanted thrown out, but the trash wouldn’t actually take. There were a lot of loose ends to clean up like mending the relationship with the lawn guy because they had stopped paying him, and a bunch of other nonsense that just seemed to drag on and on and on.
Anyways…
So fast forward a year when a very obvious envelope showed up in their name today. From the IRS. An envelope shaped precisely like what one’s federal tax refund tends to look like in its traditional check form.
Let’s just say that it was incredibly rewarding to scribble RETURN TO SENDER – NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS!!! on the outside of that envelope and pop it back in the mailbox. 
It’s not like I have any way of getting a hold of those jerks anyways…
I thought this was a really intriguing article:
How Companies Learn Your Secrets
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html
On one hand, the analytics behind the data is kinda brilliant – the idea of building a customer profile to be able to predict specific life-changing events within a few months time is just amazing to me. It reminds me of a documentary I saw a while ago about how Walmart’s automated shipping system works because they actually take into account weather patterns to ship not only hurricane supplies like water and canned foods in preparation for upcoming storms, but also Pop-Tarts because, well, their sales data shows that people go through a lot of Pop-Tarts when there’s a hurricane bearing down on them off the coast! 
On the other hand, though, I can’t necessarily overlook all of the ethical quandaries that stem from such digging – like the fact that they not only use membership cards, but also just straight up credit card purchases as a way to tie all of your sales data together (neat, in my eyes), and the idea that they also buy consumer data from other conglomerates to merge together with their own (not as neat).
And of course, the glaring issue stemmed from this particular article – what happens when a profile is built that you would’ve preferred to keep quiet due to personal reasons, or perhaps even tragedy??? The woman who starts getting coupons for her unborn baby is one story when Target predicts that she’s pregnant before she’s even told her own family, but what about in the case where somebody has a miscarriage and thus no longer wants to get those kinds of coupons? Maybe this isn’t really that big of a deal – I don’t know, because of all those Target coupon books that I’ve gotten to date, none have been filled with deals on frozen pizzas and LEGOs and video games and Pop-Tarts that would drive me to make an impromptu visit to their store!
I think part of the reason why I’m not so concerned with the overall ethical implication here, though, is that as a general rule, I honestly don’t really have a problem with targeted advertising simply because I’d much rather view ads relating to things that I personally care about than just random crap that doesn’t affect me in the slightest. I know a lot of people would throw out the notion that they don’t like having to view ads altogether, and maybe I don’t share that philosophy because I sell advertising on all of my websites and have come to accept that without them, a lot of content creators would never get paid for their work. So if I’m visiting a video game review site and they run ads pimping out a new RPG that I might actually want to play myself, that’s better in my eyes because instead running something like an ad for Raisins (*because I have a bag of raisins on my desk as I write this…) doesn’t really help either of us – I’m not going to click the ad because I have no desire to see raisin-related ads intermixed with video game reviews, and the publisher misses a click because an ad for the new Zelda game might’ve stood a better chance at gaining my attention because I actually care about that.
Now whether the general public is, well, in general ok with this sort of thing … that’s a little trickier to tell. My gut would be that honestly, I don’t think most people care simply because they wouldn’t even think about what’s being assumed about them behind the scenes unless you told them. And I don’t necessarily think that it’s deceptive for a store to do intelligence like this to help improve their own sales, either – it’s really just another step down the path of making the store inviting, doing market research to identify which products sell the best at which positions on shelves, how many different choices are the optimum to give a customer, and so forth. A lot of people want to criminalize the types of things that take place here, much like the efforts that go into keeping a gambler inside a casino spending money, but at the end of the day the consumer still had to step through the front doors in the first place.
Bottom line – I’m going to go grocery shopping anyways, so if Target wants to analyze my purchases and send me coupons for FREE LEGOS to get me in the door to buy other crap, then more power to ‘em!
It’s kinda long, but I think this is one of the most complete critiques I’ve read in a while with regards to exactly why paywalls truly are a horrible idea as an attempt to help “save” mainstream newspapers in the digital age. Ironically, although it may be sad to see the medium itself eventually dry up altogether, it’s kind of interesting to think of this new generation of media distribution which, although may not bear the same (blind) numbers that traditional papers used to command, will actually end up producing more engaged readers and as a result, probably more valuable content for those passionate fans to enjoy.
Now what everyone else will be reading in the meantime, I don’t know, but then again, there really was never much proof of what they were genuinely engaging with in newspaper, either…
Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/01/newspapers-paywalls-and-core-users/
There has never been a mass market for good journalism in this country. What there used to be was a mass market for print ads, coupled with a mass market for a physical bundle of entertainment, opinion, and information; these were tied to an institutional agreement to subsidize a modicum of real journalism.
Sometimes I wish that more people were excited about the prospect of solar power.
I mean, I understand that it’s still kind of expensive and all, but I’ve got to think that it would be a big step in the right direction even if every new home that was built these days had its own solar panels, thus requiring only a fraction of power from the grid as existing homes … if not being able to sell back a little excess to boot! It just seems like with resources becoming more and more limited and pollution going through the roof, maybe it’s time to invest in clean energy solutions that don’t come with the harmful effects that buying coal or nuclear-based power from the local utility is associated with.
This post was inspired by a couple of links that I stumbled across the other day – the first being a really cool infographic citing the financial impacts of homes going solar:
http://1bog.org/blog/infographic-what-if-solar-were-on-every-roof/
And the second (possibly from the comments of the first) being a 1-year review of solar power from a consumer who installed it in his home last year:
http://snorkie.com/post/2011/07/27/One-Year-of-Solar-Power.aspx
The second blogger does make mention that part of his motivation for doing this was being conservation conscious himself, which I know some folks may not put a priority on over cost, but I’d like to think that if enough people who were in that position to make the choice began err’ing to the side of solar, one would think that eventually the costs would work themselves down to an area that would be more affordable for the average Joe. Besides, after seeing some of the crazy electric bills that we’ve gotten this summer, who wouldn’t drool at the thought of not getting a bill in the mail each month?!
So I finally got around to watching Transformers: Dark of the Moon last night and with one very important caveat, I really enjoyed it!
Specifically, that caveat was as follows:
I went into this movie with almost zero expectations.
Giant robots fighting, lots of explosions – that’s what I wanted to see from Transformers 3 and if nothing else, it was certainly fun to watch gigantic things shoot at each other and blow up for 2.5 hours. We saw it on the IMAX giant screen downtown and specifically addressing those two movie-going expectations, Transformers did quite well.
Outside of that, I mean, sure – the movie was horrible. The story was ridiculous, even considering that it was a movie about giant robots trying to invade the planet, Megan Fox’s replacement was essentially a cardboard cut-out of a lingerie model, and not for nothing, but why was Megatron wearing a cape?! Was that supposed to tell us that he’s only a fractured pauper of the king that he used to be??? Because at the end of the day despite missing half of his head, he’s still a 40-foot tall robot with guns on every conceivable part of his body!
In particular, I wasn’t too crazy about the opening scenes where they doctored the footage from Kennedy talking about the original moon landing, just because it didn’t seem like it was very well done; same with the Obama scene where Sam gets his medal. Buzz Aldrin’s cameo was kind of cool, except that it seemed silly when Optimus said in return that it was an “honor” to meet him as well, which seemed a bit too humble even for Optimus Prime…
“You’ve been to the moon? Congratulations – I could go there right now if I wanted to … should I bring you back something?!”
I guess it says something where the most obnoxious character in the last movies – Agent Simmons (the Sector 7 guy) – was now one of the most entertaining. I mean, John Malkovich was weird, but really, John Malkovich is just a weird guy, so no surprises there. I still have no idea why Sam’s parents were there, except maybe the writers needed to fill 5 minutes and were running out of explosions or something. Honestly, the best character interaction was probably during the last fight scene (i.e. the last hour of the movie) where the only dialog was variations of “Holy shit – that’s a big fucking robot!” and “Holy shit – this is fucking insane!”
I did really enjoy the robot fighting and the explosions, though – I suspect that roughly 95% of the budget went into the special effects, and it shows. The giant worm robot that eats entire buildings was pretty cool, and both Bumblebee and Optimus got to show off their general badass-ed-ness in one form or another. The twist at the very end was a little unexpected, however the last movies have basically proven dying to not be that big of a deal among Autobots and Decepticons alike, so I don’t really expect the outcome to have much of an impact on future sequels to come.
Honestly, at this point if they wanted to just give up on the whole “script” thing and toss that money into even more explosions and CGI robots, I think I’d be fine with that, too.
So I was in Target looking at toys (among other things) earlier this evening when I exchanged a couple of text messages with my wife that I thought were kind of comforting:
Scott: Is it bad if it’s the toys that get me excited about having a kid more than anything else?
Sara: Not at all
For the record, this was the picture that I had sent along with my text…
I mean – Fisher-Price mixed with Dungeons & Dragons … where was this stuff when I was a kid?!
Those not directly in the loop might be interested to know that while we’re not currently pregnant, we’ve been trying for a little while, which I don’t really want to talk about publicly here because it’s a bit too personal, but oddly enough I will talk about the decision simply to want to have kids because it certainly hasn’t been an easy one for me to swallow at times! I honestly go back and forth about it a lot – part of me is excited about all of the amazing experiences to look forward to, while another is scared out of his mind about being ready to take on that kind of challenge and the fear of possibly having to leave other things behind.
I do find that focusing on all of the positive, fun, exciting things does help to sway the balance, though, and so yeah, one of the things in particular that I’m looking forward to doing eventually with my son or daughter is getting just as much into their toys as they are. I’ve already got the LEGO collection started before they even get here, not to mention as seen above, there are just some really cool kids toys and video games and doodads and whatnots available out there these days! A lot of kids grow up playing with other kids, but not so much with their parents … you can tell them in the store simply by the ones who are enjoying the toy aisles with their kids* vs. the ones who are griping just to pry the kids away from them.
I want to be a fun Dad who plays with his kids, and who always makes time to play with his kids, and who encourages them to goof off and be creative and have fun as opposed to stiffeling it or telling them to “Calm down!” all the time. When we finally buy our own house, we are gonna have the mother of all playrooms in that thing, just filled to the brim with every toy and building brick and age-appropriate video game their (or my) hearts could desire! I’ve got such great nostalgia for all of the LEGOs and GoBots and Voltron lions and all of the other amazing toys that I enjoyed myself growing up that I really look forward to sharing all of those awesome memories with the next generation, and maybe even trying to figure out some of these new-fangled toys if we’ve still got any time left, too…
* Note: It’s kind of funny because I actually witnessed a positive version of this firsthand on this same trip, which did stand out to me because unfortunately I normally only ever hear the opposite. A little kid was picking out toys in the LEGO aisle and his Mom was actually pointing out that he still had money leftover if he wanted to get something else, or that he could even pick a set that was a little bigger! In fact, she was even helping to teach him how to look up the prices with one of those self-scan machines they have at random around the store, which was cute because I was actually blocking the machine sending this vitally important tweet and I overheard her say, “We can go check the price over here, but we have to wait our turn first…”
Maybe it seems silly to notice something as simple as a Mom actually enjoying time with her son, but it does seem like far too often that I overhear parents making their kids sound more like a burden than a blessing, and I’m sure it is tough at times … but toys of all things won’t be one of those struggling points for me, mark my words!
I’m also going to try really hard not to yell at them while we’re at Disney World – you know, the Most Magical Place on Earth, too, but that’s a rant for another day…
Yesterday was our big moving day, and eventually we made the decision to splurge a little and pay a company to help. We still did all of the packing (over the last three weeks, and it was crazy), but these guys would show up the day of, load the truck at our old house, and then subsequently unload after I drove the truck over to the new house. We honestly weren’t really sure what to expect and at some points felt a little slackish for not doing the heavy lifting ourselves, but looking back now that it’s all done, I’ll never not pay someone to help us move ever again!
Of course, it didn’t help that I wasn’t able to get a bigger truck – it was either 17’ or 26’, and stupid me opted for the smaller of the two, which was in fact smaller than the truck we had used to move into that house some three years earlier – so I warned the guys right out of the gate that it was probably going to be a tight fit at best. Amusingly enough, their response was a chuckled, “That’s par for the course – we’ll make it fit!” and with that, they went straight to work.
The whole ordeal was like watching an expertly played game of Tetris, and aside from me helping to pack up Sara and her cousin’s cars for them to transport the more fragile and awkwardly-sized items, I pretty much kept to the sidelines and answered questions about prioritizations while they worked. There were times that admittedly I even felt a little guilty because these guys had to do all of the heavy lifting, wrestling with our dresser and TV and countless numbers of boxes, but the truth was there was just no way that Sara and I could’ve done it on our own.
That’s how we did it last time, and although I can’t recall if she actually had back problems before, she most certainly did afterwards. I even had friends that offered to come help, but that’s still an awful lot of work for a couple of non-physical people to handle and we easily would’ve been at it all day. With these guys we were loaded in about 2.5 hours and unloaded in another hour – it was truly amazing.
The (sheepishly) funny thing is, when we first considered hiring people, I did a lot of searching around about tipping and after a healthy debate, I had decided that we were already paying them enough – they didn’t need to get a tip on top of that (their fee was $45/hr for two guys – we had them for 4 hours total). By the time they were ¾’s of the way done loading and the truck was bursting at the seams from floor to ceiling, my opinion had slightly changed on the concept of tipping and I had Sara stop by an ATM for some cash!
When all was said and done, they most definitely earned that tip, and probably even a little more. Sure, it was a good chunk of change for a long afternoon’s work, but not having to wrestle our elliptical up into and then back out of the truck … priceless!
Even beyond all of this!
I love how it’s not overly complicated.
I also recently got a new Blackberry Bold for work and frankly, I absolutely hate the thing. It’s like they just kept cramming in more and more features without any consideration at all for useability – there’s three or four different ways to display the main menu, it took me looking it up on another phone to figure out how to unlock the keypad lock, and I actually feel like I’m more limited by all of the features just because I’m overwhelmed.
I love the apps that I’ve been playing with so far.
I found a cool app from the guys who do TouringPlans.com that shows estimated wait times for attractions around Disney World, I’ve been playing the hell out of Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja, and even the WordPress integration app looks like it has a lot of potential for posting the occasional blog post remotely and managing comments. Everything just seems really visually attractive and also flows well, which is good because aesthetics are important to me.
I love how easily and quickly I can check my e-mail / Facebook / Twitter.
Before it would literally take me five or ten minutes to launch the Mobile Web app, then visit each website and hope that I didn’t get some stupid error, then login to view any updates on these sites, whereas now I can check any of them in 30 seconds or less and it’s hardly an interruption to whatever else I’m doing at all.
I’m sure I’ll have even more to gush about later, but so far I just really like this device – it seems to have been designed extremely well, the speeds seem reasonable both on 3G and wi-fi, and I feel like this is the experience that having a “smartphone” should be. It shouldn’t be confusing or daunting, it shouldn’t be ridiculously bad at handling data or phone calls – it should just work.
If you want to read a riveting story, go check out John Heald’s blog for his account of what happened to the Carnival Splendor last week.
Apparently John was onboard as the Cruise Director during this voyage that abruptly ended only a day in after a fire broke out in the engine room and killed power to the entire ship. I know of John’s name simply because he was the Cruise Director for our trip on the Carnival Legend last fall and he was entertaining enough that I remembered to track down his blog later and still keep up with it from time to time. The man has a sense of humour (spelled incorrectly because he’s British) that’s just the right amount of foul for an audience of all ages, and I remember several evenings where his introductions had me rolling more than the actual comedians…
Anyways, Friday afternoon he began posting his own recollections of the chaotic events that took place that day – getting woken up with the definitely not a drill call, trying to keep passengers calm, “borrowing” a candy bar from someone on the bridge to prevent himself from falling into a diabetic coma. The entire story is up to 5 parts at this point and it’s just cool to read a candid perspective from a high-ranking employee on what took place during what had to be a really fucking scary time for a lot of the people on board!
After writing this, I realized that I think I hit on something with that last point – how much of the younger generations even read newspapers anymore, at least in the traditional sense??? If it’s such a low number that it’s inversely proportional to the amount who use DVRs, then maybe that’s the key – newspapers cater to their audience, who really aren’t using DVRs, anyways. Kind of like the concept that the average age in Congress is something like 64 years-old … a sad reality for the current time, but eventually there will need to be a shift or the whole thing will just die with them. Hell, a lot of people in my generation would cite that newspapers are already dead anyways, so maybe I need to just stop nursing them along and catch up with my own people…
