aubreyturner.org

I braved the rain on Saturday to head over to the local Cabela’s in search of pants.  Specifically, I was looking for their Stretch 7-Pocket Hikers.  The only problem is that they tend to scatter the displays for the stretch hikers amongst the regular ones and several other types of pants (like their Chinos or Khakis).  To find the color you want often involves wandering about the area checking out all the racks that have pants.  Oh, and just for kicks, they rearrange the locations of these racks from time to time.  It’s not like in some stores where I can simply beeline my way to the desired item.

So I’m bumbling about the men’s section looking for the right color pants and trying to avoid the crowd (which was surprisingly thick for a rainy Saturday), when I spied a rack of stretch hikers a little further over and went to investigate.  There was one pair on the front that was easily examinable, and at first I thought that the hips seemed a bit odd, but I didn’t think much more about it.  However, I was mightly confused when I saw the size marked as “18.”  Obviously no one makes pants with an 18” waist (at least outside of children’s clothes), and these were definitely bigger than that… 

About this point the little lightbulb went off and I realized that I’d stumbled into the women’s section.  With a furtive glance about the area to see if anyone had noticed, I hastily beat a retreat back to the familiar area of the men’s department.

They definitely need better markers between the sections.  Or perhaps an alarm system (“Intruder alert!”).

It would appear that Radio Shack is having a bad time of it lately.

RadioShack Corp., coming off a quarter in which earnings plunged 62 percent, said it will close 400 to 700 stores and pare overhead costs as part of an 18-month turnaround effort.
…
RadioShack executives capped a challenging week by unveiling a turnaround plan at a meeting with analysts and investors. Slow-selling merchandise will be replaced with more popular items, and outside consultants will examine every expense category to find ways of cutting costs.

Between bad earnings and a CEO forced to resign after lying on his resume, it’s looking pretty bad for them.  I can’t help but wonder if their store experience doesn’t have something to do with it.  I spent many years avoiding them over their demands for name/address for every purchase.  When I finally went back I found that they were annoyingly pushy, trying to get you to buy the most expensive version of whatever you were seeking, or hawking those damn batteries.  It got to the point where I would avoid them unless I knew for sure that they had the item in stock and there wasn’t anywhere else to get it.  I also hated having the salesmen descend on me like a pack of sharks upon entering the store.  I like to shop in peace, and I usually know what I’m after.  It’s not like I need a lot of help to buy speaker wire or A/V cables.  It comes across to me like they’re guarding access to the products and they have to test my knowledge to make sure I know what I want (while making sure to steer me to the most expensive item).  Frankly, it’s a level of hassle I can do without.

Maybe if they made the store experience more friendly and less pressure-ridden perhaps more people would come back?

My hours outside of work for the past couple of weeks have been taken up by reading a bunch of novels by Val McDermid, especially the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series.

It all started innocuously enough last year when I saw a preview for Wire In The Blood on BBC America.  After watching a couple of episodes I was hooked.  Recently I discovered the books that the series was based on and ordered one of them.  Well, that was like extra crack for the addict.  So I found myself ordering the rest of the Tony Hill series as well as a couple of others. 

Over the past two weeks I’ve read the following:
The Mermaids Singing
The Wire In The Blood
The Last Temptation
A Place Of Execution
The Distant Echo
Killing The Shadows

And right now I’m working on The Torment Of Others.

Yes, I know it’s cheesy and it’s not realistic, but I’m a sucker for crime stories of all types.  One thing I have to say, though, is that Ms. McDermid has a wickedly evil imagination.  Her serial killers are some pretty sadistic bastards.

I’ve been wrapped up lately in working out some details for a project that’s been simmering in the background for a year and a half that suddenly became urgent last week.  It’s a bit annoying in that it’s one of those cases where the requester is hot to get something going, but this person doesn’t control the prioritization of my team’s work.  In any event, I’ve been yanked off another project (which is now on hold, pissing off a whole separate group of people) to work on this (at least to the point where there’s a design definition that can be foisted off onto the development team). 

But what really rankles me about this is that the requester had already decided on the design, in that they had some code written by another group that could handle this new type of data.  Their “requirement” was that we take this code and integrate it on our servers.  And port it from C++ to Java as well as migrate it from SQLite to a real DBMS.  Hmm… perhaps it’s not quite so ready for prime time as they thought?

Anyhow, I didn’t make them happy by saying that we’d consider their code, but that we’d have to review it carefully before we put it into production.  The code is more of a prototype or proof-of-concept right now.  We have to deal with several hundred thousand transactions per day on our servers, so we can’t just deploy any old code that someone gives us.  Not that we want to “reinvent the wheel,” but we have to consider things that they probably didn’t give any consideration to in their prototype.

It also didn’t help that I’ve insisted on written requirements (shocking, I know…).  I was a bit appalled that they’ve been pushing this project for a year and a half and they don’t even have a Business Requirements Specification.

I think the real problem here is that the requester got frustrated about being made to wait and decided to run the project without our input.  Now I’m doing the due-diligence on our part, and it rankles them because it appears that we’re redoing work.  It’s unfortunate that they feel that way, but there’s no way for me to develop something that works without understanding just what I’m supposed to be developing.

Would you expect a home builder to build you a house without a written agreement as to what he’s building?  Most people wouldn’t try to do that, so why do they think they can get away with it for software?

While a bit of humiliation sounds like a good idea, you have to wonder if anything short of the stocks would do any good with the bastards who install adware (or if you really want to get their attention, the pillory).

WASHINGTON—Companies could find themselves put up for public humiliation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission if they continue to advertise through insidious ad-serving software.

Such a move might help in the battle against adware, FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz said Thursday at an event here hosted by the Anti-Spyware Coalition. Adware is software that displays pop-up ads on PCs, often after Internet searches.

“I think that could have a beneficial effect,” Leibowitz said in an interview. “In this context, maybe shaming a company on how they are spending money might inure to the benefit of consumer’s privacy.”

Of course, some companies wouldn’t like this idea, because it holds them accountable for the actions of their agents (the most common excuse from companies that are using adware is that “they didn’t know”).  This would be a good incentive for companies to make sure their agents are playing by the rules.

The previous owners of the house left a hideous pink paint pattern in the kitchen/dining area:

They also had a pink theme going on in the living room:

I’m not sure whether they were simply colorblind or suffered from bad taste, but I couldn’t stand it and I was planning to eradicate all of it.  However, painting all that picture-frame molding trim was so tedious and time-consuming that I never wanted to touch another paintbrush again after the living room.  So I’d resigned myself to put up with the other rooms until such time as I recovered.  Now I’ve gotten fed up with looking at it.

I’m feeling the itch to paint again.  That, or I’m coming down with something…  If I actually pick a color, then we’ll know I’m serious.

The FCC has come out in favor of unbundling cable channels.

It has been a trend in American living rooms for decades: Every year, the cable television bill goes up as consumers receive ever more channels they do not want or cannot find the time to watch.

But in a frontal assault on business as usual, the Federal Communications Commission, in a report issued Thursday, said consumers would save as much as 13 percent on their cable bills if they could buy only the channels they wanted instead of being forced to pay for hundreds of them. The average household, the FCC said, watches only 17 channels.

I’ve often wished for something like this, or perhaps a pay-per-view per-show option (i.e. view an individual episode of the Sopranos without subscribing to HBO).  So far, all of the on-demand options for something like this only apply to existing subscribers (in the above example of the Sopranos, you can watch anytime, providing you already subscribe to HBO).  We’re starting to see a little movement into this area, with pay-per-view shows being sold via the iTunes Music Store. 

But on further thought, I can’t help but wonder how well this will work out.  My previous thoughts were with regards to price, in that I’d expect the cable operators to find a way to raise effective rates, but hide them in the per-channel billing.  But there’s also the issue of networks funding their niche offerings through bundling them with the more popular channels (which is a rather socialist approach when you think about it).

It looks like it’s going to require the development of a whole new approach to revenue to pull this off.  That, or a bunch of smaller channels will go away.

I recently cancelled my Cingular wireless service in favor of Verizon.  I’m getting better coverage and paying less per month.

Anyhow, I was greatly amused to receive a check from Cingular today refunding me for the remaining balance on my account.  The reason I was amused was that the check was for $0.17.  Looking at the front of the mailer, I see that Cingular spent $0.32 to send me a $0.17 refund.

You’d think they’d just go ahead and put a clause in the contract that any balance less than $1.00 would not be refunded.  It’s not really worth it in terms of my time or theirs to deal with such a small amount.  I certainly wouldn’t make a trip to the bank just for this one check (I rarely deal with checks, so I may go into the bank once every three months or so these days).

What is it about GM and the names they give their cars?  What does the name Lucerne conjure up?  Aside from the city in Switzerland, I get an impression of something soft, fluffy, comfortable.  While comfort is nice, if I were to buy a car, I’d also want performance.  So I was a bit surprised to learn this morning that they are now offering a Northstar V8 (on the CXS model).  That got me to actually take a look at the features on the car, which I normally wouldn’t have done, since I normally tend to dismiss Buick as an “old people” car line.

This thing actually has some interesting features on it, like the Northstar V8, stability control, and magnetic ride control (uses a magnetic coil to change the viscosity of the fluid in the damper).  I was a bit surprised to find these on a Buick until I learned that it’s built on the Cadillac DTS platform.

Buick has always had a bit of a schizo personality.  My first car was a hand-me-down 1966 Buick Wildcat (scroll down to 1965, which is almost identical to mine, except that it was maroon instead of the lighter red).  It had a 401 cu.in. V-8 with a 4-barrel carb.  The Wildcat line was eventually killed because it was considered too “wild” for their core market.  The Wildcat and LeSabre were built on the same platform and the LeSabre continued on (as its name seemed to “fit” their customer base better). 

I wonder how well the Lucerne will ultimately do, given that many people, like me, don’t usually give much consideration to Buick?

Update:  I just played around with their “Build Your Buick” feature and added all the cool options to the CXS model (sunroof, deluxe leather seats, XM, 6-disc CD, theft package, backup assist, etc) and it came out at $37,435 MSRP.

That’s a nice website you’ve got there.  It’d be a shame if something were to happen to it.

Once again, a Verizon executive is bellyaching about not getting enough fees out of Internet traffic.

A Verizon Communications Inc. executive yesterday accused Google Inc. of freeloading for gaining access to people’s homes using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build.

The comments by John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, came as lawmakers prepared to debate legislation that could let phone and cable companies charge Internet firms additional fees for using their high-speed lines.

“The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers,” Thorne told a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. “It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers.”

Verizon is spending billions of dollars to construct a fiber-optic network around the country for delivering high-speed Internet and cable TV services. Executives at other telecom companies, such as AT&T Inc. chief executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr., have suggested that Google, Yahoo Inc. and other such Internet services should have to pay fees for preferred access to consumers over such lines.

Frankly, this is a daft load of bollocks (sorry, been reading too many British mystery novels lately).  Google may be using “cheap servers,” but they pay for the bandwidth they use in their datacenters.  And I pay for the bandwidth I use on my end of the link.  Verizon isn’t having its lunch eaten for free by other players.  All of us who use their broadband services have already paid them for it.  If they’re not making money on their backbone operations, then maybe they need to negotiate better deals with their peering partners.  But it’s time to stop bleating about this.  No one is getting a free lunch here. 

There also appears to be some confusion about just how these networks can be used.  It sounds like Verizon is complaining that all its bandwidth is being eaten by services offered by providers other than itself, and that makes their new fiber build-out unprofitable.  This is an obnoxious obfuscation on their part.  They have built capacity into their network for their own services, and then provide broadband access to people using the remaining bandwidth.  Their own video offerings are in no way threatened by Google or Yahoo, at least from a bandwidth standpoint.  And I see nothing wrong with them using QoS tools to guarantee bandwidth to their own IPTV offering (should they ever actually start offering it; right now, at least here, their TV service uses an RF overlay on the fiber).  After segementing out their own traffic, they’re offering me a certain amount of bandwidth.  It’s really not up to them what I do with that bandwidth.  But this sort of talk sounds a lot like they’re wanting to charge me more depending on how I use that bandwidth.

I think a lot of this is simply sour grapes on the part of telephone providers who can’t stand the idea that data is the new game and the old (and very lucrative) telephone system is on its last legs.  Verizon and the others are trying to find ways to reach into the data stream to pull out new sources of revenue, rather than being relegated to being providers of commodity bandwidth.  Verizon had better be careful about this sort of talk.  We’re already getting rumblings of “net neutrality” legislation in response to these sorts of proposed schemes.  Millions of people now use broadband, and those people have come to depend on the net working a certain way.  They will never stand for additional per-site charges and sites like Google will not likely stand for being charged.  I would expect a player like Google to segregate traffic from providers who demand payment so that the end-user knows exactly who is to blame (i.e. if you’re on Verizon and Verizon demands payment from Google, Google could simply redirect you to a page that explains that you are experiencing slow performance because Verizon is demanding that Google pay extra for you to use the bandwidth you already paid for).  Just how much bad press and customer enmity are Verizon, AT&T, and the other network providers really willing to incur in this battle?

Link via Slashdot.