Have you seen the price of gasoline?!?
Where can I park my Prius?
Reply
Author Archives: bluedepth
My money's on the Bear
A bear and a shark have arguably equivalent biting capacities, but the bear wins because of the sharp claws. Sharks just have fins. Bear wins.
Don't say 'Assessment' around me
Assessment
I’ve heard this word too much and now I hate it. It’s a way for academics to avoid talking about the real problems because they throw up an endless stream of straw men that they want to deal with first before discussing the real problems. It’s always “We should assess” which turns into “What can we do to assess” and that finally blossoms into a completely idle study of assessments. The real problem just disappears completely and the only thing occupying meetings are assessment tools and methods of assessment and ethics of assessment. The real problem has grown up, wandered away and eaten a bus load of school children while people are trapped in a meaningless committee arguing about assessment. This is related to the “Painting the Bike Shed” problem, in that a group of people spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about what color to paint the bike shed instead of what should be done with the 20 metric tons of nuclear waste adjacent to the bike shed. It drives me mad.
Retreat would set this country straight
What this country needs is to retreat, to pull back on all our self-established commitments. Declare that we’ve won in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Korea, Japan, The Phillipines, and all the other places where we occupy land that isn’t our country. Tear down the fences and let whoever owns the land have it back. We need to let other countries and organizational units take over being the world police force. It’s time that China and the European Union take a whack at protecting the world. We need to concentrate on our own house first. We need to get out of debt, we need to stop being the John Wayne of Earth and realize that some things aren’t winnable, like a land-war in Afghanistan. Life could be so much more pleasant if we concentrated our efforts on our own continent instead of being spread along all the others.
The Grass is Greener…
Living in Kalamazoo isn't a permanent thing. This place is a waystation. You don't stay forever in a waystation. It will just take time to get to where I am going.
Where's the 'undo' button?
Do overs in your past are really thorny things to think about. Would you be in the place where you are now if you didn't have that experience? Would you be better off, or worse? And do you really want to risk it? The things that I've done, the things that I wish I could do over are mistakes that I've made that became lessons to me later in life. If I missed them, I would probably end up finding a way to make them happen anyways. One thing that I probably could do without, if I had a chance would be my relationships during college. One in particular which was very nasty I could probably do away with. But then again, I lacked the maturity and understanding to do it any differently back then, but now? Oh how I would erase all of that. I know exactly where and when I should have turned my back and walked away. The first fateful aborted meet-up, the one that fell apart because the person I was about to meet was a coward. I should have had more wits and saw that for what it really was instead of allowing a second chance and enduring what I had to endure.
But then again, that whole experience laid the foundation for where I am now. I enjoy my current life because I learned a lesson back then and grew because of it. Do I wish I could have skipped it? Sure. But if I did, I probably wouldn't be as mature now as I am having experienced that mistake. So there is a wish, but no will to carry it out.
My knife scar
My left hand is where I keep my scars. I've always thought it was because I'm very right-handed and so my left hand is a simple appendage. It doens't have the dexterity of my right hand or any of the motor memory that my right hand does. There are three prominent scars on the left. The two thin scars are from knives. One of them was an accidental cut with a swiss army knife, while the other was with a hunting knife. The most prominent scar however is one on my left index finger. When I was 16 or so, maybe I was celebrating Christmas with my family in upstate New York and the tree was too high for the room we put it in. The fix was easy, just lop off the topmost branch part and the tree would fit perfectly – about 3 inches of treetop. I grabbed a pair of scissors and I angled them just right and lopped off the branch. What I didn't notice was that this part of my index finger was also laying against the equally sharp sides of the scissors on my side of the scissor screw that held the two pieces of metal together. I had taken a thick notch out of my index finger. The rest, well, is the scar.
The only other scar I have that is noticeable is a surgical scar just above my knee on my left leg. I had to have a cyst removed and it required surgery to do it. That hurt a lot less than any of the others because I was put to sleep while they took it out of me and woke up stapled and bandaged.
Pushing Om Nom Nom to 11
Quite possibly the best recipe I have that is insanely delicious and not very bad for you is Alton Brown’s Dan Dan Noodles. Here’s the recipe:
Dan Dan Noodles – Recipe courtesy Alton Brown, 2011
Prep Time: 30 min Inactive Prep Time: 0 Cook Time:1 min
Level: Easy
Serves: 4 servings
Ingredients
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar
1 tablespoon chili oil
1/4 cup low-sodium chicken broth
8 ounces ramen noodles
1/2 cup roasted peanuts, chopped
3 scallions, finely chopped
Directions
Place the peanut butter, garlic, ginger, soy sauce,
brown sugar, sesame oil, black vinegar, and chili oil into the bowl of a mini-food processor. Process until
the mixture is well combined and forms a paste, 1 to 2 minutes. With the processor running, gradually add the
chicken broth and process until the sauce is creamy and well combined, 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a large
mixing bowl, cover, and set aside while you prepare the rest of the dish.
Place 4 quarts water into a large pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the noodles and cook until al
dente, 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Drain thoroughly in a colander. Add the noodles to the bowl with the sauce and toss
to combine. Serve topped with the peanuts and scallions.
Copyright 2011 Television Food Network G.P., All Rights Reserved
Printed from FoodNetwork.com on Sun May 08 2011© 2011 Television Food Network, G.P. All Rights Reserved
Saying Goodbye to Facebook
Yesterday, July 19th, 2011 I said my final goodbyes to Facebook and announced my transition over to Google+. I went on Facebook and let everyone who could still see my wall, know that I was leaving that service for good and conducting all my sharing over on Google+. For me it was a matter of who built the better mousetrap. The services provided by Google+ far outweigh the headaches that I’d have to wade through to match on Facebook and I like the cleanliness of Google+ and the lack of baggage that comes with running a service that was at one point built for high school and college age kids to socialize on.
When I made my goodbye status updates on Facebook one of my friends who usually doesn’t say much brought up a valid point. His issue with Google+ is their privacy policy, which he took exception to. The policy is composed of jargon and legalese such as “non-exclusionary rights granted by the … for the perpetual use and non-exclusive publishing rights of the …” and so on and so forth. I am not about to make people who read these policies feel less of themselves by denigrating this legalese as so much meaningless and incomprehensible bibble-babble, but I’m not about to let something like that interfere with the path of my life and the things I want to do. Aren’t I running afoul of a policy that strips me of my rights for what I share and what I post online? Don’t I care about the things I write and the music I share and the photos I share? Doesn’t that bother me?
No. Not in one small bit does it bother me. My life is dull. What I have to share is free for the taking. Why should I license what I photograph, what I record, anything at all, when it comes down to it! What am I protecting? If I were to get all worked up I’d be protecting an endless and mindless stream of inconsequential doggerel and pablum. My social existence is important for me, and the message is important for the people in my life, but ownership of that material? It’s utter dreck. So what if someone comes along and licenses all my photography and lays claim to all that I have written. Someone comes along and asserts ownership over my blog? You are welcome to it! Much like Jazz, the crap that I create comes from an infinite source of unceasing malarkey. Grab as much of it as you want, I’ll just shovel up more. I’ve got a big shovel, boundless energy, and you’re just running garbage detail for me. Knock. Your. Socks. Off.
Really what it comes down to is none of these policies mean anything to people like me because we go ahead and live our lives. These policies exist for people who thrive on the minutiae of life. The only times these policies get dusted off and opened up is when someone tries to be a dick. Society gives us a shorthand when people are being dicks and so, in this social fabric, as long as the howler monkeys aren’t hooting and hollering too loudly the rest of us shrug and graze and go about our plain and dull lives. I haven’t heard anyone get bent about a privacy policy whatever from Google and even when I read the policy bibble-babble, I don’t really care. Non-exclusive, penultimate, pejorative, permissible, persimmons blah blah blah. It’s important to a very small subset of people and if it keeps them happy and shuts them up, why should I care? If the service disappears, so be it. It evaporates with all my writing and all my posted pictures? Uh, fine. I’ll just move on to something else. In the end I don’t care! I don’t care if I win, lose, or whatever. This sort of thing doesn’t interest me and life goes on.
And that brings me to another point, one more general than all the others. If everyone uncorked all these very dull and very blah-blah-blah policies and we all decided to dwell in the house of the righteous and mighty we’d quickly find ourselves so wrapped up in legal jargon and rules that we couldn’t do anything. Liability to perform a bowel movement? Nope. How about walking outside in the sunshine? Nope. Eating? Come on. I bet a legal eagle could find a series of policies that outlaw respiration! When you have this amount of text and only a very small segment of the population with enough interest to maintain consciousness when exposed to it, you end up with people who take others statements on-faith. We can’t process the endless stream of legal mumbo-jumbo, so we hire people who we pay and we trust to do it for us and give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Truth to be told, once we honor them enough to let them have a say, we forget all about what they said and get on with life! People tell us that we really should have lawyers look at things, and so we do. Not because we understand or actively even care about the lawyers but we understand that lawyers must be fed. Nobody told us why, and it doesn’t directly impact our lives to see to their proper feeding, so we write the right things, we post the right things and we look to the special creatures called lawyers and we look for a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. That’s as far as it goes, kids! Life goes on! Work has to be done! Those agreements and policies are great, they’re done, yes! They were seen by somebody? Yes! Those somebodies were happy? YES! Well, good… WHATEVER. We move on.
Life has to find a way to trudge forward. These policies are meat for lawyers. The only time when you need a lawyer is when people deviate from the Golden Rule. Society pressures each of us to not stray from the Golden Rule, so for a lot of this, once penned, will never see the light of day again. This brings up another point that has bothered me for a long time, and that is the fine-print monsters. There are agreements everywhere and there is fine-print everywhere, you can’t escape it. There is what is written and there is what is understood and the two aren’t necessarily bound together! When someone decides to be a dick, to play the fine-print game, then the lawyers click their mandibles together and there is a feeding frenzy — for the lawyers! For the people in the drama, there is the victim of the dick, the dick, and the fat happy lawyers moaning in ecstasy and having little orgasms when they hear “billable hours”. So afterwards, the victim of the dick and the dick part ways and the victim has learned a lesson. The victim of the dick never approaches the dick again. This used to be the end of it. The dicks never really had anything else to fear from the victim because they were just one little meaningless nobody in a sea of meaningless nobodies. That is, until social media and social networking came to town. Now the victims of the dick can hop up on a soap-box and write about their experiences to all the other potential victims of the dick and warn them. “Dick is here, he’s after you, avoid him.” and so the dick starves and dies because his prey was alerted that he was in the tall grass and fled. This creates a new series of regulatory controls between the victims of the dicks and the dicks. Now that each one of us can instantly publish and amplify our warning hoots to everyone else, the dicks are on the run, scampering left and right looking for victims and finding nothing but pounded earth from the millions of victims that have fled. This is the natural order of things now, and this is why it’s important to not be a dick. The minute you are branded a dick, you are effectively ostracized from society, you are given a Scarlet D to wear and everywhere you go tales of your dickishness proceed you!
So lets get back to where we started… leaving Facebook for Google+. Do I care about the privacy policy? No. Why am I not concerned? Because I value nothing that I create, I WANT TO SHARE IT and because I’m using these systems, isn’t it obvious that I want to GIVE IT AWAY!?! So someone comes along and takes it, well, that’s part of the point. If there is a dick in the tall grass, it might bring down a bit of the storm but it won’t stop the storm from coming and overwhelming it. Even if the dick starts to rampage, it’s now just a matter of pressing a button and walking away, effectively annihilating the dick.
In the end I don’t care. Life goes on. There are more important things to fret over, like whats for dinner tomorrow, did I see the tight little bubble-butt on that twinkie gym-bunny, what are my plans for labor day? These are the pressing things, not “Oooh, Google came in and asserted ownership of my LOLCATZ pics!” There is an order to things, and frankly, bubble-butts trump rampaging company-legalese-dicks. Life goes on.
Verizon
My day was poisoned by Verizon and Asurion, one of them is a nationwide wireless carrier, the other is an insurance company. They are the Reese’s Cup to my wasted blown-out day. Thanks guys.
Situation: Coworker breaks iPhone, takes it to a Verizon store, nothing comes of it. Coworker gives me the dead phone and I try to make heads or tails out of the knotwork that is Verizon and Asurion.
Email 1: (me writing to Verizon Rep, upset at being lead on a wild goose chase for most of the day, MIKGOVTEAM is an email to a bunch of people who are supposed to help me, a part of Verizon’s Customer Care … Team.)
Hello,
Thanks for the resolution on this problem. I have contacted Asurion and completed the affidavit. My client indicated that the report that the device was exposed to water is incorrect, it fell face-first onto a concrete surface. Because this is the word of our coworker versus a Verizon store we have issued new policies for our clients to not approach Verizon ever again because of these miscommunications. Instead all of our clients will route their phone issues through my office and we will contact Verizon directly where the conditions of the events can be exchanged clearly and without any of this miscommunication. We are unused to how Verizon conducts it’s business because of our previous relationship with Sprint and Asurion when it came to handling insurance. Sprint acted as our representative to Asurion, which differs fundamentally to how Verizon manages the three-party relationship. This too has changed our policies and procedures when dealing with your company and when dealing with Asurion. It is rather upsetting as a customer to know that Verizon stores cannot be trusted, cannot provide services, and that our only contact is MIKGOVTEAM.
The only thing keeping us as your customers is your network.
Pray for the health of that network.
Response from Verizon:
Andy, I am sorry to hear that you don’t seem to value the service my team and I provide. There are many reasons for VZW Government contracted customers to only be able to work directly through the Government team, the main one being security. The stores are restricted on what they can see, they can’t see government accounts.
I would be happy to meet with you to discuss the many other reason for our decision to not allow retail environments access to your account, I can assure you it is to your benefit.
My final email to Verizon:
The entire reason for us having a mobile infrastructure is first and foremost for our major gift directors and engagement team to have as much of a reliable wireless connection as I can provide for them. Verizon was selected because Verizon’s network is the largest in the United States and therefore won by default. Verizon wasn’t selected initially in the past because of a difference in toolsets provided by Verizon and Sprint. Sprint has proven themselves to be grossly incompetent when it comes to managing a network and right before I migrated everyone to Verizon, Sprint was “Circling the Toilet Drain”. I have yet to be actually pleased by any wireless carrier as they all try to be more than what they really are. Verizon fought against this tooth and nail, doing everything in their power to refute being a “commodity carrier” but in the end, that’s all the customers really want. The value-added components I’m sure gratify other wireless customers and they’ve expressed their thanks to you. I do admit that it comes in handy, when it works as designed. Verizon provides the network and Apple provides the devices. It was 8/10ths the iPhone and 2/10ths the Network. I informed Sprint of this and they sent a fool to me and actually dared to argue with me about Droid. It was that meeting in which my Sprint contract died, because they sent a fool to actually pick a fight with their customer. I was paying a three-grand-a-month contract and they lost it because they sent a fool.
My attitude about mobile carriers in the United States is pretty much identical. Every company is pretty much all the same. Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The networks are different, the frequencies are different and the rest is a dart board of bullshit that the customers have to put up with in order to get work done. I’d like to say that any one company is better than their competitors, but they aren’t. Verizon has the network but the stores are chock full of slime-balls trying to sell as much accessory junk as possible. Sprint is incompetent but the stores are reliable. I don’t regard AT&T as even a mobile carrier as they are just Cingular wearing the Death Star’s face. It’s macabre and it fools nobody. Cingular was incompetent on their own and their only singular saving grace was the iPhone, as AT&T. So in the end it doesn’t really matter how much I like any one company. Sprint screwed me with a $6000 billing error and I had to go through at least four wireless field reps and even still not getting anywhere as they continuously screw up billing.
So now we’re predominantly with your company and we just have to face some rather grim realities. It’s a compromise that we make. We trade a really quite excellent network for pretty much everything else. I have yet to visit a single Verizon store here in Kalamazoo (and man, are there a lot!) where I’m not either a used-car-shopper or in one case mistakenly thrown out of a store because looking for an iPhone bumper case is something AT&T can help me with… :~|
This entire interaction with Trish’s iPhone really had to come about eventually. It exposed a situation that we were not expecting to happen. One of my clients broke her phone, this was eventually going to happen. It’s why we bought the TEP Insurance because I know my clients have butterfingers and these devices would eventually start getting damaged. I made a mistake, so did Andy M, my assistant. We wrongly assumed that if Trish walked into any Verizon store that she could lay her dearly departed phone on the counter, that the Verizon store representatives would look up her phone number, see that it was a Verizon account, and then offer to replace her iPhone. What I was really hoping for was that the Verizon rep could then help her program the Exchange information on her iPhone and she could limp along with her device until she came back to WMU to get it polished off. If there was any costs associated with this entire hypothetical event, that they would be simply posted to the account. At best I was hoping for Verizon to offer her a warranty replacement free of charge and at worst replace the phone and ding us our insurance deductible. All of this so that I could tell all my clients that they could, if out in the big wide world, spy a Verizon store and know that they were covered, because a helpful person from Verizon was in any one of the multitude of Verizon stores and that they, in a manner of speaking, had my back.
What turned out to be was not that. Trish went to a Verizon store, they erroneously noted water damage (for which I know both Apple and Verizon have it in their best interests to push as hard as possible, since water damage isn’t covered by warranties) and they indeed proved the device was shot. They told Trish that they couldn’t do anything at all. And then Trish had to bring her dead device to me. I started with MIKGOVTEAM and was told that I had to go to Asurion. What really got me was the vicious circle that the both of you created. Verizon pointing to Asurion, Asurion pointing to Verizon and I’m in the middle, with a broken phone, and no way to resolve the circle. The advice from MIKGOVTEAM was useless. Being told to “Call Asurion” when I have a page from Asurion that says “Call Verizon” is just stupid. That’s when I reached out for you and Kim, since I was obviously getting nowhere in a big hurry. The process with Asurion wasn’t pleasant either, when I got to that. I had to cover everything all over again with them, get yet another claim number, and fill out an affidavit proving I am who I say I am and then faxing it to them.
So where we stand now is we can’t really trust any Verizon store. They run the gamut from used-car-salesmen to barely verbal thugs. They “note” water damage when there really isn’t any just to weasel out of having to put up with a warranty issue and then all of this that happened. If we invalidate all the Verizon stores and all I get from MIKGOVTEAM is “Call Asurion, 888-888-8888. Talk to them.” messages, then where exactly is the customer care, because I certainly don’t see it. So… to cope with all of this I’ve told my iPhone-using coworkers to just avoid Verizon stores altogether and bring their phone issues to me directly so I can corral all our dealings with your company through my office. It’s just another compromise. I am trading all that I wanted, the idea that even if my clients are in Houston, Texas, with a dead iPhone, that they will be able to get it fixed quickly for Verizon’s nationwide network. In the end, that’s what Verizon is to me. It’s the network. What I was really after isn’t possible and really all I need to know is that is how it’s going to be. I lower my expectations to match and we’re back to being happy customers.
When my clients get to Houston, Texas and realize their phones are dead they’ll have to find a Kinko’s and ship their phones to me so I can initiate an insurance claim, wait the days for Asurion to get to whatever they have to do, get the phone back to me and then FedEx it overnight to my clients. It’s messy and inconvenient and painfully expensive, but this is what we have to do in order to compromise.
If Verizon decides to make any of this better, I’ll be first in line with a smile and ready gratitude. I will admit that the website, when it works, works well. But Steve, you have to also know that it took Verizon nearly a month before I could reliably purchase iPhones through my website portal. The first half dozen iPhones I had to order manually through Kim. I’m sure there are other things that you and your team can do for us, but how much of it will be actually needed beyond ordering new devices, dealing with damaged devices, and the assumed-it’s-coming billing fiascos? Most of which I can already do through the website, and the billing fiascos, well, those will certainly be treasured moments yet to come. I don’t expect much and really all I’m after is the network, so don’t feel bad. It’s the best we can do with this compromise.
After my numerous experiences with Verizon stores, I certainly understand why you’ve established a walled garden around us all. I certainly don’t expect Verizon to change, but it will help you to understand that what we’ve lost stings quite badly. I can hope that we’ll never have another broken iPhone to deal with, but we both know it’s just a matter of time. At least now I know not to expect anything from the stores and I can skip MIKGOVTEAM and just contact Asurion directly. The only other reason I would need to contact you would be to help resolve problems with Verizon. The only eventuality I can think of is when Verizon screws up billing, and that might never happen, so if the world works out for the best, I won’t need to contact you or your team at all. If that isn’t the definition of a happy customer, I don’t know what is.
Now all we have to wait for is the other shoe to drop and witness the three-ring-circus that is Asurion. I fully expect that they’ll screw up and send us an empty box full of shredded newspaper and a $9000 bill, 60 days late with a collection notice rubber-banded to the box. My professional expectations start out at raging incompetence and there is nowhere to go but up!