Recently someone obtained my social security number and home address and phoned in to various credit card companies claiming to be me, claiming they were traveling and needed a cash advance. They claimed they had left the credit card at home and otherwise failed to provide correct information. So, the credit card companies said no, and each in turn called me, and offered to send me new cards with new credit card numbers, just in case, and I put a fraud alert on my credit report, and aside from the idea that someone is running around with my social security number and will surely try to identity thieve one day in the future, life went on happily.
My Chase credit cards both appeared overnight, on my doorstep, courtesy of FedEx. I have double-checked now, and seen no fees for this courtesy. Capital One, on the other hand, appeared the next week via first class USPS. That’s good enough for me, but what also appeared the next week was a statement with a $16.00 “Fast Card Fee”.
So, instead of calling in to activate the card, I called customer support. Within a few minutes I got a nice lady on the line, and instead of activating I simply canceled the card. I explained that the Fast Card Fee was insulting and wrong. She processed the cancellation and asked if there was anything else to be done. I thought a moment and asked to speak to the manager and when she asked why I explained that I wanted the Fast Card Fee refunded since the fee was not disclosed to me when the service was offered and contrary to her understanding the card was not dispatched “express mail” rather USPS First Class and further more those cards that had bothered with the expense of overnight mail didn’t charge me anything.
She went away for two minutes and when she returned she explained that she had gotten the fee reversed on the grounds that it had not been disclosed, but that even though the fee was canceled I should go ahead and pay the minimum balance by the due date and it would subsequently be refunded to me. I explained that I would do no such thing because by canceling the fee my balance would be 0 by the due date and if they want to charge me a late fee for failing to pay a zero balance . . .
Anyway, we’ll see. I’m mailing the thing back to them with a note and if they want to dig a deeper hole I’ll give them what for. As it is it is just nice to vent a little testimonial on my web site.
If this were any other food, reducing the size a bit to keep costs in line and maybe keep us from getting fat is a reasonable thing. But Haagen Dazs isn’t food, it is Joy in the form of a delicious treat and I would much rather pay a little bit more for Joy than receive less.
Ben and Jerry’s is keeping their size and their comparable price, but their ice cream is overly-sweet glop. Haagen Dazs is a superior product for which I’d gladly pay a bit more!
No, not Chinese. But at least I’m playing with an ethnic stereotype. So, sorta International?
I only know Russians who have emigrated to America. There seem to be two types: the incurably depressed and those with a healthy sense of humor. Russians with a sense of humor know that it is all too easy to be a funny Russian, so they try to keep it dry, but they often can not help but smile. That said, nobody I have met has gone full Yakov Smirnov. To be sure, I once asked my colleague if they had Polar Bears in Russia. He said yes, they walk on the street, and they shoot them. He was trying to make me cry! So, this comic strip is dedicated to Vlad.
In other news, I swear I smell pot. I don’t know if there’s actually a smell that has infiltrated my house or because I’m listening to Reggea music, and my mind just fills in the gaps. Go go brain!
Apologies to anyone whose browser window is fewer than 967 pixels across.
It has been a pretty busy day at work. In between bouts of business I entertain myself with various baubles like mailing lists. Someone made a statement I found utterly hilarious, that in the context of current events:
“I think it would be politically possible to return to a gold standard.”
I responded that:
“I think a carbon tax would be more relevant to the concerns of the 21st Century.”
To which some else responded:
“Our currency and economy are broken, and the solution is to tax use of fossil fuels, biggest source of productivity the world has ever seen!”
And I though yeah . . . it is hard to advocate an idea like a new “tax” during a recession. Personally, I think calling it a “carbon ration” might be smarter: you get your allotment and if you make good lifestyle choices you can sell your excess at a profit. Anyway, I responded from the basis of an idea I heard at TED last week:
Over a century ago we swore up and down that without the cheap energy afforded by black slaves the national economy would collapse. So, instead of abolishing slavery we made compromise after compromise. Ultimately our nation was plunged into the catastrophe of civil war, and we abolished slavery for International PR reasons and in order to literally free up fresh soldiers for the war effort from among the newly-emancipated populations.
These days we swear up and down that without access to unlimited cheap energy, our economy would collapse and we would be unable to enjoy the “quality” of life we do now. And as each decade passes we find greater and greater evidence that we are living on borrowed time, and that we are multiplying the problem of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, and that we are approaching various global tipping points which bring us closer to catastrophe.
In both cases, abolitionists and environmentalists are ridiculed and despised an know-it-all killjoys out to ruin everyone’s fun. Where the abolitionists had printing presses that would literally be burned down by their detractors, modern radicals warm themselves with flame wars on the Internet.
To go back to your glib response to a carbon tax, it is easier to make radical changes when it is clear that the status quo is broken. A big reason for the present crisis is that we were fueling growth on unsustainable credit models. Debt Debt Debt. Injecting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is a form of debt against the future, and if we go bankrupt with climate that’s really really not pretty. So, we have a good opportunity to look at how we structure the free market to take natural resources like the atmosphere into account, and price them appropriately so that we can realize economic benefit with the greatest efficiency.
Maybe one way to think of the idea of carbon rationing is that it is like Social Security for the environment: we each make a sacrifice now so as to secure against a future characterized by poverty. In this case the poverty would be a world wrecked by sudden catastrophic climate changes.
You remember Ken Starr? That guy who focused the nation’s attention and energy on Bill Clinton’s penis? Yeah, whatever.
“On December 19, 2008, Ken Starr and the Prop 8 Legal Defense Fund filed legal briefs defending the constitutionality of Prop 8 and seeking to nullify the marriages of 18,000 devoted same-sex couples solemnized before Prop 8 passed.”
I have nothing nice to say. but if you hit this page and sign your name before Valentine’s Day maybe you’ll feel slightly better for a moment. Not really.
Okay, why do I care about the gays? Because I grew up as a nerdy Atheist kid. So, I grew up learning that human beings have a bad habit of shitting on the weird people. Nowadays I live in the happy wealthy bubble of the Silicon Valley, where nerds are admired and showered with wealth. And every time Barack Obama mentions “and the non-believers” I feel a twinge of optimism that we are making progress toward inclusiveness.
And I have long observed that The Gay get shat upon far far worse than Atheists or nerds have ever had it in my lifetime. All sorta of awful name-calling and we still have the occasional grotesquely cruel murder of some queer folks. You wanna get married? Hell, you just want people to stop spitting in your face? I’m 100% behind you.
So, every time I hear things are going well for the homosexuals, my heart cheers that the meek are a step closer to inheriting the Earth. And every time the Kenneth Starrs of the world make progress in the opposite direction, I take it somewhat personally. I am tired of this shit.
You can listen to the audio to grok what all that means.
新年好 = xin1 nian4 hao3 = “new year good” = “Happy New Year”
æå–œå‘è´¢ = gong1 xi3 fa1 cai1 = “Wishing you a prosperous New Year” æå–œ = “respectful happiness” = “congratulations” å‘è´¢ = “to get rich” æå–œå‘è´¢ does not translate well if you take it literally.
红包 = hong2 bao1 = “red envelope”
You give gifts of money to children in red envelopes. 红包!
红 and 包 I have drawn before. 红鱼 is the “red fish” and é¢åŒ… is bread.
The other day we ate hot pot at è€åŒ—京 . . . at least, I was able to read “Beijing” and as I drew this I recognized “old Beijing” . . . the restaurant is called “Old Mandarin Islamic Restaurant”. Beijing I like because it simply means “North Capital City”
Last night we were at Temple Night Club and I saw a big old 爱 and I recognized it as å‘ with more up top. 爱, pronounced ai3 is “love” and saying “I love you” in Chinese is as simple as æˆ‘çˆ±ä½ = wo3 ai4 ni3 .
In addition to the Chinese characters, drawing the (Chinese) human characters was somewhat challenging as well. I am most happy with the girl. After trying to figure out how best to draw a “cute little Chinese girl” I ended up basing my character just a teeny bit on Lin Miaoke, the infamous “Beijing Olympics ‘lip-synch’ Girl”.
[CiscoSystems] would love to have technology that gives me NPR feed during KQED fund-drive when I’ve already given…feels like they fundraise every month.
I work for Cisco. I do not speak for Cisco. But, there is technology to capture the NPR feed and play it back. I even hacked up my own “Radio TiVo” a few years back. Alas, I shut the thing down since the personal convenience didn’t justify the carbon impact of running a PC 24/7.
Also, Cisco will announce Quarterly results today after the markets close. I am hoping they are favorable. Again, I do not speak for Cisco.
Update:
Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) — Cisco Systems Inc., the largest maker of networking equipment, posted second-quarter profit that topped analysts’ estimates after embarking on a plan to cut $1 billion in costs by July.
I recently made wheat bread and stored it in zip-lock bags. Then when I finished the bread I thought I could re-use the bags, but I should label what was stored in them so that I could store comparable foods. Then I figured I might as well get bilingual, so now I have three zip-lock bags labeled “BREAD é¢åŒ…”
On Thursday evening I met with the Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco group. I’m not a hard-core cartoonist but I felt welcomed and I got some practice inking in some panels in different styles. I had wanted to get some thicker lines going, so here I did the characters with a sharpie, other lines, like the bread crust, are inked over about 5 times with my 0.7mm pen. And then we have some actual shading. Whooo! I added the colors after scanning.
I effed up in that the slices do not match the shape of the loaf.
I was thinking maybe just maybe I might enroll in a Chinese class. Then I might even learn something, but CCSF started classes last week. I also been thinking it might be great to get more of a regular habit of drawing or doodling. Then I was thinking I might as well just wrap them up together, and illustrate Chinese words. So, here we go: a little homage to Dr Seuss!
Well, I found a torrent and acquired the .iso file. How to verify that it is legitimate? Well, unlike free software projects, Microsoft doesn’t supply checksums, so I Googled the md5sum:
0-23:03 djh@noneedto Windows 7 Official Beta 1 build 7000 x64 EN$ md5sum Windows\ 7\ Official\ Beta\ 1\ build\ 7000\ x64\ EN.iso
773fc9cc60338c612af716a2a14f177d Windows 7 Official Beta 1 build 7000 x64 EN.iso
Well, no panics over a trojan. The install process was quite boring. It loaded files, then it presented, of all things, a blue screen! But not the blue screen of death, but the blue screen of light glowing from the top. The computer sat there a good five minutes showing me the blue screen of light as I wondered to myself whether the install had wedged. Eventually a button appeared that said like “Install Windows Now” and I chose my old Windows XP partition. You can’t “upgrade” from Windows XP: it just moves the old Windows out of the way and you get to dig around your hard drive to find all your old files and drag them to where Windows 7 can find them.
I also had to whip out the old Knoppix Live Boot CD to restore my bootblock, because unlike free software projects, Microsoft assumes that there is only one Operating System you care to run on your computer. I Googled up this reference page and ran the following:
sudo grub
> root (hd0,1)
> setup (hd0)
> quit
My details differ slightly because my Linux partition is on the second partition, whilst Windows is on the first.
The initial impression is that it is really zippy. I installed the free version of Avira AntiVir and Windows shut up about virus protection. I was pleased when Windows gave me a dialog asking if I really wanted Avira to edit the system settings so that it could start on boot: hopefully this will lead to less cruft in users’ systems as Windows 7 gets deployed.
The “Shutdown” item doesn’t actually present a menu to Shutdown or Reboot, it just shuts the thing down–fast!
My next adventure will be to figure out how to turn down the power supply fan speed. I accomplished this with lm-sensors and the like so now Linux runs very quietly–until Windows can run without aggravating my Tinnitus I’m not likely to use it much. I’m also not sure what I would do with Windows, besides occasionally play a PC game or possibly manage photos. I have gotten very much at home with Linux.
As someone who has wondered at the issues involving monastic vows of sexual abstinence, I found myself dog-earing the following passage from an interview with a Buddhist couple who gave up the monastic life for marriage, as interviewed by Leslee Goodman in the January, 2009 issue of The Sun. (more…)
Ever since I upgraded the guts in my computer my Windows XP partition has failed to boot. Even the Windows XP install / recovery disk blue screens! Oh well: I guess I’m stuck on Linux or whatever, which had flaky support for the Ethernet until one day Ubuntu updated its kernel and then my Ethernet device started working consistently. I guess I just can’t play games. Still, it would be nice to be able to boot into Windows, you know? I could watch Netflix-on-demand, and Windows XP is probably the nicest interface for uploading photos in to Flickr. Though, GNOME or whatever I’m using right now works okay . . .
I have heard that Windows 7 is Microsoft backing away from Vista, which I have never had occasion to use, and just kind of going back and fleshing out the utilitarian OS that is or was Windows XP. Hell, I loathe Microsoft but I like Windows XP! So, when I heard about the free Beta download I was eager to try it out.
But I can’t. I register and everything and get to the download screen which has a big “Download Now” button on it and I click and click and nothing happens. Why is that?
What web browsers support the Windows 7 Beta download experience?
Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 support the Windows 7 Beta download experience. Please note that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 users behind a proxy server should use the automatic configuration for their proxy server for the best download experience.
Windows Beta 7 Download Experience? OMFG you have got to be kidding me! In order to transfer a file to a remote computer you skip decades of open, portable, universally-supported protocols like FTP, HTTP, or even BitTorrent and opt instead for an experience? An “experience” that only works for those who are running the latest version of the Microsoft Web Browser on the Microsoft Operating System? Because, you know, I guess the geeky kids willing to try out weird new Operating Systems would all be running Windows on their desktop, right?
I’ll give them credit for trying to open up with a “public beta” but better luck next time, Microsoft!
So, in the past two weeks I have traveled to Pueblo, CO, Chicago, and a little overnight trip to Monterey, CA with a visit to Hearst Castle. I shoveled snow, played Santa Claus, flew on four planes without any serious delays, drove three cars other than my own. On New Years Eve I rode in a cab after a nice, not-too-crowded party. That’s my two weeks off!
Tomorrow, back to work. I’m guessing I’ll have 3,000 e-mails to delete. I think I’m even on-call starting on Tuesday. Fun! I had a few quiet days and sent out holiday cards but mostly these past two weeks have just been a break from regular life. Enough of a break that I’m actually looking forward to resuming routine.
Happy New Year, all! Despite the economy, I have hopes for 2009.
