msmercenary

Trains can get stuck in traffic.

2008-10-17T01:53:39Z

My friend Ben is a big advocate for building more rail transit, and having sat in traffic for 80 minutes each day on my commute, I'm not sure I disagree (though none of the transit options on the upcoming ballot would help me any). One of the arguments he likes to use in favor of rail, as opposed to more buses is that "trains don't get stuck in traffic." Well, I'm here to say that, anecdotally, yes they do.

On my recent business trip to San Francisco, I got to see how a city with an actual functioning light rail system works. I was advised before the trip to not rent a car, and I'm quite glad I took the advice. I never needed the car, and from observation, parking in downtown SF is a nightmare. The only distance traveling I needed to do while in the city was between the airport and downtown, and for that I took the BART. On my trip into downtown, I soared high above the rush hour freeway traffic, and even affording nine stops at intermediate stations, I still reached downtown within about 25 minutes.

My trip back to the airport at the end of the trip was more interesting. About 24 minutes into the trip from downtown, the train slowed down and stopped on top of the high curved ramp leading into the airport. We waited for maybe fifteen minutes on the ramp about 70 feet above the Bayshore freeway, with the train banked at a 20 degree angle. At one point, the train operator came over the PA to explain that we couldn't pull into the station because the platforms were full of trains, and there was no room for us. We just had to wait on the flyover ramp until the platform cleared.

I submit to you, Ben, that trains do indeed get stuck in traffic.

I found out later from asking a security guard that the airport had gone into some sort of lockdown mode, and the trains hadn't been allowed to leave until the TSA was good and sure everyone had been inconvenienced. This was confirmed by the 55 minutes it took me to clear security. Fortunately, I had given myself plenty of time, and reached the end of my trip without further incident.

msmercenary @ 2008-09-23T09:30:00

2008-09-23T16:44:51Z

Ever hear the expression "Never trust anyone over thirty"? It's usually said by someone to whom it does not apply yet. I've always thought the saying was a bit shortsighted, since, if you apply similar logic, you must conclude that folks not over thirty, while potentially trustworthy, aren't particularly reliable.

Either way you choose it, it's official today. I'm over thirty. Some would say I was over thirty last year, but to those people I would draw your attention to the following equation, which only became true today.

((int)Pi.AgeInYears) > 30

Of course, while pedants may argue whether an arbitrary person's boolean trustworthiness pivots on age 30 or 31, those that know me will undoubtedly claim that, in my case, age has nothing to do with it. :)

Still, I mark this day as one on which I have become another year older, though not necessarily any wiser. Personally, I still think I'm a teenager. Hey, 0x1F counts, right?

You can't have it both ways.

2008-08-19T16:33:27Z

Paraphrased from an actual online conversation

"I'm trying to do X. Can you help me?"

"Sure, just use Y. It comes with Windows."

"I can't find Y in XP."

"Yeah, it's new in Vista."

"Sure, but I heard that Vista sucks, so I'm staying with XP."

"Have you ever tried Vista?"

"No, but someone told me it's terrible, and I believe everything that I read in a blog."

"Well, good luck trying to do X."

Kudos to the American Express Customer Service dept

2008-05-21T02:31:46Z

You read that subject line correctly, a major credit card company actually got their customer service right. Unfortunately, the reason I had to call is their billing department got it wrong.

Back about three months ago, I found myself in Costco without my working ATM card (Yes, I've had problems before with Costco's policy on not accepting plastic). We were in line with $300+ worth of groceries, and no way to pay for them. After exhausting a list of possibilities, one of the workers there recommended signing up for an American Express card. The card would double as our Costco card, and if I put my first day's worth of groceries on the card, they would reduce the membership fee. Not seeing another option that would let me leave with my groceries, I signed up.

Allow me to digress a moment. I carry one credit card. It's a Mastercard, which is accepted basically anywhere I want to buy something. I use it for most purchases over $50 or so, mainly for expense tracking. At the end of each month, I pay it off. I don't need another credit card, nor do I want to worry about another bill each month. However, it seemed simple enough to just pay off the AmEx when I got the first bill, and then never charge to it again. So I left Costco with a temporary card, and assurances that the new one would be mailed to me within a couple of weeks.

Forward a couple of weeks, our neighbor knocks on the door asking if a soggy wad of letters was ours. Yes, our mail got stolen. I love living in an urban center, but that's another story. One of the soggy letters was the American Express letter with the sticky stuff to which a card would usually be attached. Sigh. Call up Customer Support, and report that our new card has been stolen, to cancel the card and send us another one. The people on the phone were courteous, helpful, and professional. Admittedly, that's a situation where I'd expect it.

Next month arrives, and here's the regular credit card bill I had been expecting, with the following charges:

Costco: $320.65
Late Fee: $35.00

Turns out I missed a bill when my mail got stolen, as the first bill came out at the same time as the card. Oops. I call up Customer Service again and explain the situation, asking about whether I could waive the fee. No problem, they answer. There was already a note on the account about the mail being stolen, and that fee should never have been assessed. Awesome. Customer Service 2, Billing 0. Still, it was quite a bit of effort for a credit card I didn't really even want. I paid the full amount, and put the card in a drawer where it would remain unused to this day.

This week, I got my second (third?) statement from American Express. I knew I hadn't used the card since I paid off the full balance, so of course the total should be zero, right? Old balance $0.00. New balance $2.76. WTF?

Finance charge: $2.76

For those who are scratching their heads, American Express charges a finance charge based on average daily balance over the previous 30 days. I paid off the full balance as soon as I got the previous statement, but that was nearly 10 days into the current "billing cycle", so my average daily balance was 1/3 of the total that I had paid off. The only way to be exempt from this is to carry a zero balance month to month, and recall that I had "missed" a month.

Well, at this point, I decided that enough was enough. I was already spending far too much energy dealing with this card. So I call up customer service one more time, this time to cancel the card. After I explained the situation, the CS lady looked over the notes and removed the finance charge. She was very apologetic about the whole thing, and understood completely. She also put up no argument when I explained that I just wanted to cancel the card. Right there on the spot, she marked my AmEx account "inactive", and told me the card would no longer work as a credit card. When I asked why not outright cancel, she pointed out that I could still use the card as my Costco card. Very cool. Did I mention that Costco cut up my old card, once their system had confirmation that I had received the American Express Costco card? Right.

So anyway, American Express Customer Service: 3 for 3. American Express Billing: 0 for 2. Costco: Toying with the Mendoza Line.

Taxes suck...

2008-04-16T16:21:58Z

... and so does procrastination.

kreely headed out about 11pm, destined for one of the late-night mail collection centers which stayed open til midnight.

Tax time sucks.

--
PS: Everybody wish misterflames a happy over-the-hill. He turns 40 today. Makes me feel young again. :)

Hope you folks don't have anywhere important to be.

2007-08-28T00:22:39Z

Pity the poor fools who thought to tackle the rush-hour commute when a dignitary is in town...

Guess Who's Coming to Town

2007-08-22T18:21:24Z

No, it's not the Guess Who nor is it Santa Claus, for at least a couple more months.

No, in this case, President Bush is visiting to plug for one of our local Republican incumbents.

Normally, I couldn't give two cents where the President decides to plug his partisan agenda, though it's galling that he does it on taxpayer money. It's not like I'll get to meet him. Congressman Reichert isn't even in my district. This shouldn't affect me, right?

The problem, though, is that local authorities like to do things like shut down freeways when important people are in town. For security reasons, our Eminent Figurehead can't be allowed to travel in traffic with the rest of us plebeians. Instead, thousands of mere peasants must adjust their schedules and wait while the smiling nobility drives past.

I got to see this process first-hand the last time Dick Cheney visited the area. In what would have been an amazing and unexpected display of governmental efficiency (if it hadn't been so irritating), law enforcement agencies from state, county, and seven cities cooperated to shut down all lanes of I-405 as well as all of the streets that crossed over the freeway. So efficient were they that not a car was moving 25 minutes before the VP's passing. As awesome as it was to behold, I also ended up more than a half hour late for an appointment, all in the name of security.

Such is the price of democracy, I suppose. The thing I have to wonder about is if a passing dignitary can cause such paralysis here, how does anybody ever get from place to place in that other Washington?

Resistance is futile. You will be misinformed

2007-08-10T20:59:25Z

My friend chalain once noted an interesting characteristic about me. "The good news is that Pi can be taught," he says. "The bad news is that Pi has to be taught." So it is with editing Wikipedia.

Now I admit there is no shortage of warnings about the quality of the wikipedia experience. I've read no small number of blogs, forum posts, and articles which all more or less indicate that it is pointless for regular humans to try to edit or correct articles on the site.

But of course I ignored all of those warnings. Surely it can't be that bad, and all of the self-appointed Keepers of the Knowledge are reasonable people who are just being unfairly maligned. So when, in my random web meanderings, I happened to encounter a factual inaccuracy in one of the articles, I waded in and tried my hand.

The article in question was Interstate 90 in Washington. The article isn't that important to me, but it's as good as any to see what the WP experience is like. The article contains the following line:

Sixty miles east of Bellevue I-90 traverses the Cascade Mountain Snoqualmie Pass, elevation 3,022 feet, the lowest east-west highway crossing in Washington state.

For those who don't know, Washington is divided by an imposing mountain range, which runs the length of the state north to south. There are a limited number of ways to get across from east to west. The four most significant (the only four which are open all winter) are Stevens Pass (US Hwy 2), Snoqualmie Pass (Interstate 90), White Pass (US Hwy 12), and the Columbia River Gorge (State Route 14 on the Washington side and Interstate 84 on the Oregon side of the river).

Now, the factual inaccuracy is that SR14, which runs through a gorge is indeed lower than I-90, which goes over a pass. The second half of the quote above is incorrect, so I went in to remove it.

In a sane world, that would be that. The error is corrected, and Wikipedia becomes a little bit more accurate. In this world, some self-appointed Wikipedia gatekeeper reverts the edit, restoring the inaccuracy. Not deterred, I re-apply the edit, and, trying to be a good community member, put a note on the talk page in my classic diplomatic style. No, not good enough. The same gatekeeper reverts the change again. This time there is an understandable explanation. "It is refering to Interstate Highways in Washington, not state routes or US Routes," goes the change explanation. Okay. It's kinda poorly-worded here, but I guess that makes sense as a general policy on these sort of things.

But something still isn't right. Why even mention that I-90 is the lowest interstate crossing in Washington? It's the only interstate crossing in Washington. Seeking to clear up this confusion, I dive a third time into the WP editor, and change the word 'lowest' to 'only'. That should make our vigilante editor happy, right?

Well, yes. Except that now, a different gatekeeper has reverted the change, removing the word 'only'. What was the reason given? "no, this refers to any east-west". Okay, so which way is it? Does the "lowest" designation count all highways or not? Methinks these two guys should compare notes.

Meanwhile, Pi can be taught. I'll just place wikipedia into the "Read-only" pile and get my info from the local library.

Obligatory Harry Potter update

2007-07-23T05:12:17Z

Everybody else is posting about this on their journals, and I don't want my readers to miss out on a single Potter update. So, here's my obligatory Harry Potter update:

The seventh book has been out for 48 hours so far, and I haven't even cracked the cover. Not one page.

You can count on me to keep you updated as events unfold.

Where Customer Service was just a passing fad

2007-07-20T04:57:14Z

I had occasion to visit the local Comcast store today to drop off some equipment, though I didn't know at the time that I'd be treated to some drama. I pulled into the parking lot of the Redmond store about ten minutes to noon under a partly-cloudy, but still warm and sunny sky. The lobby as I walked in contained four people.

The first was clearly a customer who had walked in just before I did. She had a checkbook in one hand and a small fluffy dog on her shoulder. It was one of those cutsie mutts properly categorized somewhere in the rodent family. The second person was a woman in a grayish dress shirt sporting a nametag with the word 'MANAGER' and a scowl that could taunt English guards. The other two were the customer reps on duty, doing their best to become invisible behind the counter.

"We don't allow dogs in here."

"Can't I just pay my bill?"

"You'll have to take the dog outside."

"It'll only be a minute. I didn't want to leave her in the hot car."

"I'm sorry, we can't help you. It's the rules."

"Fine. I'll just pay my bill tomorrow."

"We'll charge you for the extra day."

This last line was delivered, parting-shot style, as the customer was walking past me out the door and the manager was walking through one marked "employees only". I moved to the counter with an eyeroll and did my business with the company.

Now perhaps Comcast really does have a 'no dogs' policy for whatever reason, though I've been told otherwise. The thing is that the dog was well-groomed and well-behaved, and the lady was only going to be a short time while paying her bill. There was no reason for the manager to be snotty or rude, except that she was power-tripping. And the thing that always makes me wonder if there is justice in the world is that she's allowed to get away with it, safe in the knowledge that there really isn't any competition to which unsatisfied customers can flee.

"The customer is always right" doesn't apparently apply if you're a government-granted monopoly.

Protection money

2007-06-25T19:33:01Z

I'm all paid up for another year. Eighty-eight dollars gets me a sticker I can put on my car so that the "enforcers" will know I've paid my extortion money so that they won't drive me off the side of the road and take my car away.

Yikes. That metaphor works so well, it's scary.

When the truth isn't entertaining enough.

2007-06-11T07:56:56Z

I got a haircut last week. That's not usually a big deal, but this was an especially bad haircut.

Let me back up. I usually keep my hair pretty long. Five or six inches is normal, and combed back. It's all most of my co-workers and many of my friends have ever seen. A couple weeks ago, I came down with an impressively bad case of dermatitis (scalp acne for those plebeians in the crowd). After being aggravated by some really warm weather causing me to sweat into my hair and break into a rash, I decided I'd had enough. My hair was too long, and I couldn't get to a barber. So I took matters, and hair clippers, into my own hands. Suffice it to say, not my finest hour.

The interesting part of this story is not the haircut per se (and no, I'm not going to post pics), but rather the reactions of people around me. As is human nature, nearly every person that has seen the haircut has asked the same dumb question. And what better way to answer a stupid question, than with a smart-ass answer?

My first day at work, meeting Co-worker #1:
CW1: Hey, what happened to your hair?
Pi: Tragic lawnmower accident.
Co-worker #2 joins the conversation about this point.
CW2: Whoa, what did you do to your hair?
Pi: I'm learning to juggle chainsaws. I'm not very good at it yet.
CW1 busts out laughing.

An hour or so later, we had a team meeting, and I had to take my new do in to see my whole team. As expected, my manager asks about my hair.
Pi: This is what happens when you give a cat a bath, but forget to wear a helmet.

The week goes on much like this, with each new person getting a different story, from the warning "When they say not to use around open flame, they're not kidding.", to the peremptory "Low ceiling fan."

Forward to this weekend, we spent the time at my parents' place. The most satisfying reaction to date came from my father.
Dad: Wow. How'd you get that haircut?
Pi: Skydiving. Went through the propeller.
Dad: Lucky it only got your hair.

Well, eventually, my mother took matters into her own hands and fixed the damage I did. The hair is now really, really short, but as I noted at the time, I no longer "look like I walked through a knife-throwing contest."

Any one of those explanations is more entertaining than the truth, and everybody walked away satisfied with their answer, even if it wasn't the one they thought they'd get. I haven't had so much fun LAMOJ in a long time.

A school did something stupid! Film at eleven.

2007-05-24T02:59:27Z

Every time I start to have hope for the future of the human race, I need to look no further than our public school system for some really clutch idiocy. This time it happened right here in the greater Seattle area.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/316618_youtube22.html

Short version: Some kids got together and made a youtube video ridiculing one of their teachers. One particular dumbass named Gregory Requa puts it on his myspace page. Video gets mentioned on the local news, and school district suspends Requa for 40 days. Requa immediately hires a lawyer who seeks an injunction canceling the suspension, because Requa's first-amendment rights were allegedly violated.

First of all, yeah, the school administration overreacted. That's so common it's almost a non-story. It's what school administrations do. In fact, I think it's a job requirement. Even assuming suspension is the right punishment here, forty days is a significant chunk of the school year.

However, the really dumb part in this case isn't even the school's actions. No, what makes me want to go out and slap somebody really hard is the part where the lawyer gets hired. The kid's legal case isn't about free speech or First Amendment rights, it's about getting out of punishment. Let's see if we can poke some holes in the "First Amendment" argument

Courts have held that slander and libel are not protected First Amendment speech.
The First Amendment exists to limit the Federal government, not local school districts
Free speech means that you're allowed to say it. It does not shield you from the consequences of saying it. You still have to pay the piper.

Of course the lawyer is presumably educated, and I can only hope not completely ignorant of the law, so she knows this stuff already. Which means she is using the "bullshit the judge and see what we can get away with" legal argument. Or, in layman's terms, she's trying to pull a fast one. What's most scary is that in today's litigious society, she may actually get it.

So to review: Did the school district overreact? Of course they did. Does the kid deserve to be punished? Absolutely. Is the lawyer greedy, sleazy, and unethical? Trick question. I already said she was a lawyer.

You have got to be kidding me

2007-05-02T21:18:16Z

Student arrested and expelled for making an Counter-Strike map of his school.

I... I don't have any words to describe how stupid this is. Of everybody involved in this story, the one who does not need to be smacked is the FPS-playing student.

Little-known fact about Pi #117: In college, I built CS maps. My whole fraternity was extremely addicted to the game, and since I was never any good at playing the game, I just built maps for it. Among the better ones, I built a full model of our fraternity house and maps depicting WSU's Terrell Mall and Todd Hall.

I also built a map called de_twintowers, which consisted of the lobby, roof, and top five floors of two side-by-side office towers. The terrorists would start in the lobby and go to any of several banks of elevators. The CT's started on the roof, and the goal was for the terrorists to plant a bomb at either of two bomb sites, one in each tower. This was pre-9/11, so the idea was interesting and novel, in a video-game sort of way. I had finished the map but for some texturing and fine decorating, but it was playable. I never got it quite the way I wanted, so I never distributed it.

So yeah, stories like this are why I am extremely happy I got out of the public school system before the Zero-Tolerance movement took off. I'm also glad I never released that map. I'd probably be in Gitmo by now.

The unreported downside to higher gas prices

2007-05-01T16:47:11Z

Each time the price at the pump goes up a nickel, I know about it. It's always in the news around here because Western WA and OR have some of the most expensive gasoline in the U.S (as I write this, premium is in the $3.55/gallon range at the Chevron station near work). But there's a hidden downside to high prices that never hits the media.

Longer fill time.

Let me start by saying that I don't want to marginalize the actual cost of the gasoline going into the tank. That, by far, is a real issue, while what I'm complaining about is pretty much pointless whining. But hey, this is LiveJournal. If not for pointless whining, what would be left?

The problem comes from the way the gas pumps are set to run. They are designed to meter out gasoline at a constant rate for as long as you hold the lever down. Unfortunately, the rate of flow is tied to the wrong gauge. The gasoline always comes out such that the price of the fuel goes up at a constant speed, not the quantity of fuel. As a result, when the price per gallon goes up 50%, the fuel has to come out 50% slower to make the price gauge go up at the same rate. But my fuel tank doesn't get any smaller. And my car doesn't suddenly get more efficient. I still need the same 14 gallons of fuel regardless of cost. It's just that now that prices are high, I get to stand next to my car at the pump just that much longer with my thumb up my nose to get it.

It's funny. I've already resigned myself to having to pay more money for a full tank of gas. It's like fate. There's little I can do to avoid it. Sure, I don't like it, but I accept it.

Now, wasting my time on top of that? That's just annoying.

msmercenary @ 2007-04-27T14:14:00

2007-04-27T21:27:25Z

A new article from the U.S. top automobile insurers lists the top ten cities for automobile theft, and Washington holds the number 6 (Seattle) and number 9 (Yakima) spots on the list.

I think a big part of this is that Washington law (and California, which is the only state that fared worse on the list) treats car theft as a victimless crime with the lowest penalty of any felony on the books. But it's not victimless. For the vast majority of working middle-class, the loss of a car (even in the absolute best case where it is recovered intact within a couple weeks) can be devastating due to income lost when they can't get to work.

I have to wonder what those numbers would be like if we actually started penalizing car thieves instead of penalizing car theft victims.

If only he could live up to his beliefs...

2007-04-23T21:30:55Z

Said this morning in a press conference at the White House:

"I believe strongly that politicians in Washington shouldn't be telling generals how to do their job" -- President G.W. Bush

Yeah, I have trouble following my beliefs sometimes too.

The benefits of unionized labor

2007-04-20T17:29:08Z

Sandie Olosky was fired in 2005 from her job as a King County Metro bus driver for what is just about the only possible firing offense for a bus driver: unsafe driving. But everybody deserves a second chance, right? And what do Metro investigators know anyway?

If Olosky hadn't been a dues-paying union member, that would've been the end of it. She would have had to take her justifiable termination and deal with it. Life goes on.

Fortunately, Olosky was able to complain to her union rep, who got the firing overturned and put her back on the road so that she could go on to cause a fatal accident.

And as a result, life doesn't go on. At least not for Michael Dahlquist, the other driver.

An Unexpected Legislative Success

2007-04-19T17:13:43Z

I've got to give the Washington Legislature credit. Sometimes, in their blundering around, they manage to not completely screw things up.

I refer, of course, to the act of not giving away $300M of taxpayer money to a private company with no strings attached.

I admit I dislike Pro basketball. To be honest, I don't really like basketball. Being the fat slow kid in high school left me with horrible emotional scars whenever the P.E. teacher would open up the ball closet and set the class loose in the gym, in lieu of actually teaching anything. Professional basketball involves a lot more money than high school, but the maturity level is about the same.

The thing is, it doesn't matter who's asking for the handout. I like watching baseball, and am still greatly annoyed whenever I pay taxes for the construction of the Mariners' Safeco Field. (Moreso because the taxpayers explicitly voted down the new stadium, but the state built it and taxed us anyway)

The real issue here is a simple one. It's about the private/public divide. Public money should not be handed out to private corporations unless A) there is a clear and obvious benefit to the community, and B) the public will be paid back in full within a reasonable time before the private is allowed to turn any profit. The proposed Sonics deal is none of this. Instead it is a thinly veiled handout. This is favoritism which unfairly punishes the corporation's competition, and unfairly rewards its stockholders.

The argument about public benefit that leads to these kind of handouts is spurious as well. Pro Sports organizations in particular seem to enjoy claiming to be a public service when begging for the public bread, but then are firmly and undeniably private when it comes to sharing the wealth generated by whatever those public funds created. Listen up, Howard Schultz, Clay Bennett, Hiroshi Yamauchi, and Paul Allen: You can't have it both ways. Stop trying. It's insulting to those of us you're trying to fleece.

Oh, and in case you're wondering why I'm not breaking out the champagne bottles and singing the praises of the State Legislature just yet, it's because they stopped well short of the resounding "Hell, No" that the Oklahoma City Sonics would actually understand. Instead they left the door open to waste this $300M another time, if the Sonics come back with just the right recipe of political obsequiousness. Call me a cynic, but I don't have faith the legislature to do the right thing twice. Broken clocks are still wrong most of the time, and statistics show the blind mouse is much more likely to find the cat than the cheese.

Getting more convenience out of my Post Office

2007-04-13T18:05:38Z

I got a postcard in my mailbox the other day from USPS advertising some service or other. The card has a commissioned Cathy comic on it, and has the line "Get more convenience out of your Post Office" printed on it. Cathy hasn't been interesting to me since, oh, when was it first syndicated? But still, points for trying.

You know what the post office could do to actually help me get more convenience? Spam control. That would help. Really, I'm not even talking about credit card offers sent directly to me. I'm talking about mail sent to "Resident", and those loose-leaf circulars that get stuffed into the box.

So here's my problem: There are important things I get in the mail (tax documents, statements from companies that haven't gone online yet) that I must receive. A loose ad circular (the ones I get are usually 10-25 newspaper-size pages) comes in the same box addressed to Resident. Not wanting to look at the crap, I just throw it away. Unfortunately, one of the important envelopes happened to have been stuck between two of the pages, and I'm losing important mail. The only thing I can do is stand at the mailbox and leaf through the entire ad circular to make sure there's no important mail buired within. Sure, it's exactly what the advertiser wants. But it's a particularly annoying waste of my time.

So what's my solution? Yeah, I know, federal rules and all that. Unlike an e-mail provider, I can't just ask the post office not to deliver this. So I won't ask for that. The crux of my problem is loose-leaf spam getting mixed with critical envelopes I can't get any other way. There are two solutions I can think of. However, both involve using two mailboxes and expecting the carrier to have the most basic of sorting skills.

Option 1) Envelopes go in mailbox. Anything not in an envelope goes into another box (second mailbox, newspaper box, recycle bin).

Option 2) Anything addressed directly to a resident here goes into the mailbox (our names are clearly printed on the inside of the mailbox). Anything addressed generically to "Resident" or "Postal Customer" or "Car-Rt Sort" (what the heck does that mean?) goes into the second bin/box/trashcan.

Both of these options would solve my problem without violating any of the federal delivery rules. Of course, I've talked to my local post office, and they have no interest whatsoever in implementing anything of the sort. This is the point where, if they were a private company (or ISP), I'd start talking about going to the competition. But being a government bureaucracy, (you just KNEW I wouldn't be able to get all the way through this without ragging on the government) they are the only game in town. There is no competition, and no impetus for making customers happy.

There is no reason for the post office to help me with my problem, and no way that I can solve it without their help. So my only option is to deal with the inconvenience and whine about it on the internet.

Is there such a thing as elevator rage?

2007-04-09T21:04:51Z

Hypothetical situation: I'm in a hurry to reach a meeting on the top floor. I stroll through the empty lobby and hit the 'Up' button, and an elevator opens up immediately. Just before the doors close, a man walks up, jams an arm into the door, shoulders his way into the car, and presses '2'. After leaving floor 2 with my finger firmly-held to the 'door close' button, the doors again open on 3 to a man who promptly steps in and presses '4'.

My questions are as follows:
1) Would it be a breach of etiquette to punch these people in the face and shove them back off the elevator while they're stunned?
2) Does anybody know where I can get a fireman's key?

Busted laptop

2007-04-06T17:48:03Z

I've just been bitten by a design flaw in the HP Pavilion laptop series. The power connector is a rigid Radio Shack style plug which sticks out from the side of the case. I remember thinking, when I bought it, that, gee, any kind of lateral force would bend the connector and render the whole power supply useless.

Well, it took almost two years, and one fall off of the couch to prove my intuition right. Now I'm in the market for a new power adapter for a Pavilion dv4000. HP could really learn from Apple here.

Papers, please.

2007-04-04T19:17:19Z

Found this story recently on the US Border Patrol setting up a road checkpoint in Forks, WA, stopping every driver and asking them to show proof of ID before they could continue on to the grocery store.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003628279_danny21.html

Forks is technically only 70 miles from the Canadian border, but it's over 200 miles away by road, and hardly on the way from anywhere to anywhere else. That they decided to set up a "checkpoint" in some strange out-of-the-way place like Forks is strange, but what really troubles me is that they set up these checkpoints at all. When our government is stopping every car 200 miles away from the border, and requiring the passengers to provide proof of citizenship, how can we even still pretend that we live in the Land of the Free?

Hack. Wheeze. Cough.

2007-04-04T03:18:21Z

I write this in between coughing spasms. I've got a chest cold right now which, though winding down, still has my bronchial tubes in its icy grasp. And I just had to sprint to catch the 5:36 bus. Now I understand that you drivers have a schedule to keep, and that after all of the completely accepted bus delays caused by traffic, weather, breakdowns, and poorly-planned schedules, it would be unthinkable to jeopardize the precious schedule by actually letting somebody make their connection. I'm with you there. I feel you. I know it would have been terribly inconvenient to have left the door open, or stayed at the stop for ten more seconds, and I can certainly see how easy it would have been to completely miss all of the other riders yelling that there was another person coming. At least the door opened when I managed to make it all the way to the end of the platform, so that makes it okay. And I was luckier than the family that stood outside the bus, asking to get on and ignored for the full minute or so we waited to pull out of the park and ride lot.

"You should've been at the platform on time" was my greeting.

A quick glance at my cell phone says it's 5:35.

I want to ride the bus more often, I really do. My commute is 30 miles long by freeway, and traffic generally decides whether that drive is a hellish grind, or merely a waste of a half hour. When I'm driving, I can't really do anything else. The time is lost. Time on public transit can at least be spent productively banging out whiny livejournal posts or reading up my Dresden. I haven't been riding that often lately, though. Neither of my endpoints is in downtown Seattle, so there really aren't that many daily trips that will get me where I'm going (and nothing that doesn't involve switching buses). And forget about it on days that I get caught late at work. I want to ride the bus more often, but unfortunately it's seldom convenient, often unreliable, and on days like today, completely frustrating.

Yeah, I'm bitching. It'll be all better once I stop coughing, I'm sure. I'll get home and forget completely about this. And look, there's my connection, pulling out just as we pull into the transit center. So I'll be able to forget a half hour later than planned, after I catch the next bus. At least it's a nice balmy 45F out here. And doesn't that feel good on damaged lungs.

First impressions of the Wii

2007-03-12T20:37:01Z

This weekend, the_raif brought over his Nintendo Wii and plopped it down next to my other consoles. I now understand where the Wii fits in, technologically. The Wii is equipped with a new, revolutionary, and very cool control mechanism, but otherwise is pretty much the same generation as the PS2 and XBox. We played games on all three platforms in the same day and I could tell that the processing power and graphical capabilities of Nintendo's newest and greatest is about the same as Microsoft's and Sony's 4+ year-old consoles. As expected, none of the three is even in the same league (generation) as the XBox360 (in HD where available), or, I assume, the PS3.

Clearly, while its rivals are busy releasing "next-gen" consoles, Nintendo is milking the "current-gen" (previous?), and they can get away with it by providing something the other two companies haven't yet discovered: Compelling content. Nintendo is making money hand over fist on the Wii, moreso since they aren't spending that much on the hardware. How much mileage you can get from novel ideas, interesting concepts, and semi-intuitive control scheme remains to be seen, but I think they'll do all right. One challenge Nintendo faces is the ire of graphics-happy American software shops who decry the console's lack of power, but of the big three, Nintendo still has the strongest in-house development division.

Of course, no review of the Wii would be complete without talking about the new control scheme. I have to admit it's shiny and novel and a lot of fun to mess around with, but I am forced to wonder what will happen when the novelty wears off. Developers have to completely bend their thinking about game control, and they haven't really managed to do it yet. The only titles available for the Wii that take advantage of the controller's power of gestures are little more than glorified tech demos, such as Wii Sports or Wii Play.

I spent some time watching Raif play Twilight Princess, dispassionately holding one control in each hand and occasionally wiggling one or the other, causing Link to go through the stock sword-swinging animation. Aside from aiming the arrows and hookshot (admittedly a cumbersome operation with analog sticks), the experience is little different than with a controller. Even driving games like Excite Truck offered little more than you can get with an add-on racing wheel. I think Nintendo needs to come out with a full-length game that really takes advantage of the unique play experience capable with that controller, and they need to do it soon before the shiny wears off of the controller.

I discovered one more problem with the Wii Remote. After a couple hours gesticulating with the remote in hand, I had to put it down due to a tendonitis flare-up. Obviously not everybody has a pre-existing wrist condition to limit their play time, but with a control scheme which requires extremely precise wrist movements, RSI is a real threat. All it takes is one shortsighted developer to release a hit game that rewards eight-hour sessions of wicked arm acrobatics to force a whole new generation down the road to wrist surgery.