Johnny Mathis

Yesterday morning on the radio, some people were talking about something and the subject of Johnny Mathis [johnnymathis.com] came up. One person said that he was gay, and they said it very matter-of-factly -- like it was common knowledge. This was a fact that I hadn't known before.

When I got into work that day, I thought about asking people whether they knew that he was gay, and whether I was the last person on the planet to find out about that. And then I realized that none of my coworkers would have any idea who Johnny Mathis is/was.

I then did a Google News search [google.com], and sure enough, it's pretty clear that everyone has known he is gay [contactmusic.com]. Although, Mathis' Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] has the following, which suggests that I wasn't the last to know:

"A 1982 article in Us Magazine quotes Mathis as having had a sexual relationship with a male saxophone player; however, despite a multiplicity of other, more lengthy articles, no other source documents Mathis as being other than heterosexual."

Now, you are probably wondering why I care. The truth is, I don't. However, it was interesting to me that I had missed that piece of pop culture.

The only reason that I even know who Johnny Mathis is, is because my mother used to love his music. And I used to hear it all of the time because she loved it so much. I think that when I was, like, 8 years old, my parents even dragged me to one of his concerts, where I found myself in a concert hall full of elderly people.

So, to this day, whenever I hear one of his songs, I instantly am transported back to the kitchen of the house I grew up in. In the memory, I was sitting at the kitchen table reading or doing homework, and my mother was playing Johnny Mathis on the stereo while preparing food for the family to eat for dinner.

The Traveler

Disclaimer: The following post just shows how big of a whack-job I am, and I should probably have my head examined just for posting this.

A few months back, I was strolling through our local library, looking for something interesting to read. I typically like to alternate between fiction and non-fiction. And sometimes, I have slumps where I can't find anything interesting to read.

In that particular slump, I decided to go over to the sci-fi/fantasy section and look what was available. Typically, I don't really get that entire genre, which is probably surprising to anyone who knows how big of a geek I am.

Out of that section, I ended up picking up The Traveler [amazon.com] on a whim. And I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. The concept behind the theme of the book was fresh and thought-provoking, and I thought it was written well. If you like sci-fi/fantasy, you'd probably enjoy this book.

I don't want to give away too much, but the main character of the book tries to keep her life as random as possible, in order to make it as difficult as possible for people to track her. Whenever I read anything about personal security, it is always recommended to avoid routine schedules, etc., so that makes a lot of sense to me. On the other hand, I think that I might be borderline obsessive-compulsive, so it is incredibly difficult for me not to try to follow a routine schedule.

But that's a digression. The main character tried to keep her life as random as possible. Randomness is, of course, very difficult for a human to achieve, because there are all kinds of subconscious biases that will prevent truly random behavior. So, whenever she faced a decision, she would consult a random number generator she wore on her wrist, and would allow that to make the decision for her.

I love the idea of having a random number generator at my fingertips. That sounds awesome. Not only could it sometimes come in handy, but it would definitely be a conversation piece (although it would probably draw a lot of eye-rolls too).

It's just too bad they don't exist. And maybe I have too many geek possessions anyway. For instance, one of my favorite things I have ever received as a gift is a binary clock [thinkgeek.com]. It's just too bad that every binary watch I've ever seen has horrible styling, otherwise I'd own one of those too.

But it would be hysterical to have a device that looks like a wristwatch that is actually a random number generator:

• "Hey, Terence... I think your watch is broken. Why does it say '29749243'?"


• "Hey, can you tell me the time?"
  "No."


• "Hey, Terence... I just got this great new watch. You have to get one of these. It has a GPS built in!"
  "Wait, so you're telling me that if I jam that right up your ass, you'll never forget where it is?" (Alright, so that didn't have anything to do with a random number generator)


• "Hi, I'm the latest Penthouse Pet of the Year, and I'd be willing to model some bikinis for you if you could generate a truly random number for me, right on the spot."
  "Shit, I can't figure out how to get this thing out of hex mode."

I thought about suggesting this idea to ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com], but I know there is no market for it. Just like how I would love it if they sold shorts for women that say "/dev/null" across the ass.

Thanksgiving and Having a Chinese Upbringing

Last week [fluggart.com], I talked about how around the time I left for college, I started realizing the ways that I was raised differently than my peers.

Unfortunately, a lot of these realizations were the result of some pretty embarassing situations.

I was raised by first-generation Chinese-American parents. As a result, our holiday celebrations were a mix of American and Chinese elements. For instance, for Thanksgiving, we would get together with extended family members and have turkey, but most of the other food that was served was Chinese. There were no mashed potatoes or green bean casserole or any of the other typical things that you think of when Thanksgiving comes to mind.

Like a lot of other people, when I left for college, it was the first time I was going to live anywhere but at my parents'. Right before Thanksgiving during my freshman year, there was a big Thanksgiving dinner at the dining hall. I went with my roommate and went up through the line.

I managed to recognize or figure out most of everything that was being served. However, there was a tub of what looked like purple jello. Only it was kind of near the turkey (instead of being by the other desserts), so that really kind of didn't make sense.

So, I ask my roommate what that was, and of course, a lot of the other people around us looked at me like I was a complete moron. My roommate explained that it was cranberry sauce, and I was like, "Oh." Of course, that really didn't explain things for me, so I was forced to ask, "And uh, what do you do with it?" Hahahahahahahahaha.

The people near us were of course staring at me now, like I had antennae sprouting from the top of my head.

At the time, I think that it felt much more embarassing than it sounds now. However, it really made me wonder what other American culture staples I had managed to be completely oblivious to up until this point.

Check-Washing

On the latest Crypto-Gram [schneier.com], there was a link to an article about check washing [ckfraud.org].

Check washing is a form of fraud where people remove ink from a check so that they can write the checks out to themselves and/or change the amount that the check was written for. Apparently, normal, household chemicals can be used in order to wash the checks.

The article that Schneier linked to leaves a little to be desired ("Hey! 1994 called, and they want their website back!"). For that reason, I looked for a more authoritative article. Unfortunately, I really didn't find much.

Surprisingly, Wikipedia's article [wikipedia.org] had even less information. However, the Wikipedia one did have a link to an interesting article demonstrating check washing techniques [celtickane.com]. It is kind of surprising how easy check washing is, which is probably why this form of fraud is becoming so common.

There are two lessons that I have come away with from these articles. The first is to use a gel-based pen (like the Uni-ball 207 [amazon.com]) when writing out a check, because gel-based pens are much more resistant to washing. The second is to not leave out-going mail in an unsecured mailbox.

Over the weekend, I was talking with some friends about getting scammed by kids going around door-to-door selling stuff for their school fund-raisers. I have to admit that one time, a child and his mother came to my door asking me to buy stuff for their school fund-raiser, I bought stuff, and I never heard from them again. Luckily, 1) it was only $5 so I didn't really care that much, and 2) I had given them cash, so that was the only money I lost. Since then, I have learned not to buy from kids that I don't know.

I think that I've also learned that in these situations, it is best to use cash, to minimize risk. Before reading these articles, I would have thought that the opposite would have been best (thinking that at least I would have the option to issue a stop payment on a check that I wrote).

I'm also probably going to be more careful about who I write checks to in the future.

Olympics Ratings

I've been hearing that the TV ratings for the Olympics has been really low this year [reuters.com].

Not only are they a lot lower than the ratings for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, but they were significantly (~20%) lower than the ratings for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. And, of course, there are a lot of theories as to why that is.

In my opinion, the coverage (just like the rest of NBC's lineup) has been horrible, which reduces my desire to watch them. The coverage features lots of boring interviews with no-name people, for instance. I mean, if you are going to be interviewing lots of no-name people, why not actually ask them some interesting questions? You can't even really feel like you are getting to know any of the athletes, because when they finally get on camera, they are asked the same generic question that all of the other athletes are asked.

Here's another problem with the coverage: it seems like every time I turn on the TV (which is typically not prime time), the only things I can find are curling and ice hockey. Now, I happen to love ice hockey, but most Americans don't, so that's got to be a turn off. And how many people are really going to watch curling? Especially when each match is 3 hours long? It's like you have to make an effort to actually find any interesting events (like bobsled, luge, etc). The amount of time that is getting devoted to ice hockey and curling seems way out of proportion.

And when I do watch the Olympics coverage during prime time, there seem to be a ludicrous amount of commercials. You get to see two speed skating runs, and then there is another commercial break! Very frustrating...

I think that NBC has some major problems right now, and they can't seem to hire the right people who can actually run a TV network properly. The poor, boring coverage of the Olympics (which is contributing to their low ratings) is probably the result of the same factors that make their prime-time lineup so unappealing.

Microserfs

My favorite book of all time has to be Cryptonomicon [amazon.com], which I recently reread (for the hundredth time) on my trip to Hawaii in December [fluggart.com]. Before you run out and get it, though, I should warn you that the reason I like it so much is because it's a geek book.

This week, I have been rereading one of my other favorite books (which also happens to be a geek book), Microserfs [amazon.com].

Of course, the reason that I like geek books is because I so strongly identify with the characters in them. But it's much more complicated. Being a geek has as much to do with knowing an unhealthy amount about computers, etc. as it does being socially disfunctional and not necessarily knowing when you are making a colossal ass of yourself. It's that second part that that is so difficult to portray (correctly) in books.

What's funny is that you would think reading about socially disfunctional people would make me try to be less disfunctional. But Microserfs and Cryptonomicon hit the nail on head so well, that they make me envy the characters, and actually wish I were more disfunctional.

Microserfs and other geek books also have appeal because of all of their in-jokes. When I'm reading one of these books, and included is some sort of obscure joke about MS-DOS [wikipedia.org], it's funny because I can understand the joke -- but it's made even funnier because I know that I'm in this relatively small club of people who get it.

One of the appeals of Cryptonomicon is that it is relatively time-less. Even though it's 6 years old now, it still reads like it could be happening today. Microserfs is inextricably linked with tech-culture from the mid- to late-90's. However, one of the things that make it so funny is that not only are the in-jokes related to geek topics, but a lot of the in-jokes are chronological as well. In other words, in order to really understand how incredibly accurate and amusing the book is, you not only have to be a geek, but you have to have been around long enough to understand what things were like in the 90s.

One of the timeless geek subjects that was done amazingly well is the portrayal of
all of the characters as willfully disfunctional -- not only in their relationships with other people, but in their relationships with their own bodies as well.

It's done so well, in fact, that I have to wonder whether the author (Douglas Coupland) is really a geek or not (his other books seem to indicate otherwise). If he is, in fact, not a geek, that makes the writing of Microserfs just that much more amazing because of the research he must have had done. What a great book.

Foxit Reader

The Adobe software company [adobe.com] has really been pissing me off the past couple of years. Every time I install one of their applications -- whether it is Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Professional, or Acrobat Reader -- they seem needlessly bloated. They take forever to download, install, and start up. And while I'm running the applications, it seems to really slow down my computer.

With Photoshop, I'm kind of screwed, because there doesn't seem to be anything comparable. With Acrobat Professional, I'm *really* annoyed, because the latest version does all kinds of stuff (like adding toolbars to Microsoft Office applications) that I hate, and can't disable. Plus, it seems needlessly bloated and slow.

And with Acrobat Reader, I'm the most annoyed. And that is because there is no reason that a simple .pdf reader has to be that bloated. Plus, even though I have done a complete Windows reinstall recently, Acrobat Reader seems to crash all of the time (and I don't have any problems with any other applications). Plus, when you download it, they try to trick you into downloading and installing some of their other crappy software.

On my linux box, I never have any problems reading .pdfs, and the .pdf readers start up really quickly and don't slow down my entire computer.

So, in Windows, I have been trying out Foxit Reader [foxitsoftware.com]. So far, I'm very happy with it. You don't have to install it, which is a huge plus. You just run the .exe. It's small, and it runs quickly.



One of the reasons that it took me so long to switch away from Acrobat Reader is because I worried that other .pdf viewers would render the files differently. But I have not seen any of those sorts of problems with Foxit yet.

Now, if people would just make viable competitors for the other crappy Adobe products...

Envelope-Making, part 3

Over the past two days, I have been describing my experiences working at an envelope-making plant.

While I was growing up, my parents constantly drilled into my head that I had to study, study, study. I wasn't really allowed to watch TV (unless it was a special occasion like the Olympics or the Stanley Cup Playoffs). Other than that, any time I was at home, my parents were berating me to study.

Remember, this was the age before everyone and their brother had a networked computer in their house, so it wasn't like I could just go to my room and play with the computer and pretend that I was studying. Besides, I was too goody-goody for that, anyway. The closest thing that I had to a study distraction was an Apple IIe (with dual floppy disk drives!) on which I could play Lode Runner [wikipedia.org] and Maniac Mansion [wikipedia.org] (for this game, it was really sad that we only had a monochrome monitor, though).

I'm getting dangerously close to going off on a tangent now, but the point was that all of my life up until that point, it had been drilled into my head that I had to be working all of the time. Study, study, study, with the occasional breaks to practice playing the viola and do house chores. And when I finished studying, I should be asking for more house chores to do.

So, when I got to the envelope-making plant, I treated my job with the utmost seriousness -- like I was in charge of maintaining a nuclear weapon or something. Nevermind that the other 8 months of the year, everyone at the plant got by just fine without a gopher. No, I was in there running around like my hair was on fire, and working my ass off like people's lives were on the line.

Meanwhile, most of the other summer kids were more like average college students -- realizing their jobs weren't really all that important, and screwing around and only doing the work they had to do.

The one day, one of the guys in the plant asked me why I worked so hard. Of course, I didn't know what he was talking about. But he said something to the effect that everyone else was pretty lazy, but every time he sees a Chinese person, they are working their ass off, and he asked me to explain that. He went on to say that if I had wanted to, I could probably come in and spend most of my shift sitting on my ass, whereas I'm always asking for more stuff to do.

I think that it was pretty close to that point where I had kind of an epiphany. I really started realizing that the way I was brought up was radically different than the way that most other people were. I also started spending a lot more time wondering what other people thought of me, and became much more self-conscious.

Envelope-Making, part 2

Yesterday [fluggart.com], I started to describe a summer job that I had during college at an envelope-making plant. Again, I was a gopher, and my job was doing things like refilling glue bottles and pulling out skids of paper.

The tasks that I had to do were fairly easy, but there were a lot of machines, so there were a lot of supplies that I had to keep track of. Still, it didn't take me long to get to the point where I could just look down the rows at the beginning of a shift and come up with a pretty accurate prediction of when people would need me to get them stuff. So, I could plan my entire shift out. I could also bring things out to people before they really needed them to make sure that if I took my lunch break, I wouldn't be needed during that time.

There was a dedicated break room, where everyone ate lunch and took their other breaks. There were set times when you were supposed to take breaks, depending on what kind of job you had in the plant. However, I didn't really fit into any of those categories, so I was free to take my breaks at my discretion.

I do have a major problem with social anxiety disorder, though ¹. So, I was eager to avoid the type of situation where I would walk into the break room, and wonder whose table I was going to sit down at. This is a very complex anxiety thing that goes on in my head. My solution to the problem was to intentionally take my breaks out of cycle with everyone else. That way, there really wouldn't be anyone else in the break room when I took my breaks. I don't remember what I used to do during lunch. There were no MP3 players back then, so I doubt that I listened to music. And I don't remember bringing in books. And I couldn't check my email on my phone back then, either.

Occasionally, the break room is used when an order got screwed up, and they need people to manually redo something on boxes of envelopes when the machines screwed them up. So, I would still eat my lunch there, but instead of being with a room full of other people eating lunch, I would be in there with 4-8 people doing work.

On one of those days, I was eating lunch at a table by myself, and a group of people were talking about movies while they manually refolded some of the envelopes. One of them was a college co-ed about my age, while the others in the group were mostly middle-aged women. I wasn't really paying attention to their conversation, but it was impossible to not overhear.

Apparently, a Jackie Chan movie that was subtitled in English had just come out, because they were talking about it. And the college co-ed (who *really* should have known better) said, "Yeah, you know, it's subtitled because it's one of those chink movies."

I should point out at this point that I am ethnically Chinese, if it wasn't obvious before.

Of course, that got my attention. But since I wasn't really listening to what they were saying, I assumed I had heard it wrong. I mean, there is no way that someone my age would have said that, right?

Just as I thought that, she ran out of the room and into the bathroom. The room got really quiet, I realized that I guess I had heard that correctly, and continued to eat my sandwich as if nothing had happened (having never personally heard anyone use a racial slur in a non-ironic manner before ²).

The college co-ed came back after a few minutes and walked up to me and apologized. She was obviously very embarassed, and so was I. Looking back on those couple of years, I did a lot of growing up, and this was definitely one of the experiences that added to that.

Part 3 tomorrow.


¹ Unfortunately, I think this consumes my thoughts for a disproportionate amount of the day, and ruins my social life. I'll have to write about this more.

² Actually, I think I need to revise that statement. I got called a lot of things on the elementary school playground. So, I guess that the correct statement would be that I had never personally heard any adult/quasi-adult use a racial slur in a non-ironic manner before.

Envelope-Making, part 1

Previously, I had written about some past crappy jobs that I have had (Feb 2, Feb 9).

Now, I will regale you with tales from my job at an envelope-making plant. To tell you the truth, I don't even really remember how I heard that they were hiring. I suspect that it was through a temp agency, though. I also forget how old I was, but I the parts that I do remember remind me that I didn't know shit about shit, so I couldn't have been that old. It must have been right around the time where I was transitioning from high school to college.

Ok, so you're looking for a job right? What do you need? A resume. So, I threw one of those together. I would *love* to see what kind of crap I had put on that resume. I mean, what does a college sophmore put on their resume? ("Objective: To find a summer job so that my parents will get off my back", "Previous Experience: Car washing, selling knives in a pyramid scheme...") Damn, I wish I had saved that.

So, I put on the only suit I owned and grabbed a copy of this masterpiece of a resume and showed up for my job interview. The plant foreman at least had the decency to look at my resume for about 10 seconds as if he were actually interested in what was written there (it wasn't until years later that I appreciated this, though). After showing me around, he told me that I'd be working 2nd shift, and that if I wanted the job, I could start on Monday.

It turns out that the plant hired all kinds of college kids every summer for all kinds of jobs. For instance, there were all kinds of lines painted on the ground for safety purposes (stay at least this far away from equipment, etc). And then had kids come in every summer to repaint those, and sweep the floors (believe it or not, there would literally be entire shifts where the summer kids would do nothing but sweep).

That wasn't my job though. Officially, I was a gopher. As in, I would spend entire shifts just fetching stuff for people. For instance, all of the seams on an envelope have to be glued together. So, I would go around to all of the machines, and check the levels of the glue bottles, and refill the ones that were nearing empty.

Some of the machines that folded the envelopes were fed pre-cut paper. So, there would be stacks of tens of thousands of sheets of paper, stacked on a wooden skid. And it would be my job to take a hand-truck to pull those skids from one part of the plant to the machine that needed it, at the appropriate time.

I wouldn't really call it a "crappy job", per se. I was making decent money, and attention was actually paid to safety, so I didn't live in fear that my fingers could be chopped off at any time.

And it had many perks. For instance, I constantly had to roam around the entire plant, so I could stop and chat with whoever I wanted (like the college co-eds) pretty much any time I wanted.

This will be a multi-part story [part 2, part 3].

Winter Olympics

I think that I cared more in past years about the Olympics. Is it just me?

I've never particularly cared about the media artificially creating stories about American athletes in order to make us more interested about the Olympics. It seems like every time, the coverage of the Olympics includes some sob story about some athlete that had to live out of their car while overcoming all odds to make their Olympic dream come true.

Over the weekend, I had some time to watch some TV, so I started flipping through the channels, and all I could find was women's ice hockey. And then last night, when I got home from work, all I could find was the USA vs. Finland curling match. And I was oddly drawn in by it.

That is, until I realized, "What the hell am I doing? I don't even care about this sport. And worse yet, I don't even know what the rules are." And that's when I switched channels.

I mean, I would have watched bobsled or luge or speed skating had it been on. But curling? How is that even a sport? With the exception of the fact that it has ice (and therefore, appropriate for the Winter Olympics), it doesn't seem like any more of a sport than chess is (and it seems to take just as long). It's taking everything I have to not start ranting about what does and does not constitute a sport right now...

Anyway, I think that they really need to start introducing sports like Olympic Police Chase Evasion. Can you imagine NBC running a story about a psychotic coke-addict that is the expected favorite to win that event?

Blackberries

On Obscure Store [typepad.com], I caught a link to Imagining a Day Without Blackberrys [wsj.com]. It is an article about the possibility that blackberry users will no longer be able to use their devices due to legal actions.

There were some amusing anecdotes in the story, such as:

"And Debra Lucas, an office manager in Ashburn, Va., says her husband is constantly checking the device, and she has banned it from the bedroom and restaurants. Still, she says she sometimes finds him hiding in the foyer, huddled up with the device. 'It's like there's another woman -- but it's really just the BlackBerry,' she says."

I suppose that is particularly amusing to me, because I'm sure that my wife feels that same way about me. I don't actually have a blackberry, but at the same time, I am constantly using my phone to check stock quotes, read email, and read the latest news stories. I can only imagine how out of control I would be if it were easier to type out emails on my phone.

It is amazing how pervasive communications devices are in our lives. We use email for everything - from planning get-togethers to making business decisions. When I am unable to check my email, I feel as if I am out of other people's loops. When I email someone with a question, and they haven't responded by the next day, I start feeling annoyed.

And I find it almost completely impossible to stay in touch with friends that don't have email.

At the same time, I think that not being able to write email on my phone is probably a good thing. There are tons of times when I wish that I had a waiting period imposed on my email client. You know, if my client detects that what I am writing makes me sound like a pissed off lunatic (or if it detects me banging on the keyboard really hard), then it might wait an hour before sending out the email, instead of doing it immediately. That way, I might have some time to really think about whether I really want that email to get delivered or not. And the problem, I can only imagine, would be that much worse if I could email all of the time (instead of just when I have access to a computer).

Crappy Jobs, part 2

Last week [fluggart.com], I wrote about one crappy job that I had as a kitchen knife salesman. Discussions with friends off-line about that job actually reminded me of some other crappy jobs that I have had (and blocked out of my memory). This is the story of one of those jobs.

After the whole Cutco knife thing, I started going to temp agencies looking for jobs. I actually had graduated high school without ever taking a typing class (which boggles the mind of everyone I tell). So, I wasn't that great of a typist. Later in college, I actually taught myself how to type, and I'm actually fairly fast these days (~75 wpm). Anyway, the point is that when I showed up at the temp agencies and they gave me their standard litany of tests, I had practically no marketable skills.

One of them eventually sent me to a small assembly plant. I was told where and when to show up, but not what the company produced or what I would be doing. When I got there, I found that I was going to be assemble pipe couplings.


(image from globaltecheng.com)

Above is a typical pipe coupling. It consists of two cast metal pieces that have to be assembled with a gasket in between them. Then two bolts and nuts hold the two cast pieces together. In the assembly plant, there were powered socket wrenches to assist the assembly process that were activated with a foot pedal.

So, the foreman had one of the other employees show me the ropes. You grab a gasket, then grab two castings, assemble them, shove a bolt through each end, and use the socket wrenches to drive the nuts on. Then you throw the assembled coupling into a box beside your workstation. Each of the parts were located in bins in the workstation, and they got there by being dumped off a forklift.

Here's the kicker. You didn't get paid an hourly wage. I was going to be paid $0.03-0.05 per coupling I assembled. The price depended on the size, because the larger ones take slightly longer to assemble. I was expected to assemble at least 1000 per 8-hour shift (the top earners could assemble over 2000 per shift).

Looking back at the experience years later, it is really depressing. The plant was really, really hot in the summer. There was no air-conditioning and poor ventilation. I left every day with my shirt completely drenched in sweat. We did have to wear steel-toe boots (thank goodness), but we didn't get any ear protection (which, in retrospect, should have been mandatory). When the forklifts would drop a few hundred pounds of castings into a bin, it was ludicrously loud.

All of the other employees were lifers. They all knew how to put athletic tape on their fingers just right so they wouldn't develop blisters. For about a month after I went back to school, I still had grease under my nails and embedded into my skin that I couldn't get rid of. A lot of my friends who had never had a job like that seriously asked me, "Don't you wash your hands?" And the other employees would get there early, leave late, and a lot of times work through their break times to get more assembled (which translated into more money).

In order to get the bins loaded that held the bolts and nuts, I had to climb up on top of the forklift (which had to be at least 10 ft off the ground), cut a hole the box, and then climb into the box and push all of the hardware out. There is absolutely no way that wasn't an OSHA violation. But at the same time, I was a dumb kid who was desperate for a job, and didn't really think about how unsafe that was at the time. And no matter how bad the job was, I was only going to be doing it for 3 months.

One thing that is even more depressing is that the people I met that summer were some of the nicest people ever. They never hesitated to help me out as I struggled to learn the system (even though it came at the expense of their own bottom line).

Movie Reviews

So, I have to evaluate options for posting reviews of movies. I rent movies from time to time, and I used to be able to post a simple list on the sidebar of my old weblog, which just said the names of the last 5 movies I watched, and a rating (out of 5). A mini-blog, if you will.

However, there isn't really an easy way to do that here (or at least, I haven't figured it out yet). There are a couple of ways that I have thought to implement that, but nothing that will work easily and/or elegantly.

What is Wrong With Movies?

Recently, I saw a news article about how annoying it is to go to the movie theaters these days. And even though I totally agreed with it, I didn't think to make a note of where I saw the article.

Here [independent.co.uk] is a similar article from a few months ago in the Independent. I have seen a few other similar articles from other news sources as well. Basically, they all talk about the slump in movie tickets sales from this past year, and talk about the causes.

The articles point to a number of reasons, including the crappy selection of movies this year. I can't help but agree with that sentiment. Maybe people are waking up to the fact that Hollywood just wants to remake the same four or five plotlines in every single movie. Every movie has to have the same crappy happy ending, the same tired cliches and total lack of originality or character development. After seeing amazing films like The Lord of the Rings, I just can't bring myself to pay to see crap.

Which brings me to the next issue, which is the cost. And it's not just that the prices of the tickets seem ludicrous. It's that you can't buy a normal pack of, say, M&M's, and the ones they have for sale are about 3-4x larger than what I want (and 6-8x the cost).

Actually, the largest problem with movie theaters is that it is an irritating experience. I don't want to be crammed into a theater with a bunch of people who are talking and answering their cell phones. They really need to fix that problem.

There isn't a single movie in the theaters right now that I want to see - in the theater or out of it. But even when there is one, the fact that I'm going to have to sit through 2 hours of random people talking and answering their cell phones is enough to make me want to stay home.

Of course, there are lots of other reasons other than the above that keep me out of the movie theaters. I hate the movie companies in general, for ramming DRM schemes down our throats that are really just used to control the way that we watch media (for example, creating DVDs in which you have to watch a commercial at the beginning that you can't fast-forward over).

So really, the more articles I see about how Hollywood's revenue is going down makes me more and more happy. They have fundamental problems they are going to need to fix if they want my money.

Terence's Idiotic Sports Picks

On Friday [fluggart.com], I posted some picks for the Superbowl. I picked the under, the over on field goals, and that Seattle would win 20-17.

Of course, I was almost completely wrong on all counts (except for the under - which I probably would have been wrong about had the officiating not been so bad). Not only that, but I thought it was going to be a great game to watch. Instead, we had a horrible game all around. Poor play by both teams, poor officiating, and only ok commercials (actually, everyone else I talked to loved them).

I now feel embarassed that I set aside that time this weekend to watch the game, when I could have been doing something more enjoyable, like poking my eyes out.

It's pretty amazing, though, that every time I make a pick, I'm totally wrong. I think that I am going to start a series of posts here called "Terence's Idiotic Sports Picks", where I make picks, and then keep a running total of all of the wrong picks I have chosen. That will give me the data to prove that I am wrong WAAAAY more than 50% of the time.

It's too bad that Blogger doesn't allow posts to be categorized. Otherwise, I could create a new category for these posts and it would make them easier to tally.

If you are a betting man, you can do no better than to always bet against me.

Name Spelling

My name is Terence. T-E-R-E-N-C-E. And that's what I go by - not Terry.

For the past 10 or so years, I have gotten really annoyed when people spell my name wrong. I mean, it's not that hard. It's all e's and one r. What is so hard about that?

It's bad enough when people I kind of know email me, and the first line says, "Terrance,". But it is so completely annoying when my boss or one of my coworkers does it. I mean, I've only been working in the same office for 8 years now. How many Terences/Terrances can these people possibly know, and haven't I earned the right to have my name spelled correctly by now?

But the purpose of this post isn't to blast my coworkers. The purpose is actually far more amusing. My financial advisor's name is Terrance. And you know what? I have to look it up every time, because I can't remember whether there is an a in it, or what. I just had to look up the spelling just now so that I could spell it correctly in this post.

And to make it worse, he's the only other Terence/Terrance I know (other than myself). So, I should be able to remember how to spell his name, right? Plus, he's only been my financial advisor for most of a decade now...

Apparently, I need to learn how to give other people some slack. ;)

Superbowl Picks

My football and hockey picks in the playoffs are almost invariably wrong. The exception was that I did pick both Seattle and Pittsburgh to make it to the Superbowl this year.

I do want Pittsburgh to win this weekend, but I think that Seattle is going to take it. (by the way, me saying that Seattle is going to take it almost always means that they'll lose.)

The over-under is 47, to which I'm going to agree with Chad Johnson (All-Pro wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals) is way too high. If I were a betting man, I'd bet on the under, and on the over in field goals (which is 3 1/2). Luckily for my bank account, I know enough to not bet on my hunches.

We're going to see a game with primarily defensive highlights. This is not going to be a high scoring game. Seattle will take it, 20-17.

Firefox Beta Testing

I've been hearing rumors that Firefox [mozilla.com] auto-upgrade users have become surprise beta testers. However, I haven't found too much to corroborate the rumor. I did find this article [cmp.com] which states exactly the above, though.

The idea that people have downloaded and installed release software can unwittingly become beta testers kind of concerns me. For one thing, I don't think that software makers should be doing anything to discourage people from using an auto-update feature. And they certainly will be discouraged if they find out that a beta version of some software has been pushed out to them. Furthermore, they will definitely be discouraged if the software is buggy.

Worse yet, since most people won't be aware that they are beta testing the software, if there are any bugs, it may cause them to switch to a competitor. I know that I personally have a difficult time encouraging people to stop using Internet Exploder and switch to Firefox, and it would be just that much more difficult if they did test out Firefox, got some beta version pushed out to them, and were annoyed by bugs.

Finally, the reason that I am concerned is because pushing a beta version out to users without letting them know they are testing the software seems counter-productive. I mean, the whole purpose of making beta versions available is to have users test it out and feed comments back to the software developers about what bugs it contains, etc. But if the users don't know they are testing a beta version, that feedback channel is most likely going to be closed. Furthermore, any users reporting any bugs may report the incorrect version of the software they are using (because they don't know that a beta version has been pushed out to them).

Now, that being said, I have no idea if the rumor is true. Since I have had a lot of trouble finding corroborating evidence, I am inclined not to believe it. Furthermore, I have the auto-update feature turned on, and a beta version has not been pushed out to me.

Interestingly, when I was looking for corroborating information about the rumor, I stumbled across this site [mozillazine.org], where among other things, you can sign up to be a beta tester [mozillazine.org] for mozilla products.

Crappy Jobs, part 1

There are a lot of people participating in the Four Things meme. I don't think that it would be particularly interesting if I participated (partly because I haven't really found it that interesting to read other people's responses to the meme). However, the one section I have found interesting in people's responses was the Four Jobs I've Had.

I actually think that the two shittiest jobs I have ever had, I had in the same summer around when I started college. The first stop was a job with Cutco Knives. I forget the name of the actual company I was working for, but they advertised a job where you could make $11/hour, which for someone just out of high school was really good at the time (remember, this was over 10 years ago). And the job was to sell these knives, but I didn't know that at the time.

I showed up, and I and a bunch of other new employees were informed that we would need to go through a "training course" for the first week, and we wouldn't be paid for that week. This should have raised a flag in my mind, but I was pretty desperate for employment, and was still too young to understand that I couldn't do any job, even if I "set my mind to it". When my parents asked about the new job, and I told them about this part, it definitely raised some flags in their mind, and they encouraged me to quit. Especially when they found out that we had to get "referrals" - in other words, get people we know to tell us about other people who might want to buy knives.

In the training session, we learned the basics about calling people that we knew, asking them to let us show them some knives, and then how to do a demonstration where you cut up tomatoes and crap. That's what I thought I was learning. I was too young and naive to understand that they were also teaching us how to get potential customers to make decisions based on emotion.

For instance, if we were facing a couple where the husband was against buying a couple of knives, we were instructed to tell a story like, "You know, all those years that my mother spent raising me, all she really wanted was one set of really good knives. My father had thousands of dollars of tools out in the garage - every specialized tool you could imagine. But my mother... she labored all day in the kitchen to make us meals, and she didn't even have one good set of knives. And to think how happy that would have made her." (obviously, this story was edited down)

Supposedly, this would guilt the husband and prevent him from verbalizing any hesitation about buying the knives. Although, I have to say that I never took the opportunity to use this particular technique.

We were basically being trained to be sleazy used car salesmen. I lasted 2 weeks, I think, before I realized that I would never be able to succeed at that job (because I have a soul). They probably lost 3/4ths of each of the kids who went through orientation. And I'll never forget how I looked up to the people training me, until they turned on me when I told them I wanted to quit.

Now, that's what I think of every time I visit someone's house and see that they have bought a set of Cutco knives.

Timetrax

Yeah, yeah... I keep talking about Timetrax [timetraxtech.com] software that is used to time-shift content coming over satellite radios. I had previously talked about it on January 6, January 20 and January 23.

If you had read the previous posts I had written, you would know that I have been becoming increasingly frustrated with it. I also filed a technical support ticket where I explained the bugs that were in their software that were driving me batty. They replied that they would look into my problem. After discovering that upgrading to version 1.5 from version 1.4 was causing me even more problems [fluggart.com], I added a reply to the same technical support ticket, explaining the problems I was having, and then said:

Since upgrading to version 1.5 (from version 1.4) three days ago, about half of the programs I have scheduled to record have been interrupted by the internet connectivity issue. I have 8 programs scheduled to record each day, so the number that have been interrupted is completely unacceptable.

I have reverted to version 1.4 (with which I never had this problem), and will continue to use that version until this issue has been resolved. Furthermore, I will be MUCH more hesitant to upgrade to newer versions of your software in the future.

Their reply was to ask me to become a beta tester, to which I agreed.

I don't know how you wouldn't think that was funny. I first tell them that I am pissed off and will be hesitant to install newer release versions of their software, and then they offer to give me experimental new software that still hasn't been fully tested, and I say, "Sure!"

See, being asked to be a beta tester is like a badge of honor for a geek (and I'm sure that they know this). Nothing takes a pissed off geek and makes them happier than being asked to be a beta tester. Also, I'm happy to report that they respond very quickly to complaints by their users and are able (and willing) to fix software issues quickly. The beta test version that I am currently using has none of the internet connectivity issues that the 1.5-release version did. And they have already fixed a number of other things.