Business/Economics
Anything to do with business and economics, kind of like what would qualify for CotC
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Thursday, September 07, 2006
Going Bedouin
It’s funny to see Anita point out this concept dubbed Going Bedouin, as it is the exact concept I came up with for my new business still in the rough planning stages. It’s also funny I should see this right after posting on the related topic of working at home and being torn between whether and how much to maintain outside office space.
I lean toward modest shared spaces as described in the “recipe” instructions, for the same reasons, as well as to provide certain central resources. It just needn’t be large, fancy or expensive.
Home Office Tips?
I noticed in the latest CotC that Dane Carlson had a post titled 6 Tips for Working at Home With Children. Obviously this is of great interest to me, since I partially work at home, and not just blogging, to the extent that involves money.
Item one was a consideration in selecting this apartment. It’s also used for the bulk of the book shelves and some storage, and it’s not always off-limits, but I do have an office room with a door that can be closed at need. I should probably do so more than I do, but most of my work at home is simply being available and able to respond to e-mails.
All too many of those go something like:
Them: “Help! My computer barfed!”
Me: “What were you doing when it barfed? What did the barf look like? Did you try anything to clean the barf up yourself, or to prevent it from happening again? Isn’t this like the barf that rebooting solves? Let me know and we’ll go from there.”
Several days go by…
Them: “Hey, my computer’s still barfy. Please fix.”
Me: “But you gave me no information to even know what to look at.”
Them: “I don’t have time to know anything about how a car computer works! I just need it to drive me to do my work! You’re confusing me.”
Tip number two is superlative. Merely having music is a big help. In fact, I have long been fascinated by the way music acts on my brain to make me focus. It is almost like flipping a switch.
Sadly, my headphones died months ago and I have yet to replace them. I miss them most late at night if I am up and at the computer. I already sometimes avoided using them so I could easily be called into another room to help with the kids. But then, that’s not hard core working at home when I can be that available.
One of these days I’ll get a new headset. It really is useful, and probably worth the money for a better one than I had. If playing music is like flipping a switch, doing it with a headset is like putting my brain into turbo mode.
The third tip is tougher, because it all depends. I am on call theoretically 24/7, and in reality 10/5, with certain stuff I can’t do at home done best on weekends and in evenings. When I am working hardcore at home, it’s usually an all-hours, nonstop as I can handle project, so there goes having a normal schedule. When it’s lower grade, it’s such a work/home mix as to moot the “work hours” thing. If I were working more regularly and busily from home, this would no doubt be useful.
Meanwhile, we’ve been trying to deal with the conflict between my combined need and desire to do certain out of the house stuff at all hours, and the need for me to be home by 6:00 PM at the latest as much as possible. I’m not sure how other people do it, as it would be ideal for me to be home by 5:00 each day so the kids don’t melt down before supper is ready.
When she’s not charmed and amused by my artist-like habits, Deb is driven crazy by them. Can’t say as I blame her, even as it’s tough to be any other way.
The fourth tip, well, never really been an issue. Oddly enough, Sadie seems to have a sense that she should be quiet or go off by herself if the phone rings for me. The way my office is configured, sound from the rest of the house is baffled even if the door is open, as long as they aren’t actually in the office. Which Sadie also seems to have a sense of minimal invasiveness about. She’s funny like that.
As for number 5, good idea, except if I am home it’s more likely to be something wolfed down at the desk.
Ah, and number 6… heh. I never needed to ask that. We routinely e-mail each other within the house. And if I am doing intense, close the door work, all the more so. It’s just plain convenient.
Other tips? Good question. I think you have to be willing to be a little flexible, which makes it easier for everyone to accept it when you really need to be left alone. I’d say even with door-open work, everyone needs to be aware when to let you concentrate on the task you are enaged in. For me it’s writing and other creative or technical things that can involve concentration, inspiration, or being “in the zone.” Sometimes I can write an e-mail response to a client having a problem and hold a conversation at the same time. Sometimes the distraction makes me lose entirely what I was saying and changes the nature of the response. Sometimes “flow” matters terribly. Sometimes it doesn’t so much.
I go back and forth on the whole home office thing. Given the nature of my work, I will always need one to some degree. The discussion has been whether to go exclusively home, or go more completely home but with some office space somewhere, but not necessarily where and how much it is now.
There are days I’m ready to say “I just can’t do this!” and make sure I always have an office out of the house and spend more time at it than I do now. There are other days when I can’t believe I’m still spending any money for a “real” office, no matter how nice it is to have an air conditioned place to take us all on the hottest days.
So. What are your tips for working at home, with or without kids?
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Hey Look, It’s A Post!
For lack of anything better and more time-consuming to post at the moment, Jeff posted not-necessarily-stupid-at-all questions about food and reminded me that I wanted to point out this Cook’s Thesaurus site. It’s pretty cool and edumacational.
Now off to play with servers… Maybe I’ll post again later about pork chops, working at home, House, Standoff, or whatever.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Blogging… Magazine?
I received an e-mail invitation to this moments a couple hours ago, and my first thought was to wonder if the people behind it actually knew anything about blogging, or if is was another “Blog Carnival” scenario.
That is, not really understanding blogging, or things like carnivals, but seeing an apparent way to piggyback on blogging for some easy cash. Or like already famed people supplementing their empires with instant-audience blogs, then holding themselves forth as blogging experts, even if they require an editor to be readable.
Just the very idea, too… a magazine for blogging? And podcasting. Which could mean it’s a magazine for podcasting that gives a wink and a nod to podcasting’s blog roots.
Anyway, seeing the lack of detail on the subscription page, I looked at the domain of the sender’s e-mail and had my thoughts reinforced, though at least they appear professional. Well, unless you click on the podcasting link and find they are so new to the topic that you get an “Index of /” page. Heh.
I might sign up regardless, as I am intrigued at the same time I am skeptical. Free is good, after all. Getting in a directory might mean a hit or two extra here and there.
I just couldn’t help those first thoughts, and can’t help that amused skepticism.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Toto, We’re Not In NT4 Anymore
Kind of makes you wonder when a simple task that wouldn’t take five minutes in NT requires upwards of three hours to figure out and make happen in Windows 2003 Server. And while my knowledge of 2003 isn’t exactly extensive, I’m not the world’s biggest NT expert either. It’s just a whole new world, having to deal with DNS and active directory.
My main experience with 2003 before this has been a 2003 SBS (Small Business Server), with a handful of workstations and no other servers. Brainless? Maybe not quite that, but not bad. SBS is cool if it’s appropriate for your needs. My other experience was assisting with a single 2003 server, replacing a dying Novell server and upgrading twenty-odd workstations.
By rights I’d have long since played with 2003 enough in a lab or in-house network setting to have become more comfortable with it, but that would require more revenue. I once did the math to figure out what I “needed” to charge per hour to cover everything including keeping up on new things. It came to $15 more than my normal rate (which is further discounted for the big client), amazingly enough placing it closer to what is normal around here.
Oh well. Perhaps progress will speed up now that I’ve made a breakthrough…
Saturday, August 26, 2006
DreamHost Strikes Again
I have a business domain that I sooner or later need to have hosted and start moving with for real.
Based on reputation, price and specs, I attempted to host it with DreamHost. The alternative in mind was GoDaddy, but they have some unexpected limitations.
I got through the signup and they rejected me for suspected credit card fraud, which was completely whacky. After not-too-seriously considering jumping through their hoops and faxing an image of the card to their billing people, I asked them to cancel my order. They said:
Your account was disabled for fraud so there is nothing to cancel. The only way to activate your account will be by fax.
Okay, fine, so no business ever transpired between us.
At least as a temporary measure, I’ve been trying to add that domain to my elhide.com account with Hosting Matters. When I do, it keeps telling me my domain “is owned by another user.” I just now finally put in a support request for that.
Since that didn’t work and I know I’d eventually want it on its own host and all that, I decided to try DreamHost again. Just not for as large a plan or as long a timeframe this time.
At the end of the signup DreamHost gives me this error:
“This domain “thedomaininquestion.com” is already in our system!
Please contact support if you’d like to do something with it and you don’t know how.”
Aw jeez.
Their initial, admittedly instant, reply to my missive indicated they didn’t really know what I was talking about. They’re on the same page now, but jeez. If HM can fix the problem on their end, I’ll just setup shop there until I don’t fit anymore.
And I don’t think I will ever again entertain the notion of putting anything with DreamHost.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Of Trains And History
We walked a couple miles yesterday, and I remembered to take the camera along. This was not enough for Sadie, so she also played in the sandbox for a while afterward, then went with me and hung out in and around the server room and an attorney’s office while I did some work. She is soooo good, being able to do that. Though the lollipop I snagged her from the reception desk didn’t hurt.
This set is the view from two bridges over the railroad tracks looking roughly north, then from adjacent to another bridge looking roughly south. This is the trainyard area near enough to us to fill the apartment with diesel fumes when certain engines idle there, viewed from opposite directions.
In the first pictures, the more spiffed up looking stretches are the ones used by the MBTA commuter rail, which terminates not far beyond these bridges.
The third picture is retouched, brightened 15% because the camera was acting up. Though not as much as it did later, when it corrupted several pictures and ruined my getting a complete war memorial set. The card has now been reformatted and we’re going to order a new, higher capacity one.
In that last picture, the decrepit building to the left of the tracks is the old C.P. Washburn building. I’d noticed they were no longer open for business, but I had no idea why. This is significant because when I was growing up, when they also had a store near us in Halifax, right beside the same railroad tracks, they were the oldest continuously operated family business in America. Besides being a long separate branch of the same Washburn family my father’s mother was from.
This post made me look into it and I learned what happened:
As the survey progressed, we were, of course, eager to learn which is the oldest existing family business in America. The answer seemed easy: the C.P. Washburn Company (1632) of Middleborough, Massachusetts. Then came the crushing news: on November 1, 1998, The Boston Globe reported the company’s untimely demise. Charles P. Washburn IV, a member of the 11th generation, was apparently unable to pay $120,000 in back taxes and the town closed the company’s doors, bringing an end to a noble family business that got its start as a granary in nearby Duxbury, long before this country became a nation.
In the course of this, I also came across an interesting list of historic sites for Middleboro and other towns in Plymouth County.
Another Washburn building is among those historic sites, as is basically the entire part of town where we live, which includes the post office, which is itself a distinct historic site, which would fit with my taking a picture of it because it looks so cool.
As the above implies, there will be more pictures, including a war memorial curiosity I managed to photograph, even though I didn’t collect the complete set. Stay tuned…
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
JetBlue
It’s a pity that the new security rules make the prospect of flying with children so unpalatable that I can’t imagine a scenario that would get me on a plane any time soon, because I have it on good authority that there is, contrary to my previous impression, actually an airline out there that I wouldn’t grieve over having to give my money to. An airline that’s actually, I’m told, figured out that its customers are--wait for it--actual people! Who are seeking a service! And they want to provide it! Freaking revolutionary, I tell you.
All snark aside, my brother asked me to blog about the experience he recently had with JetBlue, because it was so outstandingly good that he figured the world ought to know about it. And y’all know how happy folks have to be before they make a point of publicizing their happiness, so this is no small thing.
What happened is this: he and his wife were planning to vacation in the Bahamas. As they were getting on the plane, though, he collapsed, so rather than flying out he got a trip to the hospital instead. (For those who don’t know, he’s in the middle of cancer treatment, and he’s ok. Turned out to be “just one of those things.") Their flight was on JetBlue and the airline’s response was, in his words, awesome:
They reacted to everything so quickly and well. By the time we left with the paramedics they had gotten our bags which were already loaded and refunded us our fares which is against their stated policy. Then they called us the next morning to make sure I was okay.
Absolutely amazing. Really, really cool. That kind of customer service is incredibly rare.
If I ever get on a plane again, I know which airline I’m using.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Biz/Econ Rankings
Brian Gongol created an interesting comparison between the traffic of a number of business and economics blogs and the top 200 newspapers.
While we’re only obliquely a business and economics blog, or partly, to use a simpler word, we’re reflected on the lists. In page views we correspond to Courier & Press (Evansville, IN ), and in visits we correspond to Greenville News (Greenville, SC ). Fascinating.
Hell’s Kitchen” The Big Finale, Take One
Still collecting my thoughts and mentally composing a post, which is likely not to be written until tonight or otherwise later.
A couple quick thoughts, though. First, I expected a 2 hour finale that would do more than make it so you didn’t have to see the entire prior season before watching about an hour and five minutes of actual finale… and fluffy at that.
The challenge was cool though. I’d forgotten that one, and I seem to recall last year it wasn’t close like this year.
Finally, until they opened the doors, it was absolutely unclear who the choice of winner would be. Neither would have been a surprise. Either would have been deserving. We’re pleased with ourselves for having pegged the winner in like the second episode of the season, having only seen her weaknesses, some evident right up through the “three months later scene,” later. To the extent I had any expectation which one had won, it was the one who lost and will now get pretty much the job of her choice somewhere.
Argh. I am tempted to just expand this and write it in full now, but I’ll ponder further and expand on this later. My mental composition included a point by point comparison of things like restaurant design, menu, food, staff issues, etc.
Stay tuned… I may simply edit this post rather than creating a second one that covers part of the same ground.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Taiwan: Insect Encrusted Paradise?
Back when I worked in receiving at The Renovator’s Supply, we’d get containers full of boxes of parts from Taiwan, and all you could smell was pesticides. It was as if the cardboard had been soaked in it, then had a chance to dry during shipping.
By the time we were done unloading, we’d smell of it too. Ugh.
It was never as bad with any other international shipments, though granted, none were as large at a time.
So it was that I knew the place of manufacture of the two new UPS units I unpacked today at the office, for temporary use setting up new servers, then coming home to protect these machines. The smell was unmistakable, and more concentrated than I remember it ever being before.
The second one actually had white pesticide residue crusted on the power cord. Ick.
Soooo glad they’ll have an extensive opportunity to air out there before coming home. Especially at the rate I am getting these servers deployed, but that’s another story. Somehow I got the idea it was fairly easy to upgrade NT4 to Windows 2003 Server. Ha! I might actually have to buy another computer to use as a bridge unit, and while I could use a new one, now’s not the best of times. But I digress.
Are insect escapees really that much of a problem coming from Taiwan as opposed to other places?
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
A Sad First
I paid over $3 a gallon for gasoline for the first time yesterday. The two competing stations near the office that are generally almost as low as you can get in the region finally gave up holding the line at $2.99 the end of last week and went up to $3.01.
It’s possible I could still get gas for just under three if I drove to the right place, but it wouldn’t be worth the drive. Plus it’s still better than the stations near home, ranging from $3.05 to $3.12. I’ve seen it as high as $3.17, but $3.05 to $3.10 seems to be the norm.
(And as I type the end of this post, here comes the train exhaust, not “right on schedule,” but actually a little later than normal. If they start later I think they sit idle for a shorter duration before leaving.)
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Hell’s Kitchen: It Really Was A Shocker
Usually when they say Most. Shocking. Elimination. Ever. in the promos, they’re full of hyperbole up to their eyeballs. But the elimination of the hands-down favorite to win? That was indeed a surprise.
In the context of the season, anyway. Not at all, in context of the episode.
So. The challenge. A tough one it was, too, but the kind of thing a great chef can hope to do with no help from America’s Test Kitchen. Taste someone else’s dish, then recreate it based on what you see and taste, with no recipe.
I knew Virginia had it when she used white beans instead of potato; that made far more sense to me. And grapefruit? How inspired. Makes sense, though; citrus and fish.
It says something good about all three of them that they were able to create similar dishes that looked and tasted great, but Virginia got the reverse engineering completely right. That’s astonishingly good.
Lest we forget that the contest is as much about running a restaurant, about the leadership and business end, this episode culled Keith on that very basis. We’d wondered if he could run a place, and maybe he could learn, but then… maybe not as readily as some.
Besides the normal food service aspect, this episode was about running the kitchen, calling and keeping track of orders, directing the other chefs, and providing quality control.
To his credit, Keith caught the overcooked spaghetti. However, he had a total lack of leadership and ability to stay on top of the orders. I was surprised how bad he was.
Heather was better. She’s still inconsistent, but it wouldn’t bother me to see her win. She can learn and improve. She caught the lumpy potato but didn’t send it back, tripped up on the quality control element. To Heather’s credit at the end of the episode she had gained respect for Virginia and recognized Keith’s failings, even though she went through with the plan to nominate Virginia for elimination.
Maybe Gordon’s pointers helped. Maybe her newfound confidence helped. Maybe it’s what she’s better at than running a food prep station. Virginia was easily best at the being in charge test. Salmon versus bass was an easy QC catch, but she did it and reacted decisively.
In the end, Virginia deserved to stay. Keith didn’t. You could see how tough it was for Ramsay to send him packing. I think he expected Keith to win. So perhaps as well that Keith let his true colors show, with his ridiculous sassing and attitude about being dismissed.
And so it’s Virginia versus Heather! Seeing Heather in the finale is no surprise. It has seemed almost inevitable from the beginning. Keith wasn’t initially obvious as a finalist. Virginia was never obvious as a finalist, but she’s come into her own. I have serious doubts Heather can beat her. I expected Heather versus Keith, with Keith winning. Had Sara hung on, I’d say Heather versus Sara, Heather would win. Heather versus Virginia, though… I’d probably put money on Virginia winning it, if I were required to place a bet. And no way I’d have seen that coming a few weeks ago. It’s a close competition. Can’t wait to see what happens next week!
Locomotive Bad Breath
Anyone know who we would contact to ask about the now almost daily idling trains filling our apartment with exhaust fumes for hours on end and making us sick?
We were hoping this would be the last apartment, and we just love the place, but we’re talking about moving because of the exhaust. It was one thing when once every few weeks a train with bad exhaust idled at length. Now it’s as if they’re using primarily trains with bad exhaust.
By comparison, you’ve all driven behind a diesel truck. Maybe you’d rather not be there, but hey, it’s sometimes, and it’s not that bad. But then you’ve also driven behind one of those diesel trucks; the ones you can’t understand still being on the road; the ones that make you have to drive 90 and pass before you stop breathing, or else slow way down and back off half a mile or more so it dissipates before it reaches you.
Those are rare. Now imagine if every other truck you encountered was suddenly one of the bad ones. You would be wondering what the hell was going on.
So it is with the trainyard and the idling stinkers. If we can get to winter, we can deal until spring, but there’s no way we can take another summer of this.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Death With Dignity
I’d been hoping to keep the Sentra going through September, when its inspection sticker expires. Nor was I sure it would fail the safety inspection, so it might have been fine for longer.
Yesterday it developed - or made clear that it had been developing - a fuel leak. That might explain the reduced mileage and altered performance it’s been experiencing for months. (Google U. also says it might be an oxygen sensor or something like that, for some of the behavior.)
On the driver’s side, a little ahead of the rear wheel, up near the gas tank, there are what appear to be multiple fuel lines that disappear and then presumably get to the front of the car somehow. Up where I can’t really see or reach without a better jack or lift, it dribbles gas down onto the lower bits of gas line and the ground below. Last night on the damp driveway it showed up as a trail of circular silvery slicks up behind the left side of the car.
It’s impressive enough that I’m not sure I’d dare drive the car much farther than the service station around the corner. It doesn’t leak at all when the car isn’t running.
Anyway, if we take it to a shop, they’ll probably want to replace the whole fuel line, if not more, and charge a bunch of money. If I could get it jacked up far enough, or on a lift, it’s likely even I could patch it. Perhaps one of my brothers or my nephew could bring a jack over and help me out, and we’ll have a reprieve, but despite that, it’s time.
The poor Sentra is coming up on 19 years old. I’ve owned it for 10 1/2 years of the almost 28 years I’ve been driving, and 104,000 of its 155,000 miles. It’s been as reliable and low cost as you could ever dream of having a car be. I love that car more than anyone probably should; it’s just a car, after all. Even now it starts right up and if you don’t mind trailing absurd amounts of gas and smelling it in the car, it can get you where you’re going rather well. You could probably take out the engine, transplant it to another body, give it a tuneup and replace some of the rustier exterior bits, and run it another 100,000+ miles. The body is dying, though. It’s earned its rest. But it feels like having the family dog put to sleep.
So we’ll be looking for a replacement starting as early as next week; at least something temporary. We’re not sure there won’t be need for a vehicle that holds three carseats down the line, so we’ve been assuming needing a van or SUV. However, my brother had a rental car, not even full size, that would hold three, so such things exist. It even got 34 MPG, which compares favorably with the almost 30 MPG the Sentra usually got prior to the last several months. For now we don’t strictly require anything larger than the Sentra.
We’re trying to avoid payments (though that option is available in a pinch), and assuming something used will promptly need a grand of work. The Sentra was $2000 and immediately needed $400, though that was the last it needed for a long time. The van was $2500 and immediately needed $1400, but that turned out to be merely the start for that traitorous moneysink. I can afford something in the $1000 - $2000 range as early as next week (preferably lower rather than higher for a couple of reasons), so we’ll be asking people to keep an eye out for the proverbial friend or family getting rid of a car cheap kind of thing.
Luckily, it’s at least a few weeks before there’s anywhere we all need to be at the same time. As far as we know or can anticipate.
After discussing it, though, we’re pretty well set on death with dignity for the venerable old car. If it runs with a cheap-as-possible patch, cool, and we could use the little bit more time, but basically it’s done. No more money for repairs beyond a few bucks for do-it-yourself parts.
On a less somber note, I’d forgotten how much stuff I had in the trunk. I felt like one of those clowns with the endless handkerchiefs. To get at the jack I removed:
Pack & play
Two folding chairs we take to cookouts so we still have nowhere to sit
Tool bag
Husky socket set
Cheap driver set
Gas can
Air tank
Battery charger
Tarp in unopened package
Hammer
Hatchet
Hacksaw
Bow saw
Collapsible mini snow shovel
12-pack of cherry Fresca
Not removed from the trunk were the spare tire, a couple ponchos, a blanket, light sticks, several quarts of oil, several containers of other automotive fluids and sprays, empty gallon container, old battery, emergency belt kit, emergency hose repair kit, other stuff I’m forgetting. Not like I could restart civilization out of the trunk, but add to it my briefcase and I’d be well on my way to emergency camping. For proper bugout/emergency I’d want the knives from the briefcase, some clothes, food, and maybe a few other odds and ends.
For a tiny car the trunk holds an insane amount of stuff. I’d almost be as happy to have another car, because in a van or SUV I’d miss the trunk. Guess we’ll see what happens.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Some Surprises Are Pleasant
Whatever I can say about Verizon’s goofy installation of our FiOS, it did achieve one thing: lower phone bill.
With DSL and unlimited “Freedom” calling, our bill was $102 and change.
When we signed up for FiOS, the same calling plan was being offered for considerably less, but for some reason I thought FiOS broadband would be the same or $5 higher. Maybe it’s a promotional rate and I’m forgetting they said that. I only remember the low calling plan and the waived installation fee ($70, as I recall, which is low for the minimum of two hours it takes; generally 4 - 6 hours), because they really want to get it rolled out widely. Gives them a ready market when they launch FiOS TV in this town, and I figure they’re employing guys to do these “last mile” installs whether they get solidly booked with orders or not.
Anyway, it’s $76.71 for a month, and only $19.95 of that is designated as internet. Nice. I wasn’t sure what the deal was from the last bill, which was $78. I thought is was for a partial month on the old plan, but it may have been part of a month of one and part of a month the other. I just assumed the bill would have been higher for a whole month, thus waiting until now to see.
Yay for saving money!
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Frontier Calling
I found this piece by Peggy Noonan on Ken Lay and how the world is different than it once was fascinating not because of the sympathy it exudes or the excellent point it makes, but because of what it says about a lack of frontiers.
Which might not entirely solve the problem, as it’s one of mass communication as much as one of nowhere to go, but we always can use that place to go. It’s in our nature. And not merely for obfuscating past reputations, but for “dropping out” or making a stand for principle.
When there’s debate about the presence of too many eggs in one basket, the probability and extent of civilization-devastating, even species-ending, disasters, and the costs and benefits of acting with a long view toward such probabilities approaching one, that’s entirely beside the point. Exploration and migration are in our nature. Not for everyone, on an individual basis, but for many, and for all the more when the times cry out for it.
The time to start is when that cry is yet a murmer. Can you hear it?
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Odd
The Wal-Mart in Raynham recently stopped carrying Cain’s mayonnaise. Just… stopped. It seems to have coincided with a change of store managers and modest subsequent reorganization of what went where. (When I worked at a big convenience store chain they called it “programming,” which I always thought was funny terminology.)
Since that’s at least as popular as any other mayo available in the region, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. I have to wonder if they got in a spat, didn’t get a sufficiently low price, didn’t fit with Wal-Mart’s IT systems, or what. I keep forgetting to confirm whether they still carry other Cain’s products, and whether Cain’s is also out at the Plymouth store. If they do, or it isn’t, all the stranger. If they don’t, then probably one of those reasons.
Speaking of oddities, I long meant to blog about left-sided Wal-Mart entrances.
From the time I was a kid, I learned the “walk to the right, just like you’d drive” rule of pedestrian traffic. If people tried harder to do that in stores, even when they are “the only one in the store,” things would flow more smoothly.
I noticed a long time ago that the entrance to Wal-Mart in Raynham was left-handed and felt completely unnatural. You see a lot of people simply using the right side anyway, which causes traffic jams when people coming in the opposite direction try to comply with the signs and go through the left door. Then I noticed it at Target in Taunton too! Except there it’s more appropriate to the layout of the store. Left feeds you directly up the main left aisle of the store, with the checkout area to the right. At the Wal-Mart left is adjacent to the checkout and right feeds up a main aisle that’s the demarcation between grocery and the rest of the store.
To my great relief, I see the new Plymouth Wal-Mart is correctly designed, and it’s not a chain policy to be backward. Just one more way in which the Plymouth store is superior. But the Raynham store is still on my way home from the office rather than off in the other direction…
Friday, June 30, 2006
Oh Rubbish!
All the tenants in my office building have been notified that, effective tomorrow, about 90% of everything that was previously thrown in the dumpster may no longer be put there. Dumpsters are normally the last bastion of being able to throw away anything, but it looks like, unless some easy recycling option is made available, I will henceforth need to bring home most of the trash generated in the office. Except… we’ve received no notice from the town indicating changes, but the regulations the waste disposal company that handle the office dumpster are citing apply to all solid waste facilities in the state. Hmmm…
We already knew certain things were banned from disposal, like anything with a CRT. However, now all the plain white paper can’t be thrown out. Cans that have no deposits. Glass jars and bottles. Anything metal; no more throwing away dead power supplies. It would seem to apply to dead mice and keyboards, too. Most plastic containers. Most cardboard. Which means, since most of the corrugated I throw out is on behalf of the big client, I sure hope they come up with a way of handling it. They have previously had no recycling of any kind in place. I certainly haven’t.
Oddly, microwave ovens are about the only exception to the “white goods” clause, which is one of the parts that seems to be nothing new. I would think they would count somehow under the excluded metals, though.
It will be interesting to see what people in the building do and how seriously this is taken by everyone involved, including the waste disposal company. The notice is so last minute, nobody could possibly be prepared for it.
Guess I ought to put out any trash I can find before I leave here today.
The Theory of Money And Credit Goes HTML
I was excited to see Billy Beck reporting that The Theory of Money And Credit by Ludwig von Mises is now online.
Beck notes it’s on his list of recommended books, itself a fascinating post to read. I’m not so sure about some of the “know your enemy” selections, on which it’s heavy, but I found myself lusting after many of the titles listed… and contemplating rereads.
At any rate, it’s not as if I read the whole Mises book, but in referencing it in the college library for this old paper, it was hard to keep myself from getting sucked in, dry as it may be. It resonated.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Call Me Any Any Time… Or Not?
When we go to our family doctor, we wait hours and hours to get in an see him, with the consolation being that when we have an emergency, we too will be able to get in and see him while other people wait.
And so it is that after 13 minutes on hold with not the normal nurse-receptionist or even the backup nurse-receptionist, we have an appointment at 2:15 for Sadie with not-our-doctor.
Total bullshit.
Absolute total bullshit.
And I didn’t think to ask if we could see him tomorrow instead. We’re sure she didn’t ask him if he’d fit us in. It’ll be all of a three minute visit, ending in either “looks like she buised her hipbone” or that kind of thing and “give her some ibuprofen and it’ll heal in a couple weeks,” or else “go see the specialist.”
Some random person filled in reception and didn’t know us. Or our doctor. Apparently it’s all well and good for him to have a policy of “call me!” It just goes completely astray in execution, especially when there are surrogate minions.
Anyway, after I made the appointment, and after I started typing this, we got sufficiently concerned and, well, angry, that I called back and canceled. Gave the reason of preferring to see our own doctor, and disconnected before the at least friendlier-this-time surrogate minion could verify he also has no openings tomorrow.
So what is wrong with Sadie anyway? Probably nothing that a little time and ibuprofen can’t cure. It’s borderline on whether to bother having it looked at; I just decided I ought to err on the side of caution, and it was worth spending yet another $25 for peace of mind and guidance. Of course, the tone of the reception drone initially was “have you been beating your kid?” Which was one of the factors weighed in deciding whether to take her. It’s obvious we haven’t, and our doctor would never dream of suspecting it or taking that tone. He’s the one who joked about seeing her for stitches under the chin when she manifested as an unstoppable climber.
The problem manifested itself in diaper changes. I lay her in the bassinet, unhook the diaper, and grab usually her right leg to lift her butt up to wipe her clean. She’s never been thrilled by the grab a leg thing, but it works.
Starting a few days ago, that made her scream in pain. She didn’t even seem to like to lay flat. Either leg, but more the right. If you lay her down flat now she cringes in anticipation, which makes us wonder if some of the reaction is not liking it because it used to hurt even if now not so much.
We’ve tried bending the leg and hip, prodding all over the place, trying to see if there was a locus of pain. Closest I came to a result prodding was one side of her lower back down near the hip.
Almost forgot; she seems to be pained by it if the diaper is fastened too tight, and the same few days ago she started fighting being put into the normal position and strapped into her car seat, almost as if it was hurting her. Not the agony of the grab leg and lift butt thing, but apparent discomfort that she gets over or tolerates enough to ride fine.
She had no obvious difficulties or changes to behavior. She can still walk, run, climb, stomp… but last night she was having clear difficulty climbing into and out of her chair at the kitchen table, even needing help. She falls in the tub and thinks nothing of it. She sits and bends her legs in the same ways that bother her if we have her on her back trying to identify the problem. I think I caught a slight limp earlier, and maybe there’s a little reversion to pointing her toes inward, but it’s hard to say. Mostly she’s fine. It’s very strange and subtle. Clearly not a broken bone, for instance. If it weren’t for the diaper changing hysteria, we’d suspect nothing. And the hysteria is clearly pain-induced. Or maybe “memory of pain” induced, in some part.
It’s probably a pulled muscle or deep bruise that doesn’t show on the surface, and will simply fade away. It’s the kind of thing that I wouldn’t take myself to a doctor for, but Sadie can’t really tell us what we’d like to know about it, and I decided to take advantage of the “family practice” pitch for once, to reassure us.
If it still bothers her when I have my appointment next week, I’ll bring it up then, maybe bring her with me for the day anyway. And I’ll chat with the doctor about what exactly the “call me” policy means and what I should expect from the minions guarding his gates.
Meanwhile, I do hope she stops falling and banging off of and into things so much.
Rest In Peace Jim Baen
Via Glenn, the news that Jim Baen has died following his recent stroke.
It’s a sad day in the world of science fiction.
David Drake remembers his friend.
Monday, June 26, 2006
This is going to be a problem…
There are nice men here working on the gutters or something today.
Since they needed not merely an electrical outlet, but one with a surface close by to set their rechargable power tools on, guess whose extension cord that powers phone and internet got unplugged by Joe Random Worker. Because even though there are two lovely outlets near the door - heck, four outlets, two of them not associated with a specific apartment - we have a washer and dryer that are easily confused for workbenches.
So off goes the internet. Again. They might have unplugged us if it hadn’t been just a random extension cord, but an obvious-connected-to-Verizon-equipment power cord. Then again, maybe not. The fact is, they shouldn’t have done it either way, just as sure as I shouldn’t have to use an extension cord to power the Verizon stuff.
Deb plugged us back in and moved their tools to the neighboring laundry machines, but internet didn’t come back, so I went down, not having correctly understood what she did, which was to leave them alone and plug us back into the 3rd floor power temporarily. All I saw was that our extension cord was unplugged, again I thought, so I unplugged them, plugged us back in, and duct-taped it thoroughly to dissuade people, which I’d already thought of doing, but only on the other end.
To my surprise, I found the Verizon cord plugged into the 3rd floor and so I plugged it back into the extension cord, duct-taping that. On coming back upstairs I learned Deb had done that, rather than disrupting the workers, so I changed it back, but it will be taped after they leave and we move it back.
It managed to come back on after I was done, reset the router and rebooted the computer. It’s really not acceptable to have to keep doing that because Verizon FiOS installations to apartment buildings in places like Middleboro totally suck in taking the, you know, apartment aspect into account. If you have DSL you might want to stick with it if you do not own the building or have solid control over where the service might be connected and powered.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Verizon’s Ears Are Burning
Today was our second outage since we’ve had FiOS, the fiber optic internet service from Verizon. At least this time didn’t require a call to support, but then if they’d not blown me off in regard to my “and oh by the way...” last time, or not installed in a blatently moronic way in the first place, today would not have happened either.
See, when we got our Verizon FiOS fiber optic phone and internet service installed in Middleboro, Massachusetts (if that sounds stilted and overly much info, it’s for the sake of search engines), in a multi-family dwelling, which is to say, a building of apartments on different floors, the dickhead installer, who seemed great at the time, plugged the power unit into an outlook that was clearly marked 3rd floor. That despite knowing intimately that the installation was for the 2nd floor.
You would think that Verizon and its installers would carefully investigate, consult, ask in regard to what apartment’s power is which, and ensure nobody’s getting plugged into the wrong place. He never mentioned it, and I figured if he didn’t mention it, it was a non-issue. Heck, my understanding was that the service would actually have to be plugged into power in my apartment and a place would have to be made for it near where the phone service enters. Except it enters the cellar. Where the most easily usable outlet belonged to the 3rd floor, because the 1st floor’s spare outlet the landlord plugged the legally mandated carbon monoxide detector into, the 2nd floor’s spare outlet was occupied by a drop cord and the washing machine power cord covered the “2nd fl” label. On the other hand, the 3rd floor was vacant so there weren’t even laundry machines making the outlets harder to access, never mind their being in use.
How hard would it really have been to come up here and ask about where it should be plugged in? How many other places are going to be left with Verizon-induced tenant-tenant or landlord-tenant encounters of the “hey, you’re stealing electricity” kind? Verizon needs to deal with this, and they need to train their otherwise okay support people not to sound like slack-jawed yokels unaware that installation staff can plug the power into the wrong place and that this just might constitute a problem. The support person was like “whaddaya want us to do about it?” Thought I should just string an extension cord because that’s all the install person would probably do if he had to come back. He thought we should be happy that it had power at all, as that’s the important thing.
So back to our outage today. I was giving some doubtful benefit that the outage was an outage, considering the nasty weather. I tried all the usual in-the-house troubleshooting. Then I went to the cellar.
I knew as soon as I saw our hall light was out that the landlord had been here and was probably the problem. We have a 23 watt flourescent in our hall fixture that is super bright and lights the entire stairwell enough to make it safer all around. I leave it on at all times, figuring it’s not costly (I didn’t at first; the 3rd floor people started turning and leaving on ours instead of theirs so I gave up). As far as I know, it is our electricity running it, since there are fixtures logically associated with each apartment, and I am certain there is no “common areas” electric supplied by the landlord on its own meter. Which makes me wonder who pays for the power to the outside light and the cellar lights. My guess is the first floor, and I try to act accordingly. Whenever the landlord comes in to do anything, as has naturally been happening more with the 3rd floor vacant, he turns off our hall light. Probably reflex.
Sure enough, the thing we’d been half expecting had happened: The landlord noticed something plugged into the 3rd floor’s power that didn’t belong and unplugged it. And someone had silenced the alarm that sounds when it’s on battery, from the unit at the opposite end of the cellar. Cute.
This is exactly what I tried to tell Airbrain Dude in Verizon FiOS support would happen if the situation wasn’t corrected. We would be unplugged and service would be down. It was so tempting to call support to have them send someone out Right Now when we got unplugged, but I got out my super nice long extension cord and strung that over from our own outlet. Yay. We’re back.
So hey, if we get any readers who are with Verizon, you might want to check out what procedures exist for powering FiOS service in apartments where there are “that’s not my outlet” issues. It really does matter. Duh.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Wow
We’ve seldom come anywhere close to going over our bandwidth, which over time has grown to 23 GB per month as Hosting Matters has upped it to coincide with changes in costs and competition for hosting. I don’t really even check to see what it’s been, except incidentally, as today. I want to host a domain for my nephew, and I was comparing space available under elhide versus AV. Elhide has this odd problem where it thinks it is out of disk space. I upload large zip files of pictures, 50 mb or so each, four at a time. Deb’s father downloads them. I delete them. Rinse, repeat. Last time I deleted them, they didn’t release the space, but they are gone. So that account is technically fine, if I have HM support do whatever they have to do to make the disk space counter tally properly, but I also have other stuff going on there that maybe makes me not want to host an extra domain.
So I checked AV and it’s so-so on disk space, but instead of almost no bandwidth, we’re already at 60% for this month, which puts us on target to almost exactly use the whole deal. But… I see that in may we used 27.6 GB out of our 23 GB available! See, there’s a great thing about Hosting Matters. Another hosting company might have been all over us, looking to collect the extra charge.
The sad thing is that the next plan up includes 28 GB, which would have just covered that. We may have to switch. I can keep the bandwidth partly in control by never uploading zips of pictures to AV, which I do sometimes, though there’s only disk space for two at once.
While I was looking at adding a new business domain to elhide’s space, I was also thinking of getting hosting for that elsewhere, adding another basket for my eggs. Without resorting to Verizon, Mindspring and Gmail accounts also available but not really used, if HM goes down to a denial of service attack or other serious problem, I am completely cut off.
I looked at GoDaddy, since I have domains registered there.
They are insanely low cost and make HM look stingy on disk space and bandwidth. However, it seems each e-mail account is limited to 10 MB. Normally that’s fine, but I actually do need the ability to have my e-mail accounts unlimited in size. One, I can be e-mailed some rather large attachments. Two, I download the e-mails in more than one location and leave mail on the server for a specified number of days. It’s a safety mechanism.
Also, I didn’t formally ask, but I found mention online that a hosting account there is for one domain, period. I can add a bunch of domains to any given HM hosting account. Nobody without that is likely to get my business.
Anyway, I’m amazed that our bandwidth has actually gotten that large. In the past few months we have gone from routinely in the 200-something hits a day range per Site Meter (which misses a lot of actual traffic) to 400-something, some days 500-something, which is a big difference. We do have photo-heavy content, whch also matters.
Well. We’ll see what happens. At least I know to watch the meter.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Some Bill Gates History
Even if you aren’t technical, this Joel On Software piece, My First BillG Review, is well worth reading just for the Bill Gates anecdote and the bit of history. I may have first read Joel before I ever read my first blog, which possibly makes Joel, not Virginia, Joanne, or possibly Jerry, the first blog I ever read.
Yet I was unaware that Joel was behind VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), or the use of late binding and variants in the VB line. I am hugely impressed. With him and with the ability Gates showed in this product review and the management practices surrounding such reviews.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Mmmm… Calcium, and Light Posting
Sadie must have a calcium craving this morning. She asked for cheese for breakfast, and then for strawberry milk. Not coffee. Which has a lower proportion of milk in it than strawberry milk. She didn’t ask for a pickle, or fruit, or raisins or cashews or whatever. Speaking of pickles, we got a jar of the cutest little miniature gherkins yesterday. They’re Sadie-sized. Speaking of calcium, we got some yogurt, too, which Sadie hasn’t tried since she was a baby. Speaking of shopping, the night before last we went to the BJ’s in Taunton for the first time. I used to go to the Avon store, because it was under 5 minutes from the old apartment.
At two years old you would think the Taunton store was brand new, and built to acknowledge the fact of competition from things like Wal-Mart Supercenters (the amazing Plymouth version of which we went to yesterday). My first thought on walking into it was that the store layout exactly matched that of the Costco in Sherbrooke, Quebec, which is the only Costco I have been in, and a very nice store. From my father’s in Vermont, right on the border, it’s either shop up in that area, probably 40 miles away, or drive all the way across the state at an angle to Burlington, an all day jaunt.
The BJ’s even has parking for customers with infants! We thought we were just getting an insanely good spot - and we still would have even without that - but then we saw the sign… and it happened to apply. Go us.
That BJ’s is one of the nicest stores I have ever been in. My only complaint is the weird traffic pattern they setup for entering the plaza. Well, that and the pair of employees going around gathering empty boxes for the “free boxes” cart, who pretended we weren’t there rather than moving the box cart to the side a foot to let us pass and look at what we wanted in that aisle. They were being low life pricks and there’s no excuse for that.
Anyway, I have to work on billing. It should have been done several days ago. Even though they almost always pay faster, terms are net 15 and it’s the 15th and rent is due the 1st. I’ve just been a combination of busy and skittish about giving the big client a second really huge bill in a row. I figure the extra several days will make it feel less bad. These two will have been larger than all but a handful of other months since we started in January 1999.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Hire Sean Hackbarth
We have thought for a long time that Sean Hackbarth needed to get out of his job in retail and into a proverbial real job.
He has finally reached that point of departure himself. There is even a separate blog to keep track of his progress.
His blog is unusually old, having started in 1999. I’ve read it since around the time I started blogging in 2003, and would love to see him find an excellent, meaningful job, or set of jobs that meld well together, amount to one full job, and keep things all the more interesting. It’s increasingly common not simply to have “a job.”
So spread the word. Let’s get Sean Hackbarth a future!
Monday, June 12, 2006
I Meant To Ask…
Does anyone have insights into making an office as “paperless” as possible? A law office, specifically? Prefereably for smaller rather than larger amounts of money?
In analyzing things, my conclusion is that the biggest obstacle is habits and working comfort, not technology, which just keeps getting better. To me, if everything will be on-screen, and printing is to be avoided, people can’t have 14” or 15” screens, and seven year old computers that were not the height of available specs at the time.
I know nothing about fax servers, but it seems to me that’s going to be one key. Then incomings never go to paper, and outgoings can be faxed without the intermediate step of printing. We already have the Digital Sender that can work with a fax server if you have one, for when there is paper to fax.
Anyway, this should be interesting. They are using the need to do a major upgrade to try to be forward looking and take full advantage of technology, rather than merely reacting.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
KY and Gro Jobs
Kate posted about the same woman appearing in the K-Y Warming Gel and Miracle-Gro TV commercials, both of which encourage growth.
I had noticed the same thing and forgotten to blog about it.
Turns out her name is Erica Shaffer (warning, site plays music, which as you know if you’ve been online more than about a week is a rude design flaw) and she’s in a lot more than two ad campaigns. She’s even been in a bunch of stuff that isn’t ads.
The fascinating thing is that she is fetching, yet at the same time generic, nondescript, malleable. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, for landing acting work. It wouldn’t be that hard to see her in commercials for two products and not realize it was her. I seem to recall the reason I noticed was because KY and Miracle-Gro happened to play almost back to back.
The funny thing is, she and the last advertising actress who made me say “is that the same one?” (Diet Coke skater and Old Navy Madras), Nicole Vicius, are both associated with the Cartoon Network; the one as character voices and the other as “voice of.”