Cheers and Jeers: O:M edition

So sue me, Bill in Portland Maine, over on Daily Kos. Remember who writes your performance reviews . . .

1. Cheers to Blizzard Entertainment. WoW patch 2.4 is out; Blizz dedicated it to the late, great Gary Gygax. Without EGG, WoW and Diablo would not exist. This patch is nowhere as massive in impact as 2.3 was; at least they fixed several annoyances.

1a. Jeers to breaking my damned UI mods, as usual. I guess you can't make an omlet without breaking UI mods . . . bastards.

2. Cheers to Seanan McGuire. Her Bardic Blondeness is coming to town this weekend. I haven't seen her in more than a decade, and I'm looking forward to paying my respects in person to one of my favorite multi-talented artists. She should be your favorite too. Check out her LJ, website and music for reasons why.

3. Cheers to over a century of fearless journalism. My new favorite political magazine is The Nation. I've been on their mailing list since forever, when ex#2 and I used to subscribe to the dead-tree edition of this august journal of liberal opinion. These guys have been around since the 1860s fighting for the abolition of slavery and continue to cover Stuff That Matters (sorry, Slashdot) like elections campaigns and ongoing corruption without accepting a single dime of corporate money.

4. Cheers to filkerTom-foolery: I thought I was hallucinating when I read that Tom Smith, aka the world's fastest filker, is going to be part of the entertainment for Eschacon'08, the lefty blogger con organized by the influential Atrios in Philadelphia this weekend. I'd love to see his set list for his performance . . . .

5. Jeers to sports memes as workplace motivation. Every company seekd competitive advantage through incentivizing its workforce through a variety of means. I have no problems with most of the ways Management motivate us worker bees. I don't even mind those STUPID motivation posters. However, few things this side of the Veil-between-Worlds piss me off more than big time sports. I was raised in a sports-saturated household. There was always sports on TV or the damned radio, and to hell with me if I wanted to watch something mind-streching like Star Trek or listen to music. To this day, I cannot stand sports or TV. This time, it's March Madness, the 63-game marathon men's college basketball tournament. Pick one of the 64 teams (preferably one that stands a chance of winning) as an identity and rank those corporate metrics against them. Frankly, I couldn't care less weather Gonzanga (sounds a stripper's stage name) or UConn or Louisville wins the damned thing. Please. Make Them Stop!

6. Cheers to the Nurses of Kaiser South Sacramento. My wound care issues brings me in contact with a lot of nurses. When I moved south last year I figured I'd have to move my care (which I did) and I worried about continuity and quality of care. Pam, Connie and Valarie, the triumvirate that change the dressings and track the progress of my wounds throughly impress me.

Bits, bytes, nybbles and other data constructs

Scenes from a geek's life:

1. My hip going "pop" as I was getting ready to leave the doctor's office. Tylenol is helping; two of the world's most awesome nurses *ever* making sure that I did not leave the doc's office until the pain had diminished. Valarie and Connie are a matched set (literally!). I've met more educated nurses, sure...but none who are so patient-centered.
(Gheekspeak follows)
2. I get my job satisfaction shots in strange doses. Few things make me happier than rescuing a customer from a mistake. One of my axioms of Mac Teching is "Walk non-technical customers through the start of an Archive and Install (preserving) because there are too many ways for a nontech to fsck it to hell and beyond." "Archive and Install" (preserving) is a common resolution for software issues on a Mac; what it does is move the /System/ folder to a new location (the "archive" part) and installs a new one. It does NOT overwrite the old /System/, /Applications/ or more importantly, /Users/ (the "preserving" part). The /Users/ folder is home to things like the Desktop, Documents, Music, Movies and all the stuff you store on a computer and want to not lose. Well, Ms. Customer made one little mistake: the did the archive and install with the "preserving" option disabled. When this happens, the /Users/ folder goes into the archive as well. Upon completion of the install, your system goes through first time setup as though out of the box and looks like all the data is gone! The call started out with my diffusing the customer's demand for scalps. I told her how I think it happened, without assigning blame (I care about happy customers, not the whys of breaking things or Who To Blame), and showed her the mystery of how to restore a archived /Users/ folder without hosing the file permissions. This customer went from mistrustful and hinting at legal action to wanting to fly me to the East Coast for personal Mac lessons. Long call, because this restore process is a bit delicate . . . but the call ended with a VERY happy customer.
(end Gheekspeak)

3. Last night, in semi-secret rites in Nygel's Point, Desolace, Dakatirr (my shaman) was passed the title of Guild Master for the WoW guild Legends Till Death . Yet another case of insufficient reluctance. I'd been looking at starting my own guild for awhile, but I literally could not buy nine signatures for a guild charter I took out for . I did not set out to take over someone else's guild, but now that I have it I'll be doing as much administrivia as I do actually playing.

4. A few days ago, Barack Obama gave this little speech about race, faith and a few other things. My inner Orator (the one who got free in speech classes in high school and college and earned the highest degree of distinction from the National Forensics League for oratory, debate, extemporaneous and impromptu speaking) was amazed. Presidents are supposed to be inarticulate boobs who cannot sting together two original thoughts without connective tissue. Presidents are supposed to be rhetorical embarrassments. At least that's been the lesson of the 21st centuty dark age that is the Bush / Cheney administration. BO was brilliant in laying out his vision for that nation, his view of this nation's historic and persistent racism. (geek sideline: while his first and last initial suggest something odorous, his full initials -- BHO -- is a Windows geek acronym: Browser Helper Object. Some BHOs suck, others are not so bad) Folks, Barack Obama (BTW, his first name means "Lightning" in Hebrew and was also the name of Ariel Sharon's armored brigade in the Sinai in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the name goes back to a military commander from the Old Testament) is the Real Deal.

4. Finally: to the piece of human debris who parked his or her car less than a foot from my van which was centered in it's space at Kaiser, forcing a buy with a sore hip and not-so-mild claustrophobia panic attacks to climb in through the cargo door: FSCK YOU WERRY MUCH, ARSEWHOLE! I was just one security camera away from keying the passenger side door of your PoSmobile. Please, for the sake of the people who must share the road and parking spaces with you, get a real license to replace the one you have courtesy of Cracker Jack and Learn To DRIVE and PARK, you miserable dollop of dog crap.

Mac and Moto Madness

My new phone arrived today. Kudos to AT&T and FexEx for getting it here so quickly.

OMG, the RAZR is a slick phone. I've always liked how this phone looks. Now that I have one of my very own . . . I wish I'd gotten one a couple of years ago. All I had to do was slip in the SIM for my POS Sony Ericcson, charge the battery for 30 minutes, and I was ready to roll.

This phone and my Mac get along very very nicely thanks to iSync and Bluetooth. I paired up the phone just like it was any other device, iSync did the rest. Much easier than syncing a Palm PDA because Palm Desktop and Hotsync Manager is NOT involved. Now my PDA, my Macs and my phone all talk to each other in perfect sync.

Reason 2 why I'm impressed: it can be powered through a mini-USB power adapter. Mini-USB makes a good data connection for the Bluetooth impaired, and with a mini to A cable, you can power it off a standard 500 mA (high power, same kind iPods charge from) USB port. The power adapter prongs fold into the body of the adapter like those on a Mac / AirPort Express "duck head."

Reason 3: I noticed in the Bluetooth settings that this phone had a Bluetooth "service" called "OLX Object Push" The Bluetooth wireless link allows a number of different services -- printing, headset, dial up modem and others. OLX Object Push is for sending files back and forth. Mac OS X has a feature called Bluetooth File Exchange for sending files to a Bluetooth device. I tested the feature by snapping a picture with the camera and sending the resulting jpeg file to the Mac. That pic appears above.

Color me in-fscking-impressed!

I've only begun to explore this little jewel of a phone. More later.

Oh yes, Leopard, aka Mac OS X 10.5, is likewise awesome. Much more later!

Brain on random...

1. Feeling like fsck thanks to a a bit of a cough and cold. Been resting; hope to feel better tomorrow.

2. New phone arrived yesterday -- Sony Ericson z310a. Pretty nice phone, really, if the damned thing would work. I managed to get it charged, registered on the AT&T network, turned on, entered some phone numbers manually (it does not sync with iSync 2.x in Mac OS X . . . needs Windows and proprietary software), and shut it down for the night, never to turn on again.

Now the "fun" begins . . . Called AT&T's "customer service" people. Selected "other" from a voice menu, and got billing. "Tech support?" . Rep number 2 knew her onions. For once I decided to NOT say "I'm a tech, I know what I'm doing . . ." to someone doing tech support because I didn't want to come off sounding like an idiot if the issue was something I overlooked. After explaining my troubleshooting, the tech said "Yep, you've done everything" and transferred me to a long wait and someone with the typical accent heard from reps who live in a certain very large South Asian nation famed for total cluelessness in phone support. This rep told me I was in the wrong queue, and before I could start unloading my utter frustration onto her, was again transferred . . . to FSCKING SALES! By this time I was primed like a block of plastique and I went off, big time. I demanded to speak to a supervisor. She did what I'd do in her place and offer to help . . . which I declined after explaining why. I asked again. And, like I've done in her place, was warm transferred to another agent who, from her accent, resided in a large but sparsely populated North American nation. I calmly told my story of totally inferior service, that if I had not already put money on the books to activate the phone, I would have canceled already. At that point she said "pick a phone from the go-phone list you want." "OK, does it have to be the same phone and does it have to be the same price or less?" "No. I'm giving you a credit for a phone upgrade or accessories for your trouble." "OK, how about the Motorola RAZR v3?" The RAZR is the phone I really wanted two years ago. It has a camera, and Bluetooth. iSync 2.x and that phone do get along. In other words, my OS X Address Book and iCal will sync to the RAZR via either Bluetooth or USB without 3rd party crapware like The Pissing Stink, er, Missing Sync.

Now I'm getting a RAZR and not having to pay an upgrade price for it. This is my second Sony product that has been an extreme disappointment (the first was my Clie PDA). I'll avoid Sony anything in the future!

Not to mention that AT&T did a good job of addressing my dissatisfaction.

3. Finally, a Democratic presidential candidate who GETS IT!
And, "it" is the oath of office: " . . . support, defend and protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . .". As far as I'm concerned, the official acts of Shrub and Dead-eye Dick certainly qualify them as the latter foe.
The more I look at Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama, the better Senator Chris Dodd looks. While Obama and Hillary draw all the attention and the money, but from what I have seen, Dodd's the real deal. At a time when Congress seems to be engaged in a game of "Let's grab our ankles and grease up for Shrub!" Dodd is LEADING!


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Listening to: Pink Floyd - On the Turning Away
via FoxyTunes

DMV is A-OK

In years past I used to go to great lengths to avoid visiting a California DMV office for any reason. The lines for "service" at hot, sweaty CalDMV field offices rivalled bread lines in the old USSR. A visit to DMV meant a long, uncomfortable standing wait in line to speak to a surly old battleaxe of a clerk with a smart mouth, a bad attitude and virtual immunity from discipline thanks to Civil Service who seemed to want to be there even less than you did. When I absolutly HAD to visit the DMV, I either made an appointment online (much shorter wait, but the same surly staff), went to the local Cal AAA office (which handles some DMV business with a staff that is far more friendly) or went to a remote DMV field office in a smaller town like Lodi or Jackson where the lines were far shorter and the staff was a lot friendlier.

I expected much the same kind of wait-in-line hell from my visit to DMV today. Boy was I in for a surprise. My expectations were exceeded by such a margain as to be blogworthy. The facility I visited was fairly new, not a building that was built in the middle of the Cold War. Gone was the single long, slow, endless queue that wrapped back and forth in rope-boundary lanes like a ride at Disneyland. Standing in long lines is not good for my legs. Replacing it was a short-n-snappy "Start Here" triage line that was over almost before it began. The attractive young woman listened to my issue and handed me a number. By the time I'd whipped out an ebook to read while I waited, my number was called.
Waiting to serve me at the counter (not the usual straight line of windows but a jagged series of triangles that reminded me of a "star fort" from the 30 Years War) was another attractive and capable young woman with a positive attitude. She handled the transaction and I was out of there in less than 10 minutes.
Color me amazed appreciative and very pleased. Amazed because the conventional wisdom among American politicos - abetted by a certain loathsome species of conservative politico - is that it is impossible for government to do anything efficlently. Indeed in their view Government IS the problem in America today, that private enterprise would do a better job than a government agency. Frankly, today I got much better service from DMV than I've gotten from some for-profit corporations. As a customer service professional, I recognize and appreciate good service when I get it. I never hesitate to fill out surveys and speak my mind about how how well I was served. I'm certainly going to let DMV know that this field office is doing a great job. Whatever share of the DMV fee I paid today goes to operating the field office, I begrudge not a cent of it. Finally I am pleased that DMV was respectful of my time. Many large organizations, no matter what their PR says, could really care less about the amount of time a client or customer spends dealing with them. In the case of DMV, it isn't as if a dissatisfied customer could threaten to take their business to the competition.