Month: June 2005

What’s up with not having to sign any more credit card receipts at retail food counters? Am I the only one that’s noticed this recent change?

It started at Chipotle. Several months ago, I swiped the card for my burrito and…okay, my burrito and chips…the counter dude said that they’re not asking for signatures anymore on credit receipts.

The primary reason I can fathom for making this change is for operational efficiency. Some operations guy up the chain decided to emulate Starbucks and implement any change that would decrease queue system time. If true, then this seems absurd because the signature process takes 3 seconds at most. They still have to swipe the card and they still have to wait for both the merchant and customer receipts to print. What’s the point of bypassing the signature and saving 3 seconds?

Maybe the operational efficiency isn’t intended for customers. Maybe they’re sick of reconciling the receipts at the end of the day. They figure they save X amount of labor hours a year by avoiding the task of matching receipts to the roll record.

Is it for security? Are people standing out back of the restaurants, digging through trash, to lift signatures off the card receipts?

I tried searching Proquest to see if there was an article written. Couldn’t find anything. Is this weird? Am I the only one?

So we saved, and shopped, and looked, and spent months debating, then finally bought a new digital camera. It’s coming in the mail, and should probably be here by Friday. It’s the Kodak Easyshare Z7590. We’ll have to let you know how well it works after it arrives, but the cool thing, to me, was the great deal we got.

We had been hunting for a good deal on a digital camera. The one we have was a Wal-Mart special, $99.98 piece of junk. The funny thing is, the pictures it takes aren’t great, they tend to be really fuzzy when taken indoors, the shutter speed is laughable… yet it worked. We liked it, because we could take a ton of pictures, put them on an SD card, dump them on the hard drive of our PC or Mac, and be able to take all the pictures we liked without spending a fortune on developing them all. We’ve used it a lot, and the cheap-o digital has lasted longer than any other camera we’ve owned. It’s still working! Maybe we’ll give it to the kids or something.

But really, how many of your pictures turn out to be “keepers” that you scrapbook? Maybe out of a whole roll, 2-5 pictures will be worth keeping. The rest may make decent fodder for the lining of scrapbook pages, or they’ll sit in a dusty bin moldering in the attic.

Anyway, we knew we wanted a new digital camera to replace the old. A conventional camera just makes no sense for us. After several months of off-and-on hunting, we finally figured out what it was we wanted:

• Minimum of 4 megapixels, so that we could print out an 8×10 photo from our printer and have it look good.
• High optical zoom capability. This is important, because most “point-and-shoot” cameras only zoom up to 3X using their optical lens, and then maybe 3X more using “digital zoom”, which really sods the quality of the photo. You’re better off not using digital zoom at all, and just cropping the picture later.
• Good reviews
• A name-brand. No more “Connor 5000” or “GenericBrand001”.
• We wanted to make sure that the viewfinder view (the little eyepiece) and the display would give you exactly the same picture. The problem with our existing digital camera is that the viewfinder is, at best, a gross approximation of what you’ll get from the screen. But when you’re taking pictures outdoors in bright sunlight, there’s not an LCD made that can handle that kind of glare.
• It had to use “SD”, or “Secure Digital” media. It’s what we’re already using for our electronics, and I like to stick with it. We actually ended up deciding on SD some years ago because that was what our Palms supported. I’ve never regretted the decision, as I have an SD slot in the side of my laptop, SD readers on our computers, and everything we use uses SD. Makes it easy to figure out if we can transfer stuff without weird cables everywhere.
• It had to support video with audio. We’re not looking to make it into a camcorder, but occasionally you just can’t capture the moment in a still shot. Then it’s nice to kick the camera into video mode, and record a few minutes of video to archive the movement of something special. Our old camera had the ability to do video, but no audio.
• It had to have ways to add at least a few accessories. With the high-zoom capability, a tripod mount would be a must.
• It needed a high-quality glass lens.

With that laundry list, there are actually a ton of different choices available. We looked at several of them, and the one that kept popping up was the Kodak Z7590, along with its little brothers in the “DX” series. The camera is 5 megapixels, 10X zoom, has excellent reviews, is a name brand, has a digital viewfinder (a second, small LCD which shows the same image as the large LCD), uses SD media, does video recording at SVHS quality with audio, can do a tripod and a shoe flash, and has a reasonable-quality glass lens. So we checked out the camera in Wal-Mart and a CompUSA, found that it had the features we wanted, and more, and set out to find the best deal.

About the only thing missing is the possibility of using a remote control. Remotes are handy for when you’re taking a picture at very high zoom and don’t want to jiggle the camera at all by pushing the button. A timer can serve a similar function by letting you stay hands-off when the camera shoots, but it’s slightly less convenient. Oh well.

We didn’t know when we started hunting, but Dell sells consumer electronics. It’s not their primary business, but if it’s closely associated with computers — as digital cameras are — they probably sell it. Anyway, in cruising the Internet for good deals, I ran across an article talking about “coupon stacking” with Dell.

I’d stacked coupons buying my laptop from them several months ago, and saved a crazy amount of money versus regular price. About $800. I hadn’t even thought of it for anything other than computers, though.

Well, we were able to do it again. Regular retail on the camera is about $400. We used a 20% off coupon code that we found on the Internet for that specific model of camera. Then I found a “$30 off all orders of $300 or more or $60 off all orders of $500 or more” coupon. And Dell Home was running a promotion with free shipping for all orders of $25.00 or more.

So I bought a tripod and a 1GB memory card to go along with the camera. This changed our pre-coupon price to a little over $500. We applied the $60.00 off coupon, then the 20% off the camera price coupon (order is important: if we applied the camera coupon first, Dell’s web site would only let us take $30.00 off the total order via the Dell Home coupon, as it was then less than $500.00). I changed my shipping option to the “free” option.

Total price for a top-of-the-line point-and-shoot Kodak camera, plus tripod and a gigabyte of memory: $365.00. Retail price for the camera alone — and the price down at the local Wal-Mart — is within pennies of $400.00. We saved over a hundred twenty dollars by shopping smart. It’s even a better deal than I could find trying to get it through Amazon, or off eBay.

The experience showed me that, many times, there are much better ways to shop than your standard “run down to Wal-Mart and buy one” approach. They may advertise “always low prices”, but there are ways to get high-quality products from reputable dealers for substantially less than the Mart.

In case you haven’t heard or read, the Supreme Court this week ruled that firms like Grokster are criminally liable for providing software for downloading and sharing copyrighted media, like music.

Every report I’ve read, from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post, called it a landmark decision. Each report also was skeptical as to whether the decision would hamper further illicit online infringing.

I personally agree with the Supreme Court decision. Given current copyright law, their unanimous decision makes obvious sense. I guess it sort of is a landmark decision.

I love bittorrent.

Need some advice from my fellow Barnsonians (particularly those with advanced vocal degrees from famous music performance colleges) on how to restrengthen the singing voice.

Yesterday, I auditioned a young singer for my studio recordings. The kid was pretty talented. Great pitch, nailing high notes. So halfway through the audition I decided to join in on harmonize, rev up the spirit of the process. It might have been by the third note that I realized how terrible my voice sounded. The kid was carrying me through the tune.

I haven’t sang in the studio or live for one year. 12 months. 365 days. You know what happens when you don’t practice an instruments for that amount of time? You lose your chops.

I need my vocal chops back in two weeks. What do I do?

I read an enlightening perspective on the embryonic stem-cell research debate on the New York Times Letter to the Editor page regarding Mario Cuomo’s recent esssay on the subject.

Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, put it succinctly:

Mario M. Cuomo mars his well-reasoned essay on the use of embryonic stem cells by characterizing the crucial moral issue as whether “human life starts at conception.”

Even the earliest embryo conceived of human parents is alive and a member of Homo sapiens, and that is enough, in the eyes of many, to make it a living human being.

The crucial moral question is not when human life begins, but when human life reaches the point at which it merits protection.

It is to that question that the significance of consciousness and viability, discussed by Mr. Cuomo, should be addressed.

Unless we separate these two questions – when does life begin, and when does it merit protection? – we are unlikely to achieve any clarity about the moral status of embryos.

I’ve never really thought of it in those terms. If you think about it, there is human life which we (as a society) protect, some which we do not protect, and some which we intentionally destroy through war, executions, etc. If we accept that embryonic life is fully human the moment it is fertilized, it definitely changes the question of the ethics of embryonic stem-cell research.

It seems to me that it’s obvious that an unfertilized egg deserves little or no protection. Thousands of hysterectomies per year attest to that point of view. Similarly, sperm isn’t protected life. If it were, well, virtually every male on the planet would be guilty of genocide by the time he was fourteen 🙂

Similarly, we don’t protect unborn human life which strongly endangers the life of the mother. We are incapable of protecting the fertilized eggs which fail to attach as a result of in-vitro fertilization by hopeful couples wanting to have a child. We can’t protect against miscarriages, as my darling wife and I learned through painful first-hand experience. In general, in the US we do not protect human life which is not yet viable outside the womb, through easily-obtainable abortions.

Embryonic stem cell research holds both great promise for the health and longevity of humans, and reading this brief response convinces me the chief ethical concern is not when “life” begins, but how much it’s worth to us. I’ve found myself wondering which life is more valuable: the fully-developed one which might be saved through the use and destruction of a stem cell, or the potential one in the petri dish.

I doubt there’s a clear-cut answer. Even if the alternative is to discard the stem cells entirely.

Finally, after years of service outages, shoddy quality, bills for services never received, and customer service reps who made promises never kept, we’ve divested ourselves of our local telephone monopoly, Qwest. I, along with 37,000 others, will now say that “Qwest Sucks”.

Several months ago, we transferred our telephone service to Vonage. We’ve received excellent service, profoundly good sound quality, and a host of nifty features, for a low price of about 27 bucks a month. I initially posted about our experience with Vonage here. It was initially Sammy G who turned me on to Vonage in the first place.

Eventually, we apparently infected Weed with the Vonage Virus, and he sent me a PM saying he switched. I’m still waiting for Justin to do so (Hey! Dude! I just sent you a referral); and Justin, if you sign up, be sure to use refer-a-friend stuff so you and I get free months! Weed had already signed up, so I couldn’t claim him for 2 free months of service.

Anyway, after we booted Qwest as our local telephone provider, we were still stuck with them for DSL service. Local alternatives were wireless, which I’ve had bad experiences with and prefer to avoid, and dial-up. Obviously, dial-up won’t work with a VOIP phone, so we waited until Comcast came into town advertising cable Internet.

We finally got it installed today. Within hours, I called Qwest and formally terminated our last remaining tie to our local telephone company.

I couldn’t be more pleased. It’s fast. Real fast. About three times faster than Qwest DSL for downloads. It’s unfortunate that Comcast hamstrings upload speeds (it’s a fraction of Qwest’s upload speed), but apparently they have a “Business” offering which offers dramatically improved uploads.

As 90% of what I do doesn’t involve the need for amazingly fast uploads anyway, I’m not too concerned.

Anyway, our Vonage phone works perfectly. Our bandwidth is great. Unlike with Qwest, I can be downloading a few gigabytes of an ISO file at 400Kbytes/sec, and be yakking on the phone without any problems at all. No glitching. Whereas with Qwest, I couldn’t even play an online game while someone was on the phone, the phone would get so glitchy.

I cranked our phone quality settings up all the way, and the quality difference is profound. It’s the difference between cell-phone quality, and high-quality telephone. Very cool.

Anyway, I’m happy to finally be out of Qwest Hell. It’s a hell they created for themselves and for us, and we figured the best possible revenge was to simply not pay them any more money.

Yay us!

Any of you homies read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell? It seemed like the sort of thing you intellectual types would be into.

For any who don’t know, Blink is about the phenomenon of rapid cognition, the power to “think without thinking”. The prologue starts with the story of an “ancient” statue purchased by the Getty Museum in California, and subjected to all manner of scientific tests which proved its authenticity. The museum invited a number of art experts to view the statue, and all of them immediately pronounced it a fake after seeing it for just a few seconds. None could come up with a substantive reason as for why they believed it to be a fake, but they turned out to be correct.

Gladwell then goes on to illustrate other examples of rapid cognition, both good and bad, describing how our minds can be “conditioned” through subliminal messages, how we make snap judgments during things like cola taste tests, how the mind reacts under extreme stress. It describes how many of our thought processes occur beneath the surface of the conscious mind, instilling unconscious prejudices even in the most open of minds. One truly shocking example was a study of black students being given a standardized test. The study found that black students did significantly worse on the test when they were asked for their race at the beginning of the test, compared to those black students who were not asked for their race at all. The shocking conclusion drawn from this is that just reminding these kids that they’re black (with the stigmas of underachieving that are unconsciously bound to it) caused the unconscious prejudices in their minds to play out on the page.

There’s no real point to the book (none that I could see, at least), but it’s a fascinating read, simply to observe how much we simply don’t know about the functioning of our unconscious mind. Anyone else read it?

I realize it’s been published elsewhere, but I found this too good to pass up.

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks. I’m setting up an office in my den and I’m thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the name’s Lou.

ABBOTT: Your computer?

COSTELLO: I don’t own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my name’s Lou.

ABBOTT: What about Windows?

COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?

ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO: I don’t know. What will I see when I look at the windows?

ABBOTT: Wallpaper.

COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOTT: Software for Windows?

COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOTT: I just did.

COSTELLO: You just did what?

ABBOTT: Recommend something.

COSTELLO: You recommended something?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: For my office?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!

ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.

COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let’s just say I’m sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?

ABBOTT: Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: Word in Office.

COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?

ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue “W”.

COSTELLO: I’m going to click your blue “w” if you don’t start with some straight answers! OK, forget that. Can I watch movies on the Internet?

ABBOTT: Yes, you want Real One.

COSTELLO: Maybe a real one, maybe a cartoon. What I watch is none of your business. Just tell me what I need!

ABBOTT: Real One.

COSTELLO: If it’s a long movie, I also want to watch reels 2, 3 and 4. Can I watch them?

ABBOTT: Of course.

COSTELLO: Great! With what?

ABBOTT: Real One.

COSTELLO: OK, I’m at my computer and I want to watch a movie. What do I do?

ABBOTT: You click the blue “1”.

COSTELLO: I click the blue one what?

ABBOTT: The blue “1”.

COSTELLO: Is that different from the blue “w”?

ABBOTT: The blue “1” is Real One and the blue “W” is Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: But there are three words in “office for windows”!

ABBOTT: No, just one. But it’s the most popular Word in the world.

COSTELLO: It is?

ABBOTT: Yes, but to be fair, there aren’t many other Words left. It pretty much wiped out all the other Words out there.

COSTELLO: And that word is real one?

ABBOTT: Real One has nothing to do with Word. Real One isn’t even part of Office.

COSTELLO: STOP! Don’t start that again. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: That’s right. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?

ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer.

COSTELLO: What’s bundled with my computer?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?

ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.

COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?

ABBOTT: One copy.

COSTELLO: Isn’t it illegal to copy money?

ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.

COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?

ABBOTT: Why not? They own it!

[A few days later]

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. May I help you?

COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?

ABBOTT: Click on “START”…

In case your child has not been immunized and gets rubella, there are a couple options. You pretty much do have to treat the symptoms, but there is a marvelous working option that I will tell you about shortly.

The symptoms start two days before the rash: crankiness, fever, not too interested in food. Then the rash comes. I noticed it first on the face and legs, but it soon covers the whole body, in the mouth, etc. As it gets worse, it gets blotchy. The rash typically lasts three days.

Treatment: Ibuprofen to help the crankiness, Benadryl to help the itching and discomfort, as well as bathtime. The magic potion to heal the rash sooner is LIQUID SILVER. It needs to be in a spray bottle. If you can catch it on the first day before the rash gets blotchy, it’ll be almost gone by day two. The liquid silver works as an antibiotic and helps the skin heal quickly. I buy my liquid silver through a company called trilivin. Unless you have some on hand, it’ll do you no good to order it and wait for it to arrive in the mail. You can go to a health store such as GNC and buy coloidal (sp?) silver in a spray bottle. Spraying the rash two or three times a day should be sufficient and it won’t hurt their eyes if ithe spray gets in their eyes, so go ahead and spray the face.

Please note that Rubella is highly contageous so don’t expose it to anyone if possible. It is basically uncomfortable for a normal child, but can cause serious problems for a fetus, the elderly and anyone with a poor immune system. The incubation period is only a couple days, so you’ll know rather quickly if you have exposed others or if your kids have been exposed.

By the way, liquid silver is great for healing anything!

If you’ve ever been the victim of “phishing” — or even attempted “phishing” — you might be interested in an article on the topic in the Wall Street Journal.

Phishing is basically sending an email purporting to be someone you are not, attempting to extract personal information about the person to try to drain their bank account via Western Union money transfers or ATM withdrawals. I’ve covered a unique form of phishing particular to eBay scammers earlier.

The overriding message? Don’t ever give out information to someone who solicits it from you. Only give it at times, places, and to people that you have made a free choice to contact and divulge this information.

What’s really interesting to me is that the parts of phishing, such as designing web sites to mirror banking sites, creating the emails, making the fake ATM cards, trading account information, and managing user databases of phished accounts are all, themselves, full-time jobs.