Barnson.org

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.

Yay, it’s official! People with bigger brains are smarter than people with smaller brains.

My head is flippin’ huge. I must be a genius then.

According to Thursday’s AP News Report, many Utahns think polygamist clans in southern Utah aren’t getting prosecuted enough.

Warren Jeffs, who has been previously mentioned here (and also a related case here, which attorney general Mark Shurtleff declined to prosecute), was recently indicted for sex crimes for arranging the marriage between a teenage girl and a 28-year-old man. This is the first indictment of a high-profile polygamist in the western US in quite some time. John Daniel Kingston, another Utah polygamist, only served 28 weeks of his earlier sentence for felony child abuse, and was in court again on May 21, 2004 for continuing to abuse his illegitimate children.

In my humble opinion, it’s very telling that Utah prosecutor Mark Shurtleff has not been willing to go up against the polygamists. Instead, Arizona has stepped up to the plate to do the dirty work to bring Jeffs to justice.

Mark Shurtleff’s spokesman, Paul Murphy, states, “Anytime there is a victim who will come forward to testify, we’ll take the case. Those victims have been few and far between.”

To the contrary, says twenty-year-old Rachel Strong, recently escaped from Jeff’s polygamist clan, “Here I am. For over six months I’ve been willing to testify.” Additionally, Tapestry Against Polygamy, a Utah-based group assisting women and girls escaping from abusive polygamous relationships, distributed a list of escapees willing to speak during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Tapestry’s task is made more difficult, however, by the existence of the Blood Atonement Doctrine, which, although repudiated by the mainstream LDS church, is still considered doctrine amongst fundamentalist Mormon sects in Utah backwaters. Blood atonement mandates the murder of apostates and those who violate certain fundamentalist church edicts. According to Tapestry, “Many wives have been threatened with this Blood Atonement.”

I suspect this complicates obtaining willing witnesses for a trial.

From where I sit, it seems as if the illegal nature of the polygamous relationships themselves are not challenged in Utah. The potential five years’ imprisonment for the crime of “bigamy” is rarely pursued. Instead, prosecutors go after the easier charges of child abuse, and the perpetrators receive a slap on the wrist in a county jail, soon to return to their previous practices. It seems fairly obvious that our Attorney General can’t — or won’t — make an effective case attempting to enforce laws banning bigamy.

What’s the right approach, then? Well, from what I understand, “raids” of polygamous households do not seem to work well. It didn’t work when federal troops attempted it against mainstream LDS leaders in the 1800s, it didn’t work at Waco with the Branch Davidians, and it doesn’t work today against the Fundamentalist LDS and Polygamist Christian groups. Such attempts simply send the leaders into hiding, and risk injuring the victims of the polygamous system with unnecessary violence. Raiding Jeffs’ compounds in Utah, Arizona, and Texas probably isn’t the best solution.

I don’t know that there’s a “right” answer for this situation. But what we’re doing now sure doesn’t seem to be doing the job.

OK, so I just got back from one of the WORST pizza delivery shifts I’ve ever had, and so I feel the need to vent this information to the general public. If anyone out there has delivered before, and has different ideas, I’d love to hear them.

OK, it’s pretty much accepted that the amount to tip your waiter in a restaurant is at *least* 15%, with the standard starting to approach 18%. This is as it should be. Waiters have one of the most difficult and thankless jobs on God’s green Earth.

However, no one really knows the standard for delivery drivers, so here’s what I have found while working at Vocelli’s Pizza.

1) The minimum tip is either a) 2 dollars, or b) 10% of the check, whichever is greater. Also, it helps to know how far away your delivery location is. If the driver has to travel for more ten minutes to get to you, throw in at least another dollar. Not only does this cover the extra travel time (which could have been spent on getting another delivery order), it also helps offset the rising cost of gas.

2) Most drivers do not carry more than twenty dollars at any given time (for safety reasons), so please don’t be waiting with a fifty dollar bill on a ten dollar order. Also, please don’t ask for exact change. Dealing with coins inevitably means rummaging in pockets, and there’s time wasted all around. Calculate tip, then round off to the nearest dollar amount.

3) Please understand that if we get your pizza to you late, it is quite honestly usually not our fault. Either a) there was a backup in the kitchen (you can only have so many pizzas in the oven at once), b) you just live a long ways away, or c) there weren’t enough drivers, so one driver had to deliver multiple orders, which takes extra time. Also, if you live in a place where the driver will have to cross even one major road and it’s during rush hour, don’t expect it within 30 minutes every time. Line ups at traffic lights can sometimes exceed 5 minutes during rush hour. Also keep in mind that drivers are now heavily trained NOT to speed. It was one of the reasons why Domino’s got rid of its 30 minutes or its free policy: too many accidents. Of course we want to get you a nice hot product, but if I’m driving at night through a residential area that families live in… sorry, that extra four minutes ain’t worth taking that kind of risk.

So to sum up. The average order is around 15-20 bucks. Anything less than two dollars is cruel. Three bucks is always nice. Four or above (on a twenty dollar order) and the driver will be very happy AND will make sure to hit your house first next time he/she has to prioritize between multiple houses. We remember these things.

Thank you for listening to my lecture. Again, if anyone’s had a different experience delivering, or honestly feels that delivery folk shouldn’t be tipped as much, chime on in.

As some barnson.org readers are aware, I recently swapped schedules to the night shift for my work. I should be on this shift for quite a long time to come.

Knowing this, I’ve had some discussions with co-workers over how best to handle working nights, particularly how to get enough sleep.

Sleep is something I’ve always taken for granted. It’s simply a thing I had to do for between 6 and 9 hours every day, like a chore. No big deal. Yet now that I’ve switched to night shift, it seems as if sleep time is as precious as gold. I’ve done some reading on “Circadian Rhythms”, and tried to understand what I can do to maximize the productivity of my sleep while minimizing the amount of time doing it. Unfortunately, as far as controlling my Circadian cycle, my 45-minute-long commute home at the end of the day pretty well nixes that, as it’s after 9:00 AM and bright daylight by that time. Some friends have suggested in my bedroom windows might help my Circadian rhythm “keep step” with my new schedule, but given the length of my in-daylight commute, it’s doubtful.

Anyway, I came across some interesting research. First among these is news that people who sleep the full 8 hours die more. Yep, if you sleep less than 8 hours a night (and more than 4), you are less likely to die young than someone who sleeps the full 8 or more. Curiously, the lowest mortality among the 1.1 million people studied was among those who slept 5-7 hours per night. So from a pure “avoiding death” perspective, the 5 or 6 hours that I’ve been able to squeeze out during the day seems about right.

Yet I’m still tired all the time. Maybe just because it’s my first week back on night shift that I’m so tired and grumpy.

Critically, although those who sleep 5-7 hours per night don’t die as early as those who do 8 or more, they suffer reduced dexterity, mental acuity, and so forth.

There are some drugs that are supposed to help. Modafinil — marketed as “Provigil” — ostensibly keeps you alert without the crashes associated with caffeine and amphetamines. There was an interesting article on Slate some time ago about it. It’s only been out about 10 years, and doctors only prescribe it for occasional use if you’re not a narcoleptic, so it’s not a viable long-term option.

When you’ve had odd sleep schedules, how — and how well — did you cope? Did you shorten sleep, or find ways to nap frequently? Or are you a natural short-sleeper?

*** A sad note.. after a few failed attempts to reestablish ties with the person in this article, I have decided, out of respect, to remove all references to her on the site. She had expressed some discomfort in the past with th searchability of her name related to the site, and so, as a sort of last act of friendship, I am honoring what I think are probably her wishes. I wish her well.. and best of luck. The other content of the original post has not changed.***

BEGIN ORIGINAL POST Its true, first off.. although not the only point of my Blog. She is. I’ve acted beside her, directed her, watched her in 3 or 4 shows I had nothing to do with, and she is phenomenal. If you’re about to stop reading, I wanted to make that much clear, and to encourage anyone to visit her site at *******.com, especially if you are looking for a fantastic actress.

If you have decided to stick around, please read on, there is a reason and a rhyme. Still there? Good.. I ran into **** at Batman Begins (EXCELLENT) tonight, and after the normal pleasantries (and me trying and failing to be cool), she brought up the fact that often she will be told by someone that there is this blog that mentions her in sort of a “my high school girlfriend’s best friend” type of way. Turns out its Barnson.org. Its a testimony to the readership and listing power of this blog that this would happen, and it made me think the whole concept of the “Long Lost”

We, all of us, have the list of “long lost friends”, a list on which **** has never before been. After high school, we were not the very close friends we had once been, and really not even talking, and it didn’t matter that we lost touch. When we became friends again, though, it was really a lot different. I have her to thank for getting my acting career started, and for being my first real friend when I returned to Montgomery County. She was and is very dear.

But, like so many, life kind of gets in the way. Its never intentional (although the little lost kid inside always worries that it is), but we get busy, and that coffee date never happens. We get jobs, kids, married (as she did to a really cool guy), homes, We intend to keep it and we don’t. And suddenly its next week and month and year and then, well, there’s that list.

My list, Van Lindberg, Kara from williamsburg, Joey Johnson, Nick from college, Brett Clawson.. the names aren’t important. If you’re reading this you have a list of your own. People you would love to just see and have back and who probably feel the same.. but life allows little room to add the old attachments.

There are powerful tools.. Barnson.org is one.Look at this place, littered with friends old and new, Sam and Matt, two of my first friends in HS, Ben and Tim who I knew better in college through weird coincidences and connections.

Some people you give up on, some you don’t. I think **** is one of the latter (she is, after all an AWESOME actress). Some are successes, like we here, and some you just realize you will likely never see again.

But, for today, if youre reading this, maybe you should take the time to write that email to that friend on the cusp of becoming one of the “long lost” and let them know you’re not quite ready to relegate them to the dustbin. Don’t put it off.

In fact, why don’t I go take my own advice….

(typing…)