Jeffrey McManus

Link: Helmet fire - Wikipedia

"Helmet fire" is an expression for a mental state characterized by unnaturally high stress and task saturation and loss of situational awareness. The term originates in the military pilot community: military pilots are trained in high-performance aircraft and wear helmets to protect their cranium and muffle out engine and wind noise. A fire aboard any aircraft is considered a serious emergency, and the term helmet fire is used jokingly to say that the pilot is undergoing so much stress that his brain is on fire or smoke is coming out of his ears.

Coming through the Honolulu airport on the way home from vacation today I objected when they insisted on making me dig out my boarding pass and ID for a second time while going through the metal detector. I hate to be a dick about this since these droids are obviously just doing their jobs. But I must ask you, mister metal-detector operator: your uniformed colleague at the front of the security line already checked my ID and boarding pass — do you not trust him? And if you don’t trust him, then why is that my problem?

While accidentally contemplating this out loud, I muttered, "Why are the security procedures different at every freaking airport?" and the droid behind the x-ray machine gleefully volunteered "because it confuses the terrorists!" And I am pretty sure he was serious, which made me literally angry with rage.

At this point, my genius wife, who is invaluable in situations where I accidentally start speaking truth to power, shushed me, preventing me from blurting out the fact that the 9/11 terrorists actually had valid IDs and boarding passes, hello.

This all happened after the security droids made our baby take off his shoes. (But for some reason they didn’t make him take off his diaper. Could he not be hiding an even bigger bomb in there? He certainly subjects us to large diaper-delivered bombs on a daily basis at home.)

Anyway. I think that as a libertarian social protest, parents with infants should insist on taking off their children’s diapers and sending them through the x-ray machine at airports.

If you are going to have a feature called "Instant Payment Notification" it would be nice if the notification happened, you know, instantly, instead of 14 minutes and 59 seconds later.

How do you expect people to debug their applications if it takes this long for your sandbox to respond?

Also! It would be neat if there would be a way to see a list of all the transactions that were submitted to your sandbox account the same way you display outbound emails.

Kisses,

Jeffrey

Here’s the latest in a long series of peeved posts on the way that people in technology
talk wrong, probably because they don’t get out enough. I’ve actually noticed this one for a few years now, but it’s just now starting to drive me completely insane: saying "around" when you mean "about". As in, "On Monday we had a discussion around a few outstanding topics." When you say this, do you mean you didn’t actually discuss the topics, you just sort of flirted with them and then moved on to something else?

Over Christmas, I wanted to get the kid a cheap little portable video player so she could keep herself occupied on road trips. The Disney Mix Max player seemed like a good choice, and the $99 price made it sort of a no-brainer, so I picked one up for her.

Since Christmas morning, the device has gathered dust on my desk. The problem is that the device doesn’t come with its own software for converting and loading movies; you have to use the loathsome Windows Media Encoder to convert movies. The settings required by the device are totally nonstandard, and the instructions they provide (PDF) seem to be written by a non-native speaker of English. The guide also doesn’t seem to cover the version of Windows Media Encoder that Microsoft currently provides for download. Naturally the instruction manual didn’t actually come with the device either; you have to search the web for it, and if you’re lucky you can find it on the OEM’s web site (Memorex Electronics). But the fact that they hid the instructions doesn’t matter, since the instructions don’t accurately describe how to get the device to recognize converted videos anyway.

There’s a good comment thread on this where people have been trying for months to get the device to play converted videos. It doesn’t look like anyone has been able to get it to work.

They might as well have wrapped the "import a movie" feature of the device in electrified barbed wire, and when you think about it the reason is obvious — Disney doesn’t actually want you to convert the movies you’ve already paid for (or created yourself) to use on this device, instead they want you to pay them $20 a pop for them to reformat the movies you already own and sell it to you on an SD card.

The next time I got to a Disney theme park, I plan on hurling this
device off the top of the Matterhorn in hopes that it breaks into
enough pieces that no one else will be tempted to waste time getting it
to work. Avoid this product at all costs.

Link: San Franciscans Hurl Their Rage at Parking Patrol

"They think they can take out their frustration on government in general" by abusing the [parking control] officers, who work 40-hour weeks for about $40,000 a year," she said, adding, "They say, ‘I’m tired of the city taking my money.’ "

There certainly is money in parking tickets. San Francisco issues 1.9 million parking citations and brings in more than $40 million a year from violators, according to the transportation agency.

There’s obviously no excuse for beating up a meter maid, but it’s also not the case that the assaults on parking enforcement officers in San Francisco are some sort of random happenstance. This NY Times piece (in which only union officials and "parking experts" are quoted) seems to imply that it’s Californians’ crazed affinity for cars that’s to blame. (This, by the way, is probably the millionth NY Times piece that uses some lazy, pointless and ultimately inaccurate cliche about the culture of the West as its launchpad.)

Anyway, if the "car crazy culture" bit were true, parking enforcement would be as manic and dangerous in Los Angeles or Santa Barbara as it is here. But it’s not. It’s a fact that our city does some very aggressive parking enforcement and consequently demands a lot from its meter maids/tax collectors. Anecdotal example #1: I’ve received at least five tickets parked in my own driveway in the past year. Example #2: Last year we got a ticket while we were repairing a flat tire. The meter maid didn’t even stop to see if we were OK, he just whizzed by and took down our license plate. If we’d been murdered in a drive-by shooting in front of a fire hydrant, would the meter maid have pinned the ticket to our corpses?

San Francisco is not a car-crazy city, at any rate. We love our public transit here (one of the reasons why we moved to our neighborhood is because it’s near a BART station). As the Times piece points out, the only thing wrong with public transit in San Francisco is that there isn’t enough of it, but on the other hand, no duh, that’s the problem with public transit in every city on the globe.

I’ve always wondered how parking enforcement might change if there weren’t a profit motive in it for the city, but I suppose that’s a pointless fantasy, since parking fines represent such a gigantic chunk of the city’s annual budget. (To put it in perspective, the $40 million in parking fines plus the $33 million in parking taxes pay for about 25% of the budget of the entire SF Police Department.) I realize that the money’s gotta come from somewhere, but taking it out of the pockets of people who happen to roll to a stop in front of a red curb after getting a flat tire seems sort of wrong to me.

End of embittered municipal rant. I thank you for permitting me to indulge myself.

Link: Google Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm - New York Times.

Unfortunately, most of the academic research suggests that the factors Google has put the most weight on — grades and interviews — are not an especially reliable way of hiring good people.

“Interviews are a terrible predictor of performance,” Mr. Bock said.

Link: From the Lips of Children, Tips to the Ears of Investors - New York Times.

“Children are a secret weapon in my arsenal for making investment decisions,” said Heidi Roizen, a managing director at Mobius Venture Capital, a Silicon Valley firm.

I use the Firefox AdBlock extension to block a site called one-time-offer.com, which pops up various useless marketing offers in checkout flows.

Fandango has a fairly straightforward multi-step checkout process. The last step of the process contains an image button which concludes the transaction — no problem so far. But the button that concludes the transaction is served up from this scumhole one-time-offer.com site. Which means that if you are blocking this site, as you should be, it is impossible for you to give Fandango money, because you can’t view the checkout button. (I’m assuming it’s also the case that the flow doesn’t work for users who have images turned off as well, and for people who use browsers that don’t support images.)

Could this be any more clueless? Dear Fandango: your brilliant profit maxization strategy is causing your checkout flow to break. Please make it easier for me to give you money. Love, Jeffrey.

Why do Italians charge tourists up to 30% more for their meals?

Diner Beware: Turisti Pay More in Roman Restaurants

“They don’t see it as a crime but as a kind of justification,” said Tegan Shioler, a Canadian chef and sommelier who has worked in restaurants and hotels around Rome for several years. “It is part of the Italian psyche, and I don’t think it is done without humor. Italians are very possessive of their culture, which makes them beautiful. But some Romans disdain visitors, so they humorously justify the fact that to be served is some sort of privilege.”

Link: BBC NEWS | Searching for a mobile interface.

Nearly a quarter of phones returned for being faulty are working properly, a recent survey suggested. The problem is people just cannot figure out how to use them.

The other day I was looking at a commercial tool for a project I was working on. I couldn’t find pricing on the vendor’s site, which suggested to me that the price of the product was "overpriced". Typically when this happens I feel like somebody’s trying to gouge me or waste my time; this is definitely not customer-friendly. Why does it persist? If sales organizations were somehow punished every time customers skipped over a product because the company doesn’t publish its pricing, I suspect this practice would end.

Counterpoint: I’m sitting in a meeting now and somebody mentioned Kieden, which provides tools for doing search marketing, providing integration with Salesforce. It’s a neat idea, but it was particularly excellent when I noticed they have a published, simple tier-based pricing model that is free for low-volume use. Simply gorgeous. Kudos, guys.

When we bought our house last year, it was pretty much perfect except for the back yard, which was a grungy mess. We’re currently investing in some upgrades to the yard. Over the past few days we’ve had landscapers tidying it up a bit and fixing a collapsing wooden fence back there; our hope is to eventually stick un petit hot tub back there so our whole house can scream middle-class California.

Anyway, we had no idea who to call to give us the skinny on how hot tubs get installed in backyards. Carole turned to the miracle of Web search, which uncovered ServiceMaster.com, a directory site of tradespeople and service-types. She filled out a form on the site, giving them some information about us including our address and phone number and a description of what we wanted to do.

After horking up all our personal information, they didn’t return any information about anyone in San Francisco who could answer our questions or help us. But to add insult to injury, within a couple of days we got a telemarketer call from somebody saying they were from LendingTree.com and wanted to offer us a loan on our upcoming hot tub project. Strike three: our phone number is registered with the National Do Not Call Registry.

Yo, Servicemaster.com: you ding-dongs are in violation of your own privacy policy. Until you fix this, no one should give you any of their personal information.

Yo, LendingTree.com: you nit-wits are in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Hopefully at some point soon, somebody who has more free time and a lower irritability threshold than us will sue you. Enjoy!

P.S. We’re still looking for a contractor who works in San Francisco and can do this work, if you know of one, lemme know!

I woke this morning to the sound four or five pops off in the distance outside my window. I wasn’t sure if it was gunshots or whatever, so I went back to sleep. Within a few minutes we heard the sound of a helicopter orbiting our neighborhood, and later a light plane, so I figured there’d been some gunplay. I just hoped that it wasn’t some armed maniac loose in the neighborhood.

We found out later that the CHP had shot a woman driving a stolen car near our house. Apparently they’d picked her up in Concord (like 40 miles away) and chased her all the way to a cul-de-sac on the other side of the freeway from our place; when she got stuck there, she backed up and smashed into some CHP cars, which caused the cops to open fire on her. They took her to the hospital and she died later in the day.

Here’s a map showing how far the chase was. Note that in the middle there is the Bay Bridge, which she must have blew over. The Chronicle story said that there was originally a man in the car with her, who bailed out and got away just before they hit the bridge. Protecting him must have been pretty important, since it cost her life.

This sounds like a brilliant strategic partnership: this story says that if you’re using Skype with a dual-core Intel processor you’re allowed to have 10-way conference calls, but if you’re using a competing processor (or, presumably, an older Intel chip) you’ll be limited to 5-way calls. Apparently this is the case regardless of whether the processor you have can actually handle a 10-way call.

I happen to think that if you’re doing 10-way conference calls you need to rethink your conference call strategy. One way or another, this sounds like a really stinky deal for consumers, and it should provide golden opportunities for other platforms (both processors and VOIP providers). It’s another reason why I’m going to take a hard look at AMD next time I need to buy a new CPU.

Update: This story says that AMD’s attorneys are making pointed inquiries into this deal in their ongoing antitrust action against Intel. Whoops.

Update 2: Looks like the 5-user limit on non-Intel chips was an arbitrary restriction after all, and according to this Slashdot article, it’s been cracked. Double whoops.

10. They are usually served cold.
9. They are green.
8. They are preserved in vinegar, which tastes like the rot of death to me. (I don’t eat a lot of salad dressings, either, for this reason.)
7. They are bumpy.
6. They often hide in hamburgers and are difficult to remove until you’ve accidentally bitten into one (unlike, say, tomato slices).
5. "Pickle jokes" which are never funny.
4. Unfortunate phallic imagery/symbolism.
3. They have been used to completely ruin potato salad for generations, and they have no business being in there. Same with celery, which tastes OK but is really just used as a way to add bulk to a dish.
2. Pickle relish is one of those foods that is disgusting enough that you have to say to yourself "who was the person who was insane enough to try to eat this for the first time in history?" Sort of like oysters and beer.
1. Made from cucumbers, which aren’t really that great prior to the pickling.

In New York, they give out these cards when you make a donation to policemen’s organizations (or if you’re a friend or family member of a cop). You keep them in your wallet and when you get pulled over for running a red light or whatever, you show the card and then the cop then gets to decide whether to give you a ticket or not. The New York Times is reporting today that these "Policemen’s Benevolent Association" cards are now being sold on eBay.

We have something just like this in California — ever seen those "11-99 Foundation" license plate frames? Same thing. You pay money and in exchange you get a frame that says "don’t pull me over for speeding, brother."

This is totally not eBay’s fault (although a spokesdroid from one of the NY cops associations said that selling them online is "inappropriate"). Handing out get-out-of-jail-free cards in the first place is inappropriate. It’s completely corrupt. Donating to policeman’s benevolent associations is swell and all (although I can think of charities that seem more worthy to me). But giving out membership cards and license plate frames with the obvious implication that you’re going to be let off for minor traffic offenses seems utterly scummy to me.

Update: Dilbert addresses this issue today.

Gah, what is this, the week of Websites That Only Work When We Feel Like It?

I suspect I know the reason for this downtime, though — R.I.P. Macromedia.

You know, I love you and everything, but a six hour web site downtime is total amateur hour. You should be totally embarassed about this. I’m embarassed for you, anyway.

Are you not a public company with a million plus customers? If you require people to use your Web site to start using your products (as you do today), the site needs to be available 24×7, no excuses.

Smooches,

Jeffrey

  Penelope 078 by eightdotthree.

Not all of whom necessarily should. I’m not saying anything here, I’m just saying.