Chimeric Perfection

American Internet Concerns

2011-05-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

Today I read the following post: It's Time to Break Up AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and the Rest of the Telecoms | | AlterNet and it got me to thinking about a subject that I've often thought about quite a bit because it's important to me. In case you can't tell from the link, the subject has to do with home internet from the telecom providers in the US that provide broadband internet. According to that report, America is 15th in broadband speed in the world behind countries like Hong Kong and South Korea. It's sad to me to find out that the average service in America is only 5 Mbps.

Obviously, the current average is better than it was in the 90's, but we shouldn't settle for what we have when we know that better things exist. Another problem with the service has to do with the prices we pay for broadband internet. A very small number of companies, usually as high as 2 in a given area, own all of the infrastructure and can set high rates because consumers don't really have a choice of anything else. Ideally, there would be more than a couple service providers competing for our business, which would help reduce the cost of service for consumers, and encourage service providers to invest in infrastructure to keep up with their competition. The end result would be faster internet at lower prices, making it possible for the United States to catch up with other countries. If we don't keep our abilities in this area, the US is likely to fall behind other countries in innovation and eventually lose our position as a world power.

Cell phone Family plans

2011-04-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

I made a post previously about cell phone data plans so I figured it could be helpful to make another post since I recently looked into pricing for a friend of mine looking for unlimited texting and data plans for his family (2 lines only). Here is a list of the results, but please note that not all plans are the same even though I did my best to find the same or similar configurations. All plans have unlimited texting and data unless otherwise specified and the minimum voice plan. Listed below are the monthly prices.

$160: AT&T 550 minutes (4GB with tethering for one line and 2GB for the second line. Add $20 to get tethering on the second line)
$130: Sprint 1500 minutes
$140: T-mobile 750 minutes
$160: Verizon 700 minutes

As you can see, AT&T is the only carrier that doesn't have an unlimited data plan, although most of my research suggests that it is very unlikely to surpass even the lower 2GB in a month using the cell data plan. Also, the details as to which plans include tethering to other devices is unclear in some cases. If that's something important to you, you probably should talk to a sales representative or 7 to figure out what the true story is. Good luck on your hunt.

Idea for those "catch the bad guy" tv shows

2011-03-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

I just had a good idea for how the "good guys" could catch a bad guy in one of those CSI-type investigation shows. First the bad guy has to live in one of those states where it's illegal to text while driving. Then the good guys trick him to allow them to have access to his cell phone records to get out of a traffic ticket so they can see the incriminating evidence in his text history. Oh, this is so good that it probably has already been used.

A simple change for the better

2011-03-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

I had a discussion with a friend about how some of the ages commonly thought of as checkpoints in your life should probably be changed. In particular, the age for driving should be moved to 17, smoking age to 19 and drinking to 23. Now you might be thinking, why should the age for all of these things be moved? Well quite simply, it's because the new ages would all be prime numbers, and being a prime number just makes you better than other numbers. Plus then the age requirement for being president of the United States of America could be moved to 37, giving me another 2 years before I would qualify.

Monosodium Glutamate

2011-03-10T12:57:00.001-08:00

So I've been thinking lately about how much I like food with MSG. Actually, that's not exactly true. More truthfully it has been brought to my attention recently that some food I tend to eat regularly happens to have MSG in its ingredients. Now I, as most people who have seen homstarrunner.com, thought that MSG had negative effects on stomach lining for at least hand drawn cartoon girls on lined filler paper. However, according to a Mayo Clinic page about MSG, it turns out that MSG is generally considered safe for humans to eat. The FDA even considers it a food product. I for one am glad that the makers or Doritos have had the presence of mind to include MSG in their products to increase the savoriness.

Depression

2011-03-07T07:19:00.000-08:00

I recently read a post about something Michael Todd said at the recent Game Developer Conference. He develops games as a profession, but the interesting part is how he modifies his work to deal with depression. As mentioned in the Choice of Games Blog : Five Tactics for Designing Games While Depressed, he has 5 tactics to keep himself productive, knowing that he is regularly depressed.

The primary focus of these tactics is to focus on rewards and to do your best to break up the boring or tedious parts of your job (every job has these) with things you're excited about. A big part of this is choosing things that excite you and developing in a way that allows you to more quickly see results. He also suggests using others to bounce your ideas off of. In his case, let people play your game sooner rather than later to give you feedback. Another important aspect is to focus on things that play to your strengths. So if you happen to really not enjoy math, don't work as an accountant. In general, you should do as much of what you like as you can, and avoid the things you don't like if possible. That doesn't mean to put off the things you don't like indefinitely, but if you find yourself in a job that is 80% unenjoyable tasks, then maybe you should consider a career change.

As part of this discussion, he suggests getting a tool for keeping track of what you spend your time on. Here are some tools that might help you:

Mac: Time Sink, Pomodoro

Windows: ProcastiTracker

Write a song?

2011-03-04T23:43:00.000-08:00

Here's a little cheat sheet to writing a song. I am posting this mostly so that I can find it again in the future when I'm too lazy to think, but this seems fairly well put together. So if anyone is interested in coming up with a brain-dead chord progression that will probably be good enough for whatever song you might be working on then this is it. A simple set of instructions to follow that will get you past the tough musical part and on to the lyrics part.

Thinking

2011-03-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

I've decided that in an effort to get my blog to once again become active, I'm going to base much of my blogging on things I read else where on the internet. I installed this handy blogger extension to my web browser to help me quote and link these interesting pages. So for my first entry this year, I draw on some thoughts from a blog post about aging computer programmers losing their skills. Now while this post is specifically about programming, the points I will address I believe to be applicable to more general audiences. Davy Brion mentions his simple plan to keep his skills up in his Thoughts On Developer Longevity:

1. Keep feeling stupid

2. Question what you know and think, all the time

Now I for one agree much more with the second point than the first. However, to address these points in order, "Keep feeling stupid" is a directive to keep from being too confident in ones own skills to be willing to change and learn new things, especially from other people who might be younger and less experienced. I think that is a very valid motivation, but at the same time, "feeling stupid" can be a demoralizing practice if not done right. I would modify the first point to say, "Stay humble" since humility does not require the self-destructive practice of feeling stupid.

As for the second point, "Question what you know and think, all the time." I try to live by this rule in all aspects of my life. People close to me may notice that I ask a lot of questions and that I twist words around and wonder why things are said how they are said. For me, this is my way of questioning not only what I think, but what everyone else thinks. I know at times people think that my questions are meant to point out something wrong with what they have said or thought, but if anyone is reading this, I am much more hard on myself than I am on people around me. Every time I say something I ask myself why I said it that way. When I step over a crack in the sidewalk, I ask myself why I did that and whether it served a useful purpose or was merely an interesting diversion. So to me, questioning myself is a constant effort that I can achieve on my own. My greatest growth however comes from questioning others and learning about who they are and why they think the way they think. I truly believe that everyone has something good to offer the world, and I for one would like to hear your answer as to why you say "egg" they way you say it if you happen to be able to figure it out.

Car Troubles 2

2010-07-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

So I come back to the same point I was at 2 years ago when I started this blog. I once again am having problems with my car and once again the dealership seem incapable of providing the required service to fix the problems I have.

On the 6th of July I took my car in to the Honda dealership and told them of the problems I was having with my air conditioner not working right. Basically it would periodically start to blow warm, humid air instead of the cool dry air that I am used to. They told me that it would be $100 to find out what the problem is and that if they could fix it the $100 would be counted towards the cost of those repairs.

They called me a short time later to inform me that my condenser was damaged and needed to be replaced. They said that the part was in stock and that it would run $600 to replace it. It was done a short time later, I went and paid them the money and they gave me my car back.

Sadly, my car had the exact same problems that it had before. I gave it a couple weeks to see if it would improve and sometimes the air conditioner would run great and my car would be very comfortable to ride in, but other times the car would become hot and humid and very unpleasant.

Today I took the car back in and told them that the same problems have persisted for two weeks and that I wasn't happy with the charges because they had not fixed the problem. When they called me after looking at my car I was told that the problem was a low level of refrigerant and that the machine they use to check refrigeration systems had failed completely a week ago and needed to be replaced. They said there are no leaks in my system and that the reason for the error was this faulty machine in their service shop.

It appears that I won't have to pay this time. I really hope they got it right.

Cell phone data plans

2010-06-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

How much is it worth to get access to the internet on your cell phone? Right now I pay about $30 a month for a high speed internet connection (6mbps) and it has a nice low latency (around 50ms ping to google). Now this is a wired connection so I am only able to take advantage of it while I'm at my house. Also I personally believe that I should only be paying $20 a month for that connection and that I'm being overcharged.

If I could get the same quality of connection everywhere I could see that as an increase of value. I'd probably be willing to pay an extra $10 a month for access elsewhere even though I would very rarely make use of it. One way to get this is to add a data plan to my cell phone. There are a lot of issues with cell phone data plans. First the connection is not anywhere near as good as my wired connection. I may be able to get the same or similar bandwidth, but the latency is much much worse (most people I've talked to report on the order of 300ms ping or higher). Next, cell phone data plans seem to be moving towards only offering limited bandwidth.

There are three main reasons that I would like to be able to have internet access anywhere I go. First is simply browsing websites. Any well designed website with primarily textual content should be fine with reasonably limited internet bandwidth and latency. The trouble is that many websites have way more graphical, audio, and plugin based content and that requires much higher bandwidth, but latency is not really an issue.

Second, I would like to be able to play online games. Most online games require fairly low bandwidth but absolutely depend on low latency for a smooth gaming experience. The horrible latency of cell data networks basically makes this an impossibility.

Third is streaming online videos. When you start to watch a video online you don't really mind so much if the video takes a while to start up. What you absolutely need is a good amount of bandwidth. And you want your video to look good on whatever screen you are watching it on.

I believe that cell phone data is only actually effective for the first kind of web use since that will easily remain within the bandwidth limits and does not require a low latency connection.

Now on to the issue of tethering. If a phone has the capability to connect to a cell phone data network and a wifi network at the same time then it has the capability to share the cell phone data with any wifi enabled device. There is no value added by allowing your device to do what it can already do. However you are still stuck with the same limited bandwidth restrictions and poor latency. If a cell phone service provider would like to have a reason to charge for tethering they should at least include a much better network connection with the increased cost (which should be no more than $10). There needs to either be a lower latency connection to allow you to do some low bandwidth gaming, a much higher bandwidth limit to allow for streaming of higher quality videos that will look good on your screen, or both.

If I could propose a pricing scheme that I'd be willing to support and pay for it would be as follows:

$10 - basic data connection with a low bandwidth limit for people that only intend to use their data connection on their phone. Consumers should be notified that this connection will be severely limited so that they know what they are getting in to.
$20 - higher quality data connection with a higher bandwidth limit for people that want to be able to stream videos. Tethering should at least be enabled for this tier as the bandwidth would allow some amount of streaming to a larger screen. Consumers should once again be made aware of the limitations of this plan.
$30 - highest quality data connection. This should have a very high bandwidth limit or perhaps be an unlimited plan. In addition, wherever possible, these users should be able to have a low latency connection to enable real-time multiplayer gaming through this data connection. This would be the connection I would want and happily pay for.

For my own reference I am adding a list of similar plans from the big 4 phone companies in the US that I might be interested in:

Sprint: $70 – 450 + unlimited + unlimited
T-Mobile: $80 – 500 + unlimited + unlimited
AT&T: $85 – 450 + 2 GB + unlimited
Verizon: $90 – 450 + unlimited + unlimited

Changing the Facebook Paradigm

2010-03-16T12:36:00.001-07:00

So it occurred to me that all of the profile information on Facebook is autobiographical, or at least intended to be autobiographical. Well what if there were two sections to Facebook, the autobiographical part and then a collection of information that other people write about you? Of course there would need to be good controls over what can be published about an individual, but perhaps it should be done similarly to wikipedia. The community of Facebook could be leveraged to verify all the data and anecdotes to be true or false. The incorrect biographies could be corrected by the community and through good discussion we could end up with much better representations of who people are than what they provide on their own.

I don't usually do this but...

2010-01-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

I just had to. I think this is really awesome.

see more funny facebook stuff!

Edit: the linked picture no longer appears, but if you click through you can still see it. Probably not worth your time though.

Websites

2009-10-14T13:13:00.001-07:00

Why do website designers often feel the need to use flash to represent content that could easily be displayed using simple HTML and standard web technologies. Not all platforms support flash and I would much prefer to be able to view content that should be regularly viewable with a non-flash enabled browser (not to mention the fact that I disable flash by default on all my browsers). Don't get me wrong, Macromedia (now Adobe) did add rich capabilities to the web by introducing Flash and Shockwave, but that functionality is specialized and should have no place in displaying images and text when that is the principle content.

Yelling

2009-08-11T17:52:00.001-07:00

I have been contemplating an appropriate way to address my feelings regarding an issue that has been on my mind lately. I really can't come up with one. I keep yelling in my mind but that really doesn't seem to translate to written words well right now. So just imagine the following statement reflects a high amount of mind-yelling: Text messages should be free since they cost cell phone providers almost nothing and the work-arounds that must be used to make them free are more costly to these companies.

Bigotry

2008-11-04T11:20:00.000-08:00

I believe that a prime number is defined as being a number that is only evenly divisible by itself and one. That belief makes me a bigot because I would not accept the definition of 4 as a prime number no matter how much equality it would bring to the number 4. Maybe being a bigot isn't so bad.

Equality

2008-10-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

So something has been bothering me lately and that is how much inequality I see in the world. There are people that are stuck in different circumstances and it's unfair that they can't all experience the same good times. I mean, everyone wants to be happy, right?

In particular I was thinking about the places people live. Now some people can afford smaller houses and some people can afford bigger houses. Why should a person that wants a bigger house be stuck in a smaller house, especially if they are going to use it? I think the problem here comes with some so-called traditional values that are increasingly outdated in today's world and economy.

There are many lending institutions in the world that help people who don't have enough money to purchase a home on credit. Now depending on the past of this person and decisions they have made previously these institutions attach a risk rating to these individuals to determine their eligibility for receiving lending. This seems benign when viewed this way doesn't it?

What you don't see is that this is a form of discrimination towards these people. They are just living their life how they want to and because some group of people in some organization somewhere declares them to be high risk for a loan for one reason or another they can be prevented from receiving the money they need to move into a house for example.

The good news is that in recent years some of these regulations restricting the lending of money to such high risk individuals have been loosened. This is great for the equality of these people! Now they can get into the homes they've always dreamed of and be placed on and equal footing as those that were lucky enough to be deemed "low risk". Some restrictions still exist, and that is very saddening. I propose that all financial institutions remove all regulations on lending to provide equality for all people everywhere. Let's all do our part to make this world a better place!

Victims of Gender Bias in the Media

2008-09-03T15:25:00.001-07:00

So today I want to discuss how we are all becoming victims of gender bias in the media. This is something I have heard a lot about lately in my television viewing as well as on and off in my reading of internet postings. There have been a lot of events that have come up recently which have brought this horrible problem to light and I'd like to touch on some of them.

First off, I recently saw some discussion from a political activist who held a strong opinion on a hot topic. As I understood it, this activist presented the recent movement in school systems to include prayer in schools as a clear act of defiance towards the separation of church and state that have been so clearly prohibited by the founders of our nation. Now while I think this person is sincerely concerned about this religious uprising, I might remind everyone that the founders of our nation were very content with prayers being offered frequently and had no objection to that kind of religious activity. I believe the problem was when religion began to be a financial and political power. Communities should decide what level of religious behavior should be enacted in their communities and what should be avoided. It's not the place of a small group of atheists to tell everyone else that they can't have their religious expression because the founders of our nation (who were fine with religious expression) said it was not okay (which they did not in fact say). This poor person with a misinterpreted idea of the separation of church and state has unfortunately become a victim of gender bias in the media.

Next I'd like to bring up an issue that is plagued by media gender bias. I recently went to a drive through and ordered some food as I do from time to time. Upon receiving my food and issuing payment to the representative of the establishment I was told, "tanks". Now I presume the meaning of this phrase was to thank me for spending my money at that place and not at one of their competitors, but I was thrown off by the pronunciation of the word. It reminded me of some time I spent in the largest nation of the Iberian peninsula where they pronounce that word similarly when speaking English. The more perplexing thing to me is that in that nation, the dialect of the language which the majority of the residents call their native tongue actually has the phoneme used to begin the word, "thanks". Actually, the phoneme for "th" in english has sounds that are split between the letters "z", "c", and "d" so I suppose I can understand the difficulty in using the correct sound for the word. But even still, I became a victim of gender bias in the media through that exposure to the word "tanks".

And the last statement I have that is proof of the boundless gender bias in the media is the following: "80's power ballads are best performed by Russian children's choirs."

Car Troubles

2008-07-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

So to start I want to share a little about the adventure that has been caring for my car over the last month. It all began in the beginning of June when my car refused to start one time while I was visiting my family in California. I figured that even though I checked the lights and knew that I hadn't left them on that it was my fault that the battery could not start my car. We jumped it and I drove around for a while to make sure the batter was charged. A little while later while I was visiting my friend's house, my car decided it didn't want to start again. Luckily, that friend's house is built in close proximity to the Honda dealership I normally take my car to for routine service.

Now going back months earlier, in the fall, I had my battery replaced when my car wouldn't start. So about six months later my battery appears to be failing... Now I don't know much about cars and batteries, but from my limited knowledge, six months seems to be too short for a battery to fail. Returning to the story, I took my car in to the service center the next day when it opened and they decided to replace the battery after, as they claim, doing some tests on the electrical systems in the car. This service was performed on the fourteenth of June.

A few weeks later, my family had left on vacation and my car wouldn't start again. I noticed the problem late in the day, so I had to drive another car to my destinations and the following day, I jump started my car and returned to the Honda dealership service center to report the continuing problems. They once again claimed to do tests on the car and, in the end, just recharged the battery and told me to come back if it has problems again and to expect a longer check up at that point.

Believing that my car might be working well enough, I set off on my trip to return to my home in Utah. My car ran okay for a while until one day it once again needed a jump start. Being as this occurrence was in the weekend when most service centers are closed, I had to wait for Monday to take my car in. Once again, I chose to go to a Honda dealership expecting the warranty on the battery to still be effective among licensed service centers. They kept my car overnight to replace the alternator and to fix a broken engine mount for a hefty price and sent me home with a recharged battery on Tuesday the seventh of July.

Wednesday came around and I went about my business as usual and as I was leaving my work to drive home, I discovered that my car once again would not start. As with every other time, the service centers were closed, so I had to wait until the morning to address the problem. Luckily, I was able to enjoy a leisurely stroll home from my place of employ to my chilly basement living quarters. The real frustration came in the next day when I walked back to work and called the dealership to leave a request for help that was not answered that day at all. Once again I got to walk home with thankfully pleasant weather.

Friday morning, and I once again returned to where my car tarried. To add to the journey I called the dealership and once again got an answering machine. Refusing to use the same method that had failed to procure any results the day previous, I called again to a more general number at the same service center. After speaking to a representative there, my call was redirected to the service person assigned to dealing with my case. I was given the number to a towing company that came and picked up my car after arrangements were made. I ended up waiting longer than I would have wanted to be towed, but that was to be expected.

So now I sit in the Honda dealership waiting to see what they discover to be the "problem" this time. My Civic is resting a mere ten yards from where I am and I've seen them apply various instruments to the machinery and electrical systems under the hood. It appears that they are doing something and I can only hope that the talented and capable personnel certified to deal with my car figure it out and fix the real problem. It's already been nearly a thousand dollars and I still have a non-functional car.

I have some theories with respect to the methods used by such mechanics. I've dealt with two different dealerships with similar results thus far and it is this experience on which I base my thoughts. I present the following as a checklist for what to try when a car won't start based on the order I've seen:

Car won't start? replace the battery (don't necessarily check the previous battery first).
New battery and car still won't start? recharge battery and hope it works.
Recharged battery fails again? replaced the alternator and hope it was the problem (costs about $500).
Car won't start again after 2 days? don't answer the phone when the customer calls for help.
Customer is persistent and calls again? claim you were getting to the message that they left and maybe help.

I guess any more steps in this checklist will become clear as I get reports on my car. For now, that's all I know about dealing with a car that won't start. Seems pretty effective although I think I'd personally change my phone number when the customer was persistent in calling so that I wouldn't have to deal with it any more. That's probably part of the reason I'm not an auto-mechanic.

An update on the status, this last trip resulted in a new battery free of charge and a promise to tow the car again when it won't start the next time... It's really encouraging...