I’s (getting) married now!

Squeeeee worthy? I think so.

To save you all from the deluge of wedding ideas that I want to share, I’ve created a new tumblr specifically for these thoughts. Follow if you like to read about wedding-y stuff.

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For the days leading up to Black History Month, I will do a cursory Family Tree for any African-American folks that ask me. The only caveat? You have to be willing to post your tree somewhere (blog, FriendFeed, Facebook, twitter, etc) during Black History Month.* Why? I think AfAms need a better understanding of who we are and where we come from. Interested? Email familytreeme@ericabaker.com.

To expand, I define cursory as “as many generations I can go back without having to jump over many hurdles”. This normally gets me back to the 1870s for most African-Americans and if the data is good, I can go further.

To get started, I’ll need the names and if possible, birthdates and birthplaces of your grandparents. The tree I generate will work backwards from them.

Once done, I’ll give you a list of all the people in the tree, the actual tree itself, and the GEDCOM format file in the case you want to upload and continue working on the tree in Geni or another family tree tool. If applicable, I’ll also provide interesting supporting documents (Freedmen’s Bank Records, Draft Registration cards, wills, etc).

Please feel free to pass this on to others.

*Why the necessity to post during Black History Month? Reminding people that Black History is more than just remembering the efforts of civil rights activists and celebrating African-American inventions; it’s our history.

Applicable Ethnicity? Mostly European.

While the 23andMe health data is pretty good and comprehensive, unfortunately, the research in that area has been focused mostly on people of predominantly European heritage (more on this later in the post). African Americans like me will still show results in this area but I’m taking the reports with a grain of salt.

Aside from the health data, 23andMe has added quite a bit of really interesting Ancestry data. For example, apparently my maternal haplogroup is L2c1, a haplogroup common among the Mandenka of Senegal, according to 23andMe.

They also do this really interesting thing called Ancestry Painting. It basically matches each little bit of your DNA to where it most likely originated. Based on my Ancestry Painting (in the image below) I’m 20% European. The history of slavery makes this entirely unsurprising.

100% Mutt

23andme recently released a new Ancestry feature in Beta called Relative Finder.  The feature will be released to all users in early January and from what I’ve seen of Relative Finder so far, this could be a complete game changer for those of us interested in Genealogy. Check out the portion of my Relative Finder results pictured below.

Hello European relatives of mine.

As an African American, this is Huge. Think about slavery for a moment. Those European roots included in my Ancestry Painting will never be documented anywhere and up until now, there was almost no way to find out who was tipping to the slaves quarters at night. Once released to all 23andMe users, putting together the puzzle pieces of Relative Finder matches and family history will make it possible, maybe even easy to figure out the unknown branches in family history. Knowing who was a slave owner could lead to knowing where a slave originated, which could lead to finding out EXACTLY where I or any other AfAm came from.

Clearly Relative Finder would be highly beneficial to most African-Americans. There is one small problem. The cheapest 23andMe service, the Ancestry edition, costs $399.00. The median annual income for most African-American families is $30,134 before taxes. Factor in taxes and one 23andMe Ancestry kit will cost a family 20% of the average AfAm families gross monthly income, nothing at all to scoff at.

What does this mean? Sadly, this groundbreaking tech will remain out of reach for many of the people who could use it most. When I asked 23andMe about this on Twitter, their response was mostly vague but leads me to believe their pricing model isn’t about to change anytime soon.

Long story short? Price changes unlikely in the short term.

Sucks right? The genealogy isn’t even the half of it. Remember earlier in the post when I mentioned that a lot of the health data is based on studies of people with European ancestry? Yeah. That’s not going to change anytime soon unless a) some researchers decide to focus on African-American DNA or b) the cost barrier is reduced, allowing for more AfAms to participate on their own.

If you can’t tell, this is a pretty big deal to me. A big enough deal that I wrote to the Oprah show to try to get her to cover the subject. I don’t think any of the AfAm “moguls” have devoted any cycles to the subject, save the brief run of the African-American Lives series. In a perfect world, the Oprahs, the Diddys, the Shaqs, and the Jay-Zs of the world would take some interest in all this but thats not likely to happen. Other than that, frankly, I don’t have a real solution to any of the issues I’ve written about here. Maybe one day the price of DNA testing will be low enough that cost won’t be a barrier for those people that don’t have an extra $400 laying around. If you are an African-American with that kind of disposable income available, I encourage you try out the 23andMe service. If you do and you get some Relative Finder matches, I’ll be more than happy to do a cursory building of your Family Tree on Ancestry.com for you. The more you know, etc.

Disclosure: My employer is an investor in 23andMe however, the views reflected in this post are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer. I paid full price for the 23andMe service and have not been offered any future discounts  for the service.

Happy 2010 by teapotqueen

Happy New Year Peeps!

Make this decade a good one!

Given the recent spotlight put on web based “incentive” programs, I thought I’d share what I heard from Pizza Hut when I asked about this very topic back in September.

On September 19, I was having my typical Saturday night at home and decided to order pizza for dinner. Since Papa Johns doesn’t deliver to my area and Dominoes is well..Dominoes, I went with Pizza Hut. Standard operating procedure, I ordered the pizza and afterward, I was “qualified” to sign up for some scheme or another. I didn’t take a screenshot so I can’t remember which. I was annoyed enough by it to tweet about it since I knew Pizza Hut was at least paying some attention on twitter:

Pizza Hut wasn’t going to explain itself in public and responded:

I sent them my e-mail address via DM and they responded:

Turns out that correct information was a carefully crafted email response claiming that “the Web Loyalty program provides value to customers at a time when they need it most.” To quote Amy Poehler, REALLY?

Here is the full text of Pizza Huts email response:

Hi Erica,

Thank you for your question.

The Web Loyalty program provides value to customers at a time when they need it most. Pizza Hut customers who are members of the program receive $10 cash back every month and that’s just one example of many companies and services that offer discounts and specials through the program. To enroll, our customers complete a three-step opt-in process upon checking out online. If at any time they wish to discontinue membership or if they feel that they inadvertently signed-up, customers can call 1-800-889-8776 for a full refund.

Sincerely,

Alexa Robinson
Pizza Hut

Now, forgive me, but I don’t fully believe this. Why would Pizza Hut claim this scam is good for consumers even after its been targeted for a Senate investigation and settled a class action lawsuit for potentially hundreds of millions?

Well apparently there are up to 10 million reasons why Pizza Hut keeps it around. Ah, the almighty dollar wins over consumers again. While Pizza Hut falsely claims that these scams are valuable for customers, in reality, they are most valuable for Pizza Hut, customers be damned.

Remember that next time you’re ordering pizza. Frankly, I’ll be ordering from Pizza California. They’re local and they don’t try to scam me for the sake of their bottom line. Their Gold Rush pizza is pretty damn good too.

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Oh Microsoft.

Who did you have vetting your Windows 7 party participants? I know you didn’t let everyone play because I know several people who applied and didn’t get selected. Yet, for some reason, you chose me?

Me who works at a company that your upper management seems to want to obliterate?

Me who publicly derides Windows whenever the mood fancies?

You could have Binged me and found out all this stuff yet still, somehow, you decided that I’d be a good person to throw a forced promotion party for your new OS (or is it a Service Pack with a shiny new title).

I’ll be the first to admit, I signed up for it. See my mom just got a new computer with Windows Vista. She hates Vista. Like, a lot. I promise I had nothing to do with that but you should have seen the smile on my face when she called and told me so. She repeats it too. Anytime we’re talking about her computers, she tells me. Even went so far as to have me put “Om-boo-tu” on her older computer with Vista just so she didn’t have to deal with it anymore. Promise. So when I got the opportunity to maybe give her a version of Windows she didn’t despise (for free!), I didn’t pass it up.

So here we are. You’ve selected me. I am a woman of my word so I will have the party.  We may even discuss Windows 7. Like so “thanks for the playing cards Windows 7! I’m all in” or “thanks for the fancy tote bag Windows 7. It’s perfect for my gym shoes!”

Anyway, I know you’re looking for promotion with this whole thing so far be it from me to begrudge you your shine. Here, I will unbox this party pack you sent me. You’re welcome.

Windows 7 Box

Box

It's here!

It's some junk in a box!

Nope, not fake.

Random crap from various vendors that I'm supposed to give party guests.

Puzzle and Playing cards. I'm thinking poker.

Centerpiece, Napkins, Balloons, Streamers

Letter, Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition (wtf?) 32bit and 64bit versions.

Poster.

Party bags for guests to put the crap from vendors I'm supposed to shill.

The whole shebang, minus box.

So there it is. Thanks Microsoft?

So trying to sort out my Halloween costume, found the dress but it won’t be for sale until next week. Lame. I found a pattern for a similar dress but apparenly it takes a while to make a dress. So here I am. I did manage to find fake ciggys (that make smoke!) so that’s taken care of. Now I just need to find a willing Roger and possibly a Peggy.

All for now, hope this actually posts.

“Bought a receiver online? Fuck you, pay me.
Oh, you can’t watch the channels you ordered? Fuck you, pay me.
No high def service huh? Fuck you, pay me.”

I don’t know how rackets like the one DirecTV has established come into existence but I have a small clue. I don’t know how they stay in business but it probably has something to do with offering current customers $100 to pimp the service to their friends.

This is what happened in my case. When I moved, I had a choice between DirecTV and Comcast. Everybody around me couldn’t shut up about DirecTV and also, could I please use their account number when I signed up? Ha.

The decision maker for me was the local sports package. I signed up for DTV and that package to watch baseball games from Baltimore (How bout dem O’s hon?).

Baseball games? All blacked out. Nice. I called to turn that service off and went on about my business. Fast forward a month or so. I want my HP monitor to get TV and it only has an HDMI in. No problem, most cable boxes come with HDMI out right? Ha ha, not DirecTVs!

The only DTV boxes that have an HDMI out are their High Definition boxes. Oh I know, I’ll just run to Worst Buy (I should by the Worst Buy partnership) and buy an HD box. Thanks Worst Buy! Get home, start setting it up, DirecTV tells me, they own this box, I just paid worst buy a couple hundred buck to lease it. (Refer to video)

Oh but don’t think you can just use the box with Standard Def service. No ma’am, you’ll need to pay to get HD access for that box to work. (Refer to video)

Well shit. May as well get HD TV right? We’re in the high def age and all.

FFWD a week. DirecTV guys come out and realize due to the fucked up way some person from DTV initially installed the satellite my entire building shares, I can’t get HD channels. NICE. But wait, I still have to have HD service for this bloody box to work when all I want is the HDMI out. (Refer to video)

I decide I’m over it. I call DirecTV customer service and say I don’t want their service anymore. No problem ma’am, that’ll be $400 in early termination fees. (Refer to video)

I email their CEO and others. Turns out DirecTV is wise to the ways of the EECB and will just drop you to their “customer advocate group” (1-866-785-5537) who parrot the same BS regular customer service does. On the plus side, they were able to work some magic to make me not pay for HD service I’m not getting while still allowing my HD box to work. (Fuck you, but only pay me a little less)

Fine. I’m not paying $400 in ETFs (yet) so I give up.

I decide I want to get an DirecTivo to tinker with that DTV does NOT own. I buy one on Craigslist. I call to activate it. Sorry ma’am, the access cards are tied to each unit and customer and we can’t reassign them. Let me transfer you to our access card department where you can purchase another access card for $20. (Refer to video)

Is it any wonder DirecTV is the subject of a class action suit in California?

Final words, reader. If you are trying to find TV service, steer clear of DirecTV. If you must have satellite, go with Dish. If you don’t need satellite, go with one of the myriad other TV providers. If you absolutely have to go with DirecTV, may your personal deity have mercy on your soul.

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Since moving to the Bay Area, I’ve relied on Sonic.net for internet. Sonic, a small local ISP,  has the most intelligent and competent Customer Support team I’ve ever worked with. Seriously. The best.

Unfortunately, Sonic.net provides DSL service that rides over AT&T’s crappy lines. When I first signed up for their service, I didn’t mind as I was paying their “introductory price” (about $55/mo) for the service. At that price point, it was affordable and I didn’t mind the slow spees. Recently, my “introductory pricing” was up and I started paying ~$80/mo for service, once you factor in the money I’m paying AT&T for basic phone service. Not so affordable, that.

I decided a couple weeks ago that if I was going to be paying ~$70/mo for internet, it’s going to be fast so I started the process of getting Comcast High Speed Internet. Here’s what I’ve experienced so far.

The Good:

Speedy.

See that? That’s FAST. Mind you, I was coming from 6/epicslow DSL so the speediness may be old hat to you, dear readers. I bought my own modem (more on that later) so that I could get the DOCSIS 3.0 speeds that are available in San Jose. DOCSIS is the standard for passing data over cable lines and DOCSIS 3.0 adds some sort of magic (I know not the magic, you can look it up if you care) that makes things go fast. I like speed. I taught Ricky Bobby how to go fast. True story.

The Bad:

The process of getting  Comcast HIS was not easy. First, this is not something you can install yourself if you don’t have Comcast cable.  An installer has to come and connect up things outside then make sure the connection is working inside. I called to have the installer come on a Saturday between 9am and 11am. He showed up at 11:45am.  Not cool.

Customer service is crap. Seriously. One guy I talked to sounded like he was sitting at home answering my call and would not stop trying to upsell me. To the CSAs out there? No means no.

The Ugly:

So the Ugly? Really. Fricking. Ugly. First of all, I figured with my newly discovered speed, I would hop on Halo and perform some quick pwnage. Pwnage did not reveal itself as I suffered all kinds of crazy lag during gameplay. I spent a solid 15 minutes trying to figure out what was going on until it dawned on me;  traffic shaping. The cost of doing business with a giant ISP is that they do all kinds of dumb shit.  Like traffic shaping. Support Net Neutrality folks. What was odd about this is that I was able to download a >1GB iso (mythbuntu) from usenet pretty fricking quickly.

Still ugly on par with traffic shaping but something that didn’t personally affect me is that Comcast rents its cable modems. Mind you, plenty of ISPs do this but that doesn’t make it any less dirty. Even more offensive is that Comcast is raising the rental rates for their modems. Yes, $60/yr for renting what is probably a used and outdated modem. Yes, the same $60/yr that you could spend to buy a brand new Comcast approved cable modem and have money left over. Do you see Comcast advertising that option to folks? No you sure don’t. Never fear, dear readers, I am here to save you from being screwed by Comcast and their rental fees. Below you will find some Comcast approved cable modems available for purchase from Amazon. For the sake of transparency, you should know that I will get some paltry sum of money if you purchase using the links found here. Don’t worry, it won’t make me rich. People viewing this in a feed reader may need to use this link to see the modems (assuming you cared).

So that’s it readers. I’m now Comcastic or however you want to call it. I still have my Sonic.net DSL turned on for the time being (I’ll turn it off right before I’m supposed to get the next bill) and am trying to think of clever things to do with that connection. I’m thinking I’ll put an open wireless network on it and redirect all traffic to this blog, unless you all have other ideas.

No related posts.

I’m still around, contrary to what this blog might lead you to believe. Sorry about the lack of posts but I seem to spend all my words on FriendFeed and twitter these days. I’ll try to do better but no promises. Before you continue, I request that you excuse the typos in this post. I’m working with new (cramped!) hardware that is affecting my typing but more on that later.

So!

What have I been up to of late? Let’s see, went down to Richmond, VA to visit with family and do some genealogy research. The visit was actually quite fruitful as there is stuff hidden in microfiche in the Library of Virginia that I would have never found elsewhere. <slight tangent>Why this data is locked away in microfiche format, I will never understand. Why hello 2009, you’re full of wonder and technology, surely this stuff should have been digitized by now. Alas no, and I’m fairly certain the Library of Virginia is not the only place that has treasure troves of information that can’t be found unless you visit.</slight tangent>

My trip led me to find out something I find quite important though. Up until then, I knew my grandmother died in her late 30’s but I had no idea my great grandmother also died very young. That knowledge freaked me out enough (I do have a fear of dying young you know) to finally bite the bullet and do the 23andme thing. I ordered the test last week, I should be getting the kit next week. I don’t know whether I’ll find out something reassuring or depressing but at least I’ll know. Perhaps I might hit the HIV resistant gene lottery too! Hey one can dream and if I do, I promise to share my DNA with my future kids.

Post Virginia trip, I drove up to Baltimore for the boyfriends birthday. I kind of arranged a nice get together/party thing for all his friends, with the help of his brothers and his best friends. He had a great time but people who get to bury their faces in cake-y cleavage usual have fun. I’d post the picture of him nose deep in cleavage cake but then you’d never hear from me again because I’d be dead. While I was in Baltimore, he got his condo on the market. The quicker it sells, the quicker he can move out here, finally. Then we can escape my current spider infested hellhole of an apartment and move in to someplace decent.

Post Baltimore, we flew back to the Bay area together and of course, we had the worst flight in the history of flying. I think the turbulence map that day showed nearly 60% of the contiguous 48 states covered with turbulence. I will be glad when I only have to fly once or twice a year. When we got back, his birthday present arrived; a Terps red Lenovo S10. It was so perfect and great that the next week, I blew my Amazon Associates money and got a pink one for myself. Look at the precious:

If you look closely at that picture, you’ll see my cute little S10 is running OS X. This is because I love OS X but the Macbook Air is far too expensive and doesn’t come in pink.

My eyelids force closing themselves tell me that I have stayed up later than they will allow. I’ll press post on this and come back with another post in 4-6 weeks when I have my 23andme results.