"Fake" Ivan

Tuxedo or Bust

2009-11-07T21:18:00.002-07:00

I'm being told that someone near to me will need to spend hundreds of dollars to obtain a tuxedo for a child who is taking orchestra in high school, or they may be failed. Can that simply be another broken California thing or is it something Americans are experiencing? Perhaps since CA is a blue state he'll be able to find some billion dollar government "no tuxedo left behind" program that subsidizes this distraction from focusing on the skills needed to teach a child to play an instrument.

Any suggestions are most welcome for a good place to get a reasonably priced tuxedo, for the duration of the school year, until the child grows out of it, or until the program is cut or the teacher laid off in this robust economy.

Amazon for affiliates, does anyone make any money?

2009-10-28T08:46:00.002-07:00

Funny story, I've been participating in the Amazon affiliate program for... a very, very long time. (I want to say somewhere around 10 years, but it's probably not quite that long.) I continue to receive their marketing and messaging regarding my account only to become excited to log in and finally see that I've made some money. So, can you guess how much money I've made in all these years of working with Amazon as an affiliate? I've actually received one payment of around $10. Of course given the stocks in my portfolio, I guess I could be getting a worse ROI.

So, you say, "well sure, you aren't trying very hard". Ok, what does it mean to "try hard"? Should I quit my full time job and "get rich" with Amazon? I'm not willing to do that, after all I need to feed, cloth, house, and educate my children--and that doesn't happen without income, a trust fund, or a goverment hand out like AIG got.

Actually, I've been an active affiliate for various affiliate markets and have accumulated a bit of experience that would probably be helpful to others anticipating getting into affiliate marketing more heavily.

My advice, don't quit your day job. And, learn when to give certain affiliate programs the finger--don't fall for the BS that passes as "information" in those channels...while these folks weren't clever enough to invent gaming, they certainly engage in it.

...see, I told you it was a funny story. You know what else is funny, watching people get hurt on America's Funniest Home Videos, right?

Pidgin Copy/Paste Problem

2009-05-22T14:45:00.002-07:00

Revisiting an addiction of mine, free software, I experienced another pidgin rarity recently. Copy/Paste stopped working. It used to be fine--did I upgrade? Did I catch a virus? Did I exceed my mailbox capacity to store spam? Did Jesus come back in EMP glory and cook the circuitry in my hard drive? So many questions, so many opinion-spouting pundits, so few answers.

So, like I was starting to say... when I would try to copy/paste from a pidgin chat window, it would fail. I guess there are numerous circumstances that can lead to this, but apparently no one had vocalized about mine.

After much sleuthing, cursing, and the procuring of a voodoo doll I seem to have at least affected a solution that resolved my problem--even if I don't completely understand why; a facet of "modern" "computer" "science" (which somehow seems less like science and more like over-eating and watching commercials on FCC censored cable TV that I'm paying for--where did America begin to go wrong?)

The symptom:
Pidgin doesn't copy to the Windows buffer as evidenced by nothing getting pasted into my document when I attempted to, ...er paste.

The investigation/technological prayer ritual:
If you open Help -> Debug Window from Pidgin you may see errors involving the clip board. In my case opening services.msc revealed that ClipBook was not running. When I'd try to start it I was getting "Could not start the ClipBook service on Local Computer. Error 1068: The dependency service or group failed to start." This appears to have been caused by either (or both) Network DDE and Network DDE DSDM both being set to disabled. By changing them to "automatic" suddenly the Pidgin copy/paste operation began to work for me.

Now, let me say, I don't know if ClipBook actually has anything to do with this, or whether enabling Network DDE, Network DDE DSDM, or both where the real problem. Maddeningly I wasn't able to repeat the instructions in reverse to confirm which service was the culprit, but again, this is what frustrates me about CS decades into this experience.

For those of you that used to be able to fix your car without an expensive scanner, and a recurring service contract with a multi-national perhaps you'll better understand my experience, and mental disposition--or as I call it dispossession.

Again, in other words. After getting pidgin to copy paste, no combination of turning off, disabling, or quirking of eyebrows seemed to be able to get it to stop working again. So, if you were looking for free satisfaction, well, perhaps you'll experience it by repeating my steps, and perhaps you wont.

Either way, have a better day!

HP OfficeJet J6450 All-in-One ... sucks?

2009-01-31T10:12:00.005-07:00

Years ago I bought a Sharp AJ-5030 "all-in-one" color ink-jet printer, scanner, fax machine. The advertised functionality definitely fit a need I had. I was extremely disappointed to find that the ink cartridges were excessively over-priced and that they dried out and failed 100% of the time, whether you actually used them regularly or not. Can you say, "designed obsolescence"?

BURNED?!

After coming to that realization, I vowed that I would never purchase another Sharp printer product and for years I've kept my vow. And, I intend to continue to do so. After all, any company that succeeds in alienating their customer (someone whose money they took after gaining their trust, using lies) should reap the reverse benefit of that alienation: Declining subscribers, declining revenue.

HEALING

After years of self-imposed wandering in the wilderness...hmmm, perhaps that warrants some clarification... Once I finally resolved to roof test the Sharp printer, I basically went through a period where I was so convinced all ink-jet printers were conspirators in a large scheme, not to provide users with a genuine value, but rather to prop-up corporate balance sheets with new streams of recurring revenue--from ink-jet cartridges; that I could not make it over the hump to purchase another machine, from any company.

This past Christmas I was excited to finally have found a machine that was the correct balance between price (my primary trigger), and features (inextricably tied to my primary trigger--in fact the only way that I'll even entertain setting my primary trigger, after all not everyone has money burning a hole in their pocket). The machine we had found was an HP OfficeJet J6450 being sold at Costco.

THE VALUE OF BRAND

Having worked in a past life as an on-site service technician--and repairing among many other brands, HP printers and faxes, I had gained the conviction that HP built great hardware. Once the price, features, and brand/quality stars aligned I reached my tipping point and pulled out my wallet...well, actually its my family's wallet since I'm simply the purchasing agent/accountant/steward of the money required to sustain them until we win the lottery or God comes back and hands out song books and Washingtons. (It sure as hell isn't the market, CEOs, or Bernard Madoff that are going to help raise my kids.) But I digress.

So, we unburied our jar full of pennies from the backyard and trotted in to Costco to purchase our ticket back into the world of printer ownership. Long story, well yeah, so Christmas rolls around, wrapping paper comes off, printer gets unboxed, setup, much trash goes into the landfill, feelings of guilt at being a part of the problem subside enough to continue on, begin installing the printer drivers (which are usually no big deal, just a tiny little driver)...

BURNED AGAIN?!

And voila, megabytes of questionable crap get loaded onto the hard drive of any machine on which you install the printer driver. Oh brother! Worse still, resident in memory, auto-launched at start-up, suckling the teet of CPU cycles and further contributing to yet another mess of moronic me-too'ism that characterizes the Windows computing landscape. It would appear that HP has decided to screw around there too. I can just picture some dumbass marketer or business-type (perhaps you know them as "MBAs") chattering in their devil-language "I know how we can get more money, let's bundle every conceivable revenue-stream producing gizmo we can and load it onto unsuspecting user's computers during the driver install process--they won't mind." Well, they might not, but I do.

I've always been curious whether those business-types simply don't understand that loading programs into memory steals productivity from someone else...or if they just don't care. Do ethics come with any of those business programs, or is that just some feel-good crap you dismiss when you sign away your soul? (Ok, sorry :-)

A PLEA TO HP -- IMPROVE YOUR J6450 DRIVERS

In our case, we had three machines that we needed to be able to print from. The first, an XP "home" (home in that it's not the XP "professional" OS, wow there's a whole 'nother load of crap) machine went through the excessively long installation process only to fail twenty minutes or so into the process. (I literally burned two hours trying to troubleshoot why this didn't work before I gave up in frustration and went on to something more theraputic--granted, I'm a moron, but I'm a moron that paid you...perhaps I repeat myself.)

The second machine was a Vista machine. The installation succeeded, but the performance characteristics of the machine have changed recently (for the worse...why can't it ever be for the better); which leads me to suspect some aspect of the HP drivers.

The third machine was an XP Pro machine. It's a laptop which operates in at least two distinct device landscapes. The installation went ok--taking way too long, but at least it didn't require any strange combinations of swear words in order to get the installation to "take". However when I restart the machine it loves to chirp about the printer being inaccessible--whether I have a print job or not. I really don't want to be reminded that some crap just loaded itself into RAM without my intervention.

Lest you think this is a gripe session about my new HP printer, it's not...entirely. I love the printer--so far. It gives off the impression that it's well-built. So far the machine is everything I'd hoped for. I'm optimistic that I'm not repeating my experience with the Sharp machine, but I'd really like to feel that HP has my best interest at heart and not just their corporate profits.

MY PRIMARY COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE DRIVERS

-They bundle a lot of stuff some of which didn't seem necessary, but which takes time and space, and which I fear hogs my system resources by running resident in memory after auto-starting.

-The installation process was way too long. It's a printer after all--shouldn't it be a simple installation?

-Everything gets installed at once. I haven't used the fax or scanner yet, do I really have to wade through that process when I'm in a rush to get my kid's school report printed?!

-Everything seems to get auto-started. I'm really a fan of launching programs when I want access to them, and expecting to see programs disappear from my running process list when I close them. I hate stuff that stays resident in memory. (Apple's ITunes crap is the worst! I don't even own an IPOD, why the hell do I need iPodService.exe running in memory--thanks Steve, do you mind if I pitch a tent in your back yard and just hang out and use your pool for as long as you own the place? I mean, I've bought some songs from the IppleStore.)

-Configuring the wireless functionality (namely keying in the WEP key through the numeric dialer interface) was an exercise in frustration. It took numerous times before my router recognized the machine, each time I keyed the WEP key in again...ugh! I guess this really isn't a driver issue, but I thought I'd toss it in.

...and with that, my fingers have finally run out of frenzied typing energy.

Are Your Stats Lying To You?

2009-01-17T15:36:00.005-07:00

Have you seen these folks purporting to be able to provide metrics regarding "unique" visitors to your website? Worse still, suggesting they can associate revenue, lead generation, or indeed any level of accurate behavioral analysis to these so-called unique data points? It turns out they are either ignorant, or lying. And rather than educating their consumers regarding the small reporting set they actually need in making important decisions they instead deluge them with a plethora of whiz-bang reporting to keep them lazy and entertained, without actually helping them to learn to know better quickly. Of course, with paychecks and revenue streams in jeopardy, one might be forgiven for openly wondering about the tactics of these service providers in justifying software upgrades--and increased subscription fees, using such smoke and mirror tactics.

Sadly this all seems to be characteristic of a brand of institutionalized learner that engages in corporate ladder climbing, trading the long term health of a business and the needs of the many for short term gains as they do their brief stint until the next rung becomes accessible to them. The close cousin of this for the more entrepenurial is that of building a business with the primary intent not of achieving maximum sustainability but rather that of "branding" the business as an attractive growth engine for the primary purpose of selling it at a multiplier of earnings and getting rich in the process (at the expense of the employees, suppliers, customers, and the acquiring companies shareholders, employees. etc.)

Looking at this more holistically, many of the consumers of this kind of so-called information aren't held accountable for their failings and thus large segments of the supply chain shelter severe dysfunction. Of course, maybe I'm just a jaded crazy person and this whole world-wide financial melt down is just a figment of our collective imagination.

Either way, believing that you can get accurate data regarding "unique" visitors, and it's cousin "market reach" is ridiculous. Personally, since I might be investing in your company indirectly through my mutual or index fund, I'd very much like to know when you foster this kind of activity--so I can invest more responsibly, elsewhere.

It's the Delta Stupid.

Many of the mechanisms that provide so-called unique reporting are based on browser cookies. The word "accuracy" and "browser cookies" have no business being used in the same sentence unless you are stating that there is no quantifiable correlation between the two.

It's very difficult to know how many people allow cookies to persist--and so many people just assume it's a tiny percentage of people that are smart enough to clean up after themselves.

I don't know if this has ever been true on the web. The landscape changes so quickly that during the adoption phase the data held in cookies may have been tainted for analysis purposes due to adoption issues. And, certainly over time hyper-commercialistic sites have trained us through sheer self-defense to clear our cookies with increasing frequency--if only to allow our browsers to continue working as tools for other sites we frequent. It's even a game among many to deliberately provide misinformation in the form of personas, some amusing in their blatant stupidity but others insidiously more clever in their misleading. What?!, you don't believe people are capable of this--but you do believe in the ever present threat of hackers exploiting your systems? Wow, who's paranoid now?

So, am I suggesting all statistics should just be thrown out as inaccurate? Certainly not. The data your bank provides about your account balance is a great example of a statistic you should pay very close attention to for example. And, as it turns out useful statistics exist for gauging visitor behavior on your web site as well. In fact, it's very likely those statistics are hiding in the same reports and datasets you are using to derive so-called uniques from. It turns out it's not the data at all, but rather the delta in the data that's meaningful. All actions have three possible outcomes: they either get better, get worse, or have no impact. Since two of those three outcomes have negative implications you might honestly question the value of doing anything--at least to an already functioning process, and you would be right to do so if your goal is to manage risk. However, for those folks who decide to roll the dice, you are specifically looking for an improvement in a key performance indicator. Or, in other words, you are looking for a delta indicating an increase.

This approach has implications on the development life cycle as it demands a baseline before any statistics can become meaningful, but consider the consequence: You might actually learn something from your time and effort.

It may well be that decision making based on so-called unique visitor data is no more valuable that putting it all on black and letting it ride. A better approach is to throw away the unique user data and instead monitor the delta on a stable data stream--don't bother with trying to gauge whether its unique or not. Focus instead on defining what is human traffic and what is not--that's likely to yield far more actionable results anyway.

Is AJAX wireless router friendly?

2009-01-10T13:12:00.006-07:00

I've been experiencing a strange problem of late that I'm embarrased to admit I don't entirely understand. Connecting through an ancient Netgear router and a broadband connection, I've noticed no problems checking email, surfing the web, etc, etc.

In the last few weeks I've begun to notice that if I visit maps.google.com, maps.yahoo.com, or even good ole' mapquest my wireless connection appears to get overwhelmed and my gateway becomes non-responsive as evidenced by pings timing out. It doesn't happen until I start interacting with the AJAX portions of those mapping interfaces. In other words, I can reach the map url, but as soon as I start using the drag/drop interfaces and I can see the interface waiting for data to come back in order to display panels of the map (not only the satellite photos), it appears to just spin and spin... and suddenly I'm unable to ping the router from any machine connected to it.

Curiously the same behavior doesn't appear to happen through the wired side of the same router.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue? Any suggestions for troubleshooting this issue?

When Good Web Hosting Goes Bad

2008-12-28T17:27:00.005-07:00

I admit it, I've been a secret admirer of a certain hosting company for a long time. However, I feel less and less like there's any kind of reciprocation, and so I've been counting down the days until my loyalty flicks out of existence. (Or, hope of hopes until they embrace repentance, shed their MBA-ways and rediscover that ancient art of pleasing the customer. I've stopped holding my breath on this one--perhaps the democrats can do a better job...hahaha, go two-farty system!)

Anyways, perhaps the wait for my loyalty to crumble is over...? Over the Christmas holiday, I noticed that this particular hosting company started arbitrarily dropping some free analytics code into all pages. They've already been skull-packing the HTML of authors who use their free hosting offering for some time, worse and worse each time the advertising market tanks--but now they are also doing it to the folks who are paying. This is a really bad no-no for anyone who knows anything about webmastering--but perhaps that sheds the final light, there isn't anyone left there who does...?

It's really quite sad, but perhaps such is life. With each new door closed, others open. Anyone suggest a web hosting provider they have come to know and love? I've got a few bucks a month I'm willing to pay for a service that requires someone to answer an occasional monitoring page and push a button to restart the servers. For the rest of the 99% of the day I'm happy to have them relaxing with the latest MMORG.

Wii Sucks?

2008-11-15T12:36:00.003-07:00

Like the rest of you morons... oh wait, I mixed up the honey and the vinegar leads again, my bad (sounds of mechanistic fiddling... clank, bang, whiz... ch-chunk...)

Like so many others, I've become enamored with the idea of the Suny Wee...er, Microseft Pees3, hrm that's not right either... oh yes, Nintandemdo X-majiger. I know my stuff, because I went to Jarards.

Where was I going with this?, oh yes; I'm hoping to buy a Wii, having become infected--er, smitten. However, being edumacated in the school of marketing I understand all the lies--er hype, ...er institutionalized BS (...Bachelors of Science) that us consumers are continually bombarded with. My approach to consumerizing has been shifting toward a new approach, for me anyway. I characterize it as "how bad does it suck?"

In the how-bad-does-it-suck approach, a future customer rejects all of the reasons to buy a thing. After all we'd like to believe we're smart enough to determine we want, or even need, a thing. Instead he tries to ascertain the level of suck said thing possesses, and then looks deep inside himself to see if he thinks he can live with that ...er, increased sucking.

So, my search for the Wii sucking quotient has begun. Just to be sure I've done my due diligence, I'm soliciting additional er, suckage. If you happen to stumble upon this and have a voice to contribute to my search please pray, lend it.

Many thanks.

...Wii sucks because... (...points the mic into the empty darkness...)

...ignoring the occasional cricket chirp...

Was that Coldplay or U2 on SNL?

2008-10-26T00:57:00.005-07:00

You know, I love the band ColdPlay, but their appearance on SNL has me thinking too hard. Not about the introspection I think there was in their music but rather about how overly animated Chris was. Dude seriously, I love your enthusiasm, but what about dialing back the... er, whatever that was. Miss you man! I've appreciated being reminded of the beauty and tragedy around us and being inspired by your creativity. ...er, less so about reflecting on how creepy it was to watch Bono gyrating in that poor lady's face when U2 appeared on SNL... or your bobbing and yelping. ;-) Awkward! Oh my god, I'm old and stupid, how did this happen?!

"safebrowsing.clients.google.com" is good for monkeys

2008-10-16T03:52:00.002-07:00

Ah yes, from the dummys that brought you stupid comes the latest "safe" technology. I noticed that a few sites with subdomains on the 8k.com domain (a domain offered by one of the web's longest running web hosting providers, Freeservers) saw a precipitous drop in traffic. I thought, "ok, maybe Goigle's duncing again"... but didn't think much more of it... until now. I notice that all subdomains on 8k.com are being redirected through something called "safebrowsing.clients.google.com" which I guess is the new goon squad on the web. I guess these monkeys haven't heard of subdomains. Good job, you blocked off a massive chunk of the legitimate and useful web because some anti-social sysadmin or numskull exec decided they hadn't made enough noise in a meeting. Wow--hey that red button that says "blow up the world"... please, please don't push it!

A GM Hybrid for everyone who wants one... wow, that's ME!

2008-09-06T12:36:00.004-07:00

I've been told GM is turning a corner...

I've seen commercials that state "we're making Hybrids for everyone that wants one"! Finally, I can trade my $50,000 Yukon in for a green car ...er, "blue" car. (Hmmm, not a good sign, GM has already made me blue as I've somehow become of the opinion that American cars are poor quality, low efficiency, over priced, boring boxes often emblazened with the moniker "GM".)

Deeply desiring finally to murder my inner cynic and return to living in my optimistically realistic inner skeptic, I decided to suspend my disbelief regarding GM--hopefully for good. After all, perhaps the recent ass-kicking in the market place has helped them augment their business model with an astonishing principle known as repentance. I'm so excited to love American cars again and trade my Korean and Scandanavian vehicles in for some I can proudly declare were "made in America", and which are as pleasurable to drive as these currently superior foreign vehicles.

I went to the GM website to find my new $10,000 Hybrid vehicle... nothing fancy, just a point-a-to-b'er with a jack for my two year old ipod. I was however discouraged to find that GM wants me to leverage my childrens future by financing $24,000,. and that in a "robust economy" as the United States, Inc. CEO is currently calling it--or as us regular folks call it, "a recession".

I thought, well, this must be a mistake. After all, they said a vehicle for every who wants one... not everyone who wants to pay too much for one. So, I thought I'd ask a quick question. I was further discouraged to find that there is no where to ask a question online... just a simple question. After wandering around the website for five more minutes than I intended to give them as a result of their marketing efforts, I decided it was time to vocalize my experience in a more social format. I look forward to GM bringing at least a part of what makes me proud of America back to the world stage. Perhaps tomorrow.

Vista Sucks - I hate Vista

2008-08-06T03:49:00.003-07:00

Hey it's 2008 and I still hate Vista, there I said it.

Windows Vista, for all it's prettiness is a POS (that means piece of shit for all you polite folks out there). Windows Vista sucks--why the vitriol? Every damn time I perform a "Windows Update" my network driver gets fudged and I can no longer connect to the network, or the Internet. It's been more than a year and this problem seems to happen every single time I get an update.

Why would that bother me? Well, now instead of getting my email and working, I get to fix this stupid problem yet again. Thanks Microsoft!

Ok, I get that it's challenging to manage n-zillion vendor relationships, and that lead painted chinese network cards are probably not at the top of your support list...but I paid you, and this card worked fine under XP. By the way have I told you how much I like XP?

-----------------------------------
Windows Network Diagnostics

There are driver or hardware problems with the network adapter "Marvell Libertas 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Client Adapter" on this computer.

The network adapter "Marvell Libertas 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Client Adapter is experiencing driver or hardware related issues.

Click here for information -->
-----------------------------------

"Clicking here" of course launches the useless troubleshooting sequence that ten minutes later essentially tucks tail and mopes off like that annoyingly unhelpful animated dog character in XP ...wasn't his name Poochy or something... good lord folks, all I wanted was a Pepsi! And, an operating system that doestn't continually reintroduce the same problem I've corrected umpteen times now. Wait, this just in... I bet I'll be doing this again!

I wouldn't feel so bad except that--I PAID TOO MUCH MONEY FOR THIS POS. When Firefox does something that pisses me off, I'm still inclined to lick my picture of Mark Andreessen....er, too much information... ok, ok, I kid (and perhaps through far too incorrect a reference). I can't remember the last time I licked a picture of Bill Gates....ew (ok, this is creepy... but I feel better now).

Fortunately I've almost successfully made the switch to Ubuntu...now if only I can give up the games, applications, functionality, and productivity I've acquired from software investments sadly trapped in the Windows world in order to use a 'nix cousin. I can see all the women swooning when I regale them with adventures of command line hacks I keep in an encrypted mount and exchange with members of the nerd priesthood after validating our ssh keys.... hyuck hyuck hyuck, snort!

Favorites List - Web resources

2008-08-02T20:34:00.004-07:00

Favorites list...

Note to self: Since I'm not seeing a specific favorites list utility for blogger, I'll create mine as a post and later when something more appropriate to list data is discovered, I'll move this stuff.

http://creativecommons.org/about/ - a great resource for protecting yourself and your creative work w/o "giving in" to evil.

Fund vs Savings account

2008-05-08T12:22:00.002-07:00

Ok, I admit I'm a moron, and I'm ugly, fat, smell of elderberries, wear combat boots, yadda, yadda, yadda... oh wait, where was I going with this?

Oh yeah, so I'm trying to understand how buying shares in a fund is better than putting the money in my savings account. I hear folks say "more risk = more return", that's great... way to hold up the party line and all that. So, doing a simple experiment using my monkey brain....

1. I deploy $500 to buy 50 shares of an "income" fund on the market. (I think that means its an ETF, "exchange traded fund". If not, please correct me so I can sound smarter at parties.)

2. Similarly, I deploy $500 into a money market account at the ole' credit union ...at an embarrasing 2% APR. (But hey, I can get a loan at 9%, wow, isn't that awesome, how can I go wrong! Spider man, spider man, does what ever a.... doh, monkey brain.)

OK, now the back side of this happy little equation...

1. Each month my fund returns a "whopping" .09 dividend per share. Holy cow, every month... not every quarter (4 times a year), but every month (12 times a year). So, at .09 a share each month, times my 50 shares, I'll receive $4.50 a month assuming the dividend holds each month.

2. To get apples to apples, my CU returns $10 a year (500 * .02). Then I divide that into 12 in order to see it in similar monthly increments, so I can compare it to the ETF. That means each month I'll receive roughly 0.83 for that parked money in the money market account.

So, based on my simple experiment, it certainly would seem that $4.50 a month for that $500 is better than .83 a month for the $500 at the CU. Where am I going wrong here? I'd love some input from anyone who has been burned using this line of thinking.

And now, back to the important stuff.... "spider man, spider man, does whatever a spider..."

ssh password versus passphrase

2008-03-27T15:32:00.002-07:00

From the files of using the muscles in the anus to think instead of those within the cranium...

We recently had our CVS repository moved. The notice was accompanied by some instructions for how to go about creating a new key for authentication.

The process for generating those keys involved using a web tool which forced one man's security religion into law on everyone unfortunate enough to be forced to use the tool. Specifically, it forced using a passphrase--and one which consisted of a long string of inane characters, numbers, and marks (which of course aren't a part of my natural password creation algorithm...which is where I started getting annoyed). So I went through it... got my files for this end of each future transaction as well as a notice that I'd need to wait for the key to get synced to the box I'd be hitting for authentication.

A day later, I get notice it's there and I'm good to go again. Mind you, "good to go" == "almost where you were before this mess started". Not in a better place, not faster, not happier, but simply "almost back to where you were before we did this to you".

So of course I try to log in and get back to work. Of course until I get my keys configured I'm faced with a password prompt... not once, in order to confirm that its me and I'm authorized to access this box, but rather with every single command that runs against this new repository location.

Better still, when I get my keys configured... instead of typing my ridiculously untypeable password, I get to type my ridiculously untypeable passphrase.

After a day of this I've typed my password hundreds of times now. But thankfully I'm safer from... from, well, I'm not sure who from. The admins that set this up... I doubt it. And for my company, I'm safer only at the cost of productivity which we all know is overrated (*sarcasm*).

So, my new favorite command line sequence is:
>cvs update -dir-
(password prompt... immediately followed by...)

>cvs diff -file-
(...um, password prompt again... followed by...)

>cvs commit -file-
(...um, password prompt again, again...yip it's still me. Yeah, I'm safe!)

And of course it's evil (and now pointless) counterpart:
>cvs update -dir-
(even worse passphrase prompt... immediately followed by...)

>cvs diff -file-
(...um, passphrase prompt again... followed by...)

>cvs commit -file-
(...um, assphrase prompt again...yip it's still me, and only slightly more pissed off than I was 200 characters ago. Yeah, I'm safe!)

So I ask, what the hell are keys for again?!

Please soup nazi, explain to me how my thinking is not so good here. I'll be over here rolling for cast magic missile.

Pedigree isn't just for Dogs anymore

2008-02-15T18:40:00.001-07:00

Is it just me or does it seem that a greater pedigree just ensures a greater level of stupidity? I remember joking as a child that PhD meant "press here dummy", but I've come to realize in the case of technology officers that it means "point higher Dilbert".

Weak and Strong User Interest -- Characterizing AB testing for the masses

2008-01-21T04:34:00.000-07:00

Having racked up nearly a decade of online marketing related experience I realize that I've had to create some lingo which I use to help business and technical folks primarily with a soft landing into our efforts on the marketing front.

While I doubt the concepts being expressed are patently new, I find that I'm having considerable difficultly finding them characterized as such. Perhaps this is because I disdain traditional educational sources (having felt alienated by them) or perhaps its something else. Either way, finding a seat at the table sans traditional education credentials is the challenge of any self-professed pretender to the moniker "intellectual". Ultimately experience and ability win in the end, but getting the other monkeys to listen in the mean time can be maddening.

Whatever the case here goes...

In my involvement with marketing I've been called on to implement text blurbs and graphical creative that will be shown to users in the hopes of enticing them into a paid signup or upgrade, or sometimes just in sharing additional information with us in order to better serve them.

On the web this creative takes the form of a hyper link--the veritable backbone of the Internet since it's often attributed as it's most compelling value addition to the life of an information consumer.

From the perspective of tracking the performance of a hyper link campaign, you need a few key performance indicators. Those metrics are essentially page views, or impressions. Click-throughs. And, conversions. Some folks also lump revenue in with conversions as a metric.

Further complicating the effort is split testing, or AB or multi-variate testing if you prefer. This effort hypothesizes that one of "n" creatives or offers will appeal better than it's counterparts. To determine which it is, we need to normalize for other variables such as time of day, day of week, the weather, localization factors, etc. The simplest way to do this is to serve all of the tests at the same time, in equal proportions. This means you'll show the different tests to the same number of people and use their responses to gauge which was most favored.

The "terms" (phrases really) I think I'm coining are "weak user interest" and "strong user interest". And they play out after the split test or simple creative is shown to users.

I define "weak user interest" as a user voting in the form of a click-through. Essentially if you trust that a click means something, you could basically be saying that by clicking, a user is voting for a message or offer shown in a creative.

Further, "strong user interest" is a formerly "weakly interested" user completing the conversion process.

In a value pyramid, at the base you have viewing the creative--essentially worth nothing from the standpoint of measuring a specific user's interest. Above that is a click, the least expensive form of voting that we can observe--or weak user interest, since it requires a weak investment, possibly only that of curiosity. Above that is a completed sale, or conversion event--strong user interest in that the user survived the variables and resistance (such as requirement of a payment method) and emerged successfully.

Why bother with the difference?

Well, consider a scenario...

We wanted to test if a 10% discount performed as well as a 20% discount. So we showed half of our traffic over the course of a week the 10% offer and the other half the 20% offer.

Click-throughs on both were surprising similar. I say surprisingly because you would expect intuitively that 20% would be more attractive to a given user than 10%.

However, the conversions on the 20% split were lower than those on the 10%. To the intuitive observer, this should have been the reverse.

So what was happening?

Well, as it turns out, other variables in the conversion process actually worked against the 20% case resulting in fewer of them successfully completing a conversion.

Performing a post mortem on the test based solely on the conversion metric would have resulted in a marketing decision that was not representative of the user population against which it was tested. Instead, the billing variables introduced between the click-through and the successful conversion had soured the test.

By seeing that the populations were responding similarly in terms of voting, we investigated further and determined the problem. Therefore, measuring and reporting the entry and exit of steps ultimately culminating in a conversion help shed light on the whether the conversion metric is a true gauge of user interest, or rather a symptom of a process flaw. When the momentum begun with the expression of weak user interest isn't carried through into a state of strong user interest it can be manifesting a phenomenon outside of the marketing effort all together. Further if you choose to erroneously hold the marketing department accountable for flaws in your systems or billing support you'll likely never have the iterative experience result in a gelling of understanding of user behaviors and you'll never be able to fully optimize your marketing bang for the buck.

As such characterizing weak and strong user interest can aid in the process of learning user preferences and distinguishing them from other factors such as that of opacity illustrated in my example.

I'd love your informed feedback. Is this approach useful or have I slept through a pertinent lesson?

Favorite Links

2007-12-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, this guy nailed it. For anyone looking for must-reads in learning to improve your craft as a programmer, you should read this post. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/12/codes-worst-enemy.html

Blocking AdBlock

2007-11-15T01:59:00.000-07:00

I've been asked for suggestions for how one might go about blocking the AdBlock add-on/plug-in from working in Firefox.

My first reaction, (as an advocate of the people... oh boy, representin' for the peeps, just what theys need, another techno insomniac confusing social networking with the actual concept behind the word "social"), er, as I was saying, my first reaction is "POWER TO THE PEOPLE!". Let's face it, if ads weren't so damned offensive, and more importantly, intrusive, slow, uninspiring, sleazy, annoying, etc, etc, this wouldn't even be an issue. So all you marketing/ad-tech sphincters out there, shame on you for putting us all in this predicament in the first place! This is what happens when "the market" rises against you and adopts a variant on the spank-a-logical protocol! (Oh and P.S., You suck!)

OK, then after popping a Valium and digging into my vast knowledge of front end web development techniques (wow, the annoying sarcasm runs deep in this one--who wounded you so, oh jaded chum....p) it seems to me that perhaps a campaign of punishment might be poised to elicit the most effective response.

Here goes:

0. (Look Ma I'm zero indexing!) Create a script in a directory under the host you are serving your page from. This can be a client-side script, such as JavaScript (um, that's me giving subtle props to you poor schleps that think MS proprietary (or hell, ANY proprietary) "alternatives" qualify as client-side scripting at all... doh, did I just type that out loud).

Said script will need to set a session cookie, from the host your content lives on (so as to avoid cross-domain security issues). It should probably return nothing visible, just set the cookie and be done with it. It's most likely this puppy is gonna need to get called into a remote iframe not intended to be viewed by the ...er, viewing public.

1. Assuming your ad server is centralized on a "remote" domain and done so in order to facilitate ad serving across multiple domains, blogs, etc., you'll need to incorporate a means of obtaining the caller's domain. This can be done by adding a parameter to the query string requesting the ad from your source, or it could be trapped for in the referrer, (or "REFERER" for the sp3lling challenged amongst us, I call them sysadmins, but that generally gets me mysterious punitive restricted access in shells and/or loss of sudo rights, so I inevitably retract).

Note: If you pass the referring domain via query string parameter, you'll need to parse on the other end, so if you can use the built in referrer constructs in JavaScript that's a nice simplification.

2. When you create a new ad placement in your ad server, include a line of JavaScript to callback to the cookie setter script described above. Note: It's important that the cookie get set on the domain the ads are getting called from.

3. You need an additional line of script in your calling page to "evaluate" the cookie AFTER the ads have loaded. This can be a little tricky. I believe you can actually trap for the onload event, but if you belong to the "AJAX" generation... wow, what a load of crap, back in my day... er, nevermind... trapping for onload most likely won't work for you AJAX folks (or your forebears that use other methodologies for asynchronously including content).

For example, if you are calling your ads in via iframes particularly in a post-load scenario--which all "good", well "grey good" since it's still not really "good", banner serve scenarios do in order to allow the UI to be rendered and operable to the user prior to making the calls to your slugly (slow + ugly) remote ad server which ...holy cow... can take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to come back, which they eventually do, mostly. (Yip, sometimes they never come back... oh I said it!) Anyway, taking this approach can greatly improve UX and if you can't abandon ads as a monetization scheme all together, I highly recommend going a post load route.

As I was saying, in certain cases when using iframes, ajax, or even post-load + DHTML techniques to bring in ads, the onload event will fire before the remote ad is called in... meaning you can't use onload by itself to trigger a check for the existence of the cookie.

I suspect the most "reliable" (and I use the term as one does for virtually anything remotely complicated in the realm of web development) approach to ascertaining whether the "good to go" cookie has been set by the remote script is to assume a time to live of 5-10 seconds after onload (you'll see why evil marketing people everywhere love this technique in a minute). Check each second while the TTL is in effect to see if the cookie has been set. If it has, cancel the TTL and life is good... this means your ads were called in and your callback mechanism functioned to confirm it¹.

4. However, if after the TTL expires the cookie isn't set, then... (here's the evil part) bounce the location.href to http://adblockplus.org/.

The reasoning goes as follows: The visitor has obtained a plug-in from these folks that is designed to alter the experience of the user. By tantalizing a reader who is using this plug-in with a brief exposure to the content they were presumably after you create an angry customer. However, the customer doesn't get angry until he or she is viewing the adblock page pitching the virtue of using the plug-in. Yes, it's true, it's bad user experience... and I am, and always intend to be, a user advocate. It just seems to me in this scenario the user has changed the rules by being tricked into colluding with their new "preferred" partner--the adblock folks. It seems only fitting then to let the adblock folks themselves remind the user why they are unable to access the information they were after.

If this is too Machiavellian then perhaps you're on the wrong Internet. (Coming soon to an Internet near you, IPv6 and goodness for all. Super-man will be signing autographs in the foyer, ...for $25 bucks a pop.) Or, perhaps you can choose to do something else with folks failing the cookie check.

For the rest, peace out.

P.S. I'd very much like to entertain your suggestions for simplifying this, or what about it doesn't work, so on so forth. Yes, yes, what if they don't have cookies, or their browser doesn't support them. What if they're using lynx or God forbid, wget... perhaps worse still Safari (woah, I'm just kidding!). Anyway, I'd love your input.

Notes:

1. Well, so there's an additional caveat here. Since much of the ad code that gets cut/pasted into ad servers actually creates a call to yet another remote domain it's still possible that--that domain may be blocked. So, your check served to validate one step of the complicated journey home, but may not speak to the next leg which exists outside of it's scope. This could be overcome by a similar check between these end points, however at this point you are reliant on folks at CJ, LinkShare, or any number of other venues... and at least in my experience, they don't tend to be able to help at this level. Perhaps I just don't know the correct folks.

Alternative Transportation

2007-11-11T04:32:00.000-07:00

Ivan needs sleep. But since that's not gonna happen, let's crack open his head, pour out some of the dream matter, and play in the goo--it's for fun¹.

Stuck in traffic on the way to work the other day I lapsed into fantasy. Not the kind where beautiful women instinctively flock to me like the salmon of Capistrano²... ewe. (Sorry honey, I love you... uh, you, complete me³.) No, rather the kind where you fantasize about beaming into work, or better still the local Starbucks. Though a nerd I am, even I don't linger in the fantasy of matter and energy being interchangeable for purposes of saving money on a scene involving the ground, a spaceship, actors, and witty dialog to sew it all together. "Never surrender, ...to infinity!"⁴ Ugh, this incorrect reference thing is getting out of hand, how now to put down Frankenstein's monster? On an up note, computers will never be able to take over the world⁵ as long as incorrect references permeate human discourse, they are just too damn confusing! But I digress from my digress...ion.

So, stuck in traffic, not fantasizing about women, not fantasizing about a Star Trek style transporter, I was fantasizing about alternatives to my car, and more importantly to being stuck in a metal clad sea of humanity probably entertaining final solutions of their own... sorry, that's a terrible reference.

For a moment I was considering flying alternatives. Since I disdain anyone that can fuel a private jet--and actually does, a plane is out. Besides, as a minion serving capitalist dogs, I don't have property holdings with sufficient expanse to accommodate the technologies available to those bloodsuckers anyway, perhaps the term "runway" is more familiar to those less-jaded amongst us.

That could leave vertical take-off as an option. However, the energy expenditure required for vertical take-off craft of today is wholly unacceptable in my mind. Besides, all the governmental beauracracy I'd have to endur, and more importantly pay, and perhaps pay under the table as well completely defeats my objective to "do good". What kind of hypocrit dreams of the destruction of poor efficiancy systems when they are subsidizing one?, I'd have to be some kind of er, hypocrit.

That might still leave lighter than air vertical take-off. I realize however that I don't understand the calculations necessary to create a container for such an effort. Further, ascend and descend functions would probably require the onboard creation of lighter than air, um, stuff. And the expulsion of said stuff into the ecosystem, which may have unacceptable repurcussions as well.

Further, since the atmosphere is unpredictable (at least to the mind of a computer programmer stuck in traffic not fantasizing about women) there remain the problems of generating and controlling lateral movement, not getting blown off-course to Siberia by the prevailing winds, not getting crashed into by other air traffic, not banging into powerlines or mini tributes to the tower of babel, and of course not getting struck by lightning or pooped on by birds or meteors. An overwhelming array of villians to be sure.

This is the point at which I began considering a story circulated through the ranks of those of a certain "christian" persuasion that raised me ...after the wolves gave up. Since I'm a devout skeptic, I hardly offer these as scientific principa-do-hickees, but as long as I've mentioned the Star Trek transporter system I figure fantasy isn't off the table (ouch that's gonna hurt in the morning).

I've heard it expressed that *gulp* angels, or whatever you want to call "them"--aliens, figments of an over active imagination, or a desperate need for life beyond the cruel finality of death; or simply what I'll call them, a hypothetical variable named "N".

As I was saying, I've heard it expressed that "N" travels on a beam of light. Oy vey. Yet, the idea is interesting. As a student of well something--science, science fiction, Harvard, monkey island, whatever ...it seems that there is a serious problem we humans have to overcome. If we're going to branch out into the universe (ugh, as long as I'm going off the deep end I might as well pick up a loaf of bread on my way down) we need to be able to move faster. Or perhaps smarter--if you buy into the worm hole idea⁷.

Since there's no basis in fact for how one might do this, it's basically as easily dismissed as the matter-to-energy transporter, but let's face it... we need some movement along one of these lines if we're ever going to achieve the break-through that must come if we're going to solve this problem. And if getting me to the office with a savings of fifteen minutes is a side effect then sign me up!

At this point, I managed to sneak out onto the off ramp. Left with the idea that creating a dirigible is probably just a problematic as the airplane scenario.

It seems a desirable solution would have these properties:

1. No or at least low reliance on existing infrastructures--particularly roads. And, I'll throw in petroleum here as well.

2. Feasible given current technology. This however may be a critical flaw... too often I think we allow the internal pragmatist to guide us in to compromise to accommodate not pushing ourselves to invent new--radically divergent innovations. (Perhaps I've just developed an allergy to my own medicine--at work I favor leveraging existing code, extending existing/mature process and technology, and routinely prescribe ringing out additional droplets from current products and marketing offers. But hey, this is about not sleeping and fantasizing about alternative transportation methodologies, so screw guilt!)

3. Less expensive.

4. Convenient.

5. Sustainable.

6. Non-destructive. (I guess that means the internal combustion engine might be off the table.)

And now that I've basically gone nowhere... until my next insomniatic episode, (or acid trip), peace out.

And the references...

1. "It's for fun" -Strong Bad, Home star runner

2. Dumb and Dumber

3. Jerry McGuire

4. An amalgamation. A concept from Star Trek--and the real-world reason for it's "invention" (saving money on what would have been a campy Flash Gordon-like scene involving wires or perhaps poor matte work assuming that was even available at the time). Star Wars--Episode III (the disdain toward poor dialog--among other factors--ruining what might otherwise have been the Tristan and Isolde of science fiction). A nod to Galaxy Quest for it's brilliant turning-inside-out of the behind-the-scenes of Star Trek. And, Toy Story... I've been in a Tim Allen kick recently, he's delightful⁶.

5. A convoluted reference to the idea behind the Matrix, as I understand it.

6. (Doh, a reference in a reference.) "He's delightful" is a reference Bart Simpson makes to Billy Crystal regarding his hosting of the Emmy's or some meaningless awards show where a bunch of monkeys pretend they belong to our species.

7. Uh, the worm hole idea as I understand it is: Instead of going faster, you go shorter... Dune's concept of interplanetary travel is my favorite example currently which is basically that you consider point A, and point B--and then you make the space between them go to zero. Voila, "there you are"⁸.

8. (Another reference in a reference.) A shortening of the quote "Just remember, where ever you go, there you are." attributed to Buckaroo Banzai.

Pidgin Sucks!

2007-11-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

Wow, I feel like a jerk for saying this, but Pidgin sucks! I wasn't hesitant at first when trying to update GAIM to find that Pidgin was it's "wave of the future", but a day later--I'm uninstalling the damn thing and switching to a different client... after years of loyalty!

The reason?, when you hit a key like backspace or the up or down arrow while chatting, the speaker (which isn't a part of the volume controls your OS operates) gets chirped. Not a warm fuzzy chirp like a chic makes, but a frigging honk from hell, loud enough to make you actually sh#t your pants. Not once mind you, but every time your spastic fingers hit "the wrong" key.

I hunted for a solution and found suggestions ranging from "it's not our fault", to reprogram your registry, to switch to a different operating system. Come on folks, I know you disdain social functionality in all their tedious forms but on behalf of the human race, "pull your collective heads out".

So, while I would normal applaud the volunteer programming community that gives us so much awesome stuff, on this day I can only remark, "go to hell a-holes"! I'm going down the road.

Surviving a recession

2007-10-31T23:26:00.000-07:00

Having been only academically aware of the concept of recession, concerns of a coming recession finally succeeded in poking through the tissue paper walls surrounding the living space in my mind... and now I find these concerns muddying up my carpet and my couch. My lack of understanding regarding the dynamics of recession bring into focus for me the idea that I need direction. At such times my propensity to run-off at the mouth (fingers) offers an opportunity to 1) remove all doubt that I am a fool, and 2) hopefully provide a path to soldier through the gaining of a functional understanding... er, so here goes.

What is the tipping point for a recession?

What is the most prudent course for weathering a recession?

Thinking out loud, and mismatching pieces of the puzzle during the exploration...

If the fed lowers key interest rates, that's done to make debt more attractive to business, correct? (As well as to consumers who's paychecks come from said debt fueled businesses, in part. Thus providing ways and means to perpetuate a debt ecology.)

Because debt is now more attractive to folks in search of a loan but who wouldn't shakle themselves at the higher previous interest rate, they extend themselves--going (further) into debt.

On the other end of the ecology, investors who might otherwise use investment instruments tied more directly to debt given out at the previously higher interest rate now find themselves unhappy with the lower prospects for returns thus withdraw their money (or don't "re-up" once their debt related investments mature) and instead redeploy into stocks which while more risky offer the potential for now more compelling returns.

Recession happens when consumers of debt cannot be enticed into extending themselves, accurate?

The economy stalls during such periods--and that's the defining state that is "recession", correct?

As a consumer, is being in debt during a recession more or less attractive if the primary means by which recession is addressed from a policy standpoint is to reduce the key interest rates? Wouldn't at some point debt be made so attractive that no wo/man could resist? Assuming the pressures of such a scenario are absorbed elsewhere in the ecology, where exactly do they emerge?

Tracking Ajax Applications

2007-09-24T00:14:00.000-07:00

Having been a student of the technologies that had wonder-twin activated into what the collective "we" now know as Ajax, I am curious for some of the more sticky answers to topics few seem to ask about.

I'll leave browser caching issues, erratic server response, and all that jazz hiding under the rug on this go, but the one that I'm curious about is tracking.

I love hearing interviewees get excited about which Ajax framework they love best (kinda reminds me of the browser wars days... damn we're a conflict seeking species aren't we). Having come from the "client-side application programming" world, I particularly love to hear web programmers (curiously, a specific breed of web programmer that is closer to UI than the typical server side CGI programmers I work with most consistently, and perhaps therein lies part of my problem, but I digress). I love to hear that Ajax is working to bridge the gap between traditional web programming and client-side programming worlds. (Never mind all the nasty security rules and OS interfaces that aren't even on the table yet, except in proprietary subsets of "JScript", Flash, and various other conspiracies to "own" the Web via it's defacto standards landscape... er, stay on target.) I applaud the ideal expressed, but I'm concerned the "car" is being driven by folks that don't see enough of the end game to accommodate a functional business model's emergence... not for the big guys from corporate subsidy land (uh, last I heard Google doesn't make it's money from its awesome search suggest feature, or even it's online spreadsheet capability)... I mean the ma & paps on the web, the small and giant alike that want the coolism of Ajax, but that can't connect the dots between coolism and cold hard cash.

Welp, having played in this space for years now, (along with many others of like mind though perhaps currently un-united) I think there is one key piece of technology that needs to be factored in, in order to provide that critical element... the connection of the dots between technology and revenue. Yip, many folks have heard of it, in myth and legend, it's called tracking.

The challenge then is one of suggestions for how tracking can be implemented in an Ajax application that does most or all of its data shuttling behind the scenes, replacing the traditional step based models with a glorious charcoal smudge where ambiguity replaces distinction in all but the sweet-ass looking UI.

I open the floor... anybody out there?

2007-09-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

I for one was grateful to Jerry Lewis for his recent apology to GLAAD for providing them with some much desired air time. It's a tribute to a man who does so much to help those with such a debilitating condition, as Muscular Dystrophy. Thank you Jerry, hero of mankind, nice man, ...nice science man. You are a gem, a humorous, hard gem.

However, I was immediately offended at the inflammatory remarks leveled against the much beloved Slurpee. Deriding that great hot-day-mitigation device with the insulting vernacular, "slur". "It was entirely uncalled for," said someone who believed in something. "I demand an apology from GLAAD for this affront to that great American institution" she went on to say.

2007-08-18T04:51:00.000-07:00

Want to play a game of hangman? Here's a cool JavaScript game from hangman.bappy.com. Enjoy!

Play Hangman