Kurt's Thoughts

Google Blackmail: “Either you sign up for Google Plus or we release all the private information we know about you.”

Nothing better or funnier than the truth.  The rapid fire, no holds barred truth.

Taken from:
http://www.fastcocreate.com/3023400/this-new-coke-ad-totally-captures-the-reality-of-early-parenthood

Everyone agrees that there’s a shortage of next-generation console units to buy, right?  Demand is outpacing supply, right?  There’s a limited number of consoles for each platform whether it’s Xbox One or Playstation 4.  It’s a good bet that the numbers are roughly the same given that both companies launched their consoles around roughly the same time, (PS4 had a 1 week longer) have the same manufacturing capabilities, and are shipping units as fast as they can make them.

In fact, let’s just say hypothetically, each company manufactured 2,000,000 units, give or take 300,000.

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS AND LOOKING SILLY
So along comes a media flack that announces:

“Well, Microsoft had to ship Xbox One in 9 countries to make their 1st million units sold, whereas Sony shipped PS4 in only the US to sell their 1st million.  Clearly, Sony’s doing got better momentum & I expect them to grow faster once they are able to generate more supply.”

Excuse me, but what difference does it make what country or countries the sales come from?

Again, there were a limited, finite number of consoles available worldwide & both Microsoft & Sony sold out of the units they had available after week one.  The only difference was where each company shipped the units they had manufactured.  Sure Microsoft could have focused all their sales in the US by making the Xbox One only available in the US and ignoring Europe, but instead it made units available in 9 countries.  This was done likely with the knowledge that Xbox fans in the US would still purchase consoles later, if they couldn’t get one at launch.

A few thoughts on this:

1. RESPECT FOR EUROPE
   Those 8 other countries gamers ought to be thanking Microsoft for not ignoring them like Sony did on day one.  This of course wasn’t entirely altruistic.  Having a worldwide launch helped jumpstart Xbox One in markets in which it wasn’t as strong as competitors.
2. FOCUSING ON GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES
   A worldwide launch generates more buzz that a US-only one.  One might also say that given the dominant strength that the Xbox brand has in the US, the US isn’t the place for Xbox to focus their efforts, knowing that it would do exceptionally well locally anyway. 
3. WHERE THE CONSOLES ARE SOLD DOESN’T MATTER
   Anyone pointing out North America sales versus European sales are morons.  The only thing these figures tell us is how many units each company shipped to those geographies – that’s all.  Each company is selling out of all stock on hand worldwide.
4. PS4: 33% LONGER TIME IN MARKET
   Some like highlight that Playstation 4 has sold more consoles to date, forgetting that Xbox One has been in market for only 3 weeks as of 12/14/13 while Playstation 4 has been in market 4 weeks.  33% longer.  33% more manufactured units.  33% retail sales.
5. OUTSELLING PS4 WEEKLY
   No one is mentioning that Xbox One is selling more units per week worldwide than Playstation 4.  In other words, there’s more Xbox One’s being manufactured that Playstation 4s and those units are getting shipped and sold to people now, capturing early marketshare.  Now, this is a thought worth noting because how do you figure this is possible if the manufacturing capacities are the same between Sony & Microsoft?

   The answer lies in how the consoles were designed.

ELIMINATING THE MEMORY AVAILABILITY BOTTLENECK
One of the things that the Xbox One team did was they chose to use current generation RAM/memory a.k.a. DDR3, instead of the rarer, more difficult to manufacture GDDR5.  This eliminated a significant potential manufacturing bottleneck for Xbox One:  Instead of being constrained to the supply of GDDR5 memory available in the world, (again, GDDR5 is much more difficult to manufacture in volume while providing arguable performance benefit for games) Xbox One would be able to build more consoles and get them to market quicker (by using more readily available DDR3) than consoles that would otherwise require DDR5 like PlayStation 4.

HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF
Note that this was a lesson learned by Microsoft from the Nintendo Wii.  To this day people often forget that the winner of the last generation console wars at least on console sales, was the Nintendo Wii, selling more consoles than Sony & Microsoft combined due it’s ability to manufacture systems simply by using last gen, readily available components & parts.

Microsoft didn’t go nearly the same lengths that Nintendo did on the Wii with the Xbox One.  While it does have a state-of-the-art 8 core CPU & next gen GPU along with 8GB of RAM, 500GB of storage, Ethernet port, & Blu-ray Drive, it’s usage of DDR3 provides a manufacturing capacity edge that allows Microsoft to manufacture more consoles without being constrained by worldwide memory yields of the newer memory.

The bottom line of all of this however is that we really won’t know solidly which console comes out ahead until at least a few quarters have passed.  By then we’ll have seen whether Microsoft’s strategy of:

• Distributing consoles outside of the US early on
• Tooling its design for early console availability
• Creating an entertainment console with TV integration
• Backending Xbox One with a massive number of cloud services
• Engineering Kinect 2 as a essential part of the console

…will have paid off.

With CES coming up, it seemed like a good time to write up my annual post about taxicab longhauling.

I love Las Vegas but something that always bugs me is getting longhauled (being taken extra long routes just to increase cab fare) by unscrupulous cabbies to increase their total fares & meet the company’s expected quotas.  It’s something that bothers me because I would rather let a cabbie – my service provider – keep the change from a $20 bill then get longhauled and have the taxi company take all my money… who frankly, I couldn’t care less about.  In fact, longhauling reached epidemic proportions in 2013, so much so that people started writing about it:

• Las Vegas Taxis Overcharged Tourists $15M To Airport, Audit Finds
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/vegas-taxis-overcharge-tourists_n_3134051.html

FOLLOW THE MONEY!
So the question I wondered was:

• “Can a person determine what cab companies are most likely to charge, on average, more for a ride?”

Well, it turns out that the Nevada Taxicab Authority keeps public records of taxicab company revenues in multiple categories including:

• Per trip
• Per shift
• Per medallion

And this is where it gets interesting and maybe even obvious.  But I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. 

Here’s a snapshot of each cab company’s “Revenues per Trip” for October 2013, i.e. “Who makes the most money per trip on average?”  In particular, look at the top 3:  (Note: Before you make the assumption about “Deluxe” & “A-Cab”, keep in mind that if you are a tourist on the Vegas strip or arriving at McCarran Intl, you will never see these taxis because they don’t service tourist areas like the Las Vegas strip.  They only service Vegas locals & as a result, their fares tend drive farther & cost more.)

For a more visual comparison, here’s a chart:
(I’ve highlighted A-Cab & Deluxe’s averages since they are for all intents & purposes, not relevant to Vegas tourists visiting the strip)

So now take a look at the top 3 companies on this snapshot of “Revenues per Shift”, i.e. “Who’s cabbies make the most money on fares?”:

Again, for a visual comparison:

Now take a look at the top 3 companies on this snapshot of the “Revenues per Medallion”, i.e. “Who’s cabs are driven the hardest to make the most money?”:

And the chart:

Noticing a pattern?  Uncanny isn’t it?

If so, the next time you’re about to enter a cab in Vegas… y’might want to look at the name on the side of the cab and ask yourself, “Am I about to be taken for a ride?”

Further information:

• Monthly Revenue Statistics of each Taxicab Company (And other facts)
  http://taxi.nv.gov/About_Us/ALL/Statistics/ 
• Longhauling Permit Number Database
  http://taxi.nv.gov/Driver_Info/Longhauling/
• Taxi Complaint Online Form
  http://taxi.nv.gov/Complaints/complaint_form/Complaint/Incident_Affidavit/
• Approximate Fares from McCarron Intl Airport to Strip Hotels
  http://taxi.nv.gov/Rider_Info/Approximate_Minimum_Rates_-_McCarran_Airport_to_Las_Vegas_Strip_Hotels/

Wow.  Now this is a whopper of a story.

Ironically, I got this from an AMA that Jon Lovitz did on Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qktgf/
actor_comedian_jon_lovitz_youd_know_me_as_the/cddsuar

OMG. This is so awesomely true. This is my life. This is my GODDAMNED LIFE.

Princess Leia is hot.

Three words:  Star Wars Kid.

Y’know the bit is gonna be good when the first line he utters is:

“Y’know what’s amazing to me?  You can name your kid anything you want.  Isn’t that incredible?  There are NO LAWS.  There should be a COUPLE OF LAWS?”

Every year, I say to myself, “This is SO MEAN.”  Then I laugh my ass off. 

F-ckin’ Kimmel.

This is what I perceive as to be the 5 phases of Windows 8 hate.  It’s most commonly seen by self-described IT professionals & folks that love saying, “I’ve been in the PC industry for 25 yearsblahblahblah”.  Interestingly, it’s also common for these exact same people to declare that they firmly agree that:

• Mobile technologies – specifically phones & tablets – are the future direction of the computing industry
• Seamless compatibility & integration with existing IT infrastructures is absolutely key to transitioning to any new technology
• Hardware refresh cycles for businesses are growing from 3 years to as much as 7 years; companies can’t afford to buy new devices as frequently

So never mind that Windows 8.1 empowers users to provide both a desktop & mobile interface without

1. INDIGNANCE:
   “OMG-I-can’t-deal-WTF-how-can-full-screen-apps-be-better-startbuttonstartbuttonstartbutton-you-will-never-get-me-to-use-this-ever-I-won’t-I-won’t-I-won’t-WinXP-for-liiiiiiiife!”
2. FURY:
   “Dumb-assed-Microsoft-you’re-going-down-in-flames-can’t-innovate-forcing-customers-to-use-your-unholy-bastard-child-metro-screw-you-I’m-gonna-go-buy-a-Mac-replace-everything-with-Linux-from-my-parent’s-basement-I-stab-at-theeeee!”
3. RESIGNATION:
   “Dude-whatever-I-just-install-Start8-ClassicShell-RetroUI-and-it’s-the-same-damn-thing-as-Windows-7-anyway-I-never-go-into-that-Start-Page-thing-on-my-desktop-don’t-know-why-anyone-would-stupid-metro-no-I-don’t-own-a-tablet-why-do-you-ask?”
4. DISCOVERY:
   “Huh-this-metro-thing-isn’t-half-bad-on-my-tablet-desktop-is-great-for-the-office-but-touch-interface-metro-makes-sense-for-anything-away-from-my-desk-only-problem-is-where-are-the-apps?”
5. IMPATIENCE:
   “Where’s-the-metro-version-of-Outlook-Photoshop-Peoplesoft-iTunes-Premiere-VegasVideo-dammit-touch-doesn’t-work-on-any-of-these-PoS-apps-iOS-versions-suck-c’mon-Microsoft-you’re-totally-blowing-it-why-can’t-you-get-them-to-build-faster-these-metro-hating-ISVs-don’t-get-mobile-innovation!”

With that being said, here’s a nice article from Mashable about the new capabilities of Windows 8.1 that’s a good read:

• Windows 8.1: Everything You Need to Know
  http://mashable.com/2013/05/30/windows-8-1-features/

In case you don’t know what “linkbaiting” is, here’s an old explanation of how it’s done by the master himself, John C. Dvorak. If you’re aware of the concept of how linkbaiting is executed, it becomes very obvious when it’s being done & what news outlets are advertising whores & otherwise lousy sources for news.

A tell-tale sign of linkbaiting are things like “Top 10 Lists”, Slideshows that require you to clickthrough & refresh the page, etc.

Here’s how you’re being manipulated.

Shout out to Computerworld, Business Insider, Betanews, PCWorld, Inquirer, Register.co.uk, InfoWorld, and Redmond Mag.

If you know me, you know I’m serious.  Just watch the video & you’ll know why.  I’m saving this to my phone to watch when I need a spiritual pick me up or something to remind me… that technology & all this other stuff I do isn’t that important.

Taken from the Clean Food Living Community on Facebook:

1. Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.

2. Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!…

3. Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.

4. Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.

5. To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.

6. For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.

7. Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.

8. Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yummm!

9. Reheat Pizza
Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

10. Easy Deviled Eggs
Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.

11. Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.

12. Reheating refrigerated bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

13. Newspaper weeds away
Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers, put layers around the plants overlapping as you go. Cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.

14. Broken Glass
Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can’t see easily.

15. No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

16. Squirrel Away!
To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it.

17. Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

18. Reducing Static Cling
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and … guess what! … static is gone.

19. Measuring Cups
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don’t dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out. (Or spray the measuring cup or spoon with Pam before using)

20. Foggy Windshield?
Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!

21. Re-opening envelopes
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.

22. Conditioner
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It’s cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It’s also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn’t like when you tried it in your hair.

23. Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2′ with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

24. Get Rid of Ants
Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it ‘home,’ can’t digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

25. Dryer Filter
Even if you are very diligent about cleaning the lint filter in your dryer it still may be causing you a problem. If you use dryer sheets a waxy build up could be accumulating on the filter causing your dryer to over heat. The solution to this is to clean your filter with with a toothbrush and hot soapy water every 6 months.

Recently, a certain information source – which I will not mention because I’m increasingly finding them unworthy of my recommendation or attention or patronage – brought the topic of the ethics (or lack thereof) of today’s pet crematoriums to the forefront.

BACKGROUND: BAD ETHICS IN PET CREMATION
The net-net is that in the pet cremation industry, there’s apparently extremely few regulations and like any other business, drives out competition by cutting costs. 

The problem is that the way they cut costs is very often by NOT RETURNING YOUR DECEASED PET’S ASHES TO YOU but instead providing a random animal’s ashes in an urn, knowing you’ll never likely suspect otherwise… much less be able to prove otherwise.

My best friend Sheepa passed away two years ago.  I still talk to him often on our mantle & I still get inconsolably upset when I think about his passing for too long.  So you’ll understand why the mere thought that someone potentially SCREWED ME & MY OL’ PAL  during such a vulnerable time had me going through a spectrum of uncontrolled, unrelenting emotions:

1. Horror.  Sheer fear & unadulterated terror.  What if?  OMG.  WTF… what if?
2. Depression.  A vast emptiness enveloped me with tears streaming down my face.  The absolute worst sadness one can feel.  How could anyone be so cruel?
3. Rage.  Unholy, blinding anger.  Throwing objects.  Blood boiling.  As in, I’m-gonna-go-fuckin’-take-someone-down.
4. Focus.  Sudden extremely clarity in what I needed to do.

I simply couldn’t escape the thought that the crematory that I had Sheepa cremated at “wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be”… purely because of one report I heard.  Irrational as it sounds, it’s such a meaningful thing for me that I needed something to help me calm down.

MY RESEARCH
This was REALLY important to me for whatever reason – having personal confidence in knowing that Sheepa’s remains hadn’t been mishandled.  My question simply came down to, “How reputable were these folks that I used?”  I admittedly was so destroyed by Sheepa’s passing that I left the entire process to our veterinarian – who I assure you has never steered us wrong, however given the information I’d heard about the reported corruption in the pet cremation business, I started to doubt even his strong recommendation.

I pulled out my old records and I dug into the outfit that did Sheepa’s cremation.  And after some digging & referencing, it turns out… that it sounds like these folks are on the up-and-up, i.e. they’re honest & trustworthy – thank God. 

Here’s why I think so:

1. NEVER GOT CONTACTED FOR AN UPSELL
   I clearly remembered that I never, ever, EVER got contacted by the crematory about anything at all, much less for an upsell, despite their having all my information.  They took all the details I provided my vet, I paid them, they delivered his ashes.  That’s it.
   
2. PRIVATE CREMATIONS ONLY
   This was interesting:  I didn’t realize that the company I went through did ONLY private cremations.  They never do multiple cremations at the same time in a single unit like many do.  There’s no possibility of ever “mixing up” your animal’s ashes since it’s the only one in the cremation unit.  One in – one out.  That’s it.
   
3. VIEW THE ENTIRE PROCESS
   They permit the deceased’s caretakers to observe the entire process end-to-end:  You can bring your pet to the crematory & have the body cremated in front of you to guarantee with your own eyes that it’s your animal’s remains throughout the entire process.  They schedule appointments for this throughout the week just to provide confidence & comfort to those in mourning.

It’s this LAST bullet that made me feel a lot better.  I didn’t know that this was possible, although there’s a part of me that thinks that our vet might have brought this up but I was too much of a blubbering mess to consider it as an option.

In any case, I feel confident now that the service I used here in Los Angeles was trustworthy.  If you’re interested in the name of the business, post a comment or ping me on Twitter at @kurtsh.

I received a couple Nokia DT900 Wireless Charging Plates through a clearance sale of sorts online. 

One of them sadly had a broken power cable, but I figured no big deal, right?  Nokia’s notoriously awesome at customer service and I’m sure it’ll be a piece of cake to get a replacement power cable.  After all – it’s just a stupid cable with a materials cost of probably less than 25 cents, right?

OMG, WRONG.

NOKIA ON TWITTER
I first tried the Twitter feed for @nokia.  Nothing.  Okay, my bad.  Let me see if they have an actual support feed.  Sure enough, they do and it’s called @nokiacareus. 

I fire off a tweet to this new twitter feed, asking them for the process of buying a new, replacement power cable.  After all – they must have ‘em lying around in droves right?

Here’s the response:

Wrong answer, Nokia.  Try again.

This back & forth went on for several days & you can read the rest of the thread HERE but the point is after talking with Nokia Support and a little research on my own, the following became clear to me:

1. NO REPLACEMENT PARTS DEPOT
   There is no official avenue for replacements parts like these for Nokia accessories.  This is a bit unfortunate.
2. THE POWER CABLE’S NAME IS DT-21
   Nokia does have a part name for the DT900 Wireless Charging Plate’s power cable:  “Nokia DT-21”.
3. A PRICEY AFTERMARKET EXISTS
   There is a small aftermarket for parts like this power cable however it’s pricey:  $21 for a power cable.  (Yeah – I know.)  Here’s a few links that I hunted down:
1. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313&_nkw=Nokia+CA-211&_sacat=0&_from=R40
2. http://www.2buya.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=CA-211
4. NOKIA STILL HAS PHENOMENAL SERVICE
   Let’s just say, Nokia ultimately resolved the issue of my “not having a power cable”.  I’m not going to explain what the resolution was but if you read the Twitter thread, you can probably figure it out.  Yes, Nokia Support went way above & beyond the call of duty in the matter.

Again, thank you Nokia Support.  You were a little slow, but dammit you came through for me.

What is up with the services that I’m using recently?  Criminies, I’m rarely a complainer, but damn…all of sudden every service I use is screwin’ up.

I entered in a delivery location into Dominos.com (“10250 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles”) and it auto-populated the store doing the delivery as Store #7802, 1371 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles (see below)  I completed a $100+ order and waited.

Our group waited and the order never came.  I found out later after I called that the order was cancelled because the store the website gave us doesn’t deliver to the address I provided – despite the Dominos.com web site assigning the task to them.

The correct store to deliver to “10250 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles” is Store #7806, 10616 Pico Blvd, Los Angeles.

Dominos:  PLEASE FIX THIS.  I can’t order online because of this and I typically order a lot of pizzas, chicken & soda in bulk because I run a user group and ordering via phone is VERY inconvenient.

Have you ever had such a bad customer experience, you were simply beside yourself?

I called FiskIt Plumbing of Culver City, CA because I had their “Call us” magnet stuck to my refrigerator & in past years, and I hadn’t had terrible things to say about them.

The last time they came, they guy was waaaaay outside the window of time they’d promised, (over an hour & a half) and was otherwise rushed and dismissive, but their past work had built up some goodwill equity with me & ultimately, I was able to accommodate the time shift in that case, so fine. Nothing worth writing about.

But today was different.  I had no such luxuries.

MAKING AN APPOINTMENT
A few days ago, I called to make an appointment with Fiskit specifically when our condo building’s water was being shut off during a window of 3-6PM on a Monday. I explained very specifically that I needed repairs done during this time because what I needed done required the water to be shut off and having the water shut off meant the WHOLE CONDO BUILDING’S water was being shut off.  This is a big deal for us.

The girl on the other end said she understood and would make a note of it and she could have someone arrive around 4PM with a two hour arrival window. Wait – two hour window? I absolutely NEED this to happen between 3-6PM. This is the time during which all the neighbors have been notified that the water is being shut down for repairs in the building.   I need the repairs done then – there’s no option in this. She repeated that she’d make that clear.

AND OF COURSE, NO ONE SHOWS UP
I took half a day off and waited at home for FiskIt to arrive. Of course 5PM rolls around, and there’s still no one at my home. I call and ask if anyone’s coming and she tells me she’ll call me back. 5:20PM hits and I get this on the phone:

“Um… like, we’re having… um… computer problems and some appointments got deleted… and your appointment was one of them.”

What?

Awright, whatever – just get someone down here ASAP. I have only between 3-6PM – I made this very clear when I made the appointment – and y’all have 40min left. This isn’t just an mild inconvenience: I took time off from work and you’re burning my time, in addition to losing the window I had to do this in. She says she’ll call back. At 5:40PM, she calls & says she talked with a plumber and they’ll work “late” (as if they’re doing me a favor at this point) & she says they’ll be here at 7:00PM.

7:00PM? What the heck good does that do me? I said 3-6PM repeatedly: Get someone down here NOW.  If this was an overflowing sewer line, I can’t imagine the world of hurt I’d be in if I’d trusted you with my business.  I get that you screwed up and yes, these things happen & normally I’ve very understanding about this but you folks made a commitment to me – one that cost me time & money by taking part of the day off – and 7:00PM doesn’t fulfill that commitment one bit when I’ve repeatedly said over and over and over again that I need someone between 3-6PM. What are you going to do to make this right?

She says she’ll have a manager call me.  I’ll give you one guess as to whether or not anyone ever called.

AND AFTER THE WATER GOT TURNED BACK ON…
Without a call to confirm, two plumbers showed up out of the blue late in the evening, long after the water had been turned back on.   I told them to leave since there was nothing they could do now that the water had been turned back on and all my neighbors were home cooking dinner, bathing their kids, and otherwise needed the water on. 

They talked about “coming back” later to do the work at another time and I explained that FiskIt wouldn’t be doing any future work for me.  I wasn’t blaming the plumbers but rather their front office:  Never mind their costs:  They wasted my time & that’s something I have in very little quantity these days.  You don’t get a second chance from that.

A NOTE ON THE YELP REVIEWS
I was astounded at how little their front office seemed to care that they’ screwed up and they put me in a bad position so I checked Yelp.  Lo & behold, something has apparently happened to this company because it’s clear that they’ve got nothing but 1-star reviews over the past few years. 

Now I typically don’t trust Yelpers with only 1 or 2 reviews to their credit, since the reviews are usually emotional & inexperienced…  so here’s my review, coming from a former two-time Elite Yelper with close to 90 reviews exhaustively written & a record going back to 2007.

After sitting on my refrigerator for a long while, I tore up FiskIt’s refrigerator magnet and threw it in the trash.

I squealed like a girl when I saw this.  Like chocolate & peanut butter with a side of cognac.  Awesome.

Someone I know commented that the CA state lottery is a tax on people that are bad at math.

Y’know, I used to say the same thing, but while the statement is witty, it’s also dismissive of a more ominous act of our government. The fact is, as one of the most fiscally irresponsible states in the Union, bleeding heart liberal California facetiously & quietly figured out a way to get it’s deficit funded by it’s poorest citizens – VOLUNTARILY. Quote:

“…the lowest fifth in terms of socioeconomic status (SES) had the “highest rate of lottery gambling (61%).”

Yes, it’s ignorance that drives this behavior… but the fact that we have one of the worst school systems in the US & the capitalization of this ignorance (the lottery) is state-sanctioned: Doesn’t that bother anyone? Here’s some research:

• Who plays the lottery, and why: Research review
  Summary of “Gambling on the Lottery: Sociodemographic Correlates Across the Lifespan.” Journal of Gambling Studies, December 2011
  http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/gender-race/research-review-lotteries-demographics#

Now for those of you who don’t know the ‘return-on-investment’ of the CA MegaMillions lottery, i.e. spend vs. return based on odds, here’s some stats: The edge that CA lottery (roughly -59%) has on players is more than 40x worse than a Vegas craps table. (-.7%) In other words, if for every $1 you spend on the lottery, you will make a little less than 40 cents, while for every $1 you spend on Vegas craps, you’ll make 99.3 cents.

• PBS: ODDS – The California Lottery
  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gamble/odds/california.html & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_mathematics

Now that was MegaMillions odds.  If we’re talking about the new Powerball odds. MegaMillions is roughly -59%. Powerball is about -69%: i.e. CA Powerball returns are  10% worse than MegaMillions.  That’s right:  If it wasn’t already bade enough, it just got WORSE.

• ABC: California Powerball: What are your odds of winning?
  http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?id=9053665

A 1.0% TAX ON THE LOWER CLASS
Imagine millions of a family of 4 living under the poverty line, buying just a single $1 ticket every day at the highest poverty threshold income of $23,000.  This is the equivalent of spending ~1.5% of their income annually on lottery tickets and having only a ~30% return.   That means 1.0% of every daily Powerball player’s income is spent on the lottery.

I’d love to know what the demographic breakdown is of where the lottery gets its money from, per dollar.

It’s frightening that there are folks that are investing in a non-guaranteed currency – one that ultimately they’re putting faith in with very little knowledge of how the system works.

Take a look at this:

• How the Bitcoin 1% manipulate the currency, deceive its user community, and make its future uncertain
  http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/how-the-bitcoin-1-manipulate-the-currency-deceive-its-user-community-and-make-its-future-uncertain/2013/06/30

The article is based on this research:

Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph
http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf

The Bitcoin scheme is a rare example of a large scale global payment system in which all the transactions are publicly accessible (but in an anonymous way). We downloaded the full history of this scheme, and analyzed many statistical properties of its associated transaction graph. In this paper we answer for the rst time a variety of interesting questions about the typical behavior of users, how they acquire and how they spend their bitcoins, the balance of bitcoins they keep in their accounts, and how they move bitcoins between their various accounts in order to better protect their privacy. In addition, we isolated all the large transactions in the system, and discovered that almost all of them are closely related to a single large transaction that took place in November 2010, even though the associated users apparently tried to hide this fact with many strange looking long chains and fork-merge structures in the transaction graph.

Untraceable money.  I wonder what sort of organization would be interested in such a thing.  Hmmm.