My current assignment at work involves a large scale project that will ultimately effect how we create software. A small team has been crafting a new methodology, and has been making presentation of various aspects of the new life-cycle to a larger team comprised of managers. Due to the tight schedule for delivery of the new methodology, and the tight schedules of the parties involved, we have resorted to meeting over lunch, as that is the only time the quorum of parties is available.
The lunches have been catered, but with no announcement or menu provided to the participants. As a lifetime picky eater, going into a situation where I don’t have control over my food choice is uncomfortable at best. At worst it is acutely embarrassing for me. All the childhood feelings of not being the same as everyone else come roaring back to the surface and it takes considerable effort on my part to not feel like a kid caught playing grownup.
When the lunches have been some form of sandwich, with some extras, like chips or a cookie, I’ve been relatively comfortable. Today’s lunch was a salad, with a few scraps of meat, some croutons, and a tub of salad dressing. Ick.
So I sat through the rest of the meeting, mutely embarrassed by the untouched salad in front of me. There were some cookies provided as dessert so not all was lost.
My employer has a parking garage under the main building for associates. Unfortunately the company has grown so much in the past couple of years that there is no long sufficient room for everyone to park in this facility. My employer’s parent company has a number of real estate holdings in the downtown area, and one of those includes a large, multi-story parking garage more or less across the street from the building where I work. The associate overflow parks in this detached garage.
There is a waiting list for spaces in the underground garage. When I started last winter I was number 107 on this list. Meaning that 106 eligible associates would get a space in the building before it would be my turn. The company has been going through some reorganizations, moving associates between the two downtown locations, and there has been some attrition.
This week one of the web developers with whom I am acquainted is moving on to a new opportunity, creating an opening in the garage. A quick visit to the employee intranet to view the parking lot waiting list revealed that I have been moving up in the world. No longer am I number 107 on the list.
Now I’m number 77.
This morning I ran across this PC World article, where a researcher discovered that sites participating in the Beacon ad service with Facebook where transmitting details of transactions conducted even when the user clicked the ’no’ option and even when they were logged out of Facebook altogether.
Disturbing to say the least.
I have augmented my earlier Facebook scrubbing by removing all the cookies (there were several) that Facebook had left behind on my computer. If the Beacon service causes transaction data to be sent from participating sites regardless of whether I am signed in to Facebook or not, just deactivating the account isn’t enough.
Obviously the sites participating in the Beacon service are able to find and utilize the Facebook cookies to track customers activities, and then report on them to Facebook.
Having been active on the Internet for more than dozen years, and on BBS before that, I know fully well that my privacy is tenuous at best, that it is up to me to protect it. Facebook and Beacon are neither the first, not will they be the last, to stretch the limits of what is acceptable on the digital frontier. That they have reversed their position on what Beacon is or isn’t may make them less polished than other offenders, but no less intrusive.
Somewhere, George Orwell is smiling a rueful smile and gently shaking his head.
About three months ago, through one of Sibylle’s sons, I was introduced to Facebook. I am not the social network type, but it was interesting to be involved in something that was so popular. Unfortunately, as recent stories have shown, Facebook is perhaps not the safest place to have a digital representation of oneself.
Neither, as it turns out, is it the easiest place to exit. I spent roughly thirty minutes this morning unchecking or removing all the information I could. Some pieces of information couldn’t be removed. My birth date for example. Once you put that year in, it’s locked and cannot be changed. The month and the day are mutable and have been altered.
Part of the difficulty in removing yourself from Facebook is that so many of its features intertwine you with other members of the service. All the messages you posted, all the applications you installed, all the interactions with your friends leave a trace of you elsewhere.
I was able to eradicate most of my presence on the site, simply because I hadn’t participated in its many offerings. The final step was to “deactivate” my account. Facebook assumes that you will want to return some day, so you can’t (to my knowledge) delete your account. As near as I can tell, the only pieces of information left in my account are my email address, my name, and the year of my birth.
Last night I tried to create an account at Blue Host. While I was successful in creating an account, the process left a lot to be desired and as a result I almost immediately canceled the account.
In signing up you are presented with a page, where you input your name, email address, mailing address, and credit card information. Nowhere on the screen are you given any indication what your account name (ID) will be. At the bottom of the screen are two buttons: Next and Cancel.
Like most people who have interacted with web-based signup forms, I took the “Next” button to mean that there was an additional step to complete before the transaction was complete. Perhaps establishing the account name. I was wrong. Clicking next transmits your credit card information and, once the transaction is approved, you are presented with a “Welcome to your Account” page. In a few minutes you get an email with your account information, included a generated account name.
In my case I have two established domains I wish to move, and a new one I need to create. I decided to move the less active domain first. The account name that Blue Host created for me was the first eight characters of the domain name I provided. I was extremely unhappy with this choice. Using their 24/7 online chat help I asked if that could be changed. The answer was no.
I was directed to their online help desk, where I created a ticket asking for my account to be deleted. That page also gave a toll-free number to call for assistance. Upon calling I was fortunate enough to catch someone with the authority to cancel my account immediately, rather than having to wait until the next business day. Even so it will take five days for my credit to appear on the credit card. (That I can spend money in twelve seconds but not get refunded for five days is the subject of another post.)
Now I must reevaluate Blue Host. Do I want to continue with them? Or should I go elsewhere. That a process as simple as creating an account should be handled in such a way as to be upsetting to me, doesn’t bode well for future interactions with them. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for Blue Host, there are many, many choices in the domain hosting market space.
Once in a while, Sibylle and I will order take out from the nearby steakhouse and eat at home. By ordering out we get to avoid the crush of people waiting 30 to 45" minutes for a table, and we save some money too. Neither of us needs or wants to eat an entire 9 ounce steak, so we split one, with a couple of side dishes, to make a perfect meal at home.
There are some problems with the process at LongHorn, however. The call into the restaurant is answered by the hostess station. She doesn’t take phone-in orders, so she passes you off to one of the bartenders. The bar is easily the noisiest place in the restaurant, so it is very had for the bartender to hear you, and vice-versa. Once you get to the restaurant, the problems continue.
Again the hostess can’t help you. You have to go fight through the crowd of people sandwiched up against the bar, and attract the attention of the two over-worked people behind it to get your food. I watched my food sit on the counter for several minutes last night before the bartender had a free moment to gather it up and collect my payment.
Some restaurants recognize some people want to get take out and have adapted their processes. Outback Steakhouse, for example, has “curbside takeaway.” When you place your order, they inquire about the type of car that will be used to pick up the food. When you arrive, and pull into one of the designated takeaway parking spaces, they come out to collect your payment and deliver your food.
Increasingly I am aware of businesses that are more responsive to the changing landscape of customer service. That the brand new, just finished construction a month ago, LongHorn doesn’t have a dedicated takeout process tells me that they either don’t experience much takeout business, or they don’t care to attend to that segment of their customer base. Interesting.
We like their food offerings and will continue to patronize them, but I would be very curious to know why their business model doesn’t address carry out customers.
After a long time on my current host, I am finally ready to switch to a new host. I’ve got nothing against <ahref=“http://pair.com” title=“Pair.com”>Pair.com, except that I can get the same hosting package for far less at any number of other established providers. If my site were heavily visited I might reconsider my move, but since zanshin.net exists far out on the long tail of the Internet’s power curve, i am satisfied to save some money.
There are actually three major facets to this migration:
Each of these major pieces breaks down into several smaller steps, which I hope to capture and detail here as I go. As it is the static of the two domains I already host, I’ll be moving And If You Did Know first.
Thanks to Sibylle’s research for a web host for a project of hers, I was able to choose a new hosting provider with relatively little effort. I am going to move to Blue Host.
Over the coming days and weeks I’ll be chronicling my progress, and detailing the steps I take here. Stay tuned, nerdliness ahead.
I am happy to report that the nail on the finger I accidentally shut in a car door back in July, nearly re-grown now. There is perhaps a mm of growth left before it is the same length as its opposite number on my other hand. The new nail is, ah, featured; with two major ripples that span the width of the nail, and far more side-to-side curvature than it had before. I don’t know that it will ever be the same as it was before, but at least it is starting to look normal again.
My body weight has been consistent throughout the summer and into this autumn. I am usually between 194 and 196 in the mornings when I get on the scale. Without a regular, strenuous exercise, and with some daily snacking, I have found an equilibrium point, weight-wise. While a part of me would like to lose a few more pounds, I am very happy that I have lost 55 pounds and kept that weight off.
This entry, and whatever I post tomorrow, will be the last two entries for National Blog Posting Month 2007. It has been an interesting month, trying to post something everyday. In the beginning I was having two or three good ideas a day, and I carefully doled those out. In the last few days I’ve really been scraping the bottom of the barrel idea-wise. Hence a posting like this one, that really isn’t about anything at all.
Hopefully inspiration will strike tomorrow and I can end the month on a high note.
Like all jobs (or most, anyway) mine came with a set of benefits, including two shiny floating holidays. The parent company observes all the banking holidays each year, while my employer observes all but two. To balance this inequity, we get two floating holidays each year.
I used one of mine way back last spring. My vacation time was used in one chunk this year for our trip to see Genesis and visit Gemany. Leaving me with just holidays and one floating holiday for time off.
We are down to the final weeks of the year, a holiday rich portion of the calendar. Now it is time to carefully use my long hoarded floating holiday. Should I extend the four-day weekend for Christmas to five days? Or use it on the last possible day of the year, making the New Year holiday another four-day weekend? Or take a random day off, just for fun?
Decisions, decisions.