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Digging the new WordPress for Android. From Starbucks.
Over the last couple of months I’ve been reminded of a favorite truth: the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
For example:
It turns out that, when buying my house last year, they didn’t do everything required to clear the title. Who “they” are in this case is certainly a bit ambiguous, but it should definitely include a few lawyers and title companies to whom I paid a lot of money. Its now taken care of without additional charge to me, but not without one person telling me he was pissed off I was implying he didn’t do his job. Oh well.
I discovered this title issue during a refi. With that refi, there was a 45 day lock on the rate. 45 days came and went and the refi company wanted to charge me $1000+ to extend the rate. Why did the date pass? Well, a variety of reasons none of which relate to me. I agreed to pay it–I didn’t want to start over–with the caveat I would never recommend them and would rate them poorly. And, just as suddenly as it popped up, the fee was gone. Was the delay their fault? Probably. Although I believe hope is the thing with wings (or whatever) it is not a particularly good management strategy, a fact I pointed out several times.
Finally, you might have noticed my ceiling fell down. The insurance company originally said they didn’t cover collapse. Well, they exclude collapse except in six circumstances. So I made an argument for two of those six. Now its covered. Side note: how on earth is collapse not covered?
All this drives me crazy, but is just part of the world. Alls well that ends well, right? My advice to anyone faced with similar circumstances is simple: complain.
Complain early and often. Don’t feel confined to “reasonable”. Make an argument. Leverage c-sat and referrals to your advantage. You have nothing to lose.
Sorry to hear about the bankruptcy filing this morning. It happens (well, not so much with the hoi palloi anymore but that’s another story).
Why do I feel terrible? I’m a platinum flier with you, but I won’t be next year. 2011 has been a year of airline experimentation for me. Its true! I’ve flown Virgin (Atlantic and America), Southwest and coming up my first flight on JAL.
This at a time when you have treated me quite well. The frequent flier mile funded first class forays this year have been fun. And just this morning I walked up and asked to get on an earlier flight–and you let me. No hassle, no charge. Really, really nice.
Why have I started to take other airlines?
Well, first and foremost, I wanted predictable internet on my domestic flights. Yes, you have it sometimes, but it was impossible for me to ferret out when. Once Virgin started flying to SFO, I switched.
Second, while you still have a lot of great flights from O’Hare, you have been cutting back. For example, why no PDX? I had to jump over to Southwest. I’m looking around for next spring too and can’t help but notice evrything is going through Dallas. Boo.
Third, add a fourth class to your international flights. I know it seems weird, but premium economy is very decent. Since you don’t have it, I fly somone who does.
Finally, some newer planes would be nice. Your newer 737s are great but these MD80s have got to go.
Well, those are my thoughts as I land at LGA. You’ll come out of bankruptcy just fine but what then? Will you lead? Will you innovate? Will you transform American into the platinum airline everyone will love?
I hope so.
My goal about 6 weeks ago was to plant a few veggies and then have fresh tomatoes and peppers for xmas. Well it has been interesting.
Everything sprouted ok, but getting them to go beyond the sprout stage has proven difficult. The root of the problem is most likely light, but that’s really just a guess.
This morning I moved them from the basement to the second floor. I had grow lights on them but I suspect that’s not enough. Hopefully the lights combined with a little late afternoon western exposure will improve things.
We’ll see. With 6 weeks until xmas, I’m not optimistic.
I was at OSCON this week. OSCON is the “Open Source Conference,” something I’ve wanted to go to for a long time but haven’t ever made the time (or money) to actually do. I’m glad I went.
My attitude going in was that I would probably run into a lot of people far more technically skilled than myself. And I did. But I wasn’t alone: people at the event were all over the map in terms of their technical skill. Even those who I would consider leaders — speakers in sessions, etc — were attendees in another.
Which is to say, they didn’t know everything.
Phew. What a relief.
But really: who knows everything? This myth of perfect knowledge, both that others have it and we should seek it and that it’s even possible, is just that: a myth.
We all know what we know and are where we are because of things we’ve had a chance to do or things we’ve taken the opportunity to explore. That’s it. Nothing more.
These people smarter than me: most of the time, they got that way by jumping in and doing whatever it is they were speaking about. They didn’t get that way by watching a lot of TV or by reading every funny picture on Reddit (although they may have also done those things).
They found something of interest and gave it a shot. And then did a little more.
Neat.
Like a lot of people, I’ve been working through Google+ over the last couple of weeks. (See my earlier post.) In no particular order, here are some thoughts.
1. Google+ gets it largely right. If you call Twitter generation 1 of micromedia, and Facebook the gen 2, it makes sense that gen 3 would fix what didn’t work before. And the good news now is that we have a ridiculous number of people trained and ready to use social media, especially a better social media.
2. Google and the Google+ team have an opportunity to solve a persistent problem: how to follow someone, but only follow the posts that really interest you. I tend to post a fair amount, and the people interested in Oatmeal aren’t necessarily the same ones interested in my day job over at salesforce.com. It would be interesting to have a subscribing mechanism that helped people interested in what I have to say find the posts they really want. Google should be able to do this better than any other provider on the planet. Posts that are of interest show up. Posts that are probably not of interest get clumped together.
3. Another interesting opportunity, and this is probably something for a 3rd party developer to handle once G+ has an API, is to provide counter points to crazy posts. Here’s how it would work. Your crazy aunt likes to post political non-truths about her least favorite party. When it pops up in your stream, it shows a link to FactCheck.org or Snopes.com where you can in near real-time figure out what the truth. Again, Google should be able to do this better than anyone else.
4. Finally, since social media (and let’ face it, media in general) is getting us way more comfortable than we should be in our own personal bubbles, what if you were able to see both sides of issues that pop up in your stream? For example, your crazy aunt posts something about how we should bomb [insert bombable county here]. Wouldn’t it be interesting to have an immediate counterpoint presented at the same time from outside your normal sphere of influence?
That’s it for now.
Just finished reading Naked In Death by J.D. Robb (aka Nora Roberts). This after noticing I hadn’t been reading any women writers lately. It’s a futuristic police procedural that ends, I hate to say it, somewhat predictably. However, books are about the journey, and this one was interesting.
Short version: Lieutenant Eve Dallas tracks a killer. While doing so, we get a glimpse of Robb’s idealized future, politics that are a little closer to modern-day than I might like and follow Dallas’ trip down lover’s lane with the roguish raconteur, Roark.
Was it good? Do I recommend it?
I’ve just come off a streak of Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake) works that are completely different. Stark is from the other side of the law — uber-criminal Parker is his perennial protagonist — and all cops are corrupt and / or lazy. The action moved fast, and the books are all about action.
Dallas, on the other hand, takes quite a bit of time to explore her feelings, first refusing to talk about her background (over and over and over) and then talking about it in some detail. And there’s a love story going on. A love story! Imagine a love story in a Parker novel. Ha! I shouldn’t be surprised: Roberts is a romance novelist after all, so it might be that a love story is a prime ingredient in her narrative soup.
Side note: this description of the differences between the books sounds so trite it nearly sickens me to write it. “Female author focused on feelings; male author concentrated on actions” is the oldest stereotype in the book (if you’ll pardon the pun). Notice I said “nearly sickens me”. Obviously not so near that I’m going to withhold that opinion.
So: Was it good? Do I recommend it?
It wasn’t bad, but Westlake is a better writer. His text is tighter and the language is more precise. However, Robb scores points on the futuristic aspect and creative approach to the crime. I did, however, correctly predict the villain relatively early — I’m typically bad at that — so maybe it’s not as creative as I think.
Will I be reading more of the “In Death” series? The jury is still out. I picked up Infinite Jest again after I finished Naked In Death the other day, and that sometimes takes me a while to put down.
What are you reading?
Wasp was winning.
No, not that kind of Grylling.
We had some some company this weekend so I took the opportunity to do a little work on the grill.
First up was a bacon wrapped turkey breast with bread stuffing. This is from a Weber cookbook. There we no leftovers with this one.
On Sunday I branched out to try a recipe a chef friend of mine (as in that’s what she does professionally) and added some grilled vegetables to it. The ingredients started out like this:
And the organic pork tenderloin turned out like this:
Pretty awesome. Ate a little too much. But at least none of it was squirrel.
We had a huge amount of rain on Sunday — and a bunch of kids over! The Critter decided to lead the charge through a large puddle. Hilarious.
