Trick or treat!

I prepared for Halloween by buying enough candy for 280 trick-or-treaters. That's about how many we got last year, before we had to turn our lights off because we were out of treats. I also had over a hundred dimes as backup this year.

We actually got over 400 trick-or-treaters. Our street seems to have a reputation, and kids come from all over. Sometimes when I opened the door, I saw a dozen kids waiting for their treats. It seemed like they were bussing in, but I never saw their bus. When teenage girls, age seventeen to nineteen, held out their bags and say, "trick or treat," I always resisted the temptation to tell them that I couldn't afford to be their trick.

I thought that a dime was a nice substitute for candy. Indiviually-wrapped candies actually cost more than ten cents apiece around here. (Tiny twizzlers and Reese's Cups cost slightly less.) When I started handing out money ("Don't eat this, it's a dime"), I connected with a lot of passionate kids:
"Money! Awesome."
"He's giving away dimes!"
"A dime, I got a dime!"
Etc.

Did La Russa ‘Make a Mistake’ in Game 2 of the 2011 World Series?

The Cardinals lost game two of the world series in the last inning. Tony La Russa took his closer out, and the pitcher he brought in was tagged for the loss. In the press, La Russa’s move was widely described as a mistake. At the time, I thought that was silly, and this seems the ideal time to comment on it.

La Russa is an active manager. He makes moves. He makes decisions during that game that can greatly affect the outcome. Baseball is a game of probabilities. There’s no way to be certain what will happen on a given pitch, or a given at bat. A good tactical move is a decision that, at the moment, increases the chance of winning.

La Russa’s move in game two made sense to him. But even if he was right, and even if the chance of winning increased from say, 80% to 90%, there was always the chance that that other 10% would bite him, and it did.

La Russa made similar moves all season and throughout the playoffs, and his team won. It appears that, in general, he made good moves, and it is very hard to single some of them out as mistakes.

Let me illustrate my point another way: suppose you are trying to win a bet by rolling the same number twice on a die. You are given two dice. One is normal, but the other die has a six on four sides and a one on the other two sides. On your first roll, you are required to use the normal die, and you roll a six. For your second roll, you decide to use the special die. If you roll a one with that die, have you made a mistake?

Yes, he talked:

On my way home, I crossed the paved open area that surrounds the university's rectangular wading pool. It's a rather artsy place in my home town, and the pool is part of the air conditioning system for a nearby elegant building. It was warm enough for people to sun and wade, and one man, a performance artist, stood on a small platform. Utterly still, he held a pose, one hand held high. The other hand was partly open at waist level. I walked past him, marveling at his stolid patience.

What an opportunity. I've rarely talked to a statue. I have talked to runners. I like to say "Good afternoon" to them, expecting them to be frustrated that they have to keep up their breathing and won't be able to make a civil response.

What would the statue do? I walked back and stood before him.
"You should open your right hand more," I said.
"Why do you think so," he responded, speaking softly, rapidly, lips nearly motionless.
"Your gesture needs to be more inclusive," I said.
"I think it's right," he said, and he stood even more still. Our conversation was over.

Electric Razor Anxiety:

Do you shave with an electric razor? Suppose your razor stopped working in the middle of a shave. What would you look like?

My razor has never broken in the middle of a shave, but for some reason, I worry. In order to minimize the risk, I try to shave symmetrically. I shave my right cheek, then my left cheek; my moustache; my right jaw, my left jaw; my chin...

If my silly fear ever materializes, my face will look like I tried to do something intentional to it.

Almost.

A Savemore Coupon adventure (think Groupon):

My wife gets offers from a company called Savemore that offers Groupon-style deals. She saw an offer to buy $24 worth of coffee from Roaste.com, for only $12; would I be interested?

My coffee-buying habit is to order expensive, really great fair trade coffee from some fine artisanal coffee seller, for something in the neighborhood of $40 (including shipping). For that, I get less than two pounds of coffee. I’m always horrified at the high cost (and since the coffee crop is under attack from global weather changes, the prices always go up). In fact, buying coffee by the cup at Starbucks is more expensive, but I always compare the cost to cheap coffee, which costs six to ten dollars the pound.

I make up for my extravagance by buying the next few pounds at the supermarket, and then I’m ready to buy “fancy” coffee again. I looked into Roaste.com to see what they had.

Roaste is a new (to me) kind of online coffee seller. Their website features many fascinating coffee brands from what Amazon would call affiliates. At the Roaste site, you can buy from such well-known brands as Caribou and even Starbucks, but they feature many, many brands with intriguing names; if you’re not careful, your brain will tell you that you have fallen into coffee heaven.

I kept reminding myself that Roaste might not be coffee heaven; what counts is the quality of each affiliate that interests you, and you have to check these brands out for yourself.

I was also concerned about the price of shipping. Ever since coffee has become more expensive, the price of (coffee) shipping has risen even more. You have to wonder whether some of that “shipping” cost is extra profit for the coffee seller. I purchased the Savemore coupon while worrying that the cost of shipping might wipe out the $12 I was saving by buying the coupon. (Actually, I believe I am saving $10, because Savemore charged me two dollars for something.)

Sigh.

So here’s what happened when I went to the Roaste.com website, selected my coffees, entered my order and checked out the shipping cost. Here’s what I saw on the page (numbers approximate):

24.95 The two coffees I selected, types A and B.

49.95 UPS 3-day shipping.

74.90 Total.

$74.90!! Fifty dollars for shipping! I won’t tell you the thoughts that ran through my head, because this isn’t that kind of blog. Clearly my “pay $12 for $24” value had been completely wiped out by the outrageous shipping cost.

I called Roaste’s customer service and spoke to a helpful person named Tim.

“I see your problem,” he said. “There’s a typo. It says that Coffee A is twelve pounds of coffee, but it’s really twelve ounces.”

Problem fixed, here’s the bottom line: the Savemore coupon covered the cost of shipping, so my order will cost about 2/3 what I would normally have paid. And, I am hoping I’ve found a wonderful new coffee company, one of Roaste’s affiliates. I’ll blog about them if they’re real good.

It's all Pink:

The movement to go pink against breast cancer has gone viral. Last week I saw a pro football team wearing pink footgear for the cause. Pretty soon nearly everything will be pink, inclusing these important products:

• Cigarette packs
• Submachine guns
• Baby boy's and girl's diapers
• Eggs
• Chutes and Ladders
• Starbucks Coffee
• Top hats
• Stop Signs

And have you seen the new pink chocolate? White chocolate is out...

Don’t Let Mosquitoes Land on You:

I had to work outdoors in the late afternoon and early evening, prime time for mosquitoes in New Jersey. I was swatting them right and left until I remembered that I had found a way to keep them from landing on me: keep moving. Any time I stopped to think, I kept my whole body swaying and my arms in motion. Try it, this technique might work for you; although mosquitoes love some people so much, nothing will stop them.

Robison, not Robison!

When I was fifteen, my mother sat me down and told me that when I grew up, I should change my last name. From what it was, to, oh, anything else. I was horrified. I assured her that I would never change my last name. I have kept it ever since. But you know what? My mother had a point.

My last name is hard to pronounce, and hard even to imagine. It is: Robison. There’s no ‘n’ in the middle! It’s not Robinson. And it is not pronounced Rahbison, either. The first ‘o’ is long.

When my mother, in middle age, entered graduate school, the bursar looked at her name on her papers and said, “You do mean Robinson, don’t you?”

When I explained to my friends in teenage camp that there was only one n in my last name, they called me Robinso.

Today, I watched my doctor speak into a microphone to record the results of my visit. This is the 21^st century, so he was talking to a speech-to-text system, not just making an audio recording. As you know, speech-to-text logic is not exactly perfect, and sometimes he had to stop, delete some words, and speak again. The first time he mentioned my name, he said, “Mr. Robison ... delete ... Rahbison...”

“It’s Robison!” I said.

He looked at me apologetically. “I have to say Rahbison or the computer will spell it wrong,” he said.

Style Over Everything: Steve Jobs.

I was planning to write this piece, or something like it, before I heard that Steve Jobs had died. Well, here goes...

Bill Gates appreciated what a marvelous sense of style Steve Jobs had. Gates admitted he envied Jobs for it, knowing he lacked the same. Nothing highlights the difference between those two men than the history of the tablet device.

For years,  Bill Gates championed the CD drive. At a time when the CD seemed good only for audio, Gates saw it as the savior of software. He pushed the CD when it was too expensive. He pushed it when too few people had drives to use CDs. And he saved us from software installations requiring twenty and more floppy disks.

For years, Bill Gates championed the tablet. He persuaded many companies to build tablets that flopped. Steve Jobs designed the tablet that succeeded.

The iPad is a not a success because of some brilliant insight, or because of changes in the cost and power of hardware. It is a success because Jobs envisioned every important aspect of the device, and planned the computing world it could live in. His comprehensive vision succeeded where one of the richest companies in the world had failed and failed again.

Bill Gates, and Microsoft, could have afforded to buy, or hire, the sense of style that Gates knew he lacked. There must be other geniuses out there who can painstakingly discover every opportunity a product requires in order to succeed, and who know how to design it into a world of success. But Microsoft, as far as I know, never hired that person; or perhaps they hired that person without the authority to move worlds into the ideal alignment a tablet needed to succeed.

Most reports suggest that Steve Jobs was a tyrannical leader. In business, employees can rebel against tyranny. But the directors and employees at Apple had the sense to let their leader and his vision lead them.

Steve Jobs changed the face of computing, and it may be many years before the computer world moves on to some paradigm other than his. Jobs dramatically improved the value of smart phones (good), lowered the cost of music (good, I think), and greatly lowered the price of computer software (bad, I think). He has also dragged us away from the lassez-faire computer environment that the IBM PC and Windows gave us, to a more walled-garden approach where approved software is most welcome. In the long run, this walled garden may stifle development and progress. But we are going to live with Steve Jobs’ vision for a long time.

Fool’s Golf (2):

Yesterday I told you about Gameloft’s Golf 3 game. This game always suggests where to hit the ball, and I’ve found that following its advice is a good way to try to make par. On one hole on the Egyptian course, there is an obstacle about 175 yards from the tee: a towering black rock, high and wide. I have tried hitting around this rock, into the rough, with poor results. So I decided to try the game’s suggested tee shot: 163 yards straight down the fairway, in front of the rock.

I made this shot, and now my ball was ten yards from what looked like an impassable obstacle. Black rock reached high over my head. Black rock prevented me from aiming 45 degrees to the left or the right.

I couldn’t imagine what the game would suggest for my second shot. Well, it suggested that I aim right through the rock to the pin, 180 yards away. (The game showed me a dotted line going through the rock.)
Who am I to argue with the game? Maybe the rock isn’t really there. Maybe it’s a test of faith. I hauled off and drove the ball hard.

The ball bounced off the rock, over my head, and rolled most of the way back to the tee.

Fool’s Golf (1):

I’m enjoying a golf game on my iPad by Gameloft, called Golf 3. The game is free or nearly so, but Gameloft makes its money by charging you to do things. You can play, free, about a dozen minutes a day. If you want to play more; if you want to play on more courses; if you want better clubs, or clothing  that miraculously makes you a better golfer; then you have to spend real money.

This game is for me, because I know I will not spend $$ on it. I can’t get addicted to it, because I can’t play it very much. Ideal.

The game experience is very nice. The graphics are pretty realistic. Animals wander around the courses, even unicorns, to watch me play. Tomorrow, I will tell you about one of the most bizarre holes on Golf 3’s courses.

Al Aronson, Painter:

Al Aronson is a neighbor of mine, and his fine paintings are full of energy and pleasing color. If you spend a few minutes gazing at his online gallery, chances are that his work will lift your spirits. You can find out more about him and contact him through his website.

Knick, Knack, Knuckle-whack:

English has a lovely collection of words that begin with “kn”. These words have character, and there aren’t nearly enough of them. You need to contemplate a word like knude for just two seconds, to realize what we’re missing. I’ve made a list of suggestions here, although I doubt they’ll get into the OED any time soon. These words just sing, don’t you think?
knabob
knacreous
knaptha
knarcolepsy
knasty
knatheless
knative
knattering
knavy
knearly
kneedy
knegativism
kneither
knephrology
knexus
kniggling
knihilism
knocturne
knose
knubile
knothing
knugatory
knull
knumeral
knuptials
knutter
knylon
knymph

Friday bad Word-play Hay Day:

I wish there was a really high-definition picture on the web of some hay. In great detail, larger even than this one: http://polk.uwex.edu/files/2011/08/small-square-hay-bale.jpg . 8,000 by 8,000 pixels, maybe. If you wanted to examine the whole picture on your screen, you’d have to take a scroll in the hay.

Ominous Dark, Cloud on the Ground:

On September 11, 2001, I went to a meeting in the eastern suburbs of Philadelphia. I drove back north on the New Jersey Turnpike in mid-afternoon. To my right, the entire horizon – and I could see a lot of it – sported a line of dark, ominous cloud at ground level, tall enough to be visible everywhere, spreading north and south as far as the eye could see. It was smoke from the collapse of the the towers that had spread right down the Jersey shore line. I wondered how terrifying that sight would have been, had I not known what had happened. There was no way to tell whether it was drifting toward me, and I had never seen anything like it.

I wondered what that sight would be like to anyone who did not know about the disaster. I could imagine getting off the turnpike and driving away from it as fast as I could, and calling my wife to tell her to do the same.

I love my VibraLite 3 Watch:

The alarm goes off! Buzz! Wake up! Pump adrenaline!
Waking up to an alarm is a very individual matter. That’s why somebody invented an alarm clock that makes a loud noise and flies around the room until you catch it.

I’m the type that reacts swiftly to a loud alarm, pumping adrenaline and jumping into action too fast. The last time my phone woke me up, I grabbed it and mashed the end button, before I could even realize I had hung up on a phone call, not an alarm.

It’s the adrenaline that bothers me. As we get older, it’s better to wake up gently, get all the systems in working order before trying to do too much. I bought the VibraLite 3 because it reminded me of a movie I enjoyed, In Like Flint. The master hero in this movie twice puts himself into suspended animation, waking up only when his watch, responding to an alarm, extended a little hand and tickled the inside of his wrist. (He used this ability to ship himself into the enemy fortress.)

I never forgot that wrist tickle, and the VibraLite 3 is a watch that can beep or vibrate (or both) when one of its two alarms goes off. I had a practical reason for buying the watch, too. I need to wake up without waking my wife, and the vibrating alarm does the trick. But best of all: unlike all the other alarms in our house, it wakes me gently. Maybe it will add years to my life.

I Love My Website:

Steve Martin used to do this bit in his comedy routine: “Oh, my shoe’s untied!” and he would bend down to his shoe. The TV camera would zoom in on his perfectly tied shoe. Martin would then stand up and say “I like to play tricks on myself.” So do I, even though they are unintentional.

As I entered the local supermarket, my eye caught a stand of plaques for dog lovers. Signs like: I {heart} my Basenji. I {heart} my Cockerspaniel. I {heart} my Poodle. I {heart} my Website. I ...

Wait, wait! I might want to buy that one.

I went back for a closer look. The plaque actually said:

I {heart} my Westie.

A new definition of 'Optimist':

An optimist is someone - like me - who takes off one pair of glasses before looking for the other pair.

An Unbelievably Stupid bit of Security:

This is an Internet Explorer 8 story. I have been keeping my security set to disable attempts to run ActiveX controls from websites. A rational person suggested that for some types of ActiveX control settings, I should change “disable” to “prompt”. That seemed reasonable; an app that wants to run the control will ask for permission, right?

Well, with hardly any apps running, we started to see a prompt something like this, renewed every three seconds: Would you like to permit ActiveX controls to run? After answering NO to about fifty of these message boxes, I realized what was wrong, and changed my IE8 stteings back to Disable.

Now please note that the message box identified only “Internet Explorer”. That program was not even running as an application, so evidently some program or service in the background was trying to run it. That program did not identify itself, nor did it tell me what control it proposed to run. How am I supposed to give informed permission?

Note to Microsoft: when you allow a program to ask the user for permission to do something, the program and the requested action need to be identified.

Further note to Microsoft: If you can’t keep the same program from annoying the user every few seconds, don’t let it annoy the user at all.

It’s illegal to launder money:

I know that it’s illegal to launder money, but I can’t help it. Usually, what I find at the bottom of the washing machine are a few shiny coins, but this time, it was six one dollar bills. After I dried them out, they still looked pretty dirty, so I think if I can get them back into circulation, no one will suspect.

Washington Monument Cracked:

New(?) cracks have been found in the Washington Monument, after the Virgina earthquake.

Well, now we know. The earthquake was a terrorist act.

Very Close Quarters:

“Rich” was one of the best directors I ever worked for. He had a hard-driving type-A personality, and he expected a lot from us. But he was always open about what he was trying to do, including the why and the how of it.

Rich and “Dave”, one of the programmers in his group, drove to work together, a commute of about an hour each way. They covered about 25 miles of limited access parkway, and 15 miles of a nerve-wracking heavily trafficked two-lane road.

We wondered what it was like for Dave to be cooped up, hours each day, with his director. Dave did not report directly to Rich, but rather to one of the managers who worked for him. All that time together gave Dave direct access to Rich’s ear, or else it gave Rich wonderful opportunities to chew Dave out over anything.

Years later I ran into Dave and I asked him: what was it like, carpooling with Rich?

“I thought I was gonna die,” he said. He looked at my shocked face and explained.

“Rich had a radar detector. He set his cruise control fifteen miles over the speed limit. Whenever the detector went off, he slammed the brakes and dropped our speed to thirty. I expected to get rear-ended every time.”

Who do you trust?

When the Green Bay Packers visited the White House on Friday to celebrate the team's Super Bowl title, linebacker Desmond Bishop wasn't with his teammates.

That’s the lead sentence of reporter Chris Chase’s story on one of the stupidest, idioticest examples of security-screening to date. The entire Green Bay Packer team was there to identify Desmond Bishop. Why did he need his driver’s license to get into the White House?

In order to see how utterly silly it was that Bishop was denied entry due to lack of an ID, just imagine the converse: Suppose a person claiming to be Desmond Bishop showed up, and he had his driver’s license AND his passport, but the entire team said, “We know Desmond Bishop. This isn’t Desmond Bishop!” Would the security people let him in?

I’m embarrassed for my country.

Nitefall:

The sign next to the local Supermarket said “Summer Concerts, Thurs Nites., 6:30 to 8:30pm.” I knew at once that something was wrong. In the food biz, when they want to make us think of an ingredient that’s not in the product, they use spellings like Kreme. So my instinct told me that these couldn’t be night concerts. There was plenty of room on the sign to spell the word “nights”. What was going on?
Eventually I worked it out. It’s summer here, and night doesn’t really fall until after 8:30. They aren’t night concerts, they are evening concerts. Trust the food industry to be consistent.

More AT&T War Stories: (10)

Here’s another AT&T story, more personal than the previous blog entry, and also driven by the attention that security guards pay to me.

My first consulting job at AT&T, in their tumultuous year of 1985, was in a group called the PIC, which quickly grew to unit of a hundred people, to enable AT&T to bid on complex government integrated computer contracts. On Day One, we were months behind schedule, and everyone worked frantically at everything.
I was managing a project, and I needed a specification that a manager in Chicago had just written. AT&T believed in Email, but hardly anyone used it, so I called the guy to see how fast I could get his document.

“I’ll be at a meeting in Jersey tomorrow,” he said. “Just join the meeting, and at the end we’ll find each other. I’ll give you a copy.”

He told me how to find the meeting. The building was familiar to me because many of my colleagues in the PIC ran frantic errands there to use its computers, which were better than we had at that time. So next morning, I went to, let’s call it, building Y.

Of course, the security guard did not let me in. He looked my badge over and told me that a PIC badge did not give access to Y. I insisted that it did, because many of my coworkers, wearing the same badges, had been working there. After a polite argument, he said, “I tell you what. I’ll take your badge and check it out. You go do what you came here to do. On your way out, stop here and I’ll give you your badge back." Consequently, I entered the building unbadged! I’m sure that every employee, consultant and visitor, except me, was badged.

The moment I entered the meeting, someone asked a question: “How much business are we doing in this suite of products? Are the numbers worth the effort we have to make in all these meetings?”

After a short silence, a senior manager replied. “That’s highly confidential information. Is everyone in this meeting cleared to hear it?”

The questioner assured us that everyone in the meeting was cleared to hear these sales figures. I was sure that this was not a good moment for me to object, so I listened, and I got an earful about a set of sick products.

After the meeting, I found my Chicago manager and got my document. Then I returned to the guard. He assured me that I was not allowed access to building Y, and in the future, he would be careful to keep all my coworkers out as well. My PIC friends all got upset with me!

More AT&T War Stories: (9)

Most of the really bizarre experiences I had in my software career occurred during the few years I consulted at AT&T. This is a story I was told, but what triggered it was something about me: security guards always give me a careful look. I stand out to them in ways that most people don’t.

On this occasion, I was visiting the enormous Bell Labs installation (Napierville) that was just transferring itself into AT&T proper. (About two years later, it transferred itself back to being Bell Labs.) In order to visit, I needed a visitor’s badge, and my hosts advised me to please walk casually past the security guard without a badge, to save them a lot of paperwork.

This “sneakwalk” was their custom for visitors. I tried, although, as I advised them in advance, it was hopeless. The guard stopped me, and I waited while the paperwork got done. And then they told me their story.

One of their programmers used to complain that the security was all for show. The guards really paid no attention to anything. “I could paste the face of a gorilla over my badge,” he said, “and they wouldn’t say a word.”

The guy joked about this a lot, and one day he announced that next morning, he was really going to do it. One of his ‘friends’ warned the security guard.

The next morning the guy walked past the guard, flashing his badge, with a picture of a gorilla face where his face should be. The guard waited until he was about thirty feet away, and then called him back. “Let’s see that badge.”

The guy handed over his badge and trembled while the guard studied it carefully, silently, looking from him to the badge and back. What rules had he broken? What awful punishment was about to fall upon him?

After about thirty seconds, the guard said, “Looks good.” He handed the badge back to the guy and let him go.

Is it hot enough for you?

Nobody has ever asked me if it was hot enough for me. But I've realized that on a hot and humid day like today, I'd know what to say. Now bear in mind that I greatly prefer hot weather to cold weather:

Q: Is it hot enough for you?
A: No, but it is cold enough for me.

The Deluxe eDesk by LapGear for the ipad, etc:

The Deluxe eDesk is an inexpensive gadget that makes it easy for you to use your tablet while it is tilted. You set the eDesk on a table, set the tilt you prefer, and place your tablet on its rack. You can also use it as a carrying case for your tablet (the inside compartment is deep enough for an iPad 1), and it comes with a handy cloth to wipe the glass screen. Check it out here. I got mine at Bed, Bath and Beyond for $21 with a store coupon.

I would like an invite to Spotify:

I'd appreciate it if any of you can give me a Spotify invitation. I'm already to go, with the Spotify app on my iPad.

iA Writer: Terrific for writing on an iPad:

If you want to draft some writing, or edit what you’ve written, one writing program is far better than all the others: iA Writer, by Information architects. Their program adds one more line to the keyboard, and these keys make all the difference:

Move one word forward or back

- ; :

apostrophe, and smart quote signs

open/close parentheses

cursor keys to move one CHARACTER right or left.

These keys make it so much more easy to use a soft keyboard. All Apple apps should have the option of adding this line of keys. The keyboard keys are still large (leaving relatively small space for the text itself when the keyboard is up), but if you’re at all serious about writing, you know that seeing less text can be a benefit, not a hindrance.

This is the program that turns the iPad into a producer, not just a consumer!

Please note that you’ll find many reviews online complaining that this program does not support smart quotes. Well it does now, unless you’re British.

NFL Madness:

The wild free-agent week for the newly unlocked-out NFL is generating the best preseason publicity the league has ever had. But time is short, and there has been understandable confusion. During a raucous, hastily-called press briefing, the general manager of the Greedbay Packers shamefacedly owned up to his hasty signing of Carlos Beltran to a free agent contract. Taking sharp questions from the press, he insisted that Beltran could still help the team.

In a possibly related story, rumor has it that owners are responding favorably to an unusual proposal for a change in the rules that govern field goals.