FishNet Tech Forum

Still Alive - PORTAL IS FREE

2010-05-13T09:25:00.003-06:00

I could litter this post with cake and companion cube jokes, but let's just get right to the meat of it...

Portal is free, for a few days. If you don't already own a copy, GET IT NOW. Heck, even if you do already own one, it wouldn't hurt to have a...uh...second Steam account? With your second copy of Portal in it!

It's OK. You'll feel good about this. Click the button and get the game. Even if you're not sure that you'll ever, ever play it. Just get it. It's free.

Get Portal. There is no good reason not to.

The Office, Pitch-Perfect

2009-05-12T15:15:00.002-06:00

Please check out the excellent fan-written script for an episode of The Office, by Matthew Baldwin, the Defective Yeti himself.

If you're not already an Office fan, you might have trouble putting the right voices to the right people. But it's still funny.

Lan Party Time! Again! At Last!

2008-09-19T20:48:00.004-06:00

So, yeah, I decided it's way past time for another LAN party. By my estimation, there wasn't one for all of '07, so we're way past due.

So here are the details for this year's LAN party:
Where: the Walker Residence, in Kaysville Utah. If you're invited, I'll send an address and a link to google maps. Any further info, you can contact me.

When: October 17th, 2008, we will start at 5:00, and the party will last into the night (my estimation is 11:00 or later, I will update this post as details become available.)

Who:
*Jake Wilcox
*Jeff Wilcox
*Andy Walker
*Krys Johnson
*Mark Wilcox
*Aaron Sitzman
*Julianne Wilcox
*Cody Walker
*Kyle Heath

EDIT: I've taken out our non-RSVPs and put them at the bottom of this post. I wanted to make the main list neat, but retain a list of those who couldn't make it this time for the sake of future parties.

Kyle Heath has also been added to the list. 15 Oct 1:00pm -Jake.

I updated the list last night. The people with asterisks by their names have RSVP'd, and I've removed the people who have RSVP'd that they won't be there. That's eight by my count.

IF YOU ARE NOT ON THIS LIST, YOU MAY NOT COME TO THIS PARTY. IF YOU FEEL THAT IT IS AN OVERSIGHT THAT YOU ARE NOT ON THIS LIST, YOU MUST CONTACT ME (JEFF).

Why: Because it's been too long.

What: Huh?

So, yeah, if you're on the list, you'll be receiving an email telling you that you're invited and requesting an RSVP.

There will be a cover charge, as the plan for this party is to have Garcia's cater again. I like Garcia's, and I've heard no complaints about them from fellow party goers in years past, so if you have a problem with it, you can go stick your head in a pig. The plan right now is to make the cover $15. It will almost certainly not go up from there, and it may go down. Again, keep an eye on this post as the most up to date details will be here.

This is what you should bring with you: Your computer, as we don't have enough spares to go around; a power strip, since everyone will need multiple places to plug in; network cables, so that your computer can talk to ours; A switch if you have one (a discount is being considered for those who bring one); headphones, if you want sound.

Expect to have one meal at the party, and a good time. Specific instructions for invitees will be sent via email.

Non-attendees:

Eric Widdison
Leon Walker
Gary Walker
Stan Wilcox
Eric Degroot
Sterling Canfield
Scott Barber

2007 Abravanel Hall Messiah Sing-In Critique

2007-11-27T01:11:00.000-07:00

I attended Saturday the 24th's Messiah Sing-In. Every year my wife and I bring along some family and friends (this year we numbered sixteen strong), and we always like to discuss what we like or don't like about that year's performance.

I've decided to post my thoughts this year, and I'll do some catching up on previous years along the way.

Here is this year's dramatis personae:

Susanne Sheston - Chorus Master
Shannon Kessler - Soprano
Erica Brookhyser - Mezzo-Soprano (Soloing the Alto parts)
Tanner Knight - Tenor
Chad Sloan - Baritone (Soloing Baritone and Bass parts)

Again, the annual Abravanel Sing-In is tradition for us, so we're quite familiar with Susanne Sheston by this point. She's usually energetic, and she likes to share a little trivia about Messiah every year before the performance. One year (was it 2006 or 2005?) she was feeling particularly talkative and held forth on the history behind the tradition of standing for the Hallelujah Chorus. When she finished up the explanation after five minutes or so, the audience had a fun, 'What was that?' moment.

In general, she seems a good Chorus Master, and her rapport with the Utah Symphony Chorus is clear. In truth, it's the professional chorus' job to keep the lay chorus sounding passable, and that's always been done well under Susanne's leadership.

Her results in conducting the symphony are more mixed though. In 2005, she just couldn't keep the strings together at all. For nearly the duration of the concert, they were all over the place. This was improved hugely in the 2006 concert, leading me to believe that the buffoonery was not missed, and they aimed to do right after missing the mark so badly the previous year.

This year the strings again had some discord in a couple of places, but overall they held together well. If 2005 rated at a 3/10 and 2006 a 9/10, then they turned in a mid eight this year. Quite passable, but still room for improvement.

My one real complaint with Susanne as a conductor is that every year, she allows the symphony to blow through the transition between the solo and choral portions of "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion." It's undoubtedly technically correct for her to do so, as the transition is written as quick and smooth. But Handel didn't know about Sing-Ins, and a lay chorus is unlikely to stand and sing without being directed to do so because of social pressure. This bungled transition is awkward and embarrassing for the audience members, but Susanne doesn't notice, because she's too busy directing the symphony and professional chorus, with her back turned to the audience.

I know that the idea must feel unnatural to her, but I hope that Susanne will resolve to pause the symphony, raise the audience, and then start the choral portion, as doing so will dispense with the most flustering moment of the performance for the people who paid for tickets.

Let's move on to soloists.

I'll not beat around the bush here. By far, the standout performance was commandingly delivered by Chad Sloan. He started strong, appropriately booming the introductory line of "Thus saith the Lord," and he continued to deliver rich, powerful reports for the rest of the performance. Chad ably, and, by the look of it, easily stole the show from his fellow performers.

Of special note was his performance of "The trumpet shall sound," in which his accompanying trumpeter was also well into a high-performance groove (with little-to-no warm up at that point). Both Chad and the trumpeter (I wish his name was listed in the program) ornamented sparingly but in brilliant fashion. Saturday night's performance of "The trumpet shall sound" was easily the best I've ever heard in person. The one small flaw in that piece was that in the second-to-last melisma (...this mortal must put on immortality), Chad finished his run a little more than a beat early, leaving the symphony to catch up. Notwithstanding that, it was superbly performed, and I'm glad that I was there to hear it.

I'm usually most critical of the Mezzo-Soprano and Alto parts of Messiah, as they put the singer in a range that gives her voice an unfortunate tone to my hearing. Anyone who's heard the 1996 Messiah album conducted by Sir David Willcocks and performed by The Mormon Tabernacle Choir will know this kind of Alto; strained, airy, and unfortunately, often sounding much like a lazy hen. (I'm aware that in the above-mentioned case, the offender was actually Paul Esswood, a man, and a counter-tenor, but the result is too-often effectively the same.)

The standard slaughter of the Alto arias (and recitatives, but I'm lumping them together here) is why I was surprised by Erica Brookhyser, the Mezzo-Soprano, who gave the remainder of the remarkable solo performances of the evening. Erica's voice has a rich, warm quality that suits emotional pieces, like "He was despised," uncommonly well.

Sometimes, with the Messiah performance effectively kicking off the holiday season, the soloists forget the somber nature of parts of Messiah. The two stand-alone Alto parts included in the Sing-In are prophetic (Behold, a virgin shall conceive) and mournful (He was despised). In each case, Erica took the stage with proper decorum and delivered deep, soulful performances.

Indeed, the second (in order of prominence) standout piece of the evening was her "He was despised." Erica brought it to an emotional climax that had me riveted.

Sadly, the other female soloist, Soprano Shannon Kessler, didn't fare nearly so well.

Shannon gave "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion" a thorough butchering. This piece is full of melismas, during which she frequently missed notes or simply dropped the middle or end portions. She liberally ornamented--poorly, and far over-emphasized the "shout" portions of the piece, blowing them out and frequently sharping her triplet end notes in the process.

The soprano portions of Messiah are in my opinion, some of the more beautiful soprano parts around, especially from "There were shepherds abiding" through to "Glory to God." These were treated in a casual, blasé manner which did not do them justice.

Tanner Knight, the Tenor for the evening, seemed skilled enough for his class, but ultimately green. He also blew melismas, though not as badly or as frequently as Shannon did.

Tanner's main issue was consistency. For instance, he couldn't decide if "pardon'd" had two syllables or three, and it made his delivery feel off-kilter. His issues made him seem inexperienced rather than unskilled. I've no doubt that consistency will come to him with more performances under his belt.

It seemed that Tanner and Shannon were both given 'Come to Jesus' talks during intermission, as they each toned down their foibles for the second half. (I prefer this idea over the possibility that it took them each half the performance just to warm up.)

Keep in mind that in order to criticize well, one must be critical. Overall, the performance was very good, with some superb talent brought to bear by two of the soloists, which helped offset the talent that was perhaps uncharacteristically absent in the other two. The Utah Symphony Chorus backed the audience during the choral portions admirably. The symphony was in tune and on tempo in all except two short cases, and the First Trumpet made a simply extraordinary showing in the latter half.

It was a good year. I'm sorry it's over, and that I'll have to wait another year to go again.

Kids Prompt the Damnedest Queries

2007-11-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

Like this one: chip's combination cloud moon star +dvd "beauty and the beast"

If you have the Beauty and the Beast Special Edition DVD, then you can use the above query to find all of the needed answers to get through the interactive game on the disc and appease your kids.

Thank you, Google.

Conversations with The Boy, Part 2

2007-11-14T00:57:00.000-07:00

The Boy: Dad, can I have a snack?
Me: I've already told you that we're going to have lunch soon. Could I please have some peace and quiet?
The Boy: Yes.
Me: Thank you.
The Boy: What's a peace and quiet?

Target's Big No-No

2007-11-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

You may or may not know that I'm expecting a baby boy in April. As a pregnant woman, I seek the company and advice of other women. There is not a time in a woman's life when she needs the help of other women more than when she's pregnant. One of the best places I've found is the online community The Nest and it's sister-site The Nest Baby Beta.

One of the reasons I find the site so useful is that the other "nesties" are more than willing to share their experiences with products and retailers. You don't want to piss off a nestie. She will tell all the other nesties and then you'll have a nation-wide boycott on your hands.

Target may not know it yet, but it's getting a LOT of bad press from the nesties due to their very unwise decision to change it's Baby and Wedding Registry return policies. As of August 8th, 2007, Target will NOT accept returns without a receipt or gift receipt, even if it was checked off on the registry list. Not even for in-store credit.

Target, that was a bad idea.

Jenny, Myself, and Her Ring

2007-08-24T15:45:00.000-06:00

One glorious summer I had a romance with my best friend's sister's best friend. She and I were both teenagers at the time, but she was three years older than I, which was quite a feather in my cap with my friends.

In our teenage eagerness to act the part, we thought that being in love meant kissing a lot and touching each other in dark theaters, so that's what we did.

Her name was Jenny, and my yearning, angsty teenage heart thought that we just might last forever.

We were no more brainy than any other teenagers, so she and I and the friends we hung out with would walk to a local school around midnight and goof around in the schoolyard. More than once, our running around and giggling woke up locals who threatened to call the cops, and we had to split quickly.

One night on the way out or on the way back, a ring slipped off of Jenny's hand and into the grass of a yard next to the sidewalk we were following. Jenny was distraught and insisted that everyone search for the ring in the grass.

The ring was given to her by another guy, and I didn’t give a damn whether she found it or not. On the other hand, I didn't want to look like a jerk. I looked for the ring with everyone else, not knowing what I'd do if I did find it. I still don't know what I would have done.

Jenny didn't find her ring, and it dampened the evening. About halfway through the summer she or I (ok, it was her) lost interest and the relationship came to an end.

I was young though, "Wayne's World" was a new movie, and I had no idea that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was an old song getting in a good second run. Life went on.

I saw Jenny not long ago, working at a local restaurant, and the memories came flooding back. Now that I don't have to be a lovelorn teenager anymore, I can remember her and the ring that I didn't want found--but still looked for earnestly--with a fond smile.

SCO Soon to Cross Styx: Buddy, Can You Spare $2?

2007-08-20T23:53:00.000-06:00

This last Thursday, Crystal and I packed up our little family and drove to St. George. On both the trip out and the trip back, I pointed out the freeway exit for Lindon, Utah to Crystal, noting that it's the home of SCO Corp. This always spurs interest from her, because she reads most of what I write, and 15 months ago I gave SCO a doozy of a lashing at this very blog.

Of course, being on vacation and behind on my business and technical reading, I didn't know yet that Federal Judge Kimball's declaration that SCO owes basically the whole company and more to Novell had sent SCO's stock into a death spiral, and that the bell has begun to toll for them. (Image courtesy of Ars Technica.)

But then we got home yesterday, and today I got to catching up on my reading, and my, is that birds chirping in blue skies? I suppose Lindon will never quite be the same again, and I think that's a good thing.

My take on the tangled and twisted wreckage is over at EMB. Have a look, won't you?

1551536

2007-07-02T21:24:00.000-06:00

One of the members here has just completed his third decade. Several months ago, Jake asked me for the Fibonacci numbers for his birthday, so I gave them to him. At least as many has his computer can handle. The title for this post is the 30th such number. As of today, Jake is 10957 days old, which corresponds to the number
24405766982725029224574620080529938953110793609559683075724120015586439797376282
63410832575659176516430705286400831276789193401740485777373684894142096376152747
11001428756981426159241459929861020911806728146512534095337056760618262111962592
54448629692167814001818417976360566307312638004935705935835822834134303156254058
96869723340693596570983244577217820496168333549811663852448369918171191063774516
17093128977789323288738797246395635796856734640862449668788154305753994025198077
67242499025847512663982335368229640213014677230809195999480452006754123912196389
14144694116118976490453305624107026886608650474087543836861930120794908429666190
41433952461358618002337965969606442395116248863488764774646057929601246915183790
10261072866606052734121314456422912066502143135472139238976722161704852966247786
22681176410615207873716109601407147021243145792386464912248002630100199892632230
06099427498378047712101365834392505807445254303842927153271275262662620505301438
16887625375704173621323035405204295484924687899094358086527689810039712069067177
02271521977646675164218201925757675342107152841966935793216201059027755778294136
99090999935621944819805057570797854480648560952155777925907047454635464084168401
91529429385177578541804936116000923584424326755410973117179396351841380049976271
61163047533995904585353584772932981081668212155329287559561278715224106821540531
57877034263336220796849644050697049949761686232061176906640977624717578094370892
78188050110780171406795487842233520759309695483727249710368795662472546206127987
50964091451764813509178180014587474007573609149608762597081025009896445522370698
50836956183674464747688750383346314635879026141514131445803480655667944678701782
31310362860131918947859639962696847969664190605141984185100698224571017330240820
45233575711700357184456642699148234103132826262375921181046829168499053819288048
14785620980992614278225490215946612734419887359299459787980155689867770263787261
80702102027210550696905089462399710483021632135031586764174901805643673657707635
88939822742481166899008887164316799292986908481428382448956356641959989810785988
70133693690149147765139706119190762864592679523169372154092510649401683199173130
14123305466067872157348851321829070380590195355102783943487412174917192099610825
76224669506903111775998330097038190778898253429171500050592100579024289641185333
03093414212020577118893066716806120064049583392472069294544632373709785595413387
99004789479281302932413103393616489. (That's 2435 digits.)

Happy Birthday, Jake.

Management

2007-06-03T01:22:00.000-06:00

So for the last few weeks, I've been looking at a change of profession and I applied to a certain business which isn't too far from where I live and I had an interesting experience in the process. For the sake of keeping myself out of trouble, I'll not name the business, and we'll just call the manager who I dealt with throughout the hiring process Doug. Also, for the sake of not trying to skew reality, I will first outline the facts, as nearly as I remember them and I will try to use quotes as often as possible. Please note that I am human, and as such, I may make mistakes, but I will do my best to stay true to reality as possible. Then after I report the facts, I'll share my opinions.

I've been a customer at this business for some months now, and about a month and a half ago I turned in my resume. It took some time for a spot to open up with adequate hours for me to consider taking the job, but late week before last (If I'm not mistaken it was Saturday the 26th) Doug told me he had a position opening up that had plenty of hours per week, and asked if I was interested; I said yes. So on Tuesday, I strolled in and Doug started talking seriously with me about what the job would entail and we drew up a tentative schedule and we ended our meeting with him saying that he needed to talk with the store owner before I was officially hired and that he would call me first thing the next morning. Wednesday morning came and went and my phone didn't ring, so later that day I went in and said "Hey, Doug, what happened to 'I'll call you in the morning'?"

To which he responded, "I got busy. Business is business. I still need to talk to the owner. What are you up to tonight?"

"Well, I was just gonna head home and play some video games with my brother in law"

"Okay, well don't go too far. Go home and play your games, I'll call you tonight after I talk with the owner."

With that I did exactly what I said I would, keeping my phone close expecting a call. Midnight came and with no activity from my phone, I went to bed at my usual time. Morning came and I saw that I had not missed any calls. This concerned me, so I made my way out to talk to Doug. when I got there I said to him, calmly, albeit in a tone that might be construed as accusatory (though that wasn't my intention), "Hey, this is twice you told me you'd call within a certain time frame, and twice you've failed to do so."

With that, Doug took me aside and said "Listen, I'm the boss here and you don't come in and yell at me. Business is business and sometimes we get busy and sometimes things don't get done. Anyway, my not calling you was sort of a test and you just failed. If this is the way you're gonna act, I don't want you working for me."

There is one more thing I should point out before I start ranting about how I feel, and that is that when I told him that he'd failed to call twice, there was a customer in the vicinity, and though I don't know if he was paying attention, it might have been better if I hadn't said anything in front of him, though I think the outcome would have been the same.

Now I get to express how I feel about this whole thing. I think the fact that Doug didn't want me to stand up to him is the sign of a douchebag manager. A doormat is something I certainly am not, and I would have reacted in the same manner toward anyone who treated me the way he did, I don't care if it's an authority figure, a peer or a subordinate (Something I find myself lacking at the moment ;).

It's a simple matter of courtesy to follow up when you tell someone that you'll do something. When you do follow up, you show people that that's what you expect from them. After all, why should I give you any reason to trust me if I can't trust you?

Conversations with Eric, Part 1

2007-05-16T14:33:00.000-06:00

Me: BTW, when my birthday comes, I know what I want from you...
Eric: Okay, but I'll have to start saving up. Cruise missles are a little pricey these days.
Me: I want a complete set of Fibonaccis...all the way to the end. I've had an incomplete set for ages now. But now I want them all.
Very inexpensive.
I already have 1, 2, 3, 5, and on for 1,000 or so.
8, 13, 21, 34, 55, ...
89, 144, 233, 377, 610...
Eric: Wow, I can't even give you the hope of a full set of them. Machine precision starts to fail us pretty quickly.
Me: But now I want the rest.
Don't let me down here, Eric.

(I'm getting the sense that petulance doesn't become me.)

Joy, Its part of life.

2007-04-26T10:31:00.000-06:00

Well it seems that I have gotten myself into real trouble this time. For those who don't know I am engaged. Her name is Jennifer. The wedding will be on Friday July 13^th. We have been engaged for almost three weeks now, and I hope you will all forgive me for being so distracted that I have not posted the news. Unfortunately we have not done any serious planning yet so I don't have pictures to post or any more details. You are welcome to ask questions and I'll answer what I can.

Last night this lovely young lady had me take her to a restaurant she had only heard about. It was very good. I enjoy food that is a little different so I am willing to try just about anything. We started out with the spring roll appetizer witch had noodles inside and a sweet and spicy sauce to dip them in. The noodles gave the rolls a great texture and the flavor was mild. When you order you meal here they have some dishes that are “spicy” and they let you chose how spicy you want them on a scale of 1-5, 1 being “mild” and 5 being cooked on the forges of hell. I had a dish called beef sukiyaki, having never had sukiyaki before I had no idea what to expect. Its thin slices of beef with cabbage mushrooms onions and other veggies all cooked in a sauce and served with glass noodles. I also have a sensitive palette so I ordered it as a 1. (Ok I’m a pansy.)The shock and surprise of an excellent dish is the reason I am so willing to try new things. My apologies to China Hill and The Little Orient, your food is good but these guys really made you look bad. You’re lucky they are so far away. Jennifer went for the green curry with chicken. It has coconut milk onion and lots of spices I can’t identify. She ordered it as a 3, the chicken was ok but the sauce almost made me lose the ability to taste the rest of the food. Oh, they give you a big bowl of white rice too. If you have stuffy sinuses from allergies or whatever this stuff will clear you out. So bring a hanky. Here is the address and maybe some pictures if I can upload them. I also found some more reviews online here, and here. No the images are not from the restaurant I linked them to the sites they are from. (I need to get a digital camera.)

Thai Village
208 W Main
American Fork, 84003 - 2228
(801) 492-7677

Ok I realize I wrote more about the food than the girl. I just want you go for the food and leave the girl to me.

Conversations with The Boy, Part 1

2007-04-16T20:35:00.000-06:00

The Boy: Hey Daddy, do you know Frank?
Me: Uh...hm, Frank who?
The Boy: Why do you want to make a knock-knock joke?

See Me At EMB

2007-04-12T14:53:00.000-06:00

Just a heads up, I've posted over at Entrepreneurs Mean Business about modifying my Nintendo Wii. It's pretty geeky, so it may appeal to some, and not others, and that's ok.

Once upon a time, I'd have posted it at PhischX, but for now EMB is best for me. Check it out if you're so inclined!

It comes but once a year

2007-03-21T21:55:00.000-06:00

I don't often get the chance to do this, so Happy Vernal Equinox!

I hate to break the news, but you've already missed your chance to stand an egg on its end.

Thoughts on your new Blog.

2007-03-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

First where can you post comments I tried to find the post link. Since I have no way of posting a comment I will put it on fish net.

I like the idea of the book review and I think you and others can get a lot out of it. But one thing bothers me. You highlighted these quotes and even retyped them for the net. But you did not tell us what they mean to you. Why are they revealing to you as an entrepreneur and how do you see them being applied. Bring your readers to your personal level so it will help us connect with you, and help us understand your thoughts. Let us know where you have seen these things happen.

EntrepreneursMeanBusiness.com Update

2007-02-27T22:20:00.000-07:00

Here's a big THANK YOU to those of you who've been posting here. It's uncomfortable for me to think that our beloved Phischkneght would be allowed to whither and die.

Some of you have noticed that the blog I brought to your attention is dead. It was dead, for about a week, but now it's alive and well at a different URL. Please stop in if business, entrepreneurship, or Utah commerce in general are in any way your cup of herbal tea. (Me, I like a good, strong mint.)

The most recent post over there is about the new book review program I'm launching for the site. It'll be fun to read books with my readers, and get different viewpoints on them, and of course any and all here are invited.

Cheers!

AVG Free!

2007-02-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention recently that Grisoft has stopped support to AVG 7.1. I have also been told that they no longer support the free version and that you have to pay to upgrade to AVG 7.5. This is FALSE! Ok they stopped support for AVG7.1 but Grisoft still has a free version and it is AVG 7.5 here is the link. I am happy to help those who can’t afford to pay for a virus scanner and so is AVG. Making a free addition in my mind is good business. This keeps the home computers free of viruses. This in turn helps keep the corporate computers and those who pay for licenses free of viruses. So if anyone from AVG happens to read this thank you.

From a small user.

May you always be profitable.

The Commercial Spinoff Showcase

2007-02-22T20:53:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed that sometimes a decent commercial suddenly becomes a long series of lame commercials? Let's look at a few of the ones that have really stood out:

Geico's Gecko--The lovable little critter appeared to start as a catchy ad gimmick before going on to become the symbol of the company. Now, he's doing lame interviews with an accent (Australian? I'm lousy about accents).

Geico's Nerdy Office Worker--In one of the first gecko era commercials that didn't feature the gecko directly, they interviewed several people in an office about what they thought of their computer generated spokesmodel. One interviewee was a nerdy fellow who later appeared in several commercials including some where he went around the country interviewing customers, sometimes in a hot tub.

Geico's Cavemen--I've never really got these. They're sometimes kind of funny, but they've often strayed from their origins. Lately though they've gotten back to referring more to Geico in each one. (I think it's funny that Geico has three examples that I've been able to easily think of, and Wikipedia mentions some other ones that I didn't remember at first and I won't go into here).

Dodge Showroom (Marty)--There have been a series of radio commercials in our local market where one Dodge dealer calls up another one and mocks him. It started with the one dealer asking the other how the sale was going on and the other would have some lame attempt to copy the success of the caller (kind of like a not-so-good-natured version of the recent Macintosh commercials with the PC), but now this guy is just calling up the other dealer and verbally abusing him. It's not funny anymore (not that it ever was), and now it's just painful to listen to. Not as painful as the supermarket jingles, but painful all the same.

That's all I have for now. I guess that except for the Dodge one, none are really that awful, but come on. I think we've seen enough of these for now. Speaking of Dodge, maybe I'll get around to explaining why I hate them so much (in my defense, they hated me first).

Life Irritates Art

2007-02-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a business trip to scenic Scranton, PA. While the trip was an interesting series of drives through unknown and unfamiliar territory (punctuated by periods of actually doing work), one of the more memorable experiences came during my flight home.

For some reason, I was put in the middle seat of my row for both of my longer flights on the trip. On our flight from Cincinnati to Salt Lake City, I sat behind a bald man who, as soon as the wheels left the ground, plopped his seat back as far as it could go. My passive-aggressive efforts to persuade him to sit up were fruitless and I ended up spending three hours wedged behind a seat in what remained of my personal space that had been too small to begin with.

When I got home, I found two instances of creative works that captured my experience. One was a strip from my new Dilbert Desk Calendar (which is very poorly designed this year, but that’s another story) with Dilbert sitting on a plane behind some big lout who leaned his chair all the way back into his lap. The other was a brief article in the Reader’s Digest about a woman who was stuck behind someone who had invaded her space by leaning back. I was really empathizing with her through her article as she told about her efforts to entertain herself (we had both read the SkyMall magazine, for example). Then, at the end of the article, she said that she “waved her warm towel in surrender.”

What the belgium? I have absolutely no sympathy for someone who’s spacious first class living space was invaded by the slight recline of a seat back that was too far away for her to even reach. When the seat back is so close that you cannot bend down and reach your shins, then you can complain you spoiled, arrogant little columnist.

Remember All That Talk About Business?

2007-02-06T23:22:00.000-07:00

So things are changing a little bit.

Before I get to the meat of this, I really want to say that this is a great blog with great posts and terrific contributors.

I love this place. I'm not leaving, and I hope that our other contributors will come back to life and begin posting again. Eric, Jeff, Leon, Krys, Julianne...I'm looking at you.

Now, the uncomfortable part. I've begun a new venture, and it requires that I write well on a regular basis. My official goal is to post damned near every day, and that is hard. So hard that I'll probably not be posting here much. Much, you hear? I'm not deserting, I'm still here, and I still want to keep Phischkn....uh, FishNet Tech Forum alive.

In that spirit, I'm calling again on our contributors--none of whom have yet posted this year--to step up to the plate and reactivate. Please tell us what you're up to. Tell us what you're doing for work these days. Gripe about frustrations. Give us restaurant recommendations. Review the books you've read. Plan some LAN parties.

What am I doing? I've started a new website called EntrepreneursMeanBusiness.com. It actually has several other URLs that are shorter and easier to spell, but EMB was the original concept and that's what we're flying with. The website is devoted to people who want to have their own businesses and improve the businesses that they're already running. It's still very young, and very beta.

When Phischkneght Forum was new, I practically twisted the arms of everyone I knew to get them to read the blog. I won't be doing that any more. The business I'm in requires that I be interesting to people that I don't know in order to produce revenue. If you'd like to check in, I invite you to do so at EMB (no longer at FishNetTech! The link embedded here is fixed!).

Finally and one last time, this is not a farewell post. I'm still here, and I'll be kicking the butts of those who do not find time or motivation to be here as well.

Thank you.

The Necessary Skills -or- How To Be Useful (You Pick)

2007-01-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

Recently, a friend asked me this:

What skills, aside from typing, will I learn that will be of use to me in an office position?

The following are my tips for working, really anywhere. They apply to front-line peons and top-floor executives alike. Someone following this pattern should be able to manage to stay ethical, make friends, and advance within an organization.

Know how to read a P&L sheet.
Know what a P&L sheet is.
Know how to read financial statements (see #2).
Be able to think on your feet in a phone conversation.
Be able to talk about nothing at all while you do the real work in the background.
Learn that all internal systems are more functional than the tasks that they train you for, and make it your goal to learn the true power of each system.
Make friends with your co-workers and be humble (especially at first) so that when (not if) you screw up, they'll want to help you.
ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS admit that you screwed up RIGHT AWAY. It makes fixing it and staying out of trouble SO much easier.
Make nice with the boss. He/She has your nuts.
Eat lunch with your co-workers. And don't be a pretentious prick.
Always listen to gossip, never create it, never pass it on. Don't be stuck-up about it, just listen when it comes up, and politely refuse to discuss it.
Make friends with Google. And I mean really good friends. Knowing how to craft search queries that get results is the same as being really smart.
When you hear a co-worker wonder something out loud, find it out and report. When you hear a boss do the same, repeat. The more you are willing to learn on behalf of others, the more valuable you become.
Always be willing, always be honest. This is what a yes-man isn't. A yes-man sugar coats the facts in order to tell the boss what she wants to hear. A real worker tells the boss why something is a bad idea, and then expresses willingness to start the idea in motion if it's what the boss orders. Honest willingness is treasured by smart bosses.
Train yourself to focus and give quality results under pressure. One might say that the only time your work really matters is when you're under pressure. If you can give top-notch results when it really matters, you're valuable.
Look for traits you admire in your co-workers and (a. Tell them about it, and (b. Emulate that trait.
Find ways to be friendly to everyone you meet at the office, including higher-ups. Don't go out of your way to bump into a muckety-muck, because you will anyway. If you're in the habit of helping when possible, you'll help a muckety-muck automatically, and the fact that your help was genuine, and you would have done it for anyone, will stand out in the boss's mind.
Know who your friends are, and proactively watch their backs. This will encourage them to do the same for you.
There is no invisible line between employee-type and boss-type. Bosses become bosses by playing the game well, and everyone is playing roughly the same game.
Understanding and remembering constantly that every action you make at work effects your future at work makes all the difference.
When things are slow, experiment with internal programs or systems. Try things that are not part of the normal workflow. Sure, they've taught you the most efficient ways they know to do your job, but who knows? You could find a better way.
Find small ways to be different in your workplace. Try not to be annoying in this. Approachability is the goal here.
Excellence is a great way to be different, but it can have the opposite effect. Best to be excellent and find additional ways to be different.
Don't gloat about excellence, and never rest on laurels. Just focus on getting better.
Try to understand jobs and responsibilities that are way beyond your own. Ask questions. Understand how the business works as a whole. Innovation comes through big-picture understanding.
You always make the best economical sense to your employer when you are as useful as you can possibly be. If you find a problem, offer to help fix it. If you aren't extremely busy, ask the boss if there's some extra way you can help. If there are other duties that you can ask to learn, ask and learn them. Find ways to make yourself more and more useful. People who know the org most completely often get promoted because they understand the company from the top down.
Don't forget to keep working on your fundamental skills. Learn key commands in the programs you use. Learn to type faster. Learn to 10-key faster. Become a better writer. Anything you can to augment your basic skills will help both in your professional life and in your personal life.

Thanks Jeff!

It's a Festivus Miracle!

2006-12-23T09:09:00.000-07:00

Everyone get out the Pole and start warming up for the Feats of Strength! It's time for us all to let everyone in our lives know how thoroughly they've disappointed us in the last year.

Happy Festivus. Happy Festivus everybody.

Product Review: Onkyo TX-SR674

2006-12-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

Recently my dearly beloved Harman Kardon receiver, an AVR-120, committed seppuku. I was at home with my kids watching a movie, and suddenly there was no sound from the front left speaker. After much testing and troubleshooting, I concluded that the left front channel simply no longer worked.

I made a daring rescue attempt, replacing a 6800uf 16V capacitor that was bulging inside, but to no avail. The unit now sits alone on my work bench, a sad victim of some mysterious circuitry malfunction. I may still attempt further repair, but life must go on.

After an appropriate grieving period, I set to work on finding my next receiver.

I've had the Harman Kardon for about five years, and in that time the TV has been upgraded, numerous DVD players have come and gone, and the PVR that I built for our home has come into existence. In this time the AVR-120 has become sadly outmoded. It has some very nice features; optical and coaxial digital audio, and S-Video--an option nearly unheard of when it was new. But it has no idea what component video is, or HDMI for that matter, and it's never been particularly powerful. I was running it at the edge of its abilities when I would turn a DVD movie up to enjoy a loud explosion, or even try to hear a garbled bit of dialog.

In short, it's been time for a long time, but short of a system failure there was no way I could justify the expense of a new receiver to my wife. And so the failure that did indeed come and force the upgrade has been very much a mixed blessing. It's not the best nor the worst of times, but conflicting feelings are definitely at play here.

I've been using the replacement unit that I bought, an Onkyo TX-SR674, for about five days now. Overall I like it quite a bit, but this would hardly be a proper review if I left it at that. And there are a couple of problems, and I'm loathe to be derelict in my duty to report them. But I also won't settle for the simple "I like this, and I don't like that," approach. And so.

The last time I was on the market for a new receiver, the game was different. It involved visiting every home theater shop in the four or five cities nearest me, carefully pricing things out, carefully checking port configurations, taking note of models and brands, and haggling, haggling, until I felt that I had a reasonable price on a good system.

And that's how I got my Harman Kardon, which after all was said and done, was remarkably well suited to my needs for a time. And it served me well until it abruptly and mysteriously half-died.

I was buying online then, but only books and knick knacks, and the odd PC part here and there. I'd probably never spent more than $75 in a single online purchase then.

Nowadays, though, I wouldn't dream of making a trip to Circuit City or Best Buy my first step. I don't want some young sales guy telling me that what I want doesn't exist (this seems to happen every single time I go in search of something). I don't want to be upsold. I don't want to look at the price on the shelf and wonder if that's even in the ballpark of the best price I can get. I also don't want a damned extended service plan pushed on me, or to deal with the alarm going off as I walk out the door because the girl at the register doesn't know how to kill the anti-theft device, and on and on.

God, I love the internet.

My first stop was to cry for help at Metafilter. This was my post there, and I wore my angst on my sleeve. After some good advice and hardcore study, I narrowed it down to the Onkyo TX-SR674 that I already mentioned, talked Crystal into letting me buy it, and placed the order. Shipping was free but slow, and it was six days before I got my new receiver in a large box.

I began setting it up right away, but realizing that it would take an hour or two at least to do it right, pushed it off for a couple of days.

COMPLAINT 1: Not enough modes

The first problem with setup was presented when I realized that I have six (well, seven) video sources, and the receiver only allows four. I have DVD, Vid 1, Vid 2, and Vid 3 to work with. In the end, I decided to route my Home Theater PC through my plasma TV's VGA input for video, and use the receiver's Tape input for sound. This is not ideal.

COMPLAINT 2: Vid 4 is front panel only

Yes, the receiver has a Vid 4 mode, but the receiver does not allow programming the Vid 4 mode at all. It's for the front panel ports on the receiver, and nothing else can be routed to that mode. In what world is this a feature, Onkyo? Why don't you allow me to decide whether I want to use back ports for the Vid 4 mode? It sure would have made setup easier.

In addition to re-routing the HTPC video feed, I had to route my video game systems through the VCR in order to get down to the four video source maximum. I really hate that I had to do this, and it is my number one gripe about this receiver. I want enough modes that I can damned near fill the back ports and assign them all to a working mode, and I expect to be able to program all the modes however I want. For this reason, I really miss my Harman Kardon AVR-120.

I'm stongly considering buying a Nintendo Wii sometime soon, and I don't know how I'll connect it.

These two complaints are a big deal to me. Fortunately, they're the only two things that I really hate about this system so far. The rest of the review will skew positive.

The owner's manual says over and over again that the first thing you should do is run the automated speaker setup. I chose to connect devices first and I even played one device for a few seconds just to make sure that I had sound from the speakers. I figured that there's no point in running the automated speaker setup if I'll have to stop it half way through and re-check a speaker connection. It sounded awful, due to the non-calibrated state of the system, but at least I could tell that things were in working order.

Device setup is managed through an on-screen menu system that the receiver conveniently fed through the HDMI port to my TV. The manual indicated that not all models in the series will output menus to HDMI. But the TX-SR674 does, and that's nice. The menu for assigning which feed is linked to which mode is simple and only slightly confusing. I quickly found my error and got it right on the second try.

I'm happy to say that converting the DVI feed from my Gaming PC to HDMI and the HDMI feed back to DVI for my plasma TV works just fine, and the picture is gorgeous.

Likewise for the analog video upconversion--HDMI/DVI is the only cable from the receiver to the TV, and my VCR, NES and DVD players all look superb through the receiver. The NES (that's right, I have an NES and I play it) in particular looks better than ever before.

The remote that came with the receiver knew how to talk to my Onkyo six-disc DVD player out of the box. This is nice, but unnecessary, as I use a Logitech Harmony remote to control the whole shebang.

When the time came to do the speaker setup, I put the kids to bed and warned my wife that I'd need silence for 15 minutes or so. We live in a neighborhood that's on the quiet side, so I positioned the setup microphone and began the setup.

Not long into the first setup attempt, the microphone fell off if its perch on the couch, so I aborted the setup, repositioned the mic, and restarted the setup.

The second try took about ten minutes, requiring my input on the remote every two minutes or so, and gave no errors. Amazingly, it knew that the right front speaker is exactly 15 feet away from where I sit on the couch, and it also knew that the subwoofer, sitting right behind the right front speaker is 17 feet away. It had distances on all other speakers and it also automatically calibrated each speaker's appropriate relative volume to the rest of the system.

Very impressive.

I'm still fooling around with the surround modes, and the system's sound reproduction is excellent. I haven't really stressed it yet, but so far I haven't heard a whisper of distortion, and it's easily gone to very high volumes without maxing.

The receiver responds quickly enough to IR commands that I never have to tell my Harmony remote that I need "Help." This is unlike my Samsung plasma TV, which takes blasted forever to recognize commands and frequently misses them.

Executive Summary:

Pros-

Excellent video upconversion
Excellent sound reproduction
Automatic speaker setup (This is hard for anyone to get right, no matter what they tell you. Having it automated is a great feature.)
Remote works with other Onkyo devices out of the box
The HDMI and Component feeds are present and work well
Doesn't need a long lag to respond to IR commands

Cons-

Not nearly enough modes, or too many ports for available mode options
Vid 4 needs to get itself into a flexible frame

The pros are great, and the cons are critical but not fatal. Mixed feelings abound. Overall, it's a great but flawed system.

What Daddy Does

2006-08-10T22:22:00.000-06:00

I wish to speak for a moment to my two very dear friends, Stan and Eric, who are freshly-minted daddies to Alexander (July 16th) and Henry (August 9th), respectively.

I'm very happy for Stan and Eric, because until now all of my tales of adventures in daddying have been to them hearsay. Now they get to make some of their own stories.

My own son, Harrison, is now four years old. I won't bother to claim that my style of daddying is the best around, or even better than any particular person's style. But I will say that Harrison is a better boy than I was, and I believe that this is due both to his given nature at and before birth, and to the parenting he's received since.

Here I'll humbly offer some of my ideas regarding parenting. These are ideas and techniques that work for me, and nothing more. I think I'm right about a lot of this stuff, but you may not, and that's ok.

The first, and most important concept that Crystal and I have used is that we have discussed our childrens' actions and planned out what will happen when something is wrong. It's hard to be perfect with this, but if Harrison does something I don't like, I tell him it's wrong, and what the consequence will be the next time he does it. For the most part, he knows what will happen when he hits his sister, or when he speaks rudely to his mom, or when he refuses to go to time out. A lot of this won't mean much until your boys are 12-18 months old, though.

Harrison slept incredibly well for the first three months of his life. Most of the time, he let us sleep unless he was hungry. Once his tummy was full, he went back to bed and so did we. After the three months though, he would frequently wake up at night and want to play.

Crystal and I talked about this together, and decided that if we gave in to him at night and played with him or let him come to our bed, then he would get the idea that playing with mommy and daddy at night is ok.

And so for months, when Harrison would cry at night, we would go to his room and offer him a bottle. If he refused it we would leave. He would then cry until he fell back asleep because we wouldn't go in and play with him.

Sitting still and listening to her baby cry is one of the most agonizing things that a mother can bear. This is doubly true if she is still nursing, and the baby's cry makes her milk drop even though the kid isn't ready to eat.

Crystal was very courageous during this period, and by the time he was nine or ten months old, Harrison understood that bed time was bed time, and he could sleep, or babble to himself, or play with a stuffed bear in his crib, or look around, or cry...but crying wouldn't do anything for him. Sure, it would get us to look in and make sure everything was ok, but he'd still be in the crib. By the end of that first year, he only cried if he was hungry, because we'd taught him that crying means mom and dad think you need a bottle.

So I guess my dominant theme would be consistency. Ivan Pavlov and his wondrous dogs are often seen as examples of action/result behaviors and Maslow is handy when evaluating motivators and their effect on a being, but the sad truth is that your kid will not learn causality or modified behavior through skillful use of motivators as readily as a Golden Retriever will.

Kids are humans, and humans are incredibly complex, thinking animals. One of the notorious shortcomings (or glories) of the human condition is the ability to possess a stubborn will to do an action and expect the wrong consequence over and over again. And kids aren't even that simple, because they're not completed humans, they're developing humans. So whatever sensibilities they'll possess later probably won't apply just yet. Or the influence of these sensibilities may be spotty.

Your task then, new parent, is to be more patient and consistent than Pavlov ever was. Yes, classical conditioning works on kids, but at the cost of sweat and tears at a minimum, if not blood.

Volumes have been written about this stuff, but I'm not an expert, and in the end all I'm shooting for here is a congratulatory post with some few tips that might help, or could be (very justifiably) ignored.

And so, just a few small anecdotes:

I spank. I think that daddies who spank justly (and sparingly) are right, and I think that daddies who decide not to spank at all are also right. This is the serious side of spanking.

I've elevated spanking to a mythical physiological mandate, dubbing it "PRT", or Posterior Realignment Technique. I've also theorized that pockets of a certain enzyme form in the gluteus, and that this enzyme is only released into the bloodstream through spanking. When the child's brain is deprived of this enzyme, it rots. When a child behaves as if he or she is in possession of a damaged brain, PRT may be necessary in order to preserve what's left of the brain. This is the non-serious, mythological side of spanking.

When my kids come out of time out, or have been spanked, we always take a moment to talk about what went wrong, and they always get a hug from daddy. I also tell them periodically that time out and spanking are some of daddy's jobs. He doesn't like doing them, but he has to. (Of course, mommy also disciplines the kids and hugs them, but this isn't about her.)

I hug my kids and talk to them often. I keep busy with work, but I try to make sure that I've had a conversation with both of my kids every day, and I make sure to hug and kiss them every day as well.

I make a point of apologizing to my kids when I've done something wrong. We frequently talk about how daddies and mommies make mistakes, too. A couple of times, I've misunderstood the situation and wrongly spanked them. Spanking is a severe punishment to them, so I treat these mistakes and their feelings very seriously, and we talk about it until they feel better.

When I talk to them, I try to kneel or sit down so that we're eye to eye. It would be hard for me to understand or relate to someone twelve feet tall.

A while back I made a mistake in my business, and I came home feeling terrible. The kids had just been put to bed, so I went in and hugged Rachel for a while to feel better. She was mystified to see me cry, so I explained to her that "Sometimes daddies cry, too." She still likes to repeat to me that "Sometimes daddies cry."

Finally, I like to check on my kids as the last thing I do before I go to bed. I shift them so they won't fall out of bed, and I cover them up if they're cold, and sometimes I whisper into their sleeping ears, "I love you." Very rarely, they whisper back, "I love you too, daddy." Then daddy cries a little and goes to bed.

How To Speak In Church

2006-07-18T02:01:00.000-06:00

I frequently fantasize during church about standing in sacrament meeting and giving a talk about giving talks in church. Eric touched on this subject a few months ago.

A couple of Sundays ago after some consecutive bad speakers, I stole a sheet of paper from Crystal and made a point-by-point outline of some of the concepts that I would include in such a talk. Tonight I've knocked out eight items on a to-do list in front of me, and digitizing this sheet of paper is the last item on the list.

I'm putting the list to good use. I strongly believe that the Spirit you feel in a meeting is equally dependent on presentation as it is on content. I frequently tune out talks because they're being presented poorly. My mind can't help it; if a message's medium isn't working (in this case the speaker), then my brain has better things to think about, which it promptly gets to work doing. I'm assuming that any message you present in church will be of some importance, so why would you want me to ignore it?

Please, church speakers of the world, take the following tips in the spirit in which they're given. I want to hear and understand your message, and I want you and your audience to feel good about the way you present it. I'm not being mean, I just want what's best for everyone.

Don't tell a "When The Bishop Called" story. I've never heard a good one, and I bet you haven't either. We know that you were called, we know that you had a feeling not to pick up the phone, we know that you didn't know what to talk about, we know that you're nervous, and we know that playfully threatening the bishop is fun. It's all been done. Write your own material.
Slow down, look at your audience, look at your text as needed. I don't get a thing out of a breathless, page-long talk that you delivered in thirty seconds. I'm too dizzy! PRACTICE....SLOWING....DOWN. Especially if you know you're going to be nervous, and especially if you're a fast talker anyway. And it's completely ok to read a sentence from your notes, look at the audience, deliver that sentence thoughtfully, and then look back at your notes for the next sentence. At least this way I get to process the information, and you might look thoughtful.
Don't apologize for your material. Present your message unabashedly, and if a story you want to use is told every six weeks or so in sacrament meeting, show a little respect for your audience and take a few minutes to say it another way. If you must use something that's overused, don't apologize, just present it better than usual and move on.
Favor stories from your own life over stories from other sources. J. Golden Kimball was really cool, but I'd rather hear a story about you. You are a real, live person who I know (or could know) personally, and J. Golden and most of his ilk are dead. Telling your own story will allow you to build a relationship with your audience, let you give more detail, and help you avoid telling the same old story again (See rule #3).
Use quotations in context. It's pretty tricky to misquote King Benjamin, but it's a lot easier, and a lot more common to quote him out of context.
Vary your volume. It's ok to be quiet, and it's ok to be loud, as long as you do both appropriately.
Bring or memorize a small amount of backup material. General Authorities frequently tout "Speaking by the Spirit." This is not making things up as you go. It's knowing your material and a little more so well that if you feel that a certain part of your talk needs to be dropped, you can do so and you'll have other material ready to fill the gap.
When you use a quotation, pretend you're the person it came from and speak accordingly. When I quote Brigham Young, I stand up straight, look up a little, and speak in a booming voice. Brigham Young wasn't just a bunch of words, he was a large, visionary, opinionated man who was also a prophet of God. Don't short change him and others who provide your talk with meat.
Quote, then explain. This is really important when you quote anyone who died before 1950 or so. Old English is hard, and your audience need help with what Paul just said in his epistle. Don't let them down.
Don't be afraid to stray from your text a little. Decide that you'll say what the Spirit tells you to, even if it isn't written down. Don't rob your audience of what the Spirit just told you to say.
If you find you're off topic, take a moment to find an appropriate place in your text to continue.
Never apologize for silence or weeping. These are powerful, and apologizing trivializes them. If you wish, you may explain the silence or weeping. An explanation can magnify the strength because it helps the audience understand you.
If your talk is instructional, have a few copies of your text or notes ready to give away.
If you need a moment to gather your thoughts, thank your audience for their patience and don't apologize.
Have a clear goal of what you want the audience to learn, think, or do from your talk. Make sure that this goal stays the same when you're writing the talk, and when you're delivering it.
It's a good idea to memorize your talk, as this allows you to be more flexible. This takes lots of practice, and if you don't have time to practice giving it from memory 10 or more times, still practice it, but plan on using notes.
If you're an expert on your topic, you might try standing and speaking without a written talk or notes. This is a skill that grows with practice, and atrophies quickly.
It's ok to address the audience, and individuals in the audience, briefly.
Create a summary sentence that you will deliver at the end of your talk. It should state your goal for the audience. This will let the audience set their own goals, and it will give your talk a sense of purpose.

That's my list. I'm also really fond of the rule of opening with a joke or a lie, and I usually follow it. I like to use a lie that's so outrageous that it's immediately recognized as a joke. Also, one of my mission presidents told us to always close testifying. I like to lock the testifying into the theme of my talk, but I've seen the shotgun approach work as well.

ROCI #6: Fans Who Buy Tickets Own The Show (Logan City Fireworks)

2006-07-17T02:17:00.000-06:00

Those are powerful memories. I wrote about them more than I had planned, so this Rule Of Customer Interaction is a separate post.

This will be a special ROCI, as I’ll be emailing a copy of the post to Logan Utah’s Mayor, Randy Watts. If there’s something you’d like to tell Mayor Watts, his contact page is here. Mayor Watts, if there's something you'd like to say here, I'll be happy to post anything you send me, good or bad. My contact information is available elsewhere on this blog, and you also have my information in my email to you. I sincerely hope that you find time to talk to us.

The Logan fireworks shows written about in the previous post were formative for me, and they still hold a special place in my heart. But as sad as I am to say it, I think I’ll only attend one more year before giving up on Logan.

A lot has changed about the show in the last several years. Some of the changes are good:

The stadium’s been remodeled, and there’s a new ticket booth.
Security personnel now check every bag and cooler entering the stadium for alcohol, glass and weapons. The show in 2002 was a very paranoid affair, but paranoid was popular at the time, so it’s forgivable.
Logan City cops now direct traffic out of the parking lots. They fell down a little this year, but the last few years have been a much smoother experience where getting out of Logan is concerned.

But there are also bad changes:

The gate opening times keep getting moved back, forcing people to stand in line longer. I should be able to walk in with a purchased ticket at 5:00 PM and save seats for my family. This year the gates opened at 7:30.
They don’t open the ticket office until 30 minutes prior to the gates opening. What’s the deal? I can’t give you money until the line I’ve been standing in for two hours is a half mile long? Why?

These are small complaints. What I really want to talk about here is the show itself. The show is killing my experience, and I want to talk about it in an open forum (such as this one), and create an opportunity for Mayor Watts and anyone else of his choosing to talk about why things are the way they are, and possibly see things get better.

So let's get right to it.

First, nobody sounds good in a stadium, guys. The only person who sounds like he should in your pre-fireworks programs is the announcer (Craig Hislop?), and even he doesn’t sound good, he just sounds like you expect a football announcer will sound.

This year you had Imagine, a Beatles cover band perform. I saw Imagine at the Dee Events Center at Weber State University a few years back, and they killed. They really looked and spoke like the Beatles, and the music sounded just like my Dad’s Beatles LPs (and my MP3s). They were great.

But in your stadium, they sounded like crap. And when the utterly forgetable band you brought in last year couldn’t carry a tune to save their lives, of course the stadium acoustics didn’t do them any favors.

Simply put, your shows for the last six years or so have been agonizing, and there’s a very simple way you can make it better. Please, please, I beg of you, turn the damned volume down. One quarter to one half of the volume you’ve been using would be acceptable, if not ideal. I would be able to hear my family. I would be able to talk to my kids. I would still be able to hear the band, and the announcer, and Miss Cache Valley loud and clear.

And most importantly, I’d have the choice of putting in my ear phones and listening to an audio book instead of the terrible band, or the good band that sounds terrible in your stadium, or the kids who’ve written fawning pieces about the beauty of democracy that brims with clichés and non-sequiturs.

Please don’t misunderstand me; democracy is great, kids are great too, and even a band that sucks needs to eat. But I paid cash to get into that stadium to see fireworks, and I don’t want to lose my hearing over it, and I do deserve to have the choice of what to listen to.

But short of wearing can-style hearing protection with earphones underneath the cans, there's no way I can listen to the medium of my choice instead of your PA system. And it just shouldn't be this way. I should be able to enjoy the show even without 85% hearing loss.

Next, let’s talk about your tradition of honoring those who have served in the military. This is a good tradition, and those who have served deserve recognition. I voluntarily served in the Air Force, and nearly died there. I have strong feelings of sacrifice, loss, and pride associated with the experience.

I appreciate being honored for this, as I’m sure many others do. So why did you wait until dark this year, to play the songs of our military branches, when we couldn’t see the people we were honoring? Did someone lose the almanac?

And you goofed again, perhaps even worse when the fireworks were finally underway. First, “Anchors Aweigh,” the Navy’s song played to fireworks. Then, “The Marine Corps’ Hymn” played to fireworks. Then, “The Army Goes Rolling Along” was played to fireworks. And then, instead of playing “The U.S. Air Force Song” (more commonly and incorrectly called “Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder”) you played “Stars And Stripes Forever!”

Who overlooked the fact that the Air Force will be far better represented in numbers at any given show in Utah than any other military branch? Who decided that no one would notice, and if they did notice, they wouldn’t care?

You honored me in the dark and then neglected to play the song of my military branch alongside the other military songs with fireworks. I'd rather you just skipped the whole military lineup, rather than doing this.

I love the Logan fireworks show. The Fourth of July and my birthday nearly coincide every year, and each year, I drive my family up from Layton and make an event of the entire day of the show. I spend money at Willow Park, at local restaurants, local gas stations, local grocery stores, at Logan Lanes, and then I pay to get into USU Stadium.

But I could just as easily spend that money in Provo, and begin a new tradition of taking my family to the Stadium of Fire.

I’d rather not. I like Logan, even if the much-touted Fireworks West shows are decidedly not what they used to be, and even if Main Street is busier every year, and even if it takes a little longer to get home every year. I don’t know of another place in the world quite like Willow Park. The LDS Tabernacle downtown is an amazing piece of art history in its own right. And I’ve never been as fond of a campus as I am of USU’s, nearly in the mouth of Logan Canyon.

I really want to keep coming back to Logan. Please fix my fireworks show so that I can do so.

Rule Of Customer Interaction #6:

Running a public show for profit is all about selling an experience, and the old saw that one person talking represents a multitude of other silent people is never truer.
But sports fans get their own entire section in the newspaper, so when ticket sales take a dive, Larry H. Miller has a pretty good idea where the problem is.
If you're in a special market, such as a seasonal one, or one that doesn't get much customer feedback, it's important to listen to the feedback you get and act quickly. Damage control in this situation is inherently reactive, and will always be too late for many who gave up because they didn't know who to contact, how to contact them, or what to say.
The legalese on the back will never say so, but a customer's ticket is a tiny piece of vested ownership in your event. Show them that you care, or they'll buy stock in someone else's endeavor.

If You're Wondering What Drives Jake...

2006-07-17T02:01:00.000-06:00

Apologies to the blogosphere; June and July are my very busiest months. I've had a couple of surges in business, a birthday, a family vacation, my daughter's birthday, several fireworks shows, and Guilder to frame for it. I'm swamped.

I know that apologizing for lack of posts is one of the big blogging no-no's, so I'm sorry for that, too. Damn, I just did it again.

Thanks, Eric, for the birthday post. I'm sorry I didn't post in reply sooner, I really meant to, but see above.

EDIT: This is not an ROCI. This one got too long, so the ROCI will be my next post. The ROCI, like this post, will be about fireworks shows.

I attend a few a year. I've attended the Clearfield show for the last four years or so (this year it got rained out), and I see the Weber State University show about every three years. I went to the Clinton City show for about four consecutive years there, and I've been to Kaysville and Layton shows also.

But the show that I most avidly attend is the Logan City show in USU's Aggie Stadium. I've been there for the last 17 consecutive shows or so, except for the two years I was in Milwaukee. My annual schedule for Logan usually consists of:

Lunch at an old A&W in downtown Logan (if there is such a thing).

A tour of Willow Park and the Willow Park Zoo on the southern skirt of Logan.

A couple of frames or a couple of racks or a combination thereof at Logan Lanes.

A final stop at Albertson's or Smith's on the way to the stadium for drinks and snacks.

Find a parking spot that we can get out of quickly at USU Stadium. We have a traditional lot.

Wait in line for a couple of hours at the gate, as they keep moving back the gate's opening time.

Enter the stadium, find our seats (which are dictated by preference and tradition), and save seats for the rest of the family.

Eat the dinner that my parents bring in exchange for us saving them good seats.

Wait for the show.

Enjoy the show.

Drive home.

This year we added a stop in nearby Smithfield during the day to hit the Pepperidge Farms outlet. Now I have Mint Milanos and Goldfishes to last another week at least.

The day that I go to Logan for the fireworks show is hands-down, one of my top two favorite days of the year. I honestly look forward to it all year, and have a hard time sleeping the night before. Yes, I know that I'm an adult now. Shut up.

What few people outside of politics know is that city fireworks shows are money-making enterprises. Sure, shows in the dark ages before ROI was a buzz-acronym were probably hosted solely for the public enrichment, a la "Music Man," but these are animals long extinct.

The Logan show in particular is a booming endeavor. I know this first-hand, as I was once a peripheral part of that machine.

You see, my family were light rope pioneers. Fifteen years ago, when light ropes were a brand-new novelty, my Dad saw a market for them at firework shows. So he bought a few hundred and tried selling them at a couple of shows. The very first light rope you saw at a fireworks show in Utah was probably ordered, activated, and sold by my Dad and I.

We did this on contract with the organizers of a couple of shows, and we did it on the fringes of some other shows, carefully staying off of the official show grounds so that we wouldn't be bothered by organizers with law-enforcement types standing behind them.

Finally, we landed at the Logan show. My Dad made some calls, spoke to the people who could cut a deal with us, and we got booths. And it's a good thing we got booths, because navigating the crowd was a risky proposition in those days. Now the light rope guys walk around with the tubes full of them, and they get takers every now and then. But we were mobbed. Our booths were surrounded, and we couldn't take money as fast as the crowd was shoving it at us. We'd sell out and desperate fathers would beg for the light ropes we'd forgotten we were wearing.

We'd usually sell out right before the show, take a few minutes to clean all the cash out of our booths, sit down just in time to see fireworks, and then go straight to the business office on the southeast corner of the stadium with our lunchboxes stuffed full of cash.

Then, with a stadium representative present, we'd sort the cash, count it, and the stadium would take their cut...I think it was 30% of our gross. This process alone would take more time than preparing and selling the light ropes, and then watching fireworks combined ever took; two to three hours.

The Domino's Pizza booths at the stadium would always have unsold pizzas, and I'd usually leave the stadium with ten to fifteen personal pizzas that would go in the downstairs fridge, about four feet from my bedroom door at home. It was summer, and in the week or two after the show, I enjoyed a pizza and a (glass!) bottle of Dr. Pepper whenever I pleased.

On the way home from the stadium, my Dad and I would always stop at a certain gas station downtown and put gas in the car while we made sure we still had our filled-to-bursting lunch boxes and laughed about the night's events. I'd usually request a soda and some jerky at these stops, and my Dad would see no reason not to be generous.

I get so emotional thinking about the years we sold light ropes. I think that it was at these shows that I came to understand the difference between the people selling hot dogs and nachos, and the people in the management offices, or the entrepreneurs in the crowd who looked and worked just like everyone else. The people in the booths would get a check in two weeks and a bad complexion from the fryer. The people with their own businesses went home with golden lunch boxes and the pizza equivalent of spoils of war.

It’s no wonder that I don’t work well for other people. I’ve seen what’s on the other side of that curtain.

29 Candles

2006-07-07T07:03:00.000-06:00

Happy birthday, Jake! Way to live almost three decades.

A Quick Trivia Question

2006-06-27T05:29:00.000-06:00

A super-paranoid company offers a wireless network to its employees within its building. Of course, they implement all the latest security measures: WPA, VPN, MAC filtering, and disabling SSID broadcast. They also have all computers patched with the latest versions of all software.

Assuming that you can get into the building, what would be the easiest way to disable their wireless network?

Justice in the IT World

2006-06-23T14:42:00.000-06:00

Wow. This will be my first post in quite some time. I hope it's good.

So today I was browsing a forum I frequent, and I ran across a thread discussing this. I warn you, it's a long read, but certainly worth your time if you like stories about getting people to do the right thing.

For those too lazy to read it, here's a brief synopsis: This guy (Evan)'s girlfriend lost her T-Mobil Sidekick, which two people picked up and decided was theirs. the couple take pictures of themselves which are instantly uploaded to T-Mobil's database and suddenly Evan finds out who has the sidekick. the site is very like a blog in that he uses it to follow his plight to get the Sidekick back. Two weeks later, after grappling with the NYPD who won't even help the guy until they feel some massive media pressure, the girlfriend finally gets the sidekick back.

Anyway, the whole story stuck me as I have a very strong sense of justice. It's amazing to me how much resistance this guy faced, both from the thieves and from THE FREAKING POLICE WHOSE JOB IT IS TO BRING CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE, just to get a stolen sidekick back. Even better, he turned down numerous offers to have ads on his site, which would have made him thousands of dollars. The only way he made money was through a donation through paypal, which was only to cover costs.

We need more people like Evan.

Peace.

Subtle Changes

2006-05-19T13:15:00.000-06:00

So, you may have noticed that some things have changed a little.

First, the blog's name has changed slightly, as you can see above. As well as Phischkneght has served our group, I've set sights on bigger things. Bigger things means more people, and lots of people are intimidated by words they can't pronounce. Thus, the change to FishNet Tech. The URL to the blog will remain the same for now.

Also, we're limited as to what we can do with this web page. I'd like to have the ability to make commerce happen here, and as long as we're hosted by Google as a blog, that won't happen. And so, looking forward, I've bought www.fishnettech.com. Nothing is there yet, so don't bother clicking.

I have a grand vision for FishNet Tech, but not all the blanks are filled in yet, and it's too complex to state here anyway. Many of the chief players in this vision have already been spoken to, but if you feel you should be part of the vision, pull me aside and we'll talk.

Please note that none of this will happen overnight. You're not going to come to read a post next week and see a whole different page. And it's important to me that we maintain the same community attitude that we've fostered all along. So, please keep posting, keep commenting, and most of all, keep reading and referring your friends.

Last week I started running Google AdWords in the top bar on the blog. I got to choose the colors, and I tried to choose a color palette that wouldn't be annoying.

But I had a good laugh when I spotted this ad, right above my post bashing SCO:

So if you're having problems with SCO Unix, you poor sap, there's your ad.

ROCI #5: Corporate Make-Believe (SCO Group, Outback Steakhouse)

2006-05-17T00:59:00.000-06:00

Oh, speaking of Utah Mormons in business who make their colleagues look bad...ever heard of a guy named Darl McBride?

This particular tale of woe involves calling your core demographic thieves and then demanding money from them. Sort of sounds like RIAA, doesn't it?

I'm going to summarize SCO's (or rather Darl's) Big Idea here. I'm NOT going to get into proving claims right or wrong, or the specifics of code, or anything technical at all. This is a business strategy post, not a technical one. But, for more information about the nuts and bolts of SCO's gambit, you can check out Groklaw, and their extensive coverage of it. I would start here.

Once upon a time there was a company called Caldera. Caldera was one of the rights-holders on UNIX source code, along with Novell and The Open Group.

Caldera had a CEO (and founder) with a funny name, Ransom Love. In 2002, Caldera got a new CEO, again with a funny name. This was Darl McBride. Darl changed the company's name to SCO Group (stands for Santa Cruz Operation, for where the company was founded).

Darl had a big idea, which I was going to refer to as “Darl’s Big Idea That Will Either Make Oodles Of Money Or Kill SCO,” but the acronym DBITWEMOOMOKSCO is just too unwieldy.

So, Darl's Plan goes like this: "We’ve got UNIX, and our own flavor of Linux, but instead of buying our Linux or Unix OSes, people are using free distros (Linux distributions). How can we get people to start paying us for Linux instead of getting and using it for free? What if," Darl continues, "we claimed that the guys who wrote the core of the Linux OS stole some of our code? Then we could insist that every copy of Linux in use in the world has our intellectual property in it! And then we can demand money from everyone in the world who uses Linux!"

And so The Plan was born. SCO’s first task was to find someone to sue with really deep pockets so that a win in court would bring in a lot of cash and tell the world that SCO means business.

On March 6, 2003, SCO filed a lawsuit against IBM for $1 Billion.
On January 20, 2004, SCO filed a lawsuit against Novell for Novell to surrender all claims on UNIX.
On March 3, 2004, SCO filed a lawsuit against AutoZone for breach of contract with unknown punitive damages.
On March 3, 2004 (yes, the same date), SCO filed a lawsuit against Daimler Chrysler for breach of contract with unknown punitive damages.

These suits have uniformly not gone well for SCO, and the reason is very simple. SCO’s claims were complete fabrications, and the judges involved with these cases each has an entire cerebral cortex at his disposal.

Now SCO is a curse and a joke among techies worldwide. The SCO brand, once relatively unknown, is permanently damaged among those in the very industry SCO claims to serve. Now that’s a tough crowd.

And it’s because someone got a brilliant idea that should never have left the boardroom. And I mean this: There are great ideas, even terrific ones, which must die on your desk if you want to stay in business.

And on top of that last thought, make-believe is a dangerous game in business. Its consequences can be catastrophic, as seen above, but they can also be miraculous. As is the case with Outback Steakhouse.

You fall into one of two categories. You’ve either eaten at Outback or you haven’t. And if you haven’t, you probably think that going to Outback for a meal will be an Australian experience. This Australian experience has been brilliantly marketed, using tools like radio ads with actors sporting an Aussie accent, logos with kangaroos, and…well, that’s about it.

So that’s all it takes. An accent and a kangaroo, and you’re convinced that this place is Australian. That’s what I thought the first time I went to Outback. I sat at the table, and looked at the walls, decorated with boomerangs and pictures of Paul Hogan. And the menu was littered with Australian place names and “Throw that chook on the barbie 'cause it’s good tucker, mate, and watch your step about the wallaby.”

So, I’d seen it. No reason to go back, because that was Outback’s version of Australia and I had experienced it. Done. And then my meal arrived, and it was delicious.

My meal arrived, and it was delicious. And now when I think of Outback, I don’t think of Australia. The Australia schtick worked exactly as many times as it needed to: Once. Now I go because I like the way they cook steak, and cheese fries, and ribs, and whatever else I order there. And I’ve been there a lot.

The Australian-ness of Outback is all a fantasy. It’s not real. It’s not meant to last. Outback’s management understands that it won’t. You’ll only go once for the ambiance, and if you go back at all, it’s because of great service and great food. But without Australia, Outback is just another steak house. And it makes all the difference to them.

Rule Of Customer Interaction #5: When I was a kid, my dad would sometimes say; "Make your words soft and sweet, for you may soon have to eat them." And corporate make-believe really only comes in two flavors: 1.) Fantasy, and 2.) Deception.
If you deceive your customers, they'll do anything in their power to stop giving you money. But if you give them the right fantasy, and then chase that with something real that's even better than the fantasy (like excellent food, service, dependability, etc...), they'll look for opportunities to let you serve them.

Link Roundup #2

2006-05-15T15:56:00.000-06:00

I really liked the last one. So here we go again!

TOWEL DAY IS NEXT WEEK. This May 25th is the five year anniversary if his death, so plan accordingly. I'll be getting my internets installed that day, so I'll likely have a bit of an audience for the affair, comprised of the Comcast installers and my in-laws.

This guy does Tesla Coils. Really, really big Tesla Coils. Lots of purple plasma ahead. My dad helped me build a Tesla Coil when I was in junior high. I think we should build another.

Are you confused about Net Neutrality? ASK A NINJA. Come on, like you know better than a ninja. I mean, he's a ninja, man.

And finally, a funny dance video. No, you'll like this. Really.

Don't Ya Just Love a Good Sandwich?

2006-05-14T16:25:00.000-06:00

Hi, I'm Julianne. I'm new. For those of you who may not know me or how I came to be a member of Phischkneght, I'm Krys' wife and Jake's little sister.

When Jake started the ROCI I really took an added interest in what was going on. I like when companys are good to me. All it takes is one bad experience to lose a customer for life.

I asked Jake if I could post so that I could talk about one of my favorite places to eat: Great Harvest Bread Company. I love the place. The Great Harvest on Harrison Blvd. is my favorite. Its conveniently located just half a block from Jamba Juice. What more could you ask for than a fruity pick-me-up and a warm slab of nice, fresh, hot-from-oven-bread?

Their customer service is fabulous. They're always glad to see me, even if its at 7:30 in the morning. The bread is always fantastic. (Krys goes in every Wednesday for the pumpkin bread with chocolate chips. I go on Fridays for the nine-grain.) Get this: they started making sandwiches.

I wasn't feeling well the other day and I sent Krys out for food. He came back with the most amazing roastbeef on wheat sandwich I have ever had. It was perfect. It was exactly the sort of sandwich I would make for myself if I had the stuff. The beef was tender, savory, and plentiful. The lettuce was crisp and fresh. The tomatos were just ripe enough, and they put on avacado spread. Yum. I felt a lot better after that sandwich.

We went back again not long after. We got soup. I love this about this company, if you get some of their very tasty soup, they'll give you a slab of fresh-baked bread to dip into your bowl.

The best thing about it? The cost. It only costs about $6 for the whole shebang. Trust me, its well worth it.

ROCI #4: Corporate Suicide (Totally Awesome Computers)

2006-05-12T10:29:00.000-06:00

At first glance, it's hard to know where to begin with TAC. But when I think about it a little more, it's immediately clear: Dell Schanze.

There's been a fair amount of TAC, and more specifically, Schanze bashing on this blog, but I really believe we can take some even-handed lessons from the demise of TAC, and I intend to glean them herewith.

First, this: What do TAC and Enron have in common? Denial. Great big, heaping servings of it. Both of these companies had people at the very top telling their subordinates, "Calm down, everything's fine." Enron and TAC each hid money problems and tried to save the farm by ripping off customers. And Ken Lay and Dell Schanze both insist to this day that they've done nothing wrong, in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary.

The difference between Ken Lay and Dell Schanze? Shareholders. If Schanze had brought TAC crumbling down with thousands of shareholders to face after doing so, then Dell's claimed need to carry a gun might not be the simple self-delusion that it is.

And before we go on, I'd like to make this clear: I am not anti-gun. I'm anti-stupid.

Dell cares more about guns than he ever cared about TAC. Lay cares more about money than he ever cared about Enron.

And that's sad, and it's a bad sign for a business. A CEO or President position in a company is a commitment that you'll live and have priorities in accordance with the best interests of the business. I shouldn't be CEO of Apple Computer, because I like Windows, and recommend it to my friends. Maybe it's ok for a data-entry drone to go in every day, do his job, and hate the company all the while. But the guy at the top must care.

And even more importantly, he has to have a clue. Ken Lay was approached by his staff within Enron who had concerns about accounting practices. They were dismissed.

I know former members of Dell's inner circle. They told him to stop talking about guns. Stop carrying a gun. Stop putting gun stickers on your trailers. Stop being so crazy in front of media types. Stop buying time on late night TV to talk about religion. Stop comparing yourself to Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ in public. But as you can see below, Dell just doesn't get it.

And so, Jake's Rule of Customer Interaction #4 is a Special Dell Schanze Edition.

ROCI #4: If your staff are telling you something is wrong with the way you're running the company, SOMETHING IS WRONG. You've probably made smart hiring decisions, and if you haven't, then none of this matters anyway. You must listen to the people who have concerns. That's your job. In other words: Don't let your company die because you can't listen or change. If necessary, step down and let someone better suited to the job run the company.

Just What is "Critical" Anyway?

2006-05-11T21:20:00.000-06:00

I don’t do Windows Updates as often as I should, but I did so today. I was a bit surprised at one of the critical updates that it wanted to install on my machine. It was Windows Genuine Advantage Notification (KB905474). The description says, “The Windows Genuine Advantage Notification tool notifies you if your copy of Windows is not genuine. If your system is found to be a non-genuine, the tool will help you obtain a licensed copy of Windows.”

What I don’t get is why this is a critical update. Sure, Microsoft would like me to have it, but what’s in it for me? My definition of a critical update is one that improves the security of my machine. There is no compelling reason given for me to download this tool and let Microsoft decide whether the version of Windows that I own really belongs to me. If they are going to cut off updates after determining that I have an invalid copy of Windows, then they should tell me at update time, rather than have me download something that will annoy me to no end if it fails to work properly.

So, until it really becomes critical, it doesn’t get downloaded.

A Consumer's Perspective: The Hungry Bear

2006-05-10T21:50:00.000-06:00

When I first started my job, I would often go to lunch with my father at The Hungry Bear, a pizza buffet place in Layton. The pizza wasn’t great, but for the price (and that it was an all-you-can-eat buffet) it was very good. The store is decorated with bear-related items like a large wooden bear, large stuffed bear hides, and a large diorama of a den. Clearly they have had a lot of fun with the theme, and the place has generally had a friendly, welcoming atmosphere.

But business hasn’t seemed to go well for them. They have a large store, but it isn’t ever full, and usually is nearly empty (at least at lunch time; dinner may be busier). Over the course of several visits, we noticed a steep decline in quality and the service. Instead of having several pizzas up at a time, you’d be waiting in line for pizzas that would disappear in moments. The ingredients seemed to be of lower quality, and they were cutting back on cheese (one of the fundamental ways of detecting a cheap pizza is to look for lots of places without any cheese cover). It didn’t take long before we stopped coming.

Today, we decided to give them another shot. It’s been about a year since we had last eaten there, and there was some hope that things had turned around. The parking lot had only a few cars in it, which doesn’t bode well, but when we got inside, we found nearly the same store that we had enjoyed (prior to the decline). The owner and at least one regular employee were both there, and there was enough pizza for the dozen or so people there. I noted a few changes from the earlier days:

First, instead of plastic plates that had to be washed, they had paper plates. These are the thin, cheap ones, and not the classy Chinet variety. They aren’t as good, and certainly not as solid. Greasy pizza and breadsticks quickly soak through, but if it is keeping them solvent, then it’s probably a good place to cut back without skimping on the important stuff (cheese).

Second, they always had at least one whole pizza up, but each pizza they made had about four varieties on it. They were part cheese, part pepperoni, part meat lover’s, and part supreme. Every time a new pizza came up, you knew that there would be something you liked, and typically there would be something for you whenever you went back to the buffet. Granted, this is a step back from when they would ask you what kind of pizza you wanted as you came in (so they could be making the kinds the customers liked), but it accomplishes the same effect, and in a way that keeps things flowing better.

Third, the bathroom wasn’t so vile. In the past, I couldn’t stand to be in there, but now I just feel a general sense of being in a place where people sometimes don’t wash their hands.

I know that this all sounds like back-handed compliments, but basically this is a nice, economy pizza place, and I commend them for doing what they can to make it work without selling cardboard pizzas. I have always liked the people there, and I hope that they succeed.

Phischkneght's 200th Post! YAY!

2006-05-09T23:49:00.000-06:00

Pleasure first, then business. Tonight's post? A LINK ROUNDUP! YEE-HAW!

This Russian page with examples of cloned Disney an i mat io n cels left me flabbergasted. The one at the bottom, involving Robin Hood and Snow White is amaz ing.

I humbly ask that you consider doing your part to Fire Orrin Hatch. He's not technology friendly, and he's got a competitor for Senate this year who I think will do great things if he wins: Pete Ashdown. Please take a look.

I lifted the above photo from a post over at Creating Passionate Users. If learning how to market is at all interesting to you (Crystal, I'm looking in your direction), then have a glance at this.

What do you know? There is intelligent life in the music industry. Just not in the RIAA. Musical artist Jane Siberry has decided to let customers pay what they feel her music is worth to them, and then download that music in non DRM encumbered MP3 format. And the kicker is that she's written a letter to her fans saying that if they don't want to pay, they can just accept the music as a gift from her. And then she gives payment statistics right on the site. I think I'll scrounge up a little cash and buy this album.

Here's an excellent article by the authors of Freakonomics about a highly-paid statistician who quit to sell bagels on the honor system in corporate offices. He never gives up his statistics work, even in bagel mongering, and learns a lot about people, and businesses, and honesty in general. Highly recommended.

Finally, if you'd like to see Phischkneght get burned all to hell by Martians, click here.

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I never said that all posts from here on out would be ROCI's.

And Leon, Eric, Krys...have you all forgotten how to write? Eric does have an excuse: His own blog. But still, that's not a very good excuse. I hope you guys don't feel that I've hijacked this blog and that it's all mine now. "Forum" is still in the name, and I hope that it can remain so.

CORRECTION: Subway's free stuff now costs roughly twice as much as before, not more than twice as much as before. They changed the point structure so that 75 points now buys you a 12" sandwich, instead of 90 points. I've got about two free ones left.

I've heard nothing at all from Tasty's, which makes me wonder if Lane ever got my business card to the upper management-types at Tasty's. I'll have to go back soon and inquire.

And last of all, this really and truly is Phischkneght's 200th post. This is a thought that simply tickles me. Maybe I'll do a podcast or something in celebration. Maybe.

ROCI #3: Tiered Excellence (Leatherman)

2006-05-08T00:01:00.000-06:00

I used to be a Swiss Army man. I didn't go anywhere without my Swiss Army knife in my pocket.

As a scout camp staffer, this served me relatively well, except for two things: 1) I always ended up losing my knife, and 2) pliers were always a problem.

I lost two nice Victorinox knives on my mission, and shortly after I came home, I found myself looking for something better. I still remember standing at Gart's Sports poring over all the potential knife selections.

I finally found a Leatherman that I liked. The price was close to what I would have paid for a new Victorinox (the finer Swiss Army brand, in my opinion), the tool seemed well-milled, and I felt that it would end up more useful than my previous choices had.

Since then, I've bought four or five new Leatherman tools. I like them. I use them hard. I wear mine everywhere but church and bed. I currently carry Leatherman's premium offering, a Leatherman Charge XTi. I won't go into the features here, but I think it suffices to say; this tool does more than grab stuff and cut stuff.

What I really want to talk about here is Leatherman's use of tiering. All of Leatherman's tools are made of basically the same stuff. Sure, some titanium handles here and some really hard steel there make for small differences, but by and large, it's all just plain old stamped steel.

When I bought my Charge XTi, I gave my Leatherman Wave, their former premium product, to my Dad. I love my Dad, and I was proud to give him such a fine tool.

The Leatherman Charge and the Leatherman Wave are almost exactly the same tool. The main difference between them is that the Charge has about 1.5 ounces of titanium that makes up the handles instead of the standard steel that they normally use. I just checked, and titanium runs about $11.00 a pound, which translates to about $1.03 for 1.5 ounces. The blades and bit options are a little fancier on the Charge, and I'm guessing that the extra fanciness raises production costs by $5 or so, at the maximum, per tool.

So, at the outside, we're talking a $6 difference in actual cost between these two tools. Take a moment to guess the price difference between them on Amazon. Go ahead; you'll probably be pretty close!

It's about $25. I was willing to pay the extra $25 (actually more because the tool was new at the time) for the updated premium product because of fancier blades, titanium handles, and gee whiz factor.

Now, please observe the humble Leatherman Kick . It has the same Leatherman plier jaws as almost every other Leatherman model. It's made of the same steel. The knife blade is every bit as sharp as the factory-new edge on a Wave or Charge. And yet, it only costs $30.

It costs $70 less than my current Leatherman, and I'm confident that the company still makes a pretty generous margin on this item. And the Charge can't possibly cost $70 more to produce.

Likewise, the Leatherman Micra (pictured below), Pulse, and Core lines provide different features, price points, and similar build materials and quality.

You see, Leatherman wants you for a customer no matter how much you want to spend. If I only want to blow $25 on a knife that will jet around on my keychain, Leatherman has me covered. If I just want to buy someone a functional gift for under $50 that won't get scoffed at, Leatherman has a place for me. If you happen to be a MythBuster, you tote a Leatherman Wave. If you're an alpha geek and you pack a Leatherman Charge XTi, you paid $100 or more for your you-can't-get-this-at-Wal*Mart grin.

And tiered products are everywhere:

Dell wants you to spend money with them whether you're looking for an entry-level laptop for $450 or a fully-loaded XPS gaming laptop for $4832. (I pulled this price directly off of www.dell.com just now.)
The movie theater charges you for a tiered experience. Want to see the movie on opening day rather than in a dollar theater? Want popcorn? Soda? Video games? These are all experiential add-ons that the theater knows some people are willing to pay for and some aren't.
Why do some MagLights take six "C" cell batteries while others only need two of them? Product tiering.
Why does Sony offer me 150 TV models between the 1.5" portable LCD TV for $75 and the 52" DLP High-Def set for $7500?
Why are there so many different Nintendo GameBoy models?
Why are there about 8 different kinds of Coke at the supermarket?
Why is there a big Wal*Mart in my city that's a couple of miles away and a little Wal*Mart that's only two blocks from my house? (Hint: Prices are not always the same at these two Wal*Marts.)
Why do private schools exist at all? (Sometimes a whole business is a single tier.)

What I left out above about Leatherman is that I have used their warranty. Did you know that Leatherman's standard warranty is 25 years? 25 YEARS! If my son breaks my Charge in 15 years when he's 19 years old, Leatherman will replace it for free.

Again, if the kind of business insight you need is "Offer an excellent product and give really good warranty service," then this is not the place for you. Clearly, running a market-leading business must involve the concepts embodied above. But to really kick some proverbial ass in the marketplace, it will sure help to have a firm grasp on this:

Jake's third rule of customer interaction:

Tier your product in such a way that you will serve budget, mainstream, and premium users. This will keep customers on the premium end from going to a competitor for features and quality, and it will keep customers on the budget end from looking to competitors for a better deal. It will also establish brand loyalty because it encourages customers to buy more products for different locations and tasks, complete collections, and transition to different product tiers.

ROCI #2: Customer Dialog (Tasty's Donuts)

2006-04-24T23:17:00.000-06:00

I always think so much more clearly when I've written things down.

I've decided to trade in my Subway Club points for free sandwiches, and start going to Tasty's instead whenever possible. Half of why I've decided this is in the previous post about Subway. In general, I don't cough up enough positive company reviews on this blog, so here's one for the books.

Tasty's Donuts (motto: Try Me, I'm Tasty!) is a Utah-based donut and sandwich shop franchise. In the last five years or so, they've worked really hard to upscale their locations. It's worked. The Tasty's in Layton is spacious, comfortable, and has 1950's-era poster-sized family photographs on the walls with bags of Tasty's donuts photoshopped in. The brand is zany and lovable. When I was in high school, they had a regal donut mascot with arms, legs, eyes, and a crown.

Ah-hah! I guess he's still around!

I forgot about the scepter and bow tie. How could I be so silly?

Anyway, it's a great brand, but that's not why we're here. We're here so that I can tell you why I love Tasty's.

Their sandwiches are really good. The produce is more fresh than at Subway, the meat tends to be cut thicker, and the bread is really great. Subway bread is good, but rises a lot and ends up really fluffy and tall. Tasty's bread isn't heavy, but it's substantial enough to hold a sandwich together and it has the added bonus of you can fit it in your mouth.
Their donuts are really good. Krispy Kreme doesn't have a thing on Tasty's. They're that good.
The service is always great. It doesn't matter if I drive up or walk in. Tasty's employees treat me like the gold that I am, whether they recognize me or not. (I'm still nobody, anyway.)
When they mess up my order, I point it out and they make it right.

No matter how good your business is at what it does, you'll screw up from time to time. Proper handling of customer complaints can define your brand.

One day about two years ago, I ordered lunch at the drive through at Tasty's. After I left, I discovered the wrong size sandwich in my bag, and no free donut. I called the phone number on the receipt expecting someone at the store, and instead got Tasty's corporate office.

The guy on the line asked what the issue was, and I explained that the store had messed up my order. He asked how much I had spent, I said it was about $6, and then he took my address. The next day, there were six Tasty Bucks in my mailbox. Amazing.

On Friday, I went to Tasty's for lunch in the middle of a busy day. The lady at the register is friendly and chatty, and when I handed her my business credit card, she and I began talking about business. It was a delight to talk to her.

Today, I made sure to go back. There was a teenaged guy at the register. He greeted me positively, even giddily. When I chuckled at his exuberance, he kept it right up, and appeared to have a wonderful time serving me. Tomorrow I'm stuck having lunch in Salt Lake, but you could put pretty good odds on my ending up at Tasty's on Wednesday.

Here's the bad news. Tasty's may be on hard times. I don't know this for sure, but I do keep my eyes open.

They closed a store near Weber State University recently. I was sad to see it go, but I did go there often, and I never saw the place full. The Layton store frequently fills up.
They've pulled gelato from the stores. I never once saw anyone order some. I'm not sure if this is belt-tightening or just pulling the plug on an idea that didn't fly.
Their web site is completely offline. You can pull Google caches of parts of it, but they let their domain name expire in October of 2005.

But this is interesting. Again, I know nothing, I'm on the outside. I've just noticed the above and I'm connecting dots. Maybe correctly, maybe not.

What's interesting about it is what it means if they are in trouble. Tasty's has not made me suffer for their hardships. If I were any other customer, I probably wouldn't have noticed the three points above, and would leave the store with my meal thinking nothing is unusual at all.

Tasty's is obeying the first rule (Don't punish customers for internal problems). Subway did not. Tasty's costs a little more. I don't care.

--------------

Now. That was a really great review, especially from me. I lean critical in my musings, and I'm very picky. Having said that, I'm going to offer advice to Tasty's.

Re-open your web page. What I saw in the Google cache was creative and cheerful. Well done, but now it's gone. To folks like me, your web page is your front door. Give me a place to link when I say nice things about you.
Don't change a thing with your staff hiring and training. They're great. Especially the older lady at the Layton store. She's courteous and clever.
Consider adding free Wi-Fi hotspots to your stores. When I was a student at WSU Davis campus, I'd frequently stop in for a meal and leave. If you had free Wi-Fi, I'd have stayed and eaten more (and left more cash in your register).
Give me options for a healthier 6" bundle. Drop the donut, make my soda a bottle of water, and replace my fries with something that won't harden my arteries.
Get a little more creative with the sandwiches and breads. Can you make a bread with cheese baked onto it like Subway? Can you offer me a sandwich with cream cheese like Einstein's? Can you do something entirely original and surprise me?

Tasty's is doing a lot of things right, which is why I've been so nice here. I'm excited about making the Rules Of Customer Interaction a regular thing, but at the same time, "Be cheerful and have a good product," is just far too obvious. If you need that rule enumerated, then you probably don't need the rest of them anyway.

So I'm writing this episode's ROCI in the hope that Tasty's will follow it and sell like crazy, and take the bigger guys' customer bases right out from under them. Here it is:

Jake's Second Rule Of Customer Interaction:

A customer talking about you is an opportunity for dialog, brand growth, company refinement, and bottom line enhancement. Don't let such opportunities slide by. Gather people who are good at exploiting opportunities, and find a way to turn it to your benefit.

The added benefit of this rule is that it turns ground already covered into a rule. Now I can sleep at night.

UPDATE:

Today I ended up at Tasty's for lunch, as predicted. The giddy teen mentioned above was at the register again, and it turns out his name is Lane. Welcome to the blogosphere, Lane. And the older lady there mentioned above is Teresa, according to Lane.

I handed him a card with a TinyURL address on the back that points here, and told him that I'd written about the store on my website. He offered me a free donut. DO YOU SEE WHY I LOVE THIS PLACE? He actually gave me two free ones. Thanks, Lane!

I wanted to clarify one more thing: I sincerely hope, and would readily believe, that Tasty's is just fine financially. Since I wrote this post, I've heard unflattering things about the franchisee that ran the Harrison Tasty's, and they seem to make sense. The gelato thing was probably just a good business decision. The closed website is the big question mark for me. I hope that if we hear from someone high in the Tasty's hierarchy, they'll have something to say about that one.

-Jake.

New Regular Feature: Jake's Rules Of Customer Interaction

2006-04-22T23:58:00.000-06:00

I'm frequently peeved at the clueless ways in which the big boys deal with customers. Sometimes, it's just one store, or just one region, and sometimes the stupidity envelopes the entire chain.

I'm just guessing here, but I'm pretty sure that I'm bothered by this often enough that I can begin writing about it regularly. If I can do that, then I can make my own little guide. Thus, "Jake's Rules Of Customer Interaction."

My motivation for writing this is not only to get my views out there. Oh sure, I'd love it if the business world dropped everything and read my posts to get a pulse of what's going on out there. But that isn't going to happen. What I really want is insurance against a coming age of similar cluelessness. I know a lot in bursts, and sometimes I forget a lot of really important things that were once fresh to me. I want a place to read from a younger, more in-touch-with-the-consumer-mindset, clueful me. And that is this place. Off we go!

A semi-relative is getting married. She, and her semi-relatedness are unrelated, and her husband is mostly irrelevant also. Mostly.

He used to work at a Subway near my former home in Clinton. This was the period of 2000-2002 or so. At the time, Subway as a chain (as I got the story) was having a problem with stolen rolls of stamps.

You probably already know this, but Subway had for years a loyalty reward program that dealt with filling a card up with stamps and trading it in for free food. You had to make purchases to get stamps, unless you found a way to steal a roll of stamps from a Subway restaurant. Then you'd have a free 12" sandwich for every 12 stamps (or was it 10?) you licked and stuck to Subway Club cards.

I've heard that for a while, you could even buy counterfeit stamps on Ebay and pull the same scam with the same result.

As I was told, for a time each Subway location was to determine on its own what to do about stamp fraud. Some stores made no changes, and some decided to punish customers.

I'm not going to sugar coat this. The Subway stores that did anything but business as usual were punishing customers for an internal problem. This is an extremely unwise business strategy.

In light of this threat, the Clinton store first made the policy that only stamps from that store would be honored. I worked, went to friends' houses, and went on other trips at the time, and I'd generally end up with stamps from three or four Subway locations on each card. But my home Subway no longer wanted my stamps. I was unhappy, and I told the store manager as much. But why listen to customers? What do they know?

Next, this Subway decided that they would keep the Subway Club cards in a recipe box at that Subway. If you were a customer and you wanted a stamp, then you would have to put your name, address, and phone number on a card so that they could pull your card out of the box and apply the stamps themselves the next time you came in for a sandwich.

The privacy implications alone make my libertarian heart scream. I chewed on the manager for a while, and told her that I wouldn't be coming back unless they fixed it.

About six months later, I went back in. An employee there (might be the guy that's getting married) said he hadn't seen me in a while and thought I'd never come back. I asked him if the store had corrected its course, he said no, I left. I haven't been to that Subway since.

"But what about the new Subway Cards?"

Now when I go to a Subway, I hand a plastic card with a mag stripe on it to the clerk, and he/she puts a point onto it for every whole dollar I spend at the restaurant. I like Subway sandwiches a lot, and I generally carry 600-700 points on my card at any given time. Sometimes I use a few of them, but mostly I just let them rack up. The kid running the register frequently utters something like "OMGWTF?" when he/she sees how many points I have, and I usually make a joke about saving up for the Subway Cadillac. This is how we play our game. But is it ok?

There are two problems with the new card program.

First, if you pay attention, the free stuff actually costs more than double now. Six 12" sandwiches used to earn me 12 stamps, which amounted to a free 12" sandwich. If a 12" sandwich runs $5-7, then I spent $30-$42 for each free sandwich. Now a free 12" sandwich costs me 90 points, which is easy, because that means $90 whole dollars spent at the register, not including the change I spent on each purchase. If my purchase total came to $4.92, that's 4 points according to their rules.

So I'm being rewarded less than half as much, or I'm paying more than twice as much for the same reward as before. You can see it how you choose. Either way, Subway is getting screwed less (no stolen stamps), and I'm getting screwed more.

Second, Subway brought in the sandbags when the storm had already done the damage. The Clinton store management had already left me outraged and not spending money at Subway with no solution in sight. Subway had already punished their customers for a good couple of years before the first new Subway Cards were being handed out. They lost money because they couldn't swallow the idea of giving away a few more fraudulent sandwiches before they could get the new program in place.

Thank you, Krys, for helping me put words to the above idea.

Subway, Subway. For all your "Doctor's" this and "Fresh" that, you and all the king's marketers couldn't have seen this coming? Maybe I'm giving you too much business even today, in the age of digital points.

And so I give you, and all the world, and most of all me:

Jake's First Rule Of Customer Interaction:

Don't punish your customers for internal problems. Solve them from the inside out, and make the solution apparent to the customer only when absolutely necessary.

And thus it is written. Good night, brothers and sisters.

Hey, Look Over There, It's Free Advertising!

2006-04-18T00:08:00.000-06:00

And that's what this post is all about, indirectly.

More to the point, this post is about openenness, respect for customers, brand growth and defense, and web savvy. And I'm going to do all this in less than five yards of column inches. Substantially less, I hope.

Here's the problem. I've used this blog over the last two years to call several businesses to repentance regarding customer handling and nonsensical internal practices. Archos, Baja Fresh, Acronis, Video Professor, and others have received fairly thorough bashings from me here, in this semi-public forum (anyone can read here, only a few can post here, anyone can comment here).

All of these companies have made obvious and embarrassing mistakes in reply to these posts, chief among these being simply ignoring the post.

The one exception, Acronis, made nearly as embarrassing a mistake in allowing a first-tier agent to post his not-so-well thought out rebuttal to my post, spelling mistakes and all, here for all the world to see.

Now this is just sad. Aren't any of these companies familiar with a neat little up-and-comer called Google? Right, gotcha, I know I'm not a huge PageRank contender. But other people are, and they're writing about these companies and not getting responses. And even more importantly, maybe someday my blog will be higher up in the PageRank stats.
Q: What then?

A: It will be too late, and that's worse than it sounds. There are two negatives here. I call them the Shame and the Real Tragedy.

The Shame is that I won't get my question answered. My readers and friends will wonder why the company wasn't smart enough to answer my question. They'll ask me if I ever heard back from that company, and when the answer comes back no, they'll think twice about doing business with that organization. That's the Shame; lost sales more or less up-front because the company powers simply don't care enough to have people watching for this sort of thing and taking care of it.

But as the name implies, the Real Tragedy is much worse, and it involves the differences between doing nothing, and doing something, and doing something great.

Let's use Acronis as an example. My complaint was that their hard disk management software wrecked my server. That's reason enough to trash talk the company, but I'm an even-handed guy, and I wanted to see if they would care enough about the issue to re-sell me on the company.

They did something, albeit poorly, and they deserve credit for that. To their discredit, they attempted to pass the buck, stating that it was the fault of Windows that Windows wouldn't boot any more after using their software. This is pretty ridiculous on its face, but if you'd like all the gory details and my point-by-point debunking of their reply, you can find the post here.

There are many ways to do a thing well, and there are many ways to screw a thing up. Our example, Acronis, had an abundance of choices that they had already made before I came along that would determine how I was dealt with.

And so my first proposal is this: Get your company to make a uniform policy on dealing with blog and forum posts and be proactive when dealing with brand attacks. The proactive thing is too smart to have come from me. See the above link for more about that.

Acronis' policy at the time was: "When a blogger complains in a public area of the internets, do nothing." I know this, because their tech support agent was clearly acting on his own, and had the company made a policy for this situation, I would have been given a response that at very least had been run through spell check first.

And that spell checked public reply would have been a step in the right direction. You can pretty much fill in the blanks on how they could have made the situation better for me and them all at once, or if you can't, you can see the suggestions I wrote at the time in the post linked to above.

That they didn't do this is not the Real Tragedy. The Real Tragedy is that they didn't do more than this. It really is a shame, because people are making all kinds of money on the net these days by doing unusually brilliant things. What about this....

Dear Jake-

We're so sorry you had a problem with Disk Director. Perhaps you're right about having a warning message before performing operations that may break Windows. Thank you for bringing our attention to this problem. We'll have our developers look at it right away.

Because we appreciate your help in this matter, we'd like to give you a free license for any one software product that we offer, and we'd also like to give the first 25 of your readers who comment to this post a free license for Acronis Disk Director, the premier disk utility available today, for free.

Simply send us their names and email addresses when you've collected the 25, and we'll send them license keys and download links.

Best Wishes,

Some Internal Functionary,
Acronis Software

THIS IS NOT A NEW IDEA! It's just a really smart idea that no one has tried since the first time. The makers of X1 Desktop Search had a problem when Google announced their own desktop search product, which was free. So X1 teamed up with a blogger and gave away 100 licenses to people who 1.) Linked to that post from their own blog, and 2.) posted a comment with their blog address and the email address to send the license to. It was brilliant. Jason Calacanis, the guy who owned that blog, got a boost, X1 Software got a boost, and I got a free X1 license worth $75. If you look, I'm commenter #55.

Now, 1.5 years later, I still recommend X1 Desktop Search over Google Desktop Search to anyone who asks, even though I still have never used my free license! EVER! That's almost embarrassing, but it isn't the point.

The point is that X1 had a huge competitor with a free product to contend with, and instead of doing business as usual, they did something outstanding. And now they're thriving. Curious, isn't it?

I propose that the Real Tragedy of ignoring user forums and blogs is not simply losing a few sales or displeasing a few geeks. It's losing the opportunity to make your brand outstanding by being different and innovative.

1.5 years ago, I would never have paid $75 for desktop search software. But now I'm considering using my X1 license, and if I didn't already have one, I'd consider dropping $75 on one. Why? Because there are enough people who feel that X1's product is so much better than Google's product that they're willing to pay the $75, and maybe if they're willing to spend that much on it, it's really worth it. Or it could just be that they're still around because they did something bold in the shadow of Google's 800 lb. software gorilla.

Archos missed a chance to talk to a card-carrying geek about what he wants to spend money on when it comes to an MP3 player.

Baja Fresh missed a chance to talk about what went wrong when they catered my party. Now they won't know why I've never gone back.

Acronis could have graciously admitted that their software broke my server, and creatively fostered goodwill. They missed that boat.

John Scherer of Video Professor has an opportunity to shine staring him in the face, but I've not heard a peep from him or any of his people.

CEOs must hire creative people to develop, market, and support a product. If you are the CEO, why not choose one of these creative geniuses to spearhead an initiative to manage your online brand? Have your genius do a daily Google search for new mentions of your product, and proactively reach out to those complaining. Don't let the ranters turn you off of making a bad review better. Make sure that there is special routing for messages coming in from people who want to hear from your company in a forum or blog. Create dialog with these people and find pain points in your product to fix. Be an eager listener to your customers if you want them to stay as customers.

Most of all, I liked writing this above so I'll repeat it: make your brand outstanding by being different and innovative.

Now, if I can just find that X1 Desktop Search license key...

UPDATES:

I found my X1 key, and I'm closer than ever to installing and trying it.

Also, I fixed the above link to Jason Calacanis' blog where the X1 contest happened.

Order Of Business: Suspending Confessions Of A Budding Entrepreneur

2006-04-13T08:44:00.000-06:00

Phischkneght has become my business, and I conveniently already have a blog by that name. Also, That's where all of my posts seem to go whether they're about business or otherwise.

So there's really no point in maintaining a separate blog for entrepreneurial ideas. They will be posted at Phischkneght from now on, and as usual.

I'm not going to delete Confessions Of A Budding Entrepreneur, and I'm not going to move the posts there over to Phischkneght. I'm going to keep COABE as insurance in case I want to use it later. So officially, it's on indefinite hiatus.

Thank you.

EDIT: Contributors of COABE are still welcome to post there, and if they did so enough, I'd be inclined to follow suit. That door is still open, it's just not currently in use.

Video Professor Doesn't Want My Money

2006-04-11T23:59:00.000-06:00

Obviously, I haven't been posting enough. I'm constantly thinking of things to write about, but then I get to work on a PC or five and there goes the day.

I'm thinking that maybe I should set my PocketPC to ring at a set time every day, and wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, I'll write a little and then post it as soon as convenient. Maybe.

But anyway, here's what's on my mind. I've been running my PC business since January. Things are going well. I'm learning a lot, and I've been a little feast-or-famine lately, but I think my trend is good so far.

Running your own business exclusively gives you a perspective on business and economy that nothing else will. Here's an example.

You've probably heard of the Video Professor. He's the guy on TV that says that if you don't know or are struggling with a computer program like Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Quicken, and so forth, he'll send you CDs with lessons on them to try, and if you don't want to keep them, you can send them back and only pay the shipping.

Here's why this is an incredibly smart business model:

CDs are dirt cheap to press. He probably pays 10-25 cents per pressed disc (maybe less). If there are three discs in each lesson set, we'll be liberal and say that's $1 worth of discs, and another $1 worth of printed materials. He charges $8-12 (in my experience) to ship the package to you, and probably pays USPS $1.25 or so to First Class the parcel to your house. If we figure that's about $3.25 of up-front costs to get it to you, then his (exorbitant) shipping charge nets him about $5 (or more) even if you fall off the face of the earth after he sends it to you. He says it's free, you think it's free, and he still makes $5 if you disappear. Smart? Damn right it is.
If you forget to return a disc so that you don't have to pay the $80 for the set, then he already has your credit card number and authorization to charge to it. Genius!
If you do return a disc to avoid paying further, you still have his marketing materials and will treasure them, because he has assigned an artificial value to them: $80. HE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THE DISC HE'S GETTING BACK!!! It doesn't matter! He probably trashes it, but you having to send the disc back to avoid paying sells you on the value of the rest of the set. He doesn't want the other discs and printed stuff back because it's advertising that you paid to get from him! I love it.
Finally, if you really aren't a technical type, and everything in one of these training kits is a revelatory experience, then $80 can be a really great deal. You don't even have to leave your home. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are happy to pay it. For me, it's way overpriced. I usually learn a couple of tricks from Disc 3, and the rest is a waste of my time. That's not worth $80, but I'm also not the target market. He's got a great market, and I'm sure he's making a killing, $5, and then $80 at a time.

Do you see why this is a doozy of a business? He makes money on you coming and going, and then he sells you on keeping his ads around so that the next time you have a computer problem, you think of him. It takes a special kind of entrepreneur to come up with a business model like this, and he usually only has to do it once. Then he retires in Maui.

But there's trouble in paradise.

I have my wife using QuickBooks Pro for our small computer business. She's smart, and very PC literate, but QuickBooks is a comprehensive, complex program, and it's been difficult for her to adjust to it. So I ordered the Video Professor QuickBooks Pro lessons, fully intending to send back a disc before the deadline so I don't have to pay $80 for the set. I did this same thing with the Vid Prof Outlook, Access, and FrontPage sets, so it's no big deal for me by now.

But when Crystal called to arrange to send a disc back, they told her that I've ordered from them three times now (Outlook, Access, FrontPage, QuickBooks...isn't that four?), and I'm only supposed to do it once, so I can't order again.

Ok. Now, John W. Scherer, Founder and CEO of Video Professor, I'm talking to you. What's the deal with this? You and I both know that:

You make money whether I keep the whole set and pay the $80 or not.
I'm keeping the materials that you send because you've magically convinced me that they're valuable.
I'll pay you to send me advertisements again when I need a little help with another program.
One of these times I just may keep the whole set and happily pay $80.
Even if I don't, my grandma might at my recommendation.
(And now that you know I have a PC business,) My clients might too, at my recommendation.

But now, I'm hesitant to even try doing business with you again, and I certainly won't recommend a service to my clients that I feel shaky about.

Was this a rogue employee? Do you really not want me to try your products again? Can it really be that you don't want recommendations from me just because I'd rather pay you $5 than $85?

And I'm not being sarcastic here. I really do admire the smart business model, and I really am mystified by the incongruity of what I'm hearing from your phone agent. And I would genuinely love to hear from you about it, Mr. Scherer. If you're so inclined, please drop me an email at slybevel**at**gmail**dot**com, on or off the record; it's up to you. I'd love to post your reply here, but if that's not ok with you, I'll respect your wish.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

2006-03-31T00:26:00.000-07:00

Today, Phischkneght is two years old, thanks to my good friend Eric.

I'm happy to report that a silly word I made up in high school has become a weblog, a bit of a technical community, a second, sister weblog for longer stuff, and now...an LLC.

The new technical company I founded back in January was and is called Phischkneght Works And Services, LLC.

Now for the good news: Phischkneght is profitable, has clients, has checks coming in, and has what looks to be a bright future. May I humbly wish the same for all Phischkneght participants.

Business Tools

2006-03-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

This is courtesy of my buddy Alex Lawrence, who is a local entrepreneur and runs a blog called "A Day In The Life Of A Self-Made Entrepreneur."

Alex's most recent post involves the tools he finds critical for his business. The link to his blog above will take you directly to the post. He invited his readers to comment on the post and to add whatever they felt would benefit the post. So here are my comments:

Alex, this list is great. You'll have to put me in touch with the Exchange Server for $5 deal.

Here are my comments on your above points, and maybe I can add a few while I'm at it.

RSS feeds: Boy, are you right about that one. My Bloglines account is currently watching 39 RSS feeds, but in the past I've had it over 70. It's a lot of reading, but it means that I stay on top of tech and business. I remember trying to remember to visit each website and check for updates every day before RSS came along. Thank goodness for it.
My rule on monitors is as follows: The more you work in front of a computer, the more desktop space you should have access to. I'm a computer specialist, so I run triple LCDs; a 19" in the middle, flanked by two 17" models. I'm writing this on the right-hand monitor, Firefox (another critical tool) is on the central monitor, and the left-hand monitor has two instances of Windows Explorer and the Task Manager. When I really get rolling, I have 6-8 windows on each monitor. The more I can see, the faster I can work, and the fewer errors I'll make.
A great laptop PC: Amen, brother. I understand if you don't want to get into brands, but I've seen too many of my clients buy an off-brand laptop, only to have problems with the laptop and then further problems getting service for it. If you don't need a fancy laptop, buy a Dell and an extended warranty for it (I'm a big fan of buying refurbished Dells cheap and then buying a warranty on top of that.). If you do need a fancy laptop, buy a Toshiba or a ThinkPad and an extended warranty. A three year, full-coverage warranty is generally about $350, and it's a darned good deal if you ever need an LCD replaced. Or a hard drive, or a complete system. Mine is a Toshiba Tablet PC, so I can jot down notes on the screen with the digital pen. It's light, it's powerful, and it's got 1GB of RAM so I can really get work done.
High Speed Internet: My home connection is 7MB down and 1MB up. This is way more than most people need, but in January I actually exceeded my 100GB bandwidth allotment. I do a lot of file management. I couldn't do business without a very fast connection.
Never eat alone: I'm working on this one. I'm pretty much just starting out, and it's hard to know who to ask to lunch all the time. The book you referred to is Keith Ferazzi's "Never Eat Alone." Here’s the link to his Never Eat Alone Blog.
You golf, I play 9-ball. Or 8-ball, or Cutthroat. I love to play billiards, and I'm a pretty good shot. You get me talking over a pool table, and laughing so I can't make shots, and you get to really see who I am.
Bluetooth Headset: Dang, gotta get me one of those. I've had a bluetooth-enabled PocketPC phone since October, but I don't have a wireless headset for it yet. But yours is another in a long line of recommendations, so maybe it's time.

Stuff you forgot:

Firefox: What would I do without Firefox? I research business concepts and technical projects constantly. In the dark ages when I had to use Internet Exploder, that meant I'd have lots of IE windows open on my PC and lots of popups, too. Firefox allows me to open web pages in tabs so that I can have it all on one window. And it automatically blocks popups. And it's not vulnerable to almost all of the spyware and viruses that IE can infect you with. And it's free! It's just all-around warm and fuzzy. And did I mention it's free?
A USB flash drive: I carry my critical files around in my pocket, on a 2GB USB flash drive. I also have a version of Firefox (link is to Portable Firefox) on it that runs on any PC without having to be installed on that PC, and it moves my favorites and cookies around with it, instead of leaving them on the PC (Did I mention it’s free?). Very handy.
A Leatherman: I'm a guy who carries a knife wherever he goes. I don't fly much, so it's usually not an issue from a security standpoint. I don't like to see something broken, wherever I am. Broken things bother me. So I fix them whenever I can, and that usually involves my Leatherman's pliers, screwdriver, or blades. Don't leave home without your knife.

I could babble on for ages, but I think I'd better wrap it up. This is an interesting topic to me, so I'll be posting this on my blog, and I'll link back to your post. Thanks Alex!

Wikipedia Doesn't Know What A Roof Is

2006-02-25T20:17:00.000-07:00

And I don't really understand it myself. But Eric does.

I've been watching MIT's Professor Lewin's Physics lecture videos. He's one of the better math instructors I've ever seen, and I'm really enjoying the videos. The funny thing is, Prof. Lewin is a really funny guy, but his students never, never laugh. Ever. So I'm glad I'm not in that class.

Anyway, MIT is offering the videos to anyone who wants them, anywhere in the world, for free. The problem is, they want you to stream the videos. In Real format. **BARF**

MIT's pages for these Physics lectures are the following three links, one for each semester:

Semester 1
Semester 2
Semester 3

Fortunately, MIT themselves provide a way for you to download the videos rather than stream them. The solution, given here, is to change the link to the video from one of Akamai's servers, to one of MIT's servers. There are about 100 video files, so harvesting the links and altering them one at a time is a pretty awful process.

So, I've done the work, and I don't see any reason that you should have to also. I'm posting the links to the direct downloads on PhischX, if you want them. Again, it's about 100 videos covering three semesters of Physics lectures, and if you download all of them, you'll need about 9.5GB of free space on your hard drive. And a really fast connection to the internet, or several days to waste waiting for downloads.

The post on PhischX will look just like this one, except below the text you've already read will be lots and lots (and lots) of links. Ok? OK!

Oh, and finally, if some time has gone by, and you can no longer find the post just by cruising over to PhischX, HERE'S THE LINK!

“Son, stocks may rise and fall, ... People are no damn good, but they will always need land and they'll pay through the nose to get it!”

2006-02-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

In my recent posting dearth, quite a bit has happened. I don’t feel like providing a complete update, but I can hit on some of the highlights.

In late October, we moved out of our apartment, and in to my mother’s basement. This was so that we could be more diligent at saving money, which took us a while to get going with, but has been working well lately. This is a non-ideal situation, since it robs us of most of our personal space, and if we aren’t diligent, the Stupid Dog robs us of the rest. Despite a mutual fondness between all parties, this can’t last forever.

So, at the first of the year, we contacted a real estate agent in hopes of finding an purchasing a house. Our early efforts were thwarted by a seemingly disinterested agent who made, at best, minimal efforts to contact or help us. Eventually, we gave up on him and asked Jake for his aunt’s contact info. This was a good thing.

That very (Friday) night, she called up and talked to me at some length. By Tuesday, we were out seeing houses with her, and over the next two weeks, we saw about 25 houses from over a hundred listings she had sent us, and had made three offers in one week.

The first home we made an offer on ended up being more than we wanted to spend. The second one cost about $40k less, but needed a lot of work and ultimately the owners were not actually considering any of the offers that were coming in (we hope that they do ultimately respond to our offer, so we can tell them where to stick it). The third house was between the first two in price, but much closer to home (and the freeway). Even though our offer had a 12 hour deadline on it, we got a response, and accepted their counter offer. That means that we are buying a house, which we can move into on the evening of the 18th of next month.

It feels so good to finally have a house under contract, and that it’s one that we like, where we like, in good shape, only makes things better. Buying a house in a seller’s market sucks. I’m just glad to be done with the hunting part, and we’re ready to do the closing work and move.

Best of all, we’ll have five months to get settled before the baby comes.

LAN Party Update

2006-02-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

The following are LAN party addendum:

1. We are encouraging you to bring your own comfy chair. Not a couch, not a loveseat, not a sofa, but a chair. If it's an office chair that fits through doors easily, then that's great. Bring it. We think we'll have enough tables, but we're pretty sure there will not be enough folding chairs for everyone. My butt always hurts after using a folding chair for not too long, so I'm bringing my nice chair. I strongly encourage you to do the same.

2. Leon and I will buy drinks either this weekend or on Monday. Doesn't really matter. What does matter is that you post a comment here right away if you have a strong preference. We will seriously consider all comments, but not after we've already bought the drinks.

3. Plan on playing Half-Life 1 and Motocross Madness 2 at least. We will have a machine that will run an SNES emulator for Mortal Kombat/Mario/2-Player NES games and controllers. We will have a TV and DVD player. We will have music. We will have food. But mostly, we will have a great time. Oh, yeah...there will be prizes. For what? For whatever I decide to give out prizes!...for. (Should the final "for" be there? I couldn't decide.)

4. There may be some geeky challenges to have fun with. What does that mean? I don't know yet. But brush up on your 1337 5k1llz, if you have any. Or we may just find a HL1 map that everyone likes a lot and play the heck out of it.

5. Bring CounterStrike, or BlueKnuckle, (what was it called again, Krys?) or whatever. Play. Have fun. I don't care. If you can find others who want to play too, then go ahead.

6. We are not grounded. Field trips are a definite possibility. I've done everything I can to make sure that we don't HAVE to leave if we don't want to. But Target is next door, several restaurants are close by, and Barnes and Noble has hot chocolate.

Finally, consider this an RFC RE the LAN PARTY. Comment here on movies to bring, drinks, games, prizes, geek challenges, dinner, field trips, chairs, or the lack of moral terpitude required to pull this sort of thing off. Maybe not that last one. You have your orders. OH, one last thing...CALL ME if you know someone who hasn't RSVP'd and still wants to come to the party. It's possible we can work it out.

Phischkneght New Year's LAN Party, 2006

2006-02-13T21:22:00.000-07:00

We are go.

The annual Phischkneght New Year's LAN Party for 2006 will be on the 20th of February 2006 (obviously), and it will be at...Lady Fitness in Layton. Ok, ok, not really, but it will be in the same building that Lady Fitness in Layton is in.

I know that you're almost certainly not a lady, and almost as certainly not fit, so yes, I will direct you to said Lady Fitness.

First, let's start with this: Do you know where Target in Layton is? You do? Excellent! Aren't you such a smart LAN party participant? Yes you are. So there is a road behind Target. Directly behind, as in 'on the opposite side of the building from the front doors'. The Lady Fitness building is across that street from Target.

Or, if you're a little more Antelope-centrically thinking, Lady Fitness is behind the Fazoli's in Layton. If you pull into the Fazoli's parking lot and drive past Fazoli's, then you're at the Lady Fitness building.

You say you're a visual learner? Fine, here's a Google hybrid map of the building and immediate area. The pin on this map is between the backside of Target and Lady Fitness. If you zoom way into the map, you'll see that there is a single, lonely car in the building's south lot. THIS IS WHERE YOU SHOULD PARK, because the door you'll be entering through is on that side of the building. It's the only door on that side of the building. But please do park properly in a parking space, unlike the car in the photo.

(Sorry about the tone above. It's not for you. I respect your intellect. It's for Andrew.)

Please show up at about 1:00 PM, and plan on leaving as late as 11:00 PM. If you show up a little early, or a little late, it's no big deal.

GOOD NEWS!!! This LAN party will feature NO COVER CHARGE, and that price includes a meal, the company of some nice folks, and an internet connection for the duration of the party. Probably.

On the other hand, if you'd like to attend, you MUST BE INVITED. No exceptions. If you're not invited, we're very sorry, but you simply won't be able to make this one. If you are invited, then your name will appear below. Come to think of it, I'll have to remember to invite myself and Leon.

Guest List:

Jake Wilcox (whew, I remembered)
Leon Walker
Jeff Wilcox
Mark Wilcox
Krys Johnson
Stan Wilcox
Mike Cook
Eric Widdison
Brent Chase
Gary Walker
Andrew Walker

**This list will almost certainly change over the next couple of days. See here for updates.

Edit 1: Scott can't make it. His daughter has a birthday and he won't accept the kindness of strangers.

We are asking all attendees to please bring a power strip and a network cable. If you have a spare switch, or one that you can borrow for the duration of the party, please bring it to use. Please do not bring any routers. They cause problems. Just bring a switch if you can, or a hub if you really feel like it. But probably not the hub, too. Just a switch. And a power strip, and a network cable. And your PC, and whatever peripherals you'd like to use with it. Just that. And yourself. But you get the idea. Oh yeah, one more thing...if you want sound, bring headphones. Speakers will not be allowed, as music will be provided.

Plan on having one meal at the party. We are having Greek chicken souvlaki and gyros, and there will definitely be enough for everyone to have one meal. If there's more food after that, then that's great. If we run out of food and we want dinner, Fazoli's and other establishments are close by. And if you're not fond of Greek, you're welcome to bring something of your own.

If your name is on the list above, please RSVP for the party by creating a comment to this post. If you do not RSVP by Friday the 17th, we will assume you're not coming, and your invitation is void. Excluding Leon, Jake and Mike.

Finally, we would like to sincerely thank Comstar Internet Services for sponsoring this LAN party (They're providing the location, internet service, and food). Comstar has not asked for mentions, ads, banners, or any promotion at all in exchange for sponsoring the party. The mention, link above, and logo above are Phischkneght's way of saying thank you. We really do appreciate it.

Story Time (And a Moral)

2006-02-07T00:50:00.000-07:00

Or Amoral?

Anyway, it's past my bedtime, but this idea is stuck in my head, and I'm afraid if I don't write it now, I'll lose it.

Besides, I'm my own boss now, so I can sleep in a little if I want to. But I won't.

So anyway, back during high school or shortly thereafter, I had Eric over at my house. Full of teenage bravado (as always), I challenged Eric to a Tetris match, and tauntingly claimed that I would kick his butt. Eric, being teenaged at the time also, appropriately disagreed, claiming that it would be, in fact, he who would do the kicking (but not receiving...you see?).

Eric and I spent a minute or two offering one another the first game, and in the end I prevailed. Eric would play first, classic NES Tetris, highest score wins.

As the highest score would win, I fully expected Eric to start his play on a level other than zero. I was very surprised when he did not. If you've ever played (or heaven forbid, watched someone play) Tetris at levels 0-4 or so, you know that paint dries faster in a steamy bathroom than the blocks move at those levels.

So I settled in for a long haul, fearing that Eric would use these levels for warmup for the faster levels, and finish me off in a blaze of button pressing.

It took a while, with completed levels passing now and then, but finally, the blocks began to stack up on Eric. To my surprise, his game ended about level 7.

The pressure was really on now, because while I knew that I could play well beyond the level 7 it took to win our little competition, one bad game would make me look really stupid (not that it mattered, remember? I'm a teenager here).

As we were judging by points, I made sure to start on level 9. As I always did. Level 9 was my default pace, and unless things went badly, I generally scored up to what it would take to attain level 9 when starting from level 0, or better.

And then I played, and played, and played. Things got tight a couple of times, but I really knew I was doing well when level 9 passed and the game graduated me to 10. And then 11. And then 12. I think my game ended on 14. It was not unheard of for me, but still an outstanding game. I bested Eric's score by well over ten times.

And I felt awful. I couldn't believe my incredible luck at having such a great round, when Eric had probably done so-so compared to his usual. Of course, Eric was a terrific sport, and that just made me feel worse.

And so. Must I contrive a moral here?

Eric never again accepted a Tetris challenge from me, and I did ask more than once. On the other hand, Eric and I have remained friends since, and in spite of the event.

So I guess if there has to be a moral, it's that if you get the chance to really shine, don't hold back. A friendship worth maintaining will weather it, and give both parties the chance to enjoy the other's talents.

For instance, I'll never (in this life) be as good at math as Eric is. I just won't. He knows what two plus seventeen minus the hypotenuse of the number of dimples on a golf ball divided by Fermat's last calculated digit of pi to the logarithm of the angular velocity of a European sparrow measured in parsecs is, and I just don't.

And I don't mind that he knows and I never will.

Because I'll still kick his ass at Tetris.

BIG NEWS!

2006-01-30T21:46:00.000-07:00

So I guess it's time that I spilled the beans. I quit my jobs.

But wait! There's more, so very much more!

Remember way back three weeks ago when I hinted that our next LAN party may be sponsored? Well, the possibly-sponsoring party, the owner of local ISP Comstar, is my new partner.

Phischkneght Works And Services is now a new LLC (or at least it will be when I finish signing all the legal papers), and I'm now in business for myself exclusively. No more dabbling. This is risky, and exhilarating, and yes, it's already been frustrating at times.

Who knows what will happen? All I know is that I'm going to give my damnedest to make sure it works. If it doesn't, I and my family will survive. We've seen worse than a failed family company. And if it does work...well, that would be uncommonly nice.

So, a couple of points of order are...uh, in order.

If you prefer not to write out "Phischkneght Works And Services, LLC," you can just make the check out to PWS.
If you need internet service, and you don't already have a preferred provider that can give you service at your preferred location, please speak to me. I'm here to help.
If you need computer help, talk to me. I'm sure we can work something out.
If you have friends who need computer help, please have them talk to me. See the end of the above item.

Things being what they are, I may now have plenty of time to write new posts (gulp). I've had one in the works for PhischX for a while now, so I'll try to get it finished and polished and published.

2006 Phischkneght New Year's LAN Party Planning

2006-01-08T21:56:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Leon and I had high hopes. We were going to get the initial work of LAN party planning done. We would look at a calendar and end up with a firm date for the 2006 New Year's LAN Party. And then we got distracted by other crap.

Left to his own devices, Spaceman Spiff had to make an executive decision. And so, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, fellow spacemen and space kittens, the Annual Phischkneght New Year's LAN Party 2006 will be on....20 Feb. 2006.

Oh, shut up.

Just because it's 1/7th of the way into the new year doesn't mean the year isn't new. So I'm simply not interested in your Januarially-biased editorial.

Those of you who are federal holiday aware will notice that Feb. 20th 2006 is Washington's Birthday Observed. This mean that those of you who are in school, have day jobs, are looking for other excuses, etc... ...are out of luck. You will attend, or you'll live in ignominy. And that isn't good.

Now, we've got a bit of an issue to address. Many of us have been playing Half-Life since what feels like the dark ages. We like the first one. We like to meet periodically and really blow the hell out of each other. It's familiar and comfortable and fun.

Then we've got others--younger members if you will--who would like to LAN it up with Half-Life 2. There are still others who think the Half-Lifes are great, but they'd like some variety, like Motocross Madness 2.

The point is, we're floudering a bit on the old What To Play question. Need For Speed used to be a popular choice, but there were problems with XP compatibility. There are new versions, and if we decide that's what we want to play, then that's what we'll play.

So, contact Leon or I, or make a comment to this post, and we'll figure out what the right path will be.

And you will want to voice your opinion, because we may just be able to swing having no cover this time. We may have a sponsor for the party. More details to come.

My December

2005-12-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

My December

Week one a sign that my life is nigh ready to take a turn

The money I have is not enough for the necessities that I yearn.

For it is my wish joy to bring to family and to friends

But my hands are stopped and I can not bring about these ends

Week two a sneeze causes another loss now my car has left

Of escape and freedom now it seems of that I am bereft

Insurance will claim what little had I set aside to give

And joy now seems to be fleeing now like water through a sieve

Week three small joys a need gift for me there did await

It would seem small but great to me was the pleasure of that date

A true friend was there to lift me up in defiance of the fate

That this month against me shows not but malice and hate

Week four I confess the most pain has been drawn and time the only cure

I tore down walls and exposed a heart that I hoped was pure

Again I found that familiar sound I am wanted not as husband or spouse

My hart was crushed and I caught the dust to leave no evidence in the house

Can friends we be after I’ve seen the dreams fall to the floor

I gave the answer yes for that seemed best as we parted at the door

Two tears I’ve cried and I fear the meaning of this thing

For pain is all now I hear form the song they sing

One for the past and the pain that in my mind does ring

One for the future and fear of what it too shall bring

What is left to take against my sake my family my home a friend

With sincerity it is the prayer that I give that here my losses end

Quietly here I think on fate while sitting in my home

Will I live and if I do will I always live alone

May your holidays be better than mine.

Leon

The Promised Projects Post

2005-11-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

Didn't I say I would? So here it is.

A casual pet project for the last week or so is the hard drive I've hacked up and re-sealed with plexiglass so that you can watch the sucker work while it, uhhh...works.

Crystal is supportive of my projects in general, but at times less than understanding. When I showed her the finished product, she was clearly under whelmed, and couldn't resist asking why I had been driven to do such a stupid thing.

The simple answer is that while I may or may not end up with something cool, I do almost always pick up a new skill or two. The new skill for this project was working with plexi. I actually made two plexi windows for this hard drive mod, and there was a huge qualitative difference between the two. The first was made of an old piece of plexi that I dremelled out of a larger sheet of it. The edges were rough and not at all pretty, and the plexi was the kind that gets stress fractures inside the material from just basic handling, making in more or less opaque.
The second window was made from new plexi, cut with a plexi knife, so it had straight, pretty edges. And it's nothing approaching opaque, so that's a plus.

I also learned how nice a dust mask can be when dremelling steel. As I understand it, steel can be bad stuff to inhale. So I minimized the risk of that as much as I could. I've already learned the lesson of wearing goggles while dremelling (a few more times than I should), so I had quite the getup on my face when cutting steel.

I also had to do some basic electrical work to get the 12/5V wall wart adapter to properly power the molex connector that was to plug into the hard drive. This was easy but satisfying, as soldering always makes me feel geeky.

I'm seriously thinking of re-doing DENTSERVER. Yes, again. I just can't leave well enough alone. I want to turn my four independent basic discs into one big RAID 5 with Striping and Parity Dynamic Disk.

This will serve a few nice purposes. First, it will help performance in terms of file access, because you're pulling parts of each file from each drive instead of waiting on one drive for the entire file.

Second, it will make the situation such that a drive failure won't mean that all the files are blown away with the drive. All I have to do is pop in a drive with equal or greater capacity and tell the dynamic volume to reconstruct the lost drive from the Parity codes on the remaining drives, and off I go!

And third, let me tell you, it's a pain in the butt keeping all of those drives straight, and when I have to add a new share, figuring out where it should go based on what's already where is yet another pain in the buttocks. Having one huge 1TB+ disk to work with would just simplify the hell out of things, and tickle me pink. Then I can pull tricks like creating a single folder 600 GB in size, even though there isn't a single drive in the system that has that kind of capacity.

Toywatch: I got a new Lexar 2GB flash drive. I'm sure it'll fill up right quick. Oh, and by the way, when it comes to flash memory, I'm a Lexar man now. My last Lexar (1GB) was a fast little sucker, and this one seems to be living up to that legacy. I highly recommend Lexar for this reason. My Kingston was fast too, but it might as well have been a banana in my pocket. It was huge.

The lab is closing on me, so I've got to wrap it up.

Catching You Up!

2005-11-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

Good heavens, I'm tired. And this is a pretty average day. I was up at 3:00 this morning, and now I'm at the University waiting for an 8:30 PM WEA meeting. I'll get home just in time to fall into bed too late to make up any part of the sleep deficit I'm already running on, so I'll just have to keep looking forward to my Friday afternoon nap. I'm not as young as I used to be. Here's to running on fumes.

One thing that will help, though, is that I was released from serving the Teachers' Quorum on Sunday, thank God. And I don't say that lightly.

I played Half-Life 2: Lost Coast for about 10 minutes the other day, and thinking that I probably had about that much to go, I re-started the movie that had been playing because the wife was staring me down. Yesterday I went back into the game and found that I had about three minutes left in the demonstration level. It was a let-down at the end on more than one level. If you've played the Coast yourself, you'll understand this joke.

The LAN party of a couple of weeks ago was a good time for all. There were some small issues, such as not everyone being able to attain basic network connectivity. Overall, though, it was a good party. The food was good, the planned movies and MCM2 matches were forgone for a straight Half-Life death match, and the pool was good practice for the tournament that Jeff and I played in the next day.

So Jeff and I played in a 9-Ball ring tournament the next day. And boy was it a long day of 9-Ball. I played in four qualifying rounds of 10 racks each before I moved on to the semifinals. Ten more racks in semifinal mode, and I was done. Five or so practice racks before things began, and 50 more racks in tournament mode makes for avid fans considering swearing off the game. I was grateful to make it to the semis, though, and I did meet some fun people.

Jeff, poor guy, just had a lot of bad racks, plain and simple. I felt bad for him, but there wasn't a thing I could do about it. I'm pretty sure he played four qualifying rounds also, and he just couldn't gain a foothold.

My final qualifying round was quite funny, and I'd have laughed about it more heartily at the time if it wasn't pretty much all at Jeff's expense. There were about four racks out of the ten in that round where Jeff took care of the 6, 7, and 8 ball and then scratched, leaving me an easy shot on the 9. I was winning without Jeff's help, but his repeated assistance had me widening the gap by such a margin that I was unstoppable, and I closed the round with 17 points...a nine point lead on my nearest competitor, and by far the single greatest margin of victory in the entire tournament. Leon showed up right in the middle of this round, so his view of the entire tournament will naturally be skewed. That's ok, though. Let him convince you that I'm really that good.

After the tournament, Jeff, Leon and I went to McGrath's for a bowl of chowder and a pissing-and-moaning session. The food was good, and I think Jeff felt better about things afterward.

I want to post about my technical activities, but I think that had better be a seperate post.

Howdy Strangers! (LAN Party Directions)

2005-10-26T19:46:00.000-06:00

So I haven't posted in a while. Sue me. Ok don't.

This post is mostly for Scott's sake, as he's coming to the LAN party from Salt Lake (or thereabouts), and he's got no clue where Leon's house is, and I'll be including directions in this post at some point. But not yet.

Do you know what I love about our blog? The name. I love the damned name. Yes, no one except about three people on earth can spell PHISCHKNEGHT from memory, and that's a really good thing, because if you type "directions phischkneght" into the address bar of Firefox and press "Enter", do you know what Google gives you? The best match in the entire world for your query, which is a post on this very blog dated 22 December 2004, giving directions to the LAN party that was coming up on New Year's. I dig that.

Now, don't go there unless you'd like a history lesson, because I'm posting an updated version (I promise) below, and you'll get bad info from the old one.

In other news, on Saturday, Leon, Jeff and I will be playing in a 9-ball tournament at the Layton Hills Mall. I'm rather excited to be playing, as it's my first billiards tournament. I intend to have a good time, and if that means getting my sorry butt whipped, then that's fine.

But I'd really like to win, too. I'm thinking of dragging along my MP3 player and making a special playlist to keep me pumped. This approach seems to work nearly as well at Leon's house as getting someone to irk me a little bit so that I can play annoyed and clean them up. And I really do. But lately I've just been mostly tired. So the music may help with that.

Oh, did I promise directions? Yeah, I'll get to that...

I guess you could call this a brain dump post. I'm going to try to catch the blog up on my life in 3,000 words or less. Ready?

In August I got a new job at a company in Salt Lake called Unisys. I'm outsourced tech support without the funny accent or odor of curry. I've been there eight weeks now, and I'm doing well, but they like me at my desk by 6:00 AM, and the drive to Salt Lake takes a while in the morning and afternoon when I get off work, so I wake up early these days, and go to bed early, and I'm still tired all the time because:

I still have to be Daddy to my kids.
I still have to be SuperHubbyJake (TM) to Crystal.
I still have to be V.P. of Communications to Weber Entrepreneurs Association.
I still have to serve my Ziff Computers customers.
I still have to go to activities with and teach lessons for my ward's Teachers Quorum.
I still have to participate in regular hygenic activities, such as showering and brushing teeth, which takes a little time every day, but really adds up.

I feel like Prince Humperdinck in a classic moment when he said to his number one crony: "Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work, but I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Gilder to frame for it. I'm swamped!"

And I truly am. I just wear a Leatherman instead of a fancy dagger. But given the right dagger, I may be convinced to make a transition.

I've decided to begin studying for the Certified Ethical Hacker certification. Wahoo. Now we're talkin' malformed packets, baby! Oh, when you talk like that, it really makes my buffer overflow.

Oh, and I have a new phone. It's an Audiovox PocketPC 6700 with service from Sprint, which means that from now on when you call me on my cellular, you no longer have to cope with crappy Nextel service, which has never been a paragon of quality in my case. I love this phone, and maybe I'll write more about it later.

Ok, down to business. Following is a lightly edited version of the directions given for the previous party noted above. Most of what's new is the Google Maps directions link and my newer email address. Cheers!

Here is Leon's address in Kaysville:
350 N. Seemore Drive

Directions: From I-15, take the Kaysville exit. Coming off of the exit, turn West onto 200 North. If you're coming from the South, that's a left turn. If you're coming from the North, it's a right turn.

You should pass a car dealership right by the freeway as you head West.

Further down on the right, you'll see a nice park. This means you're going the right way. There's another park right next to the first one. Yes, two city parks right next to one another. Welcome to Kaysville. Keep heading West.

You'll see an LDS church on the left. Then you'll see a Baptist church across the street from the LDS church, also on your left. Keep heading West.

Take the next right. It's called Seemore Drive. This is Leon's street. He lives at the very end of the street, on the right-hand side. There is parking in front and at the side of the house.

Here's an aerial photo of Leon's neighborhood, and here's a zoomable Google Map that assumes you know how to get on I-15. Seemore Drive is the road that ends in a "T", not the one that has a cul-de-sac. His house is the one on the right-hand corner next to the cul-de-sac. Yeah, the one with the huge back yard.

If you have any problems, questions or other concerns about the party, you can email me at slybevel (at) gmail (dot) com, or you can call my cellular phone at nine four oh, fifteen oh six. Got that? If you don't know the area code, go away.

Better yet, you could call Jeff. He's in charge of this one.

Things I forgot to talk about in my last post

2005-10-25T22:48:00.000-06:00

This post is for things players ought to know about the LAN party I didn't mention.

One, those of you with microphones or headsets, BRING THEM! Jake and I were playing around and have discovered that voice messaging in Half-Life is fun and easy. Plus, it'll be easy to talk to teammates with it.

I also forgot to mention that in addition to the games I mentioned, we plan on having Halloween-type movies to watch, as players may get fragged out. Nightmare Before Christmas and Beetlejuice top the list, but there may be more than that.

I will probably update this post as I think of other things.

Yet Another Pre-LAN Party Post

2005-10-23T21:26:00.000-06:00

Ok, the LAN party is this coming Friday so first off, w00t! Here's a refresher for everone coming.

What everyone should know about the party: it will take place this Friday, starting at 2:00 and ending PROMPTLY at 11:00 at the Walker residence. Music will be turned off at 9:00 pm, and headphones are mandatory for games such as Half-Life. There is a $15 cover, as we are having Garcias cater.

Guests are expected to bring their own computers, monitors and other peripherals (keyboard and mouse). Tables will be set up in the basement where you can jack in to the network.

We will be playing the following games: Half-Life Death Match, Counter Strike, Half-Life 2 Death Match (if there are enough players), Motocross Madness, You Don't Know Jack, Mortal Kombat and pool. Also, with the computer games, we appreciate people having the computer games already loaded on their boxes, and if you don't now, I urge you to grab a copy (the HL Platinum pack was $15.00 at Walmart last I checked). If you don't have these games come Friday, we can take care of it, the exceptions bein YDKJ (one computer can handle lots of people) and HL2 (you must have your own copy)

Finally, these are the people we are expecting. If I have forgotten anyone or if anyone here isn't coming, I need to know by Tuesday when we order food.
Krys
Jake
Leon
Gary
Andy
Mikey (Andy's buddy)
Myself
Brad (Krys' brother)
Stan

And I guess Eric isn't going to be showing up. Too bad. Here's looking forward to Friday.

It's not a free lunch

2005-10-23T13:58:00.000-06:00

It doesn't look like I'll be making it to the LAN party this week, although if I need a break from all the other exciting things that will be going on, then maybe I'll come join you for a while. It's that or go to some 1840's period dance.

I do have a bit of news. We spent the weekend painting, and with carpet coming tomorrow, everything is in place for us to move next week. We'll be spending all day Friday packing and what not, and we plan to have a large truck here to move everything on Saturday, starting shortly after 8:00, until we're done. If any of you are interested in helping, let me know and I'll give you details. We plan to feed you, and if enough people are here, it will be easy enough work.

Of course, if you're busy or just not interested in heavy lifting, that's fine too.

Have a fun LAN party.

Has this ever happened to you?

2005-09-15T12:20:00.000-06:00

Has this ever happened to you?

You answer your door to find a neighbor standing out there with a wagon full of squash and not just any squash the dreaded zucchini in all of its greenness. What do you do send them away and possibly hurt their feelings? Maybe you develop a sudden allergy or do you accept just to throw it away later. Well here is a solution for you. It tastes good and tastes even better the second day.

Bacon – Zucchini Soup:
Serves 6 – 8

8 cups unprepared zucchini
6 strips of bacon cut into pieces
1 can (10 ¾ oz) chicken broth
½ tsp salt (optional)
1 tsp season salt
1 tsp basil leaves
¼ tsp pepper
¾ cup chopped onions
Croutons and or parmesan cheese for toppings (optional)

Directions:
Chop zucchini and set aside.
Fry bacon until crisp remove from pan
Sauté onions in bacon grease.

Combine zucchini with bacon, onions, and remaining ingredients in large pot and cook until zucchini is tender adding water as needed. And allow to cool. (Side note I personally cook the bacon in the large pot and leave the grease in the soup and leave out the salt. This way I only get one pot dirty.) Put cooked mixture in blender and blend until very smooth. Heat for serving and top with croutons and parmesan cheese if desired.

2005-09-13T09:55:00.000-06:00

Thank you Leon. I know Andy can be a Dink and I appreciate you taking the initiative.

The new specs for the party should work out just fine. I certainly don't have a problem with it and if anyone does, let me know.

Now that it's official, I want to put a few things out there. First, I'd like to do some Half-Life Mod games. I'm thinking Opposing Force, Team Fortress, and possibly Counter Strike and HL2. I'd like to know how people feel about doing this and if there are enough people with those games to make it worth while. Second, Jake has been pointing out more and more with each LAN party that Half-Life Deathmatch is fun, but it gets old after a while, as does mototag. To help with this, he has reccomended a black jack tournament and for the last party attempted a dedicated Mortal Kombat computer. I would like any other suggestions for new and exciting games to play.

Here's looking forward to our Halloween LAN Party!

PS: Thank you again, Leon, for taking initiative.

LAN Party: Power Trippin

2005-09-11T19:54:00.000-06:00

Due to a lack of motivation or desire from my brother, I have finally pushed the subject of the LAN party with my parents. Here are the details they want.

October 28^th is the day they prefer, this is a Friday we will start accepting people at 2:00 pm no earlier. Knowing most of us have work that should not be a problem.
At 9:00 pm the pool table and the stereo will be turned off and further use forbidden. My parents have plans and want to be able to get some sleep. I had to fight to make the stereo an option at all please be grateful. We are not allowed to turn it to 11; they have their own things going on up stairs and like to listen to their own music.
At 11:00pm that is it time to pack and go.
Head phones for your computer are mandatory.
Finally I (Leon) am in charge of the basement. Not Andrew because:

I worked it out with my parents.
They trust me.

If there are any changes you would like let me know ASAP and I’ll try to get it worked out. My parents enjoy the fact that you all like to come and play. I like to see they and their home are treated with respect. They are very nice despite what the above may seem to indicate. I just like to get to the point.

Thanks to all of us and let’s make this work!

Leon Walker.

RE: RE: [Phischkneght Forum] The Next LAN Party(A Reply From Phoenix)

2005-09-03T22:42:00.000-06:00

Alright, alright, maybe I did jump the gun, but I would like to point out a few things. For starters, nothing is for certain right now. My post was more to announce that that was what we wanted to do, though in my excitement, things sounded more concrete. We did intend to speak with the heads of the Walker household and Leon before proceding. Also, we set the date far enough in the future to hopefully avoid any scheduling conflicts, and of course, should any major ones occur, we are ready to change it.

Anyways, my appologies. I will have Andrew bring up the subject tomorrow and I will speak personally with Leon at the soonest possible time. So hopefully things will go more smoothly and we won't be "DENIDED" anymore.

RE: [Phischkneght Forum] The Next LAN Party(A Reply From Phoenix)

2005-09-01T23:04:00.000-06:00

Well I am glad you are gung ho about a LAN party but until it is cleared on the house owner side you are SCREWED! I am not trying to be mean but you need permission from both my mother AND father for this type of thing to fly. Having my father next to me and saying this is the first he has heard of it is not a good indicator. After you get permission then start a guest list. Our family meetings occur every Sunday after dinner. Andrew needs to bring up the proposition then and make sure he has it cleared. We may or may not have something else planed as a family of just my parents but just expecting them to drop every thing and rearrange life to fit you is rude. Point 2 just who do you think this house network belongs to. I personally demand that some one asks to use my things before assuming they can and inviting others to do so. So until I hear otherwise this location and equipment have been DENIDED.

p.s. I like the idea of a LAN party but only if the proper channels are followed.

p.p.s I believe in repentance and forgiveness.

Leon Walker

V.P. of the W.F. Corporation.

The Next LAN Party

2005-09-01T20:20:00.000-06:00

I have been talking with Andy, and we have agreed that a LAN party is in order. Here's what we're thinking: October 29, from noon to midnight. Cover will probably be in the area of $15, and the party will be at the Walkers'.

As it stands, here is a preliminary guest list:
Jake
Leon
Gary
Krys
Stan
Eric
Andy
Myself (Jeff)

We are going to look into Garcia's again since that has proved popular, but if anyone has suggestions for menu changes, people I forgot to invite, or any other changes, let me know. I will be checking this blog often.

A Tale of Data Recovery

2005-08-31T21:40:00.000-06:00

Monday morning, I woke up and found my computer hung up on the POST screen. It was blathering on about a hard drive failure. Rebooting did nothing to help. Unplugging the system drive later that day got the system to POST, and so I was stuck with a bad system drive.

This drive has a capacity of 80 GB, and over two partitions, it contained all of my user data, personal documents, and VCD files, in addition to every picture I took with my digital camera since Christmas and an extensive email archive. I was devastated.

To make matters worse, I just went through this weekend and threw away every old backup disc that I didn’t have a good reason to keep ("just in case I want to restore some files from the previous installation" wasn’t a good enough reason). I tried to create a new backup of the C drive (where all this critical data was stored), but it crashed halfway through. I should have taken that as a warning.

But I was also quite busy. Tuesday, I managed to spend about 5 minutes with the machine, during which I found that the drive was having trouble, and that was all I could do. Today, I got a bit more time, but it’s been a few minutes here and a few more there. Fortunately, I’ve made some progress today.

I tried plugging the hard drive in with another cable (on the vain hope that it was a cable problem). That didn’t work until I changed the jumper on the drive. Then, it would start to boot to Windows, but then crash and reboot before it got to the welcome screen. The good news was that it was POSTing, and that the drive still had some valid data on it.

I promptly booted to Knoppix, and after figuring out where Samba was and all that, I started copying files to my other machine. I now have all of the desirable data backed up, and I’m ready to start doing some serious diagnostics on the suspect drive.

Gentlemen...behold!!!

2005-08-24T18:17:00.000-06:00

First off, Eric's idea of a something-or-other LAN party is good, and much needed. I've been talking to Paul Plaizier and he is eager to see many of the old school Aspenridge boys. I tried to come up with some brilliant way of disagreeing with him on the need to reunionize with old friends (I was playing devil's advocate) and yet his overwhelming fervor and passion for "chilling out" and "pwning old friends" was too much for me. I conceeded.

Nextly, I have an apartment. I have an apartment, I HAVE AN APARTMENT!!! This brings me unadulterated glee for many reasons. I want to be closer to school (and work that will be on campus, WOOT!!!!) I also will be moving my records up there so that I will actually be living in my stake boundaries for the first time in 6 1/2 years. This is a good thing for me. I will be moving in August 27th, you heard right, this Saturday. I mostly will be having family help, but you know that I'm never averse to receiving help from my friends. GG all, many of you will next see me when I'm on Washington Terrace time.

O say can you C++?

2005-08-21T10:03:00.000-06:00

Some time ago, a fellow contributor was interested in learning to program. I offered him a book of programs, and copies of most of the stuff I'd written, but I don't think he got what he wanted from it. Then, we all forgot about it, and a lot of time passed.

Lately, I've been delving into programming again, and revisiting some things that I've written before in an effort to either reuse them or improve them. As part of this, I (finally, after over 5 years) went through the Wrox Press C++ Tutorial that came with my copy of Visual C++. I've got to say that it was very helpful, although as someone who already knew a lot of the material, I can't say just how helpful it would be to a beginner. Also, there were some stylistic things that they did that I disagree with, like putting endlines at the beginning of lines instead of at the end or prefixing all pointer variables with a 'p', and some language issues that I had with them, like not using built in .h headers (this reflects a difference between C and ANSI C++, and since I was taught to use the .h headers whenever available and the .h headers are better for backward compatibility with C, I still use them).

My point is that it was a very helpful tutorial, and if any of you out there have a copy of Visual C++ 6.0 and still want to learn some programming, give it a shot. I can provide some extra help if you get stuck, and even provide some code examples if you need it. In fact, I've been meaning to write an entry here about fractals, which would include pictures of fractals and also copies of my code used to generate them. I'm glad that I haven't done that yet, because a lot of that code has been revised and cleaned up lately.

On another note, are we going to try for a Labor Day-ish LAN party, or wait until Constitution Day, Columbus Day, Halloween, Veterans Day, or some other holiday?

"In London, April's a spring month"

2005-07-15T17:48:00.000-06:00

I think I won a major battle over spyware this week, but I can’t really claim victory because I nuked before I really had time to verify my success.

The story is that a coworker’s computer was badly infected with spyware. She is close to a technical illiterate, and so it was a bit of a puzzle in itself to try to find out what was wrong before I actually sat down at the machine and started looking around. It was also a puzzle figuring out what had caused the problem in the first place.

As far as I can tell, she got a popup one day saying that she either had a virus, or that she should install some program. She apparently hit the window and installed whatever came up. She thought she was installing her ISP’s anti-spyware package, and instead whatever she installed had a distinctly pro-spyware agenda.

There were dozens of different spyware packages running on her machine, but that didn’t turn out to be the problem. I could remove those easily enough, partly with the help of anti-spyware programs (legitimate ones downloaded from their respective authors) or by manually removing their startup keys and executables. This required booting to Safe Mode and sometimes to BartPE (thanks Jake for motivating me to make a disc last week).

When I thought it was all clean, I tried running Windows update, and suddenly the popups were back, along with a fresh load of spyware, only this time they were accompanied by the installer for MS Office (yeah, what the heck!?). All that work, and things hadn’t improved. So, I uninstalled Office and tried to refresh the IE files (MS doesn’t make this very easy). But there still were a couple of programs starting up that I couldn’t even find. The files just weren’t there, and neither were the registry keys, and yet they were there.

Eventually, I found them, and then promptly formatted the whole thing and install a (legitimate this time) copy of XP Home. So, the thing’s fixed and it’s out of my hands. I did what I could, and it was quite an adventure, even though in a way it was a tremendous waste of time. The point is that I learned a lot. And I think I’ll get a lunch out of it.

The Case of the Wardriver

2005-07-11T07:02:00.000-06:00

Last April, in Florida (why does almost every news story these days happen in Florida?), a man was arrested for accessing a residential wireless network without the permission of the owners. He will soon be going to trial, and I am interested to find out how this case turns out.

On one hand, the guy admits to using network resources that did not belong to him. The owner of the network that he connected to had paid for the network hardware, internet connection, and other associated maintenance costs. Depending on the wording of the law, the guy may be unarguably guilty of unauthorized access to a computer network.

That said, I do not expect him to be found guilty. Aside from the unfairness of punishing one person for an act that is so ubiquitous these days, it is not altogether clear that he was an unauthorized user of the network. If an individual makes some extraordinary effort to connect to a network (splicing wires, stealing passwords, circumventing security measures), then the access would clearly be unauthorized. In this case, the network connection was being broadcast to anyone within range of it. The man charged in this case was in a public place (on the street), and (most likely) had not circumvented any security measures to access the network.

My point is that having an unsecured wireless network is an open invitation for anyone within range to connect to it. In fact, most wireless enabled computers will automatically connect to an unsecured network within range, with little or limited action from the user, making such “illegal” activity unavoidable. It is akin to having something on a web page that doesn’t require authentication to log on (most web pages are like this), except that the range from which it can be accessed is much, much smaller (100 feet, versus world wide).

I worry that this will create an undue state of paranoia among the technically illiterate. Already people are talking about how people use unsecured networks to perpetrate terrible things, like distributing child pornography or sending threatening emails. While this certainly happens, it is unlikely for any specific wireless network to be so abused. The limited physical range of a Wi-Fi network makes it difficult for malicious users to take advantage of it. But most people don’t know enough to realize this, and are likely to be driven by fear of prosecution for something they didn’t do.

I fear that, instead of leading people to be more diligent about securing their wireless connections, this will drive people to create legislation making innocuous war driving a specifically criminal offense. This will not make the naïve technophobes, or their data, any safer, but it will occasionally save them from having people leech indiscernible amounts of bandwidth from their high speed web connections that they barely use. (Seriously, what good is a connection faster than 256 Mb/s if you never download any big files?)

For the record, I have a wireless network, and have at times been responsible for another one. I am very careful about making sure that my networks are secure. As long as most people don’t secure their wireless networks, passing people looking for an easy Wi-Fi fix will not bother with my network. It’s not worth the trouble of breaking into Fort Knox when the bank next door doesn’t ever lock it’s vault or post any guards.

Whoa, that moved fast...

2005-07-10T15:54:00.000-06:00

Lots to catch up on.

There was the LAN party, back on June 24-25. I think it's fair to say that everyone who attended had a good time, and went away very tired. I went away very, very tired. We did in fact stay up all night (except for Leon...he slept twice), and alternately played Half-Life, played billiards, and watched our movie, "Poolhall Junkies."

Eric gave "Poolhall Junkies" a thorough panning, even though he hadn't seen the movie before, and then admitted that it was pretty ok afterward.

We never did get to Slurpees. There were times that a couple of people wanted to go, but the rest of the group didn't, and then an hour or so later a couple of other people would want to go, with the majority still reticent. No biggie.

Overall, it was a fun party between a pretty tightly-knit bunch of friends. And the food was really good. And I'm pretty sure that no one will die of heart break if we don't do an overnighter again. At least not like that. It was pretty rough at the end.

Independence Day and my birthday came and went, and oh my, did I have a good time.

First, we went to Logan for USU's annual firework show there. Leon and Jeff and I went early to get good seats, and of course, eat at Logan's old-timey A&W beforehand. I've eaten at other A&Ws, but they never seem to be as good as that one. We also wanted to visit Willow Park, but there simply wasn't time. So we drove up to USU stadium and staked out a place in line. Leon and Jeff passed the time by beating up their Gameboys, and I listened to an audio book.

The audio book was "A Walk In The Woods", by Bill Bryson, narrated by the author, and not, as I first thought, by John Malkovich. Yes, really. They sound exactly the same, weird cadence and all. Y'all know by now that I don't link to products that don't impress me. "Walk In The Woods" was a really great listen. I highly recommend it.

And John Malkovich, if you're idly Googling yourself and you stumble on this post, please do consider looking into voice work for audio books. An unusual voice helps keep the audio book interesting, and it certainly helped an already excellent work in this case.

Logan, sadly, has Homeland Security Paranoia Shit (hereafter referred to as HSPS) going on. You can't bring in a glass bottle in a cooler, but I wore a knife on my hip right through the gate, and it could very well have been a gun and no one would have noticed. Granted, the knife is my treasured Leatherman, and not really an ideal choice if you're looking to let massive amounts of blood, but the airlines are afraid enough of my Leatherman, so you tell me.

Folks, when can we start to be clueful about this again? Searching people does not make me feel more secure, it makes me feel less secure. And your plainclothes guys walking around, trying not to look conspicuous? Yeah, right. Can you tell me what's more secure than a stadium full of law-abiding citizens packing weapons (be they knives, guns, or broken bottles)? I bet you can't.

The Logan show is sponsored annually by Fireworks West, a Utah outfit that designs for and supplies professional fireworks shows. Fireworks West likes to show off their new stuff at the Logan show, and this year we saw shells burst into giant smiley faces. I know, not that impressive, but they've debuted more exciting things in the past.

The long and short of it is that the Logan show has been declining in the last few years, and I'm not sure that I'll keep the family tradition next year and attend. For one thing, tickets are now $6 per person, for a show that's been shorter every year for the last five shows.

The entertainment is getting more, well...unbearable. They've clearly been spending as little as possible to get someone on stage who at least knows what a guitar is, and invariably, this person also tries to hold and play a guitar, which is a big mistake. They also did away with the sky divers. I liked that part as a kid, and they just don't do it anymore.

Here. Take the Clearfield show as a study in contrasts.

It's free. Did I mention it's free? This is a big deal. My whole family went and the only expense was dinner. Free.
There are firemen and police everywhere, but they're there to help instead of stare at you and pretend they're not staring at you.
They allow vendors in for a reasonable price, giving the event a well-rounded selection of food and other crap to buy (I didn't, but I like choice).
Nobody searches anything. But if you do something stupid, the cops will be there in a heartbeat (see my post about cops for a fun story involving this show).
There are no damned "entertainers" to fight to ignore, so I can talk to my family, or ponder the sky, or listen to my audio book in peace.
Grass. Bare feet and grass and a warm day and my own, comfy folding chair. AHHHHHHHhh.
Room (and grass, mind you) for my kids to run around and have fun.
A huge fireworks show. Longer, bigger, and better in every way that matters than the Logan show. For free.

Logan, you've got a problem. Clearfield is putting on a better show for less (none at all) money. I'm pretty sure I noticed a substantial drop in attendance at Logan's show this year, and I've got serious doubts on whether I'll be attending anymore. I don't know if you care, but here are some things that I feel would make a difference.

They put fireworks down on the grass in the stadium, and that's cool, but I'd rather sit down there, where it's cool and soft, than in a hard seat up above. Either open up this area to seating, or bring back the sky divers and let them land there again.
Get real on vendor prices. How do I know anything about this? Do you remember the first five years you had light ropes? That was my family you contracted with, and you raised the commission on us every year until we couldn't afford to do it anymore. It was fun and we didn't mind paying for the privilege, but you've got to ease up on the greed quotient.
Find a better way to entertain us before the fireworks, if you must. I remember when the organizers of a fireworks show would broadcast the program on an FM radio station. Perfect. Give us a choice whether or not to listen.
Finally, trust your public and trust your public servants. Get the damned surveillance van out of there. Be clear about what you expect and have your cops take care of it if a few people mess up.

The single drawback at the Clearfield show was that they set up the barriers a touch too close to the fireworks, and the forward parts of the audience had firework debris raining down on them from time to time. But I've had that at the Logan show too, and I don't know that any show of any remarkable magnitude doesn't. Also, in Clearfield's case, this was probably a symptom of the space crunch their experiencing...they're building a new junior high school, tearing down the old one, and there's a dirt pile and a fence where the Clearfield City Pool used to be, which has been a major thoroughfare at previous shows. So Clearfield probably needed to make the best use of the space they had. Tricky.

On the nights between the Logan and Clearfield shows, Jeff, Krys, Andrew and I lit big floral shells in my back yard. We had four tubes running at a time, and with great effect. I found a way to stake down the tubes, so we didn't have to worry about them knocking each other over this year. Last year, we had a tube fall from the force of its launch. It knocked over the tube next to it, and that tube launched its shell about 3/4 of a second later...at my house. Fortunately, the shell bounced off of the roof and broke over the road in front of the house. No harm done, but scary.

The PVR Build Log over at PhischX will have momentous news when I next post. Here's your preview if you read this first: The PVR works. It records, it rewinds, it pauses live TV, and it's all good. There's still work to do, and of course there are details to write about, but that's the gist of it.

And speaking of previews, Does anyone here read Cringely? Well you should. He was blogging long before anyone (even himself) knew what that was. These days he's the resident technology writer for PBS, and he's about to launch something that you will hear about, and probably be part of.

So go here and read about it.

Send in the Pundits

2005-07-06T20:41:00.000-06:00

Saturday, to celebrate his birthday, I watched recorded TV shows with Jake. It was fun, especially since I got to watch some recent Daily Show episodes. I’ve missed Jon Stewart’s coverage of world events, which I used to watch regularly back in my college days (it was a great way to start my night).

One guest we watched was Howard Dean, the former Governor of Vermont and Presidential Candidate, as well as the current DNC chairman. I have never liked that man. I’m not sure why anybody trusts him with anything, or why they talked about trusting the country to him (I suspect that it was a complicated ruse to draw attention away from the legitimate candidate until later in the campaign, while drawing attention to the party). (I also admire his ability to draw people to him, especially since I don’t understand what it is that draws them.) I’m not sure just where Jake stands, politically, although I know that he very much wanted Bush to lose the last election (I think it was due to Michael Moore’s feature length editorial), but he definitely has right wing leanings too.

I digress. The point is that I wanted to give some answer to every thing that came out of his mouth, and the only thing keeping me back was a desire to not offend my friend and host. I was thinking about this, and how during the last election I spent all evening, into the night, watching the punditry and commentary on CNN (a respectable, but decidedly left-leaning group), and I realized that I like this sort of thing. I like addressing the vague statements, overgeneralizations, straw men, and demagoguery that comes out. In all fairness, I don’t just tackle liberals. I’ll take on O’Reilly’s bull too. I just enjoy it, that’s all.

Life, don’t talk to me about life. (and party stuff)

2005-06-22T14:12:00.000-06:00

The only problem with taking a vacation is that when you get back everything at work is shot to heck. Let’s just say I’ll be getting some overtime this week.

Yeah I finally took my first real paid vacation. One whole week of course I had to save the time up for three years to get there but I finally did it. Nothing fancy just caught up on the little things I wanted to do. You could say I did nothing and it was everything I thought it could be.

On to the LAN Party.

1) The cover will be $15.00 U.S. if you think this is not fair e-mail me and I’ll point your error out to you.

2) There will be some basic rules to follow.

a. Have fun. We are here to relax and enjoy the company of others. I am really a nice relaxed guy don’t let the following deceive you.

b. Don’t be stupid. You are to treat every one here with respect and kindness. Trash talking is the exception but don’t take it too far.

c. Cursing is not allowed. This is my personal rule.

d. Any violations of these rules will be reviewed and enforced by me.

e. If my mother would disapprove don’t do it. If you are not sure if something is permitted ask.

3) Thanks to every one who has offered to bringing equipment, things worked better because of it.

4) Thanks to my parents for the use of the house.

5) And finally thanks to Jake for bringing this all together.

more of my input

2005-06-20T22:23:00.000-06:00

COOL! It's a good thing we're going all-nighter because my new job is keeping me out pretty late lately. Unless I work out something amazing or take that day off, I probably won't make it to the party until at least 10:30. I hate to miss any second of a LAN party, but I wouldn't miss it for anything.

What I'd like to know, and I realize it's probably still up in the air, but how much will the cover be? Cash has been a bit short for me, what with buying Jake's old monitors off of him, and the sooner I know how much I need, the easier it'll be for me to plan for/save/obtain the necessary ammount.

Finally, Leon, for what it's worth (and it probably isn't worth much), I have a Hub which I will place at your disposal if you can't get enough switches.

More LAN Party Stuff

2005-06-17T14:53:00.000-06:00

I can bring a switch and at least a few cables, but I will probably not be getting to the party until later. I will be traveling this coming week, and Friday morning, I’ll be waking up in Florida (Central Time, at least, so that it’s only a one hour jet lag thing). I’ll have to work out details with my secretary, but I will probably have other commitments to take care of after I get back in town before I can come play. I also rarely make it up past 2 a.m. these days, so even if I sleep on the plane (which doesn’t happen that often), I’ll likely not be at my sharpest during the gaming.

All that aside, I think that an all night LAN party is a cool idea, but, as Darth Vader once said, “It’s too late for me, son.” I’ll do what I can to help make it work. Is there anything else I should bring? Money? Food? Goats?

Hear ye hear ye the party is come.

2005-06-16T16:46:00.000-06:00

On speaking with my parents an all nighter from Fri. to Sat. is approved. I would like it to start no earlier than 4:00 pm Fri. I still have work that day and ill need time to set up. Dinner should start around 5:30 – 6:00 I will take on my self the burden of the initial payment of food and it sounds like that will be Garcia’s. Gary I want to send you for the pick up again. If there are any special requests let me know. I will not be providing breakfast unless we agree to increase the cover. Milk ain’t cheep.

As for games personally I like:

1) Half-Life

2) MCM2

3) Mortal Kombat

4) Mario Cart.

5) N64 Games

As for equipment ill need 2 more switches and extra network cables. I lost some cables at the last party so my stock is limited. Krys and Eric I would like you to cover the switches if you can if not let me know. I will also need a list of attendees by Wed. So I know how much food to get. Jake I need you to bring over controllers and games for the 64 also I would like you to keep track of the guest list. And I think we will need to have lunch at Garcia’s to hammer out the finial details.

For a LAN-party disk I am going to vote against but I do like the idea of making a utilities folder available over the network. You will not have internet access here so update and scan you computers before arrival. Head-phones are mandatory to keep the neighbors happy and to help provide a better social atmosphere. If there are any questions or concerns or people you want to invite PLZ let us know promptly. And finally thanks for all your help and support for making this happen.

Nicus.

Unkept Insinuations

2005-06-15T13:49:00.000-06:00

Last night there was thunder for a brief period. It was a welcome harbinger in the heat of the nearly-summer night. But there was no follow-up of rain, or even more thunder to enjoy on its own. Just a few booms over the course of five minutes or so. Then nothing.

So I was left to add thirty albums to my server's audio collection with the fan droning in the background. It was one of the more dreary music work sessions I've had in a while. But I'm glad it's done. A little over 2GB of music from the thirty albums (comprised of roughly 35 CDs) is a nice little addition. And have I mentioned this? CDs at D.I. (and most other second-hand routes, for that matter) are one of the best music deals running, if you care a whit about legality. License to a full album for $2.00 a pop. Forever. Unlimited burning. Unlimited playlists. Unencumbered, plain vanilla, good old-fashioned, MP3. What's not to love? Go on, tell me.

Now hear this...Ten days. From right now, and only nine if we decide to go overnight and begin on the 24th. That's the kind of time we have left, and with only about 5% of the work done so far.

Leon, it's at your house, and you're the boss. I imagine that you can demand just about anything you like from Eric, Krys, and myself in order to get it all together. Do so. Soon. You know how I worry when deadlines begin to loom.

Accidentally Untitled (But now fixed) (And in the wrong blog! Also now fixed)

2005-06-13T16:38:00.000-06:00

Last night (or early this morning, rather) I dreamt that Hugh Hefner (yes, that Hugh Hefner) was running for class president at a high school and I supported his run. No, he did not attend the high school. Yes, he was his real current age. No, there were not any bunnies present (unfortunately?). I don't know why I supported his run, but I thought it was a terrific idea at the time.

Oh, and dream number two was a roller coaster shaped like the graph of a mathematical equation that double-curved in on itself in such a way that the combination of speed and gravity killed the riders on the first run. It looked neat, though.

I think my brain is bored. I hope that planning and executing the upcoming LAN party will be sufficient stimulation for a little while.

I've been working really hard at understanding Windows installs. I've slipstreamed the latest service packs into all of my Windows install discs, and I'm working on pre-configuring my OS preferences, pre-integrating drivers and even activations into the installs, and testing with Virtual PC 2004. It's fascinating, but only to the reasoning side of my brain.

Likewise with all the other geeky pursuits I'm into. So the upcoming LAN party will be good for me.

Oh, and I REALLY NEED TO KNOW...LAN Party Disc or no? If yes, I need to get right to work on it.

Da LAN party

2005-06-09T19:44:00.000-06:00

before you read this post, you should read Jake's latest, in which he disusses my idea for making the 25th an all night LAN party.

It being my idea, I am all for making the 25th all night. And I expected a little resistance such as Eric with his comment to Jake's post. I would like to point out a few things to alleviate such anxieties.

1: If you come to the party, it is fairly easy to assume that you don't have work on saturday the 25th. If you don't, you have a whole weekend after the party to get your sleeping groove back on.

2: If you are so dead set in your sleeping habits, we will take steps to ensure you get the sleep you need (quiet rooms, sleeping bags, tents, etc.)

3: If you are uncomfortable sleeping in a strange place, have work the next day, or simply don't want to go all night, no one will stop you from leaving early. Seriously, if you have to leave, then leave. but don't forget point 2.

4: Finally, an all night party is FUN! Even if we only go from 8:00 pm to 5:00 (and we almost certainly will go later in the morning), there will be a ton of time for everyone to do everything they want. Plus it will add the challenge of staying sharp so you can easily pick off tired players!

So there's my input on the LAN party. At the very least, I think we should try it once and if we find we don't like it we don't have to do it again.

LAN Party, Other Stuff

2005-06-08T12:57:00.000-06:00

I had lunch with Jeff yesterday. At Garcia's. On him. I'm pretty sure that's a first. Thanks again for lunch, Jeff.

Jeff has a good idea for the LAN party: Why not make it all night? Some random related ideas follow:

Gonna be a challenge to get the head Walkers to give the go-ahead.
Darken the library for fried players to relax before going back to fragging.
Set up a tent or two in the back yard, encourage players to bring a sleeping bag in case they decide to zonk.
Will probably raise the cover a bit, as more food/drinks will be required.
We'll need to figure out what extra food/drinks will be appropriate/appreciated.
We need to make sure that our late-night activities have a minimal impact on people who wish to sleep (neighbors, parents, siblings, cops).
Would have to re-arrange party date to June 24-25 so as not to run into Sunday.
Fireworks? (Unlikely; the Walker higher-ups are anti-firework, and we're missing the legal time frame by at least a week.)
Have a relaxing activity the next morning to help along everyone's recovery.

None of those things are hard ideas, I just wanted to put them somewhere for later reference. In fact, #2 and #3 sort of conflict logically. No matter. They're just ideas. It may be that we decide that going all night is too much work. Or too much work for now, save for another party.

I'd like to have a good variety of things to do at the party. Half-Life is great, but even Krys will get fragged out eventually. I really liked the few rounds of MCM2 we had at the last party. That was fun.

Maybe we should set up a PC for Mortal Kombat? We've got an emulator, and we've got controllers. We could even feed it out to a TV for the bigger screen. Hmmm.

Ditto for StarFox 64. I've been enjoying the various battle modes on StarFox with Leon and Jeff. Any takers?

Anything else? LAN Monopoly? Anyone know of a good head-to-head Tetris program? I used to LOVE the head-to-head Tetris on GameBoy. I suppose two-player Dr. Mario could do in a pinch.

Do enough people have HL2 that we'd want to do an HL2 Death Match? I would probably be out of this, because I'll be gaming on my Tablet, and a 1.5 Ghz Centrino is respectable in laptop circles, but it and my Nvidia 32 MB of Vid memory just won't cut HL2 without some real sacrificing.

Finally, should we make another LAN party CD? Did anyone find it useful last time? Should we make it a DVD and fill it up with some k1ck455 MP3s? I think that having a disc for the party is nice for getting out patches and such, but then we could also just set up a share on someone's box and call it good.

Talk to me, people. If you're not a Phischkneght member, go ahead and post a comment. I'll be watching.

LAN Party Input

2005-06-06T21:40:00.000-06:00

Jake is right. My schedule takes some time to take shape. My June schedule is finally coming together. I have a trip to Florida the week leading up to the LAN party, and a trip to Bear Lake the following week, but I’m free on the 25th. Except that I have some hedonistic solstice party to attend.

I’ll do what I can to recruit players. Roger may be interested, and so may some of his buddies (although I don’t know if we want to see it become a teen party, what with the maturity of bulk of the core group members).

As for Garcias, I concur. It was quite good. I’m not sure if I care about the tournament idea. I just enjoy making things (read: people) blow up. That’s all that matters, really.

Down To Business

2005-06-06T17:56:00.000-06:00

So we need to get some arranging done.

We're planning a LAN party for June 25th. It's been in the works for a while, but we really haven't done much about it yet other than talk.

We had to plan the date a fair good distance out, because Eric and some others have tricky schedules. Additionally, we've had Mother's Day, Father's Day, my daughter's birthday, and various other things in a relatively short period.

After some discussion, it was decided that it would be nice to align the LAN party with the Summer Solstice. The Solstice is on the 21st (every year), and the 25th is the first following Saturday.

If you choose to bring goat-skin leggings and dance around in celebration of the Solstice, we can likely accommodate your preference to do so. Pentagrams, however, would be considered over the line and should not be worn. It is at the Walker home, after all.

So, right off the top of my head, here's a preliminary guest list:

Stan
Leon
Eric
Gary
Jake
Jeff
Krys
Roger (Eric?...)
Andrew
...er...really? That's it? Surely I'm forgetting someone.

If you're not listed above and you'd like to be, just say so. I forget things sometimes.

There is food to think of. Here's the tally; once we had Baja Fresh cater our LAN party. It was bad. You can hit the archives if you want details, but it was just bad. Never again. And the store that Baja Fresh catered out of has since closed. A good sign as far as I'm concerned.

We also had Garcia's cater our last party. It was good. Very, very good. They did forget to bring a couple of things, but those were things that the manager was giving to us for free anyway, so it was no big deal. The food was on time (because we sent someone for it), delicious, reasonably priced, hot, and just generally warm-fuzzy-ish. In short, we got a good experience from Garcia's.

So Garcia's is high in the running for catering this next party, but not necessarily a done deal. Talk to Leon or myself if you feel that you have a better idea.

And: Prizes. I want prizes for this next LAN party. I'm not sure how I want it done yet, so I could use some help on how to set up HL tourneys (Krys, are you listening?).

If you have some sort of geeky swag that you're not using, then we'd love to make it a prize. Please talk to me about it.

I wish to foster a community feeling among Phischkneght members and friends in the planning and throwing of these events. If we all pitch in, we can help each other have a great time and probably save a few bucks. And I'd like to point out that our LAN parties are not money-making propositions. The October LAN party ended up costing me around $50, and the December party set Leon back around $60.We don't mind this because we love playing with our friends. And eating good food. They're both great.

So whatever you can do to help will be greatly appreciated.

Post Stub! (Formerly On Multiple Monitors)

2005-05-18T10:03:00.000-06:00

Thanks for the tickle, Jeff. I haven't written in far too long, and I've been looking for something to write about.

It occurs to me that blogging (in our case, at least) works best as a conversation rather than soliloquy between man and ether. I stimulate you to write, you do the same for me. Here's hoping for more of the same.

(Edit: This post got huge. So I'm posting to PhischkneghtX instead.)

Dual Monitors and LoZ

2005-05-18T09:44:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I did something that's been on my list for almost six months, and I am proud to say that I am now running dual monitors.

I understand that it usually takes a while to get used to dual monitors, but whether it's because I've watched Jake with his so much or because I spend so much time on my computer, I seem to be taking the extra monitor in stride.

Unfortunately, all is not well with my display. My 17' flatscreen, which has served me extraordinarily well for three years now, has begun picking up electromagnetic interference from the new monitor, which creates a small line of interference going down the screen. annoying, but in order to fix it, I'd need to risk my life putting a shield in the monitor, and I don't have a death wish. That and the 15' secondary monitor is a POS.

In other news, the long awaited name for the 2005 Legend of Zelda has been released. Jake downloaded a trailer for it and we agree that it's one I'll need to get. Seriously, it looks great!

That's it for now.

Typhoid Mary strikes again

2005-04-18T21:44:00.000-06:00

This weekend, I went down to my in-laws’ to install a wireless network. While installing a USB wireless adapter to a PC, I noticed that it was running slowly and had a lot of extra programs on it. There was a particularly suspicious registry run entry that had a lot of random looking consonants. After I deleted the entry, it came right back. So, with the wireless card fully installed, I set out trying to clean it up.

First, I ran an anti-spyware program (Ad Aware), which identified 706 objects (probably mostly cookies, you know how AdAware is), but stopped running while trying to delete the items it found. So, I installed and ran AVG anti-virus, which was partway through its scan (it found at least 19 viruses) when the computer crashed. It gave an error to the effect of “Unable to read from disk”. When I tried to reboot, it was unable to read anything from the hard drive.

The good news is that the viruses and spyware are gone, and instead of having hundreds of problems, her system has just one. The bad news is that her hard drive, including all of its data, is gone. We have plans to replace it and upgrade from Win98 to WinXP. This time, I’ll make sure that she has some better virus protection during the OS installation, as well as more secure browsers and such, so that she won’t be as likely to be infected again.

By the way, I usually don’t do nuke-n-loads by frying the harddrive.

Good Thing It Wasn't 10 Million More...

2005-04-18T11:40:00.000-06:00

Re This:

Buyout mania continues: GameStop snaps up Electronics Boutique

By eric@arstechnica.com (Eric Bangeman)

It must be something in the air, as the second major acquisition of the day is announced. GameStop will acquire Electronics Boutique in a US$1.44 billion cash and stock deal. What does this mean for gamers?

I'll tell you what it means. It means that the money will just barely fit on a cash floppy disk.

I know, such a bad joke.

Long Time, No Post (And Some Product Reviews)

2005-04-17T21:48:00.000-06:00

Too long. I'm not very happy when I don't write. And I don't write when I'm not very happy.

I'm on yet another experimental drug regimen. Is it helping? I dunno, you tell me. No, I really mean that...would someone please tell me?

So a very dear friend of mine, Diane in (near) Milwaukee, called me last night. I wasn't able to answer the call at the time, so we got in touch today.

Diane is only semi-digital, so at times she has an email address, and at times she doesn't. Well, now she has one again and I'm thrilled because that's just about the only way I can bring myself to communicate with someone on a regular basis nowadays (and it's cheaper than long-distance calling). Diane, it was wonderful talking to you today. I hope that you and I will know one another again as well as we used to.

Jeff and I have been going to Leon's to play billiards on the weekends. Last time we went, it was decided that Leon was getting too tired and needed a Slurpee. So we went, and as Jeff and Leon both owe me Slurpees, they decided amongst the two of themselves that Leon was buying.

We got there, acquired the desired Slurpees and went to pay. As we were standing in line, I glanced at the magazine rack, and out of the corner of my eye, saw something looking like money. When I looked directly at it, there was a five dollar bill tucked neatly in front of one of the magazines.

I picked it up, showed it to Leon, and tucked it away. Leon presented his debit card to pay for the drinks, but the lady ran the card wrong, so it declined. He was taking a while to get the card back out of his wallet again, so I quickly presented the found $5 bill.

I still think it's amazing and incredibly unlikely that we just found three Slurpees and some change sitting in a magazine rack like that.

I just finished reading "How To Find The Work You Love," by Laurence G. Boldt. It was an utter waste of paper and ink, because the title of the book and the description on the back cover are simply incorrect. A more appropriate title would be something to the effect of: "A Collection Of Quotes Meant To Inspire You, That Unintentionally Come Off As Cheesy, And Some Thoughts On Ignoring The Discouraging Voices In Your Head So That You Can Pursue What You Really Love, But That You Would Already Have Heard From Your High School Career Counselor, Had You Been Listening."

Fortunately, I paid a dollar for the book on clearance in the university book store. And now I see why.

I recently found a Canon PowerShot SD100 Digital Elph refurbished for about $160. The review linked to lists it for its original retail price, $499. So yeah, $160 is a screamin' deal, and I buy refurbished electronics all the time with good results overall.

Aside: Here's my theory on refurbished goods. I don't understand why they cost less, but I like it. I've got oodles of experience in buying electronics, and the refurbished items I've bought don't break more than the new ones do, they break less. No, really, it's true. I figure that any item that's been through quality control twice instead of once is likely to be in pretty good shape. And that's why I don't shy away when the words "refurbished" or "factory reconditioned" are thrown around. I dig the concept.

At any rate, the refurbished version comes with everything but a memory card, and it's actually a good thing, because the card that's included with a new one is only 16MB. Well, I burn through 16MB in about 14 seconds, so I was going to have to buy a new card anyway. I found a cheap Kingston 512MB card and bought it (of all places, from Dell. Who knew they had such good prices on items other than embarrassingly underpowered PCs? But I'm still testing the ice with them.).

Anyway, I got the camera and LOVED it. Excellent feel, excellent interface, superb picture quality, and a price that made me feel like the cops will be here any minute. Loved it. And then it broke.

Yep. The darn thing broke. I suspect that it simply did again what caused it to be returned in the first place. The lens mechanism jammed open while powering it off. The first couple of times, I cycled the power over and over, and the camera figured out the problem and fixed itself. But the third time, no amount of power cycling fixed it. Ah well. At least it jammed permanently while still in warranty. I was grateful.

So, I returned the SD100 and found a new, not refurbished, SD110 at Amazon for only $10 more. The next model up, new, for just ten bucks more. And at Amazon too, so free shipping.

So now I'll have a 16MB SD card and nothing at all useful for it to do. It's too small to use as a bookmark. Too fragile to pin up on the wall with a thumbtack. Not recognized by the US Postal Service as actual postage, even though the makers of such cards compare their size to postage stamps, so I can't mail a letter with it. Not even with tape. Hmph. I guess it'll go into my drawer with electronic odds and ends. Can't Amazon just keep it and discount me the $10? I suppose not, as it's already at the local UPS office and will be delivered tomorrow, along with the camera that I hunger for. Grrrrrrrrr...

So, you ask, why no posts for so long? I'm choosing not to say for now. But I think things will be better for a while now.

I can see clearly now, the grain is gone...

2005-04-15T23:35:00.000-06:00

We just bought a new 17” LCD monitor. It’s probably a low-end one (we got it on sale for half off at $150), but it was immediately obvious just how much better it is than my old monitor. It’s embarrassing to use them in a dual monitor configuration. I don’t think we’ll ever go back to CRT.

Setec Astronomy

2005-04-15T15:23:00.000-06:00

It has probably been about 3 months since I first stared looking at PGP. I downloaded a PGP client (note: I downloaded a free version from the PGP Corporation website that I cannot find again today, so this is the MIT site that my wife downloaded from, and our versions look identical and are compatible), tried to find a plugin for my mail client (note: a plugin now exists, called EnigMail, although it looks like it may be buggy), and tried (halfheartedly) to get a few friends to try it too so that we could exchange encrypted messages. Nothing happened. I didn’t even install any software.

Then yesterday my wife told me about a project she was doing for a class where she had to use PGP to encrypt a message and send it to her teacher. So, I finally downloaded it and used it to exchange a message with her. I don’t think that PGP will catch on between us for several reasons. First, it’s difficult for us to do, since I have only been able to encrypt files, rather than email messages (if the email extension works, then that might remove this issue, making it feasible to use). Second, we hardly ever communicate via digital writing or files. Third, we don’t anticipate that any person or organization will try to snoop on our messages.

I’d still like to try PGP exchanges with fellow Phischkneght members. If EnigMail works, then maybe I’ll push for it again, but harder this time.

Cosmetic Update

2005-04-09T23:56:00.000-06:00

Since Phischkneght changed its face some time ago, I've been disappointed that the links on the right hand side didn't survive the change. Well, tonight, I've finally got around to fixing that. I've added links for every blog (that I know of) that's written by Pnet contributors. Conspicuously absent is Jeff's blog/commercial site that seems to be missing.

If anyone sees anything that should be added, let me know.

Factor away your troubles!

2005-04-05T10:43:00.000-06:00

Saturday night, I was sitting in a dark room listening to some speakers. While they were fairly interesting (one guy started out telling about a drug bust that almost went bad), I found myself getting very bored. I always do when I’m just listening to people talking, so this came as no surprise, but this time I had nothing that I could really do. I had no useable electronics on hand, and it was too dark to use something that didn’t have backlighting. So, I remembered a problem that I had been working on a few days before:

r is a root of x^4-x^3+x^2-x+1=0. Evaluate r^40-r^30+r^20-r^10+1. (The original problem stated that the latter equation was equal to 0, but that was incorrect.)

I had tried a thing or two on paper before, and fallen asleep before making any headway when trying to work it out in my head. While we still had a bit of light from the dusk, I tried out a few more things on paper, but I soon found myself working entirely in my head in the darkness.

Quickly I could eliminate -1, 0, and 1 as possible roots. I did realize though that the product of the four roots is 1, and that their sum is -1. From this, I assumed that all four roots had magnitude 1 in the complex domain. If a root is complex, then the conjugates must cancel. From this, I assumed that the imaginary part of the x^4 term corresponded to the imaginary part of the x term. I let r=e^it where e is Euler’s number, i is the imaginary number, and t is an angle (in radians). If -(e^it)+(e^4it) is real, then pi+t=2*pi-4t. This gives 5t=pi (actually, 5t=pi+2k*pi, where k=0, 1, 3, or 4), and so r=e^i*pi/5, or (back in degrees), r=cos 72+i*sin 72. This means that r^10=1, and the desired solution is 1-1+1-1+1=1.

The cool thing about this is that I correctly factored a quartic function with complex roots in my head, and it took less than an hour, leaving me free to learn about the evils of poker later in the meeting, comforted by the fact that r^40-r^30+r^20-r^10+1=1<>0.

Happy Anniversary, Phischkneght!

2005-03-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

One year ago, in an attempt to introduce a friend of his to the blogging world, a novice blogger started a second web log and invited his friend to join. One year, 6 (or has it been more) members, and 122 posts later, it has become more than he ever hoped for. Thank you everybody for participating, either by contributing or by reading.

No Page File For You

2005-03-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

I've been working my Tablet PC progressively harder lately.

I run several applications at once, usually on the order of 5-10 windows, and it's been getting new tasks, such as running mapping software that talks to my GPS, and MS Streets & Trips, which the GPS talks to. Both of those programs involve loading huge, detailed map files to RAM.

The real resource hog, though, is Virtual PC. It's another of MS's offerings that the academic licensing program has given to me for free. I've had it sitting around for a while, but then I realized that it would be a good way to learn Linux without sacrificing a computer or fiddling with a multi-boot environment. I've done both, and when it comes to Getting Real Tasks Done vs. Learning A New OS, the tasks win every time.

With Linux on a virtual install, though, I have immediate access to Windows and I don't have to feel bad about the computer I've installed Linux on that I never use anymore. Almost the opposite, in fact. I'm working my ultra portable as if it were a desktop replacement.

So I decided it was time for a RAM boost from 512 MB to a full Gig. I thought that I had a single 512 chip in this machine, but when I opened it up, I found a disappointing dual 256 configuration. So I made a call to Josh at Prime Systems and asked if he could turn my two 256's into a single 512. He did, free of charge. I wanted to pay, but Josh wouldn't let me.

By the way, I highly recommend buying from Prime Systems in Kaysville. They treat me well and they'll do the same for you. And I do not recommend buying from Totally Awesome Computers. Trust me. I've never heard one of Totally Awesome's customers rave about their excellent service. More on this later, probably at Confessions.

Unfortunately, I wasn't in a position to buy the other necessary 512 from Prime because I had already found a killer deal on one online and placed the order.

The system ran a little slower with just the single RAM chip installed, but the second 512 came the very next day. When I opened the package, I discovered that the 512 that I ordered and the 512 Josh had given me were identical. Sweeeeet. The upgrade took about 45 seconds, and that was taking it slow.

The system's performance since the upgrade has been noticeably snappier. I've been running on the Gig for about ten days now without any problems, so last night I killed my page file. And guess what? I think the Tablet is even a little quicker now. But of course, I'll backtrack if anything goes wrong.

Last night I spent a couple of hours working on my server. I fiddled with it back in January, and something I did made it stop responding to file requests about once per week. It would then hang while rebooting, forcing me to hard reboot it by disconnecting power and then reconnecting.

I suspect that a misconfigured application server was causing the problems. A while back I was all obsessed about having FTP access on the server, so I enabled IIS and Application Services on it to use the built-in FTP capabilities. That didn't work, so I simply switched to Filezilla Server, but forgot to turn off all of the other junk that I had turned on and never got to work.

If that was indeed the problem, then I think I've got it fixed. I also installed System Restore to the server back in January (it isn't part of the OS out of the box like in XP), so that enabled me to restore the machine to a point around Jan. 15. If there was a crooked registry setting crashing the server, that should be fixed now too.

Now that my Tablet has a Gig of RAM, I've strongly considered upgrading my desktop and the server. But the thing is, they don't seem to need upgrades...they both run just fine on the 512 I've given each of them. My desktop only runs slowly when I'm ripping some kind of media on it, which is going to happen no matter how much RAM is in there. And the server only runs slowly when it's about to crash. And if I fixed everything like I think I did last night, that shouldn't be a problem anymore.

And so my weakest system, horsepower-wise, has the most RAM. Ooh! I bet I'll get a performance boost on the Tablet in Half-Life now!

My Opening Comments

2005-03-22T18:45:00.000-07:00

I'd like to thank Jake for his generous introduction. He's a good guy and a good friend. I've lurked around here since immediately before the infamous Halloween LAN party.

This is my first venture in to blogging and as such, I most likely will make mistakes. Nothing new really, I make mistakes all of the time. I've become quite good at making them, and one day I hope to also become adept at ammending them.

I'll admit I have a problem with entrepeneurship, and maybe I should go into counselling for it. Then again, maybe I should dress up like the Queen Mother and tell everyone that "We are NOT amused." I'm not really sure where to go with this, but I'll figure something out, I always do.

Wrapping up, Jeff you're totally right, that librarian is a bitch. You will survive to be much more satisfied with life than that dried up old hag, so enjoy the best revenge of a life well lived.

Spring Broke

2005-03-21T20:50:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling increasingly weary of my school schedule and lab aide duties, so I arranged not to work during spring break.

I also vowed to do as much fishing as possible, and not to do anything that looked or smelt of school work.

Here's some of what I did do for the past week:

Ignored new email.
Listened to three audio books, started a fourth.
Fished in a reservoir that, looking back, probably had no fish in it.
Found about 40 golf balls at the reservoir, as it neighbors a golf course.
Cleaned about 40 muddy golf balls in my bathroom.
Threw my denim jacket, muddy from collecting golf balls, in the laundry.
Took Julianne to lunch at Garcia's.
Ignored a phone call from my aunt, who always has computer problems.
Went to sushi twice; once with Leon for his birthday (again), and once with Dave (who posted here exactly once).
Went to a star show at the new Clark Planetarium.
Visited several video rental stores, looking for four DVDs in particular.
Researched joining a DVD rental by mail service, as none of the brick-and-mortar places had what I want.
Broke my black leather executive chair by removing the arms (I guess it needed them) and then attempting to lean back.
Ignored my blog reading, resulting in something like 1,500 posts waiting to be read this morning.
Got my hair cut.
Bought a beard trimmer and trimmed furiously.
Got sick, just in time for school to start again.
Took lots of drugs last night to guarantee I'd sleep, wandered around in a drugged-up haze until about 3:00 pm today.

But it wasn't all fun and games.

Anyway, I'm sick and tired now, and this is after a week of rest. Maybe getting back to my schedule will distract me from the sickness until it wears off and the tiredness until I die.

The audio books I listened to were:

"Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris

"Patriots: Brotherhood of the American Revolution" by Barnes and Noble Audio

and

"Fresh Air With Terry Gross - Laughs"

And last night, in the last few remaining minutes of my wheezing spring break, I started another B&N Portable Professor selection called "Vault Of The Heavens: Exploring the Solar System's Place in the Universe." Last night I listened to the introductory lecture, and it was excellent.

"Me Talk Pretty One Day" was good once you stick it out until about halfway through, where the author really finds his groove and tells some genuinely funny stories. The ones about the interplay between his sister and his dad are very funny.

"Patriots..." was very good if you're an American Revolution buff or would like to be one. It does a particularly good job of highlighting just how unlikely the Revolution was on the whole, and how very, very unlikely it was that it would turn out the way it did. It also did a good job of humanizing the founding fathers, i.e.: Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Franklin. These guys were moral heroes of their time and contradictory to the cause of morality at once. It's a fascinating audio course.

Fresh Air Laughs was good, but not as good as I'd hoped. It is really just collected interviews with Terry and various comedians, talking about serious subjects with funny bits dribbled here and there. That's not what I paid $20 for. Disappointing overall.

Once I'm done with "Vault Of The Heavens", I'll listen to Joe Mantegna's narration of Sun Tzu's "Art Of War." Joe's in a lot of gangster shows, but I know him as Fat Tony on the Simpsons. This should be interesting. An Italian American reads a 2,500 year-old Chinese classic on warfare philosophy. (On the next Oprah.)

Oh, and during the break, Krys asked for membership to Phischkneght. I granted it in the hope that he'll become a regular poster. As far as I know, everyone here knows or at least has met Krys and feels positively toward him, so this shouldn't be a problem.

He also requested membership to Confessions, which mystifies me. I'm all for my friends joining Confessions and giving their input on entrepreneurship, but as I understand it, Krys equates entrepreneurship with selling one's soul to Elizabeth Hurley (not such a bad idea, actually). This is not an attitude that would be conducive to my intent with that blog, so once he clarifies his intentions I'll make a decision there.

One last thing...I've put Confessions on the Phischkneght mailing list, so new posts there should show up in your email if you're subscribed to the Phischkneght list. If there's an uproar, I'll change it, but I think it will be a good thing on the whole.

It’s getting a bit Linky

2005-03-20T21:28:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I finally tried out (or rather, I finally got to work, although I think I was installing it wrong before) a new Mozilla extension called Linky. I’ve got to tell you, it’s fantastic. It allows you to select multiple links on a page and open them all at once in separate tabs or in separate windows. It works in both Firefox (the standalone browser) or in the bulkier Mozilla package (which differs only slightly from the latest versions of Netscape, mostly in terms of association with AOL).

The verdict: I love it. Now, instead of slowly wading through links that I want to browse, I can just select a whole page of them and open them all in one fell swoop. How did I ever live without them.

I also discovered why downloading things took so long. It turned out that I had 4 MB of completed downloads still loaded into my download manager. After a quick purge (after several times locking up the program trying to purge through proper channels), things are running smoothly again, and my love of all things Mozilla is renewed.

(Note: for the latest version of Linky, go to the developer's site. If you download from the Mozilla site, you'll have to update again soon after.)

Man, that Librarian's a Bitch

2005-03-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

Hopefully you'll excuse my language throughout this post, but I'm a little pissed today. Besides, not only have I been saying that the librarian is a bitch for 2 years, but I think Jake can back me up on it. The librarian at DHS is a bitch. Want to know why I'm choosing to slanderize a faculty member today? Okay, I'll tell you.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been working on an entrepreneurial project for some months now. Tying it in with my entrepreneurship class was a no-brainer. Now, the server I operate off of does not allow for the design or content freedom I want. So I started a blog. After reminding my associates (for lack of that better term which currently escapes me) to join at least once a week for about a month, I was annoyed that only I and one other had actually joined. So today I took it upon myself during our meeting to make sure that everyone would be a member by the end of the day. Heading down to the local school library, I, Andy (Leon's brother) and one other associate headed down to the school library. Now, I had reminded everyone yesterday to bring their ID cards so that they could use the computers, So naturally, I expected everyone to have ID cards. Andy came through for me, but Andrew (my other associate) did not. OK, well, we wouldn't be long, and, I reasoned, if it causes a problem, I'll explain that it's for a class (which it is). If that doesn't work, I can take over for him.

So, we quietly sit down, and while I work out some some previously unassesed email problems, the librarian comes over and starts quizing us on what the hell we think we're doing in her library using her computers.

"Is this school work?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"Yes it's for entrepreneurship. These guys are with me."
"Do you have ID cards?"
"All except my pal here."
"Well, he can't use the computer if he doesn't have a card. Whose is that?"
"Mine."
"Is this school work?"
"Yes. It's for entrepreneurship. Mr. McCauley, period 8."

So after that scintilating conversation, she leaves and we continue, Andrew giving me instructions, only touching the keyboard to fill out his own personal information which, out of coustesy and habit, I don't ask him for, instead letting him enter it himself, as I said. As we get Andrew into the "Create you Account" area of blogger.com, and Andrew is filling out his username and password, the librarian comes over and tells us to log out. Asking her why, I get the generic "he can't use the computer without an ID" Explaining that he was merely filling out his personal info, we get told to log out, and calmly do so.

It isn't until later that I find out that Andy and I are both kicked off the server and no longer have use of school computers. Okay, I can handle a little bureaucracy. I just need to talk to a counselor and explain the situation, tell them it was a misunderstanding and maybe fill out a form saying it won't happen again. BUT THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE! Not only were given no notification that we were booted, but Andy was also booted. I'm all for doing a job and doing it well, but that's a little overzealous, don't you think? Sure, she took advantage of what little opportunity she had to boot me (and I've done much worse things than helping a friend sign up to be a blogger). Fine. But there was absolutely no reason to boot Andy too. The only thing he was guilty of was being complacent and following rules.

Sorry I've been long winded but it feels good to vent that anger. Hopefully I can put the bitch in her place by bringing to light what she did to an innocent student. I hate to see such injustice go unavenged.