An article in the New York Times describes how the US Patent Office is discarding originals of classic patents as they are scanned into digital form. Other folks are dumpster diving to collect and preserve the original documents.

This picture frightens me. I don’t know why.

New spam-attention-grabbing-technique using the ol’ subject line.

I got two messages today, one with the subject line “is everything ok, mrs. burlando” and another with the subject line “is everything ok, mrs. glanzman.” Some sort of prescription drug bypass service.

Did you know that there’s a line of Bob’s Big Boy condiments and sauces? Very cool jar, classic old jar with a nice colorful logo plastered on it. Nothing that good - mostly saw thousand island dressing, tartar sauce, and seafood sauce. I saw them at my local Smart and Final store.

In Ross(DressForLess) there is a section for clothing that is marked by a sign reading “Active Bottoms.”

Word of the day: annuitant

Last night I attended a party to honor my improv instructor, Terry Sand, and part of that whole experience was the opportunity to do some standup. Standup is very different than improv, it’s all about preparation, writing, timing, and the relative proportion of in-the-moment is far less (of course, any good performance of anything needs to be in-the-moment, IMHO, but I digress). I did about 8 minutes, it was really fun, I got a lot of laughs, and I got a good videotape of it to review and look at what worked the way I thought it would, and what worked differently.

I feel great today, having gone through this new experience!

This is a pretty groovy disclaimer (found at the beginning of a piece of spam email I received):

Warning! This message is intended solely for individuals of legal age interested in sex with animals. Please delete it immediately if extreme explicit materials may be offensive for you or in your community or you are younger than 18 years..

Status Update

New car battery - car is fine

Three-way calling appears to be working

The tree-trimmers are coming today!

Half.com hasn’t sent me a single confirmation email (that they promise on their confirmation screen) for the 8 items I’ve ordered over the last 24 hours. They also claimed my card was rejected for a $6.00 purchase yesterday, when as far as the credit card company and I can tell, they must have made the request when they were updating their files? I would imagine that credit card companies and the approval infrastructure would be more robust than that, and that merchants would have some retries built into their system, so maybe I just encountered another lying customer support person. I’ve never had this card declined before, and I had several thousand dollars of available credit at the time of the purchase, so who knows. Annoying!

Click the vote!

Well, two days ago my car wouldn’t start. AAA came out very quickly and jump started it. I was on my way to Oakland, so that charged it up okay, and I got back okay. In fact, yesterday I had a similar trip and made it there and back okay as well. I arranged with the local dealership, Menlo Mazda, to drop the car off on my way home, long after hours, and use their key drop. They explained to us where the envelopes are, and so on.

Upon arrival at 10:00 pm, after a long day travelling, we find there is no way to park my car on their site. All their driveways are barricaded with chains. The driveway that would seem to take you right up to their service bays is blocked by two vehicles parked just feet from the sidewalk. I managed to squeeze the little Miata between those cars and their fancy display car up on a stand. Ridiculous. And of course, they were totally out of envelopes, which they were very clear on the phone about “oh, just fill out the envelope.” We grabbed something else out of the car and used that instead.

Turns out that they didn’t notice the car til much later in the day since it wasn’t in their usual parking place (no idea where that was) and the different envelope I used was sized differently and didn’t land where they expect to find it. Nice.

Chapters/Indigo responds. Sorta.

Well, four days later I get this tepid response:

Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 10:29:04 -0500
From: TechSupport@chapters.ca

Dear Steve Portigal,

Thank you for writing.

Apparently there has been some miscommunication regarding the delivery of each of the gift certificates you ordered and I would like to apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.

Our records confirm that each of the four gift certificates were successfully delivered to each of the recipients on the correct requested delivery date - 12/09/01.

The delay occurred in updating our system that marks each of these orders as shipped in your order history which typically takes 24 hours. This in turn affects the “shipping” confirmation email delivery time.

I am sorry for any frustration that this has caused you. Should you require further assistance, please feel free to contact us at any time. Your continued patience in this matter is greatly appreciated.

Thank you for choosing Chapters Indigo Online.
Best regards,
Chapters Indigo Online
Customer Service Team

–Original Message–

On Sunday morning I placed four orders for gift certficates, beginning with order number OR7569244. Gift certificates - all that has to happen is an email is generated to the recipient. No books, no packing, no shipping. Just data!

Nearly 24 hours later, only one of them has been marked “shipped.”

I telephoned your customer support person and she told me that it takes that long to approve the credit card payment. That each order is processed one at a time, and one is not shipped til the previous one is approved.

Please! That is the biggest pack of lies! It does NOT take 24 hours to approve four credit card transactions. Something is terribly jammed up in YOUR system, and frankly is making my gift-giving into a bit of a shambles.

What is wrong? Why has it been 24 hours and only ONE gift certificate has been sent? Please rectify this immediately, and don’t tell me it’s the approval of MY credit card that is taking so long. That’s just not true.

You may have heard that google has unleashed the USENET archives back to 1981. Here’s one of the earliest posts from me that I found. Another is here and one more here.

Groups I was active in during the 1990 to 1993 period include:

alt.folklore.urban
rec.arts.movies
alt.sex
alt.rock-n-roll
alt.tv.muppets
talk.bizarre (though for some reason, those posts aren’t showing up in Google. Although I did win #25 most frequent poster of the week in the USENET stats post, including 76% of those posts to talk.bizarre - so I’ve got “proof” just no evidence)

I found some early (and tame) flame wars, some morally indignant posts by me, many smart-ass posts, quite a few questions about who sang this or acted in that (and my own share of answers), and some real newbi-ism. And, the .signatures from back then - oy! Star Trek references abound…

Yesterday I ordered four Hannukah gift certificates for my family members. Two apiece, since indigo.chapters.ca doesn’t offer the denomination I wanted. By gift certificates, this is simply a payment to them, and they issue an email to my recipients, telling them of the code number to claim it, the sender, the amount, etc. In e-commerce terms, this is like the simplest possible transaction, right? No meatspace - no books to be touched, picked, packed, shipped, tracked?

Wrong.

Whatever I did taxed the poor little hamster on a wheel that runs this crappy site. Eight hours later I had received one confirmation email letting me know that my order was shipping to my home address. I had also received a copy of the teaser email they sent to my recipient, letting them know that “something” was coming. The other three orders were just sitting, under “recently ordered” status. Today I called to ask what the hell was going on, and someone with a high school education lectured me that it takes a long time for the credit card transaction to process, and since they do it one at a time, that’s why the other three were still sitting. 24 hours later?

Here’s the emails I got

Within minutes of the order, four different versions of:

Dear Steve Portigal,
Thank you placing your order with chapters.indigo.ca. This automated e-mail confirms that we have received and are processing your order.

Within 7 minutes, I got one of these more detailed order confirmations.

Dear Steve Portigal,

Thank you for shopping with chapters.indigo.ca!

Your order number is #XXXXXXXXX. Please keep it for reference if you�d like to check your Order History online, or if you speak to a customer service representative.

Your chapters.indigo.ca order includes of the following item(s):

1. Gift Certificate

These items will be shipped by Canada Post Xpresspost to :
Steve Portigal
1656 Palm Avenue
Redwood City, California 94061
United States

Four hours later, the teaser email (just for one) was sent, cc’d to me:

Dear Steve’s Relative

It is our pleasure to inform you that Steve Portigal has bought you a gift from chapters.indigo.ca.
Details about your gift will be sent to you via e-mail on December 09, 2001.

We’re sure you will be pleased with your gift when it arrives.

Five hours later, I got a single message confirming the “shipment” of that first gift certificate:

Dear Steve Portigal,

Thank you for shopping with Chapters-Indigo Online.

Please note that the following item(s) of your Chapters-Indigo Online order #XXXXX have been shipped:

1. Gift Certificate

So, they had completely handled one of four gift certificates (they were supposed to all go out and arrive at once, but clearly the ship had sailed on that idea.

Eleven hours later I got the next two order confirmations.

Two hours later, I got the corresponding two teaser messages.

Two hours after that, the fourth order confirmation arrived.

Four hours after that, the fourth teaser message was sent.

Five hours later, the final three “shipment” messages were sent.

All told, that was 33 hours to process four gift certificate orders. And, again, I phoned and was told there was no problem with their system. I sent an email to tech support (acknowledged, but not responded to). And still this happens.

Sheesh

A few years ago they put “three way calling” on all Pac Bell subscriber phones. It was just a pay-per-use thing, but it changed the way flashing/hanging-up worked. You now needed to hang up for 5 full seconds to make it happen, and I read some warning online that modems that redial were probably going to cost $0.95 per call since they would inadvertently trigger. Well! I got on the phone and had the damn thing disconnected.

Flash forward to recently, and hey, now I’m trying to conference call from my phone. Every few weeks I get on the phone to Pac Bell and talk to them about this. “Oh, yes, you already have that service on your line,” they told me in July. Right. I tried a month ago to get it turned back on, and they told me I was all set. Last week I called again, and this time I was put through to a special person who kept me on hold while she did something. Promised me it would be back in a few hours. No dice. Today I received an invoice for the $4.75 they charged for the service. I called in. Amazingly, the woman could see that it hadn’t been processed. I was on hold for 25 minutes while a technician worked on it, she kept coming back to sell my products, or offer to chat with me, or breath awkwardly into the dead air. I was typing and having a grand old time, but every time she’d start to talk I’d get scared because she was kind of slurring her speech, was generally inarticulate, and was enthusiastic. I got a lot of compliments for my patience. I didn’t tell her I was reading blogs at the time. Eventually, they just had me go ahead and hang up, and they called me back once it was set to “flow through” (whatever that means).

Then I had to rank her service on a scale of one to ten. What a crock - as if you will give someone an honest ranking directly…whoever designs these call center is a master of manipulation of data.

It’s two hours later, I don’t think I have the ability to make a three way call. We’ll see tomorrow AM.

How nice! Returnbuy.com is going to refund my money for the battery-that-ate-my-new-videocamera. Including shipping. I can imagine some super-assertive version of myself demanding they pay for the cost of the damage, but that’s not gonna happen (me calling is not going to happen, and thus, ergo, me getting the damages back is not going to happen either).

Brady Bunch blog here

Under My Thumb

Today Jon of Jon’s Hauling came by to haul away (no guff) some concrete that I had hacked up in the backyard. I chatted with him a bit when he showed up. I was regaled with his story of the loss of the tip of his right index finger. He explained just what mechanism he got it it caught in. He pointed out that despite having broken arms and sustained various other injuries in the past, this was the one that really hurt. “Lotta nerve endings in the finger tip.” he explained, laughing. He continued the story and revealed that upon his return to the job site, he found his glove still hanging in the metal fixture that had severed his finger tip. He cut the end off and removed what was in there. He showed me his good finger and said “what was in there looked just like this [as he pointed to the last joint with the nail] only flat as a pancake!” Jon was still laughing at this point. He laughed hardest when he told me how he put the demi-digit in a plastic bag and left it swinging in the offending mechanism for the rest of the work day.

========================================================
FreshMeat #12 from Steve Portigal

               (__)
               (oo) Fresh
                \/  Meat

FreshMeat is Fresh and FreshMeat is Meat. FreshMeat!
=========================================================
Ease-of-use is all well and good - but for whom?
=========================================================

Recently I had dinner with two friends during which we
discussed technology and (without ever using the label)
usability.

Ronald and Maria are both professionals, both knowledge
workers. Each of them use a computer for their daily tasks.
They send email, look up stuff on the web, send silly
e-postcards, they each know the difference between “reply”
and “reply-to-all” (and how and when to use each).
But they are coming at this from totally different
perspectives.

Ronald is employed by the public works department of a
large municipality. When he looks down the street, he sees
the buildings, but he also sees the infrastructure that
lies beneath. It’s like he’s got X-ray specs that show
everything in cutaway view. He understands the systems that
work inside buildings to move air, water, and power in and
out. He understands the systems that work across
neighborhoods to aggregate those flows to and from various
installations that most people walk by without ever seeing.

In a similar fashion, Ronald can detect car problems
without opening the hood. He can look at the guts of an
automotive system, find the problem, and fix it.

Obviously, his ability to see and understand the workings
of these different technologies is related. There’s a
similar core of mechanistic logic between them.

Maria is completing her second graduate degree. She knows
how to operate (and interpret the results of) a large
variety of laboratory equipment, including DNA sequencing
machines.

While she’s unlikely to install new software or reconfigure
the system settings on her PC, she’s comfortable with most
consumer electronics. She sets the clock on the VCR, and
sets it to record her favorite shows. She is the one who
changes the message on their home voice mail, and Maria
will be the first one to buy a mobile phone. When they
travel, Maria gets on the web to comparison shop and book
the trip.

But don’t ask her to upgrade the electrical service in the
house, or to change the oil in her car. Those worlds are
totally foreign to her.

Ronald’s reluctant use of interactive devices is much the
same, but he doesn’t have the luxury of avoiding them. It
is part of everyday life.

At one point, the world of interface was meant to simplify
things for everyone, to add a layer of abstraction to messy
technology. In time, that layer of abstraction has become
its own technology. Buttons that change modes, check boxes
that indicate status, auditory feedback, pop-up windows,
error messages, dialog boxes, scroll bars, pressing 9 to
repeat the options. It’s a technology.

Maria can use that technology because learning on one
device is somewhat leveragable (at a pure UI level, no, of
course not - everything works differently, but at a higher
level, the level of this language of abstraction, the core
ideas remain the same - it’s about widgets). The language
of technology that Ronald is fluent in - the language of
infrastructure - is useless. Infrastructure is the ultimate
in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).

So where do we net out here? The metaphors of interface are
abstractions of real technologies. With their
proliferation, they have become their own form of
technology, apart from the electronic guts they were meant
to hide. Users who get on board and learn the language of
interface-as-technology will thrive. Users who bring other
languages to the table are asked to start over again if
they want in.

Here’s an email from someone claiming that I never returned their call. Nice job. I’ve obviously never heard from these folks. And the zaniness continues!

Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 13:49:47 -0800
From: “mara ablang”
To: steve at
Subject: Follow up letter A- Mr. Chatham

December 06, 2001

Your resume has been received here at JobFinders International, Inc., and was assigned by our screening committee to me for review. I called you seeking to set an appointment for an interview. Unfortunately, I was unable to reach you by phone and you have not called back.

We have a tremendous backlog of executive and professional job opportunities posted with our firm, and I felt confident in looking at your resume that one of these, or one of the new jobs being posted with us almost daily, would be a great fit for you.

Our staff contacts companies continuously to find the highest quality openings for our clients in the unpublished market. The response from these companies has been outstanding. We currently have over 1,500 well paying, stable positions as: CEO, President, VP, GM, COO, Controller, Division Manager, Plant Manager, IT and MIS Managers and on through line managers; as well as variety of professional positions such as Engineer, Staff Attorney, RN, etc.

My efforts to speak with you by telephone have not been successful. If you have already accepted a position, I would surely appreciate the professional courtesy of a telephone or e-mail response advising me of that fact. That will allow us to remove your resume from our database and direct our attention to those who are still in the job search mode.

You may call me at (925) 930-8940 x202 to set an appointment for an interview or to discuss your situation if you are still in the job search. To delete you resume, please call me at the same number.

Best Regards,

Robert Chatham

Vice President

The DVD player arrived last night. Took me 2 minutes to set up - the biggest hassle was inserting it into the rack of black boxes in the place of the CD player, without removing the components on top, or having an extra pair of hands to hold onto stuff. Still, trivial to do. First thing, I tried my copy of Let’s Spend the Night Together, not available in the US, but came out in South America in a magazine. It’s a noisy transfer, lots of hiss when the movie first starts, but WOW THE SOUND IS AWESOME. I was quite impressed.

And now I’m playing a single disc of MP3s with 157 songs on it.

Quite nice!

Well, last night was an important rite-of-passage. After doing improv for only five months, I was in my first performance last night. It was the annual holiday party for a local chain of beauty products. They donated a “fee” for our performance to a local school. It’s very different than the classes. Having an audience who are not fellow performers changes things, I’m not sure how. We did well, I thought most of it went smoothly, but they weren’t really a group of laughers. Some stuff made them crack up, but mostly it was engaged smiles. It was an interesting experience be a complete goof on stage (I guess I’m more of a backstage goof). I can’t wait to see the video, but I’m not sure how I’ll react.