Better Off Not Knowing
The internet is going to spoil my appreciation of reality based movies.
Chariots of Fire is a favorite of mine. Many were surprised when it won the Best Picture Oscar, but it was the best movie I saw that year (yes, better than Raiders of the Lost Ark).
I love the opening words:
Let us praise famous men and our fathers that begat us. All these men were honoured in their generations and were a glory in their days. We are here today to give thanks for the life of Harold Abrahams. To honour the legend. Now there are just two of us – young Aubrey Montague and myself – who can close our eyes and remember those few young men with hope in our hearts and wings on our heels.
And the transition to the score of Vangelis.
I can grudgingly accept the transfer of Aubrey Montague from Oxford to Cambridge (and thus from college rival to teammate) to support the use of Montague’s historical letters to his mother to bridge between scenes.
But it gave me pause to read on Wikipedia that Abrahams converted to Catholicism (since removed). It might be true. Or it might be false. But the doubt in my mind is not going away anytime soon.
I was better off not knowing doubting.
Drawing the Lines
I just noticed that LinkedIn allows you to tie your twitter status and your LinkedIn status together. And I gave it about 15 seconds thought before concluding that I wasn’t going to take that step.
Here’s where I draw the lines for social media:
- Blog: Take the First Step
- My public face, what should be the first search result on my name. Sometimes professional, sometimes personal, always me.
- Twitter: ideoplex
- More personal than my blog, it's the private me out and about in public. As private as hiding in the crowd allows.
- Pure professional (albeit a bit neglected right now).
- Primarily personal.
- Foursquare
- As personal as is practical.
Blog Roll Updates
It doesn’t seem quite right that I have a higher page rank than Code Monkeyism. I’ve added it to the Blog Roll to send some Google Juice Stephan’s way.
I’ve also added Smalltalk with James Robertson.
So Long Radio Userland
It was a minor vanity on my part, but I retained the Radio Userland web bug as part of my Textpattern web site. My original goal was to reach 1 million page views.
That wasn’t enough and I kept going in an attempt to break into the top 20. I think that I would have made it, but the Userland Site Report has not updated since Dec 2, 2009.
It’s time to move on. I’ve removed the web bug. And with it, my last remaining link to Radio Userland.
Self-Assured or Pig-Headed
If you are reading this, then you are probably pretty smart. You are accustomed to being right. And you have a certain amount of self-assuredness about it. Like me.
Much of that came from being a big fish in a small pond. Things change when you frequent bigger ponds. Requiring a different reaction to other self-assured people with contrary positions.
Sometimes it just doesn’t matter. Like the misguided colleague who didn’t know that Dr. Dunkenstein was Darrell Griffith.
Sometimes it is someone you are not likely to ever see again. Just let it go.
But sometimes, they are making decisions that affect you. You need to consider the possibility that they are right. Back off and double check your position. You will usually be right. Sometimes you will be wrong. Try to acknowledge when you are wrong.
Self-assured is taking a stand. Pig-headed is refusing to consider the alternatives.
PS. Every time you say “Everybody knows”, you take a step to pig-headedness.
PPS. Still working on acknowledging when I’m w***g.
Don't Buy a Used Tivo
Let’s get this out of the way first:
I love my TiVo. We have a Toshiba Series 2 TiVo/DVD, a Tivo HD with a TiVo extender, and now a TiVo Series 3. But that doesn’t change the fact that adding the Series 3 was a serious pain.
It is a unfortunate sign of the times that companies optimize the common paths of customer service while leaving no flexibility for leaving the scripted interaction. If you want to activate a new TiVo, then activation is as smooth a process as you could imagine. Activating a pre-owned TiVo, not so smooth.
- If the previous owner has a contract, then TiVo is going to ask you to assume the remainder of the contract.
- In order to assume the remainder of the contract, you need to call customer service and:
- Agree to the TiVo Terms and Conditions
- Provide your credit card number to be billed for the TiVo service.
- Make sure you agree to the Terms and Conditions. I discovered the hard way that if TiVo customer service neglects to get your agreement, then TiVo will
- Reject the transfer of ownership.
- Keep your credit card number on the previous owner’s account.
- Not bother to notify you that they’ve rejected the transfer.
- When you call back to see why the transfer isn’t completed, you will:
- Need to listen to and agree to the verbal Terms and Conditions read by the customer support rep.
- If you actually pay attention to this sort of thing (which I do), then you’re going to hear that early cancellation may cost you:
- Up to $155.40 (early in the T’s and C’s).
- Up to $200.00 (midway in the T’s and C’s).
- Up to $155.40 (towards the end of the T’s and C’s).
- If you ask when the $155.40 applies and when the $200 applies, then your customer service rep is probably not going to have a satisfactory answer.
- If you ask to see a written copy of the Terms and Conditions, then you’ll be directed to the TiVo web site – where you’re not going to find T’s and C’s matching the verbal ones.
- At this point you’re going to need to decide whether to:
- Just accept the Terms and Conditions even though they appear to be internally inconsistent and you’re not able to see a written copy.
- Assume that the online Terms and Conditions are the ones that really count.
- Write off:
- The cumulative hour spent with TiVo customer service over two calls.
- Shipping costs.
- And hope that:
- You get back the purchase price from the previous seller.
- You don’t get billed for TiVo service now that TiVo has associated your card with the previous owner’s account.
All in all, the money saved with the used TiVo wasn’t worth the aggravation it came with. I didn’t find that out until I was already committed. Now, you know better.
PS: Yes, I know this would have been easier if I was less AR about terms and conditions. But TiVo made a big deal out of me listening to the terms and conditions. Is it too much for me to expect that confusing points be clarified before I agree?
Bad Songs Helped Finance the Good
In previous forms, you had to take the bad with the good … So in a sense, these bad songs help finance the good ones.
– Charles M. Blow, Swan Songs?
The music industry may wish that we would sate our music needs with albums rather than singles, but that ship has sailed. Now that listening to singles is both easier and better than listening to albums, we’re not going back.
Music Sales of CD’s peaked at $16.4B in 1999. In 2008, music downloads were about 10% of that. Some of that difference was due to piracy and some was due to streaming. And some of those CD sales in 1999 were for replacement of vinyl. But a big piece of the difference was that CD’s forced us to buy the dross with the gold.
Now, we’re only buying the gold.