Steve on Everything

POTUS dropping F-bomb

2009-07-08T06:07:00.001-07:00

What happens when the president does a reading of his memoir? Comedy ensues, of course. http://www.aprilwinchell.com/2009/02/05/barack-obama-is-tired-of-your-motherfucking-shit/

Using google alerts to find followable twitter users...

2009-07-06T19:36:00.000-07:00

Nothing earth shattering over at Adam Green -Mr. Google Alerts especially for those of us with strong google-fu, but a well done primer for using google to find people with interests similar to yours and in your area for twitter following. Adam does a great job throughout training on how to bend google to your will. Worth the read.

Verizon shenanigans

2009-06-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

Talk about wringing every last dime out of your customer...

A few weeks ago my Verizon Blackberry died. Since I'd fulfilled my 2 year commitment, and was tired of having to tether the thing to my PC to get my contacts and calendar to sync, I decided to go ahead an jump for the iPhone, crappy-AT&T-network and all. I began porting my numbers... first mine... then I canceled the OnStar service in the Tahoe...and then a few days later, my daughter's phone. Now that her number has successfully ported out, I called verizon to cancel the account altogether, and I got the best excuse ever from Jan at Verizon Wireless: "We'll cancel it effective the 18th, which is the end of your billing cycle, so you don't get a pro-rated bill". Uh. What? You mean you'll bill me through the end of the month so I can pay for 2 weeks of service that I'm not going to get? Hell yeah! NOT.

So then Jan puts me on hold for 5 minutes while she "makes that change". Jan comes back and tells me that she has to transfer me to someone that can help me.

Kristen. Ah, what a sweet lady.
"Why are you leaving us Mr. Goldsby, what's wrong?".
"Nothing's wrong, I just made the move to the iPhone".
"Okay, well let me make that change. You realize there will be an early termination fee becuase you didn't fulfill your 2 year commitment on that other handset, and your final bill will be pro-rated so it will be a little higher than usual?".
"Uh, yeah, but it will be less than letting it run through the 18th of the month?"
"Well, yessir.".

I guess that little game has made it into the corporate playbook.

Saavvii for MSWord - Even faster keyboard shortcuts!

2009-01-25T14:56:00.000-08:00

http://www.softwaretheories.com/

This application is great. I have always been a keyboard junkie, avoiding the mouse as much as possible. Under MSWord 2003 and prior versions, I was able to do just about everything with the keyboard and rarely needed the mouse. This all changed with Office 2007 and the blasted "Ribbon". The keyboard shortcuts largely changed (to nonsensical combinations) and it became near impossible to find the function I wanted.

Enter SAAVVII. This little utility lets you call it up with the hotkey sequence of your choice, and type in plaintext commands like "insert 2x3 table" or "edit header" or whatever you like. No instructions, but they're largely unnecessary. As long as you don't try to get silly and trick it, Saavvii will generally figure out what you want to do and do it. Handy.

iPod Shuffles Indestructible?

2009-01-22T04:19:00.000-08:00

I have an iPod Shuffle (2G) that I've been using for my 430am trips to the gym for over a year now. I have managed to leave it in my shorts and washed / dried it no less than half a dozen times. Every time it comes out dead, but if I give it a day to dry out it will re-sync and keep on playing just fine. You just can't kill these things!

Belkin Flywire - multi HDMI + others inputs wirelessly to your LCD

2009-01-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

Finally. Wireless HDTV in your house. Well, almost. When will this thing ship?

http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/releases/uploads/07_10_08FlyWire.html

The "Ten Demandments"

2008-12-09T08:37:00.000-08:00

In the workplace, political skills can determine one’s ability to perform effectively. The following “Ten Demandments” are common-sense principles that can harness political energy to foster successful teams.

From Baselinemag

Finding large files and directories on Windows

2008-12-05T04:41:00.000-08:00

What an annoying problem - your system drive is filling up, but with 200G+ hard drives these days, how to find where in the blasted filesystem those large directories and files reside can be a problem. Space Monger offers a graphical view of your Windows harddrive, and it's slick. The free version can be downloaded here (older, but still works well) -> Spacemonger 1.40

Or you can purchase the latest version from Sixty-Five

Why does Verizon hate its customers? (redux)

2008-11-17T16:59:00.000-08:00

Tonight's debacle: Market Segmentation to further alienate your high revenue, high profit customers.

You May remember my post from April 2008 "Why does Verizon Hate Its Customers". Well, it keeps getting better.

I still have this high margin (for Verizon) account because I haven't taken the time to move to AT&T and an iPhone yet. I added a line to my account and wanted to activate Verizon's nifty Parental Control features. Apparently, although I am signed up for a family plan, I am not signed up for the CORRECT family plan (one of: Nationwide Single Line or Family SharePlan).

Now you have to know that all of this stuff is just checkboxes on a configuration screen. It's the same equipment handling all of the call routing and features. The reason I can't have the features I want is because someone with too much time on their hands and a spreadsheet determined Verizon could maximize their profit by forcing customers into just the right combination of phone plans and add-on services. In my case, even thought I pay Verizon $262 per month for service, I'm not paying *enough* to let me have Parental Controls for an additional $4.99/month.

Hey Verizon, just one more reason for me to change my service, and that of my employees, to another provider.

Can you hear me now?

VisioGuy - great visio widgets, tips and tricks

2008-10-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

I can't draw a straight line with a ruler. So when I find things that help me visualize ideas, I steal them...er.. re-use them. VisioGuy has great stuff in his kit. http://www.visguy.com/

JPMorgan/Chase, Loansharking and Getting even

2008-10-25T15:12:00.001-07:00

I got an inconspicuous letter from Chase today. I almost tossed it out as one of those all too frequent "New offer!" letters, but on whim, read it. They were telling me they were going to up my rate from the current reasonable rate of something like 12% to 29.99%.

Why were they doing this? I normally pay my credit card off every month, using it as 25-day float and to rack up points/miles/whatever. Well, recently, I've allowed a balance to build up on it. Amazingly, 2 months later, I get the 29.99% letter. Pretty sneaky.

Below is my response to their attempt to stick it to me.

25 Oct 08

To: Chase Cardmember Service
PO Box 15098
Wilmington, DE, 19850-5098

From: Steve Goldsby

Subj: I'm declining your rate increases for account xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

To Whom It May Concern:

I am in receipt of your Change in Terms notice wherein you notify me of pending rate increases.

The purpose of this letter is to exercise my right to opt out the change in APRs. I understand that my card will be closed and will no longer be available for use.

I have been a Chase customer since 1997, and during the years I’m sure I have been a profitable customer for Chase. Therefore, it is unclear why Chase would attempt to raise my APR to 29.99%. Are you kidding me? I can get better rates from the payday loan joint down the street. You’re killing the golden goose.

Maybe your data-mining tools pegged me as a bad customer. Who knows? In any case, as my ex-wife’s attorney will tell you, I’m rich so I’ll just pay this thing off. The last thing I need is some multi-billion dollar conglomerate trying to gouge me.

I also happen to be one of those customers that holds a grudge and tells all his friends when he has a bad experience with a business.

Hope you choke on WaMu.

I’ve increased the margins on this letter so it is suitable for framing, should you wish to provide it to Jamie Dimon as a gift.

Sincerely,

Steve Goldsby

Who's responsible for the current financial meltdown?

2008-09-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

You guessed it. Bill Clinton. How can that be, you ask? Well, pop on over to Investor's Business Daily and have a gander at this http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306370789279709. Well articulated and founded in FACTS.

Removing dead tracks from iTunes for Windows

2008-08-31T18:22:00.001-07:00

Man, don't you just love having to use iTunes to manage and sync your iPods, iTouches, iPhones and iEtc? And isn't it great when you want to add new tunes to your library, but not 'consolidate' that library into your iTunes folder (thus doubling your disk usage)? Ooh! And if you move stuff around, you end up with a bunch of dead tracks? Well, here's a little piece of VBScript that will remove all the dead tracks in iTunes for windows. For every track it finds in the library that the file is no longer there -- BLAMMO - removed from the library.

Open iTunes and go to your MUSIC library. Press CTRL-A to select all tunes. Don't do anything else.
Save the little piece of code below to a file on your disk, say "c:\removedead.vbs"
run this command using the Start button and the run option: cscript c:\removedead.vbs
Wait. Patiently. Depending on the number of tracks you have in your library, it could take a while.
When done, it will report the number of tracks removed from the library.

Code snippet:

' RemoveDead.vbs
ITTrackKindFile = 1
deletedTracks = 0

set iTunesApp = WScript.CreateObject("iTunes.Application")
set mainLibrary = iTunesApp.LibraryPlaylist
set tracks = mainLibrary.Tracks

for each currTrack in tracks
' is this a file track?
if (currTrack.Kind = ITTrackKindFile) then
' yes, does it have an empty location?
if (currTrack.Location = "") then ' yes, delete it
currTrack.Delete()
deletedTracks = deletedTracks + 1
end if
end if
next

WScript.Echo "Removed " & deletedTracks & " dead track(s)."
' RemoveDead.vbs

Still thinking of voting Democrat this go-round?

2008-07-28T19:44:00.001-07:00

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

Bottom line: once you start a social program, you can never kill it. The result? Over time, the incremental erosion of wealth, initiative and the fabric of society. Why work for it when it will be provided for you?

What an "Informed" African- American has to say about OBAMA

2008-07-09T11:46:00.001-07:00

Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem . As with many others in his neighborhood, he left home early and did not finish high school. The next few years were difficult ones, but eventually he joined the Marine Corps and became a photographer in the Korean War. After leaving the service, Sowell entered Harvard University , worked a part-time job as a photographer and studied the science that would become his passion and profession: economics.

After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University (1958), he went on to receive his master's in economics from Columbia University (1959) and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago (1968).
In the early '60s, Sowell held jobs as an economist with the Department of Labor and AT&T. But his real interest was in teaching and scholarship. In 1965, at Cornell University , he began the first of many professorships. His other teaching assignments include Rutgers University , Amherst University , Brandeis University and the University of California at Los Angeles , where he taught in the early '70s and also from 1984 to 1989.
Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college.. Moreover, much of his writing is considered ground-breaking -- work that will outlive the great majority of scholarship done today.
Though Sowell had been a regular contributor to newspapers in the late '70s and early '80s, he did not begin his career as a newspaper columnist until 1984. George F. Will's writing, says Sowell, proved to him that someone could say something of substance in so short a space (750 words). And besides, writing for the general public enables him to address the heart of issues without the smoke and mirrors that so often accompany academic writing.
In 1990, he won the prestigious Francis Boyer Award, presented by The American Enterprise Institute.
Currently Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute in Stanford, Calif.
Now, please read his article:

Obama and McCain
Thomas Sowell
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober-- if not grim-- assessment of where we are. Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully inadequate candidates. When election day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home.
This year, none of us has that luxury. While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world-- Iran-- is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.
The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return. Iran 's nuclear bomb will be the terrorists' nuclear bomb-- and they can make 9/11 look like child's play.
All the options that are on the table right now will be swept off the table forever. Our choices will be to give in to whatever the terrorists demand-- however outrageous those demands might be-- or to risk seeing American cities start disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds.
All the things we are preoccupied with today, from the price of gasoline to health care to global warming, will suddenly no longer matter.
Just as the Nazis did not find it enough to simply kill people in their concentration camps, but had to humiliate and dehumanize them first, so we can expect terrorists with nuclear weapons to both humiliate us and force us to humiliate ourselves, before they finally start killing us.
They have already telegraphed their punches with their sadistic beheadings of innocent civilians, and with the popularity of videotapes of those beheadings in the Middle East.
They have already telegraphed their intention to dictate to us with such things as Osama bin Laden's threats to target those places in America that did not vote the way he prescribed in the 2004 elections. He could not back up those threats then but he may be able to in a very few years.
The terrorists have given us as clear a picture of what they are all about as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did during the 1930s-- and our 'leaders' and intelligentsia have ignored the warning signs as resolutely as the 'leaders' and intelligentsia of the 1930s downplayed the dangers of Hitler.
We are much like people drifting down the Niagara River , oblivious to the waterfalls up ahead. Once we go over those falls, we cannot come back up again.
What does this have to do with to day's presidential candidates? It has everything to do with them.
One of these candidates will determine what we are going to do to stop Iran from going nuclear-- or whether we are going to do anything other than talk, as Western leaders talked in the 1930s.
There is one big difference between now and the 1930s. Although the West's lack of military preparedness and its political irresolution led to three solid years of devastating losses to Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, nevertheless when all the West's industrial and military forces were finally mobilized, the democracies were able to turn the tide and win decisively.
But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back. You cannot even sustain the will to resist for three years when you are first broken down morally by threats and then devastated by nuclear bombs.
Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes President of the United States next January.
At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure-- at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.
Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America .
On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.

Why does Delta hate it's customers.

2008-05-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to think I should start a "hatesitscustomers.com" site so people can blog about how hates its customers. Maybe a "Verizon.hatesitscustomers.com" and a "DeltaAirlines.hatesitscustomers.com".... but I digress.

Today I am catching a flight from ATL to MCO (Orlando, FL) as I have a weeklong customer conference to attend. I had originally planned on bringing my golf clubs for a round on Sunday, thus checking two bags at no extra charge. At the last minute, I decided to rent clubs at the facility and save the hassle. I consolidated all of my items into a single large suitcase. All clothes, both business and casual, to last a week, and a couple of pairs of shoes.

When I checked in at the airport, not only were the reps quite short and rude, as if I was interrupting their day, when I placed my bag on the scale, the representative indicated that my bag was overweight by 5 pounds and I could do one of two things: Take out 5 pounds or pay $80. $80!!!!!! That's $16 a pound.

I asked them: "Are you kidding me??" and was politely told "No, SIR, I am NOT kidding.". I told them fine, I'd pay the $80. The rep asked me in a nice biting tone "You can't take out 5 lbs"? I told them "No, it's all clothing, what do you expect me to do, wear three pairs of pants and five shirts?"

What strikes me as odd about this, is I could have checked up to two bags of 50 lbs each at no charge, but if I have one bag of 55 lbs, it's an extra $80.

Thanks for hating me, Delta. Between this and all of your other shenanigans, rude customer representatives, and crappy service into my hometown of Montgomery, AL (which is why I drive 150 miles to the Atlanta hub to catch a plane), it may be time for me to buy that Beechcraft B 36 TC Bonanza I've had my eye on...

Why does Verizon hate its customers?

2008-04-11T06:11:00.000-07:00

I am a good Verizon customer. I buy lots of their stuff and pay my bill on time each month. So why do they hate me?

I currently have an unlimited data plan for my laptop EVDO modem, a fat voice and text message plan for my phone, and even have my Tahoe's OnStar tied into my plan as an additional line. Total monthly charges: $262.92. That's right. $262.92.

About a year ago, I upgraded from my classic Blackberry 7290 to the 8830 world phone, with built in GPS. I thought it would be a great time to upgrade since that 7290 was getting long in the tooth. The 8830 was a logical upgrade, and it would allow me to use Google Maps when I travel rather than packing my Garmin GPS for the rental car. One gizmo to tote, and I have everything I need - email, voice, data and GPS. Verizon advertised the 8830 in Spring 2007 as GPS enabled, so what more could I ask for. Buy the 8830, load google maps, and get going. WRONG!

The 8830 has GPS, it's true. But Verizon disables it for all applications except the 911-locator service and their VZNavigator application, which they will charge you $9.95 a month to use. It's a crappy application in my opinion, but that's not the point. The point is that they've marketed the 8830 as having GPS and nav abilities, but in effect broken my phone by only allowing me to use that feature if I pay $9.95 a month, and even then only if I use their crappy application.

Being the crafty, outside-the-box kind of guy that I am, I bought a B-Speech Keychain Bluetooth GPS Receiver, thinking I'd just tote that keyfob-sized gadget with me, pair it via bluetooth to my 8830 and get rolling on some Google Maps. WRONG! Verizon has once again crippled the handset by disabling the GPS pairing function on the 8830 (although it supports just about every other pairing feature - headsets, filesystem, etc).

I'm not the only person lamenting this move by Verizon to monetize everything they can, even if it means taking away choice from their customers and ticking us off.

It's more of a hassle to move my handset and car's voice and data than it is to just take my Garmin GPS with me, but I'm quickly approaching a level of frustration that will cause me to make the move just to make a point with Verizon. So let's see how the math adds up. Verizon is willing to lose $262.92 * 12 = $3155.04 / yr revenue when I move to some other provider, just by trying to blackmail me into paying $9.95*12= $119.40 per year to use a feature that Research In Motion put in the handset by default!

So Verizon, how long will you hold my 8830's GPS hostage, even knowing that I will never pay you to use it? Is it worth over $3000 a year in revenue from me to you, knowing that you will lose me as a customer forever, and I will spread the word to my employees, colleagues and friends that you hate your customers?

I'm a good customer... so why do you hate me?

Update 5/3/08
After some tinkering, and thanks to some good work by the folks over at forums.crackberry.com, I now have a way to get Google Maps to work with my B-speech keychain GPS, despite all of Verizon's attempts to thwart me. It goes like this:

Power-on your Bspeech GPS
Pair the blackberry to the Bspeech GPS (should show upas GPS20C or similar)
Connect to the Bspeech GPS
Fire up the Blackberry Maps application that came with the blackberry.
From within Blackberry MAPS:

pull up the menu using the blackberry menu button on your 8830
select "Start GPS Navigation"
wait until the GPS has found the satellites and is returning location information

Now, hit the red phone button to exit back to the main blackberry menu screen, but leaving the Blackberry Maps application runnin
Fire up Google Maps
Google Maps should indicate your current location "within 3 meters", having found the now active GPS

Periodically, the GPS connection gets stupid and I have to "Stop GPS Navigation" and then "Start GPS Navigation" from within Blackberry Maps, but this thing effectively works.

Youtube now offering higher resolution video

2008-03-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

Apparently YouTube stores all uploaded video in the originally-uploaded resolution and has historically converted it to 320x240 Flash for playback. Well, lately, they're up-rezzing some videos to high quality at the same size. More at Blogoscoped.

Muqtada Al-Sadr Comatose In Iranian Hospital

2008-03-08T19:03:00.000-08:00

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/5884.htm

Fewer U.S. Dead = Less TV Coverage of Iraq

2008-03-02T18:35:00.000-08:00

Check it out over at Newsbusters.

One year later, the President’s surge strategy is well on its way to succeeding. The Iraqi parliament has passed several laws meeting required political reconciliation benchmarks. Attacks in Baghdad have fallen up to 80 percent in the past twelve months, Reuters reported February 16. Deaths among Iraqi military forces and civilians have dropped by more than two-thirds, from more than 2,000 per month in early 2007 to fewer than 600 per month since November.

And U.S. military deaths have also declined, falling from 126 in May 2007 to 40 in January 2008 and just 29 so far in February, with two days left in the month. Yet this good news seems to have diminished the media elite’s interest in broadcasting any news from Iraq.