The "Ten Demandments"

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

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)

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

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

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?

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

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.

1. Open iTunes and go to your MUSIC library. Press CTRL-A to select all tunes. Don't do anything else.
2. Save the little piece of code below to a file on your disk, say "c:\removedead.vbs"
3. run this command using the Start button and the run option: cscript c:\removedead.vbs
4. Wait. Patiently. Depending on the number of tracks you have in your library, it could take a while.
   
5. 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