Tag Archives: nkw

Privacy

Ways to mess with Facebook ‘Timeline’

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Word is out that Faceplant will soon say to us: “If you thought this new life dossier was going to remain optional, think again.”

Okay.  I can’t prevent it.  I could deactivate my Faceplant account, I suppose, but I would rather keep hosing them.  I never see their ads, so I cost them money, and I get use and enjoyment out of it.  I am freeloading, and delighted to do so.  (If you see their ads, know that it’s by choice.  Want to stop? If using Firefox, go Googling ‘block Facebook ads’ and you’ll find many ways.)

So how can we screw up Facebook Timeline?

My theory is that every time we give them context, it helps them create a timeline.  For example, Faceplant recently nagged me about my Ireland photo album:  “Were these pictures taken in Ireland?” Why answer? I just ignored the question.  Thus, refusing to tag locations is one way.  Refusing to post that you are at a given location is another.  (Why do you need to advise the world that you are with Joe at Yo-Yo’s Fro-Yo Palace anyway? Who cares? Who has time to care?)  We are also told that we will have some sort of ‘cover photo’, probably a total temple to our egos.  My thinking is to use a blank white space.  Why do I need a big bright splash screen of some sort? The way you mess with data collation and analysis is to provide false data, or otherwise do what they don’t expect.  So, I’m probably going to start adding false dates and locations to photos.

Lying doesn’t come naturally to most of us.  We are taught from earliest youth not to do it, though most of us eventually learn that there are times and places to lie.  However, if you want to damage data, you don’t delete it–it may be recoverable.  If you want to damage data, lie.  Lie without conscience.  It is powerfully difficult to design a reliable system that can detect lying.

So, I’m going to take a long look at what Faceplant imposes upon me.  And then I’m going to start concocting some whoppers.  I’m not going to tell it my job history.  If I ever go out to apply for work, I’ll deactivate my Faceplant account for a while.

First whopper:  I just searched for the word ‘blossom’ and came up with an eternal list of blossom-related items to ‘like’.  I ‘liked’ most of them.  How’s that for trashing the data?

Why don’t I just migrate to G+? Oh, that’s an easy one.  I’m not swapping one info-hydra for another.  Any time a company says it’s motto is “Don’t be evil,” be ready for a steady flow of evil.  At this point, Microsoft is actually about fourth on my Evil list, Information Tech subcategory.

Don’t I feel some guilt for freeloading on the USS Zuckerborg, then doing my all to cause headaches even while benefiting from it? Zero, nada, none.  Said vessel is using me more than I use it, which is why its founder is rich.  I don’t see an application of the laws and principles of hospitality here.  I see a company that has established a situation where it is moral and ethical to use them as I please provided I harm no other users.  That includes depriving it of profit, advocating non-cooperation, mocking, providing fictitious data, and otherwise creating headaches.  Petty? Sure.  So is voting, though, by that logic.

Here is an okay article that briefs you on the new feature.  If you come up with any other good ways to thwart the goal of a full life dossier, please share!

Edit, 9/1/12: if you use Firefox, and you just want to not see Timeline–yours or anyone’s–I suggest the add-in SocialReviver. Of course, you should still screw with Timeline any way you can manage. It’s still there, even if this spares you having to see it.

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How to do a labor protest wrong

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Today I’m driving through one of our town’s major intersections, and out in front of Gold’s Gym I see three people holding up a large banner about a labor dispute with Gold’s.  Hmmm.  Okay, well, in general I tend to be friendly to labor in labor disputes, so I loop around and park nearby.  I wander over to find out what it’s about, radiating a friendly aspect.

The picket captain in her orange vest comes over, and it goes something like this:

“Hi, what’s the dispute about?”

“Well, we’re protesting blah blah blah which I can’t talk about for obvious legal reasons, blah blah, but here is a sheet about what the protest is about and it’ll tell you all right there.”  She clearly wanted me gone, mystifying to me, as it doesn’t take three people to hold up that sign.

“You can’t tell me about the dispute?”

“No.  Are in a union, or close to someone who is?”

A little smile.  “You might say that.”  And I’m thinking, Lady, I’m married to one of the most dynamic labor leaders in the whole state of Washington.  If you refuse to even have a conversation with me, your cause is doomed because you are too dumb.  You didn’t even probe that statement.  You should have.  My wife would have been interested.

“Well, everything is in the flyer, so hope you enjoy reading it, and have a nice day.”  She walks off on me.  I’ve barely said a word.  No discussion occurred, no accepting the opportunity to enlist support, not even from someone who walked up and showed interest.  There I am, standing on the grass alone, holding a piece of green paper.  Dismissed.

Bewildered, I walk away reading the flyer with the headline:  SHAME ON GOLD’S GYM For Desecration of the American Way of Life.  Underneath it, it has a rat eating the US flag.  Well, that’s about my personal opinion of both our major parties and their governing abilities, so if they are trying to shock me, that’s not very effective.  I get to reading it, and essentially Gold’s hired a contractor who hired a subcontractor that doesn’t pay the carpenters standard union wages and benefits.  How this is an issue she cannot discuss for ‘obvious legal reasons’ is beyond me.  Why she brushes off a gold-plated chance to make her union’s case to me is even farther beyond me.  It’s an area with very little foot traffic.

For the record, the flyer is authored by the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters.  It urges me to call some guy and urge him to change the situation.  Yeah, I’m really sure he’s still taking calls today.

On second thought, at the rate these people are going, maybe he doesn’t even realize there’s a picket.

When I get home, I decide to call the information number to let them know what kind of shape their picket is in.  A recording: please leave your name and number and we’ll have someone call you.

You know what? Nah, I think not. Figure it out yourself.  No wonder organized labor can’t counter the negative propaganda about itself–when given the opportunity and a receptive audience, it won’t talk to it.  It hands it a piece of paper and walks off.

PS:  A friend of mine from Sweden, Mattias, has suggested that they may actually have been rental protesters.  I guess there are companies out there who can be hired to protest, and their own contracts forbid them to talk about the actual issues for legal reasons.  That would fill in a gap of understanding, although she was still an idiot, as the “obvious legal reasons” were hardly obvious to me.  Next time I’ll have a bolt in the quiver:

“So, are you rented protesters or are you actually union members and sympathizers?”

“We can’t talk about that for legal reasons.”

“Heh, thanks.  I have my answer.”

Adventures

The day Jeff lost the wrestling match

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We have freezing fog here today.  Watching the hoarfrost build up on the trees in our yard this morning made me think of a funny story.

During my 5th year at UW, I was taking nothing but foreign languages, and leading the genteel, peaceful, burnout life of a gentleman drunkard in Hansee, one of UW’s quiet dorms.  The rule in Hansee was very simple:  do as you like, so long as you are quiet.  Make noise, and the math wonks will have you thrown out of there in days.

Seattle doesn’t get a lot of snow, but when it does, the city screeches to a panicked halt.  Three inches brings chaos, six brings paralysis.  We had 8″ of dry powder snow that November of 1985, with swirling winds blowing it off the trees (to our great enjoyment when some jackass pulled a false alarm and we had to turn out at 2 AM in the snow).  On the first evening, I was out with my crew messing around in it, attempting to have a snowball fight with the powdery snow.

My crew were serious game nerds.  We had Wade, a Japanese American from Spokane, plus his frat rat high school buddy Greg and the very large Chad, who looked a lot like the Abominable Snowman in Bugs Bunny.  We also had Ian, from Issaquah, the Hobbit (though he’s not really that short), and Jeff (also from Issaquah).  Jeff was interesting.  Bigger than me, but awkward, a good guy.  I was the only one who was even slightly athletic, so I was faring well in the snowball pitching and rassling.  We were out near a hedged area, and the idea was to try and rassle someone into the hedge.  Much snow would ensue, to great hilarity.

Then came the funny part.  I grappled with Jeff, hoping to chuck him bodily into the hedge, but unfortunately failed due to poor leverage.  However, he hove me into a very dense area of hedge, and I rebounded as if I’d hit a huge spring.  I got him in another grapple, and we strove with might and main for a few seconds, then he lost his balance.  I pushed off and sent him backward into the hedge, but I picked a better spot by happenstance.

Jeff backpedaled into the hedge attempting to regain his balance, but into a less dense part, actually a somewhat bare spot where a forked hedge bush was growing.  The fork was a flattened Y about six inches off the ground–the perfect place to catch both heels at once as you backpedal, if, say, some dude has just shoved you toward it backwards.  That’s exactly what happened to Jeff.  As he fell backward headlong, of course, in panic he grabbed for the hedge branches.  Not his ideal move.

I watched in delighted astonishment as the equivalent of a snow artillery shell detonated where Jeff had been.  For a couple of seconds I couldn’t even see him through the floating powdery snow, then it dissipated.  He’d fallen with his mouth wide open, saying something, so he got a mouthful of it.  Probably inhaled some.  His thick glasses kept some of it out of his eyes, but he was fully covered in the white dusty snow, spluttering it out of his mouth and flailing to begin digging out.

When I was sure he wasn’t actually hurt, that’s when I started laughing.  I doubled over.  It’s a good thing it took Jeff so long to get out of it, because he could have pushed me over with Newt Gingrich’s heart.

Adventures

Standing on a drum

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That’s the best description I can give of the experience of watching Korpiklaani.

I went with a good friend and fellow Nordic metal enthusiast, Debbie (not Deb my wife; she’s in DC setting Uncle Sugar straight).  Our first surprise: just because the gates opened at 6 PM didn’t mean Korp was on at that time.  Nope, had to wait out a couple of crappy local metal bands, though we had some good conversations with other people waiting around.  We weren’t the oldest people present, but we were in the 95% percentile.  First observation:  if you are not a youth, yet you like this sort of sound, you should not feel shy because you are a) old enough to be the kids’ parent; b) lack a bunch of metal embedded in your face; c) unwilling to go full freak.  We really enjoyed the people we chatted with, and no one hinted that we were interlopers.  It’s a case where you get what you expect, I think, as in so many life situations.

This venue did take security seriously.  Debbie didn’t get patted down, but I did.  That said, though, they were polite.  They did sniff her smokes for pot.  Some other people got searched rather more thoroughly than we did.

Evidently one of the warmup acts got booed off while Debbie was on a smoke break, so we had to hustle into the music area as Korp started early.  They all have serious hair, well down to the armpits.  Jonne, the main vocalist, was good at working the crowd as was the guitarist next to him.  I had brought earplugs in case, but while it was loud, it wasn’t painfully so.  I was there for partly anthropological reasons anyway (and partly just to have a good time with a friend from college).  Impressions:

  • Watching them live you trade some of the actual music nuances of CD for the visual spectacle.  I couldn’t recognize most of the songs they played.  The bagpiper was my favorite instrumentalist; the big dark-haired dude on guitar was really into the crowd.
  • The place vibrated, literally.  It felt exactly like standing on a drum while some giant is playing it.  I’d give it a 4.8 on the Richter scale.  I was surprised the whole place didn’t come crashing down.  Those floors must be made of 6″ thick maple timbers.
  • I’m not sure all metal bands with long hair do the hair swirl, but quite frequently the band would play guitar while leaning over and sort of swirling their heads to make the hair whirl in kind of a figure 8 pattern.  Kind of a neat trick, when you consider they were still playing their instruments while doing it.
  • Lots of people did a hook-em-horns Texas football gesture, evidently a symbol of metal fan solidarity and approval.  I didn’t do it, but you can get caught up in situations like this.  I confess I was tempted.
  • During the first number, what looked like rugby broke out in front of the stage.  I learned that this is called moshing.  It got pretty rowdy, and at a couple points I decided I’d better kind of stand in front of Debbie in case it got out of hand.  We stood back far enough that we didn’t end up playing rugby, though ironically enough, she used to play rugby for real.

It wasn’t a very long show, a little more than an hour.  From an entertainment standpoint, it didn’t come close to Weird Al Yankovic, but I’m glad I did it, even though it required a hell of a lot of driving.

Edit:  okay, this is how dumb I am.  Come to find out later that what we saw wasn’t actually Korpiklaani, but Arkona, a Russian band.  How pissed the real Korp would be to find out we mistook Russians for Finns!  Instant death.  I guess that explains why I didn’t recognize hardly any of the music.  I was mightily tempted to just delete this whole post, but when you mess up, you have to own up.  I was wondering about the discrepancies and timing issues, but I assumed that such haphazardness was just the way shows worked.  So a total of ten hours with me driving, and three with Debbie driving, and we didn’t actually see the band we came to see.  Ouch!

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Why do sportswriters give free pimpage to bowl sponsors?

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I don’t see how ESPN gets paid for doing this, but they do it.  Right here, we have Ted Miller calling every bowl game by its full sponsor name.  Miller is in general a very capable reporter, and I’m a regular reader, but this baffles me.

Some would say that the game should be called by its full name (whatever it is this year) on principle.  Why is that a principle? If you are going to watch the Rose Bowl (which is not being played properly this year, very sadly), you presumably do not care whether it’s sponsored by Coors, Berkshire Hathaway or Joe’s Quikki-Mart.  You care who wins, or if it’s an entertaining game.  Surely ESPN is not getting money to make its writers do it, which would mean that the worst that could happen would be that Rotten.com (or whoever is the sponsor) writes them a nastygram, and ESPN answers, “Pay up if you want advertising.  You bought the bowl, not the media reporting.”  Instead, Miller continues to do this, as he has done in years past.

I do not get it. Unless it’s a friend, or they pay me, I don’t advertise for anyone if I can help it.  Buying a new car? Won’t drive it off the lot with the dealer’s license plate frame in place.  Wear an Old Navy shirt? You’re kidding, I hope.  Old Navy should pay me to wear their shirts, not charge me for advertising.

Maybe Miller is ordered by the brass to do this.  Maybe he just adores our precious major corporations.  Either way, to me, it detracts from his journalism.  Because as far as I’m concerned, UW is playing Baylor in the Alamo Bowl.  I don’t even want to know who sponsors it.  I don’t care.

Editing/writing life

LSSU Banned Words List is out!

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At least, I think the 2011 list is this year’s.  If it’s not, they’re Doing It Wrong:

Lake Superior State University’s 2011 Banned Words List

I agree on ‘viral,’ although I think that the unintended connotation of a loathsome pestilence makes the word inherently self-honest.

Sorry, but we need ‘fail.’  It is such an economical way to describe that which faileth.  I’ll yield on ‘epic’, though, as we really don’t need another watered-down superlative.

‘BFF’ must indeed go.  Sometimes when I see it, I invent shocking substitute meanings for the letters.  Feel free to drop yours into the comments!

There is nothing wrong with saying ‘woman up.’  Therefore, there is nothing wrong with saying ‘man up.’  I suppose if someone’s transgender, you would have a dilemma.  Rather than blow a fuse, you could just tell that person ‘be strong’.

‘I’m just sayin” indeed has to be staked before it can rise from the grave and propagate progeny that will also feed on the living.

Interested in your own takes on the list.

Homeownership

A confused neighbor

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One of our neighbors (the only one I can’t stand) puts up a comically garish, theme-free, obnoxious Christmas light display.  I’ll call him Cletus.  Evidently, it is very important for Cletus to let us know the true spiritual meaning of this jolly holiday.  In addition to the reindeer and Santa on the roof, and the odd mixture of colored lights strung about the place, Cletus puts up a 12′ high cross edged with lights.

Cletus seems to have forgotten the birth part and moved straight to the torture and execution part.  Good lord, Cletus, can’t you stand the idea of letting the kid live a while before he gets nailed up and tortured to death? What part of this is unclear?

I have no problem with lights, displays of faith, or people having holiday fun.  I do think it’s pretty funny when someone doesn’t think it through.  Cletus, You’re Doing It Wrong.

Human relations

My grandfather’s comedy

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My grandfather (maternal; I never knew my father’s father) has been passed away some years now.  He was no more a perfect man than I am, but he was a wise man, and at times a very funny one.  He always found humor in the absurd.

The funniest thing I can remember from my grandfather was one time when he was doing one of his favorite schticks:  the dumb hick.  While he spoke with the gentle drawl of rural Kansas, he was a strong demonstration of the fact that accents do not imply ignorance.  He was intelligent and thoughtful, both as a farmer and rancher, and later as a business executive.  So when he really laid the Cletus on thick, it was quite amusing to hear.  In this case, he was reading his junk mail, aloud, as if he believed every word of it.  It went something like this:

“Dorothy, the nahs folks at Publisher’s Clearin’ House have written to me.  They say, ‘Dear Mr. Johnson, the team at PCH is pleased to officially announce yore name as the second-place winner of the $7 million grand prize.’  They say that the total amount is $1 million.  Well, Ah’ll be!  They also say they will make all necessary arrangements for me to receive mah prize, and Ah know they’re serious because they enclose a cashier’s check to cover any fees they haven’t paid.  Mighty nice of them.  Ah must contact mah representative directly before Ah deposit the check, and for more information.  Sounds reasonable.  They give me a security code, so we best keep that someplace real safe.  And you know it’s on the up-and-up because they even assigned me mah own IRS agent, Mr. Henry Cohen.  Good, because Ah don’t want any trouble with the law.”

He could go on like that for a while, straight-faced, immune to my cackles, horselaughs and guffaws.  I only cracked my grandfather up once in return when he was doing that, but that time, I got the old man good.

Grandpa was reading aloud from a Harry & David sales pitch around Christmastime–he and Grandma were regular customers.  “Harry and David would like us to help them celebrate their fiftieth anniversary!” he began.

I broke in with my own Cletus put-on.  “Ah’ll be darned, Grandpa.  Ah never even knew they was married.”

My deeply, culturally, and politically conservative grandfather busted out in a gale of mirth.

It’s one of my favorite ways to remember him.

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Pizza Hut dishonors coupons–really!

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I was too amused to be annoyed.  Called up to order pizza from PH, current coupon in hand.  It included 10 hot wings and a large pizza, about as simple as it gets.  Slam dunk.

Phone guy, after talking to manager:  “Uh, we can’t do that, our wings come prepackaged and we can only do packages of eight.”

Me:  “Coupon says ten.”

PG:  “They changed everything around just yesterday, we only have packs of eight.”

Me:  “So you’re going to dishonor the coupon?”

PG (defensively):  “You can talk to the manager if you want.”

Me (quite calmly):  “No need.  It’s a simple question; ask whoever you need to ask.  Yes or no:  are you actually going to dishonor a current coupon?”

PG:  “We can’t do ten wings.  They changed everything.”

Me:  “Not my issue.  Yes or no:  going to honor or dishonor your coupon?”

PG:  “I guess the answer would be we’re going to dishonor it.”

Me:  “Okay, thanks, then no need to place the order.  Bye.”

It’s not that I am greatly bothered over a couple of chicken wings.  It’s not that the Pizza Hut (818 N Vineyard, Kennewick, WA) evidently isn’t very well run.  It’s that the guy couldn’t even think sensibly enough to ask his manager to do something intelligent.  The coupon came in one of those mailed coupon packs, so they have to know they’ll hear about this again; obviously a manager needs to devise some form of counter-offer if the coupon is somehow physically impossible to fulfill.  I’m receptive to almost anything except ‘tough beans’ as an answer; ‘tough beans’ basically says “we are dishonoring our advertising, and screw you if you don’t like it–we simply don’t care.”

So I called PH’s customer satisfaction hotline, carefully concealed on their webpage in hopes that no one would call.  The automated answering system did its all to convince me I couldn’t even talk to a person, but I’m persistent.  It put me on a protracted hold, then hung up on me after about five minutes.  Tried again, silent void.

WWHCD? He might get confused if you ask him to locate Libya on a map, but he knew a lot about how not to screw up selling pizza.

What better way to entertain myself while on protracted hold than by blogging the experience to share with the world?

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Penn State

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Well, that’s about as painful as it gets.  All of a sudden UW going 0-12 a few years back, and keeping Tyrone Willingham around purely out of Seattle racial guilt, doesn’t look quite as bad as it felt at the time.  I guess when they say ‘it could always be worse,’ this would be what they meant.

For those unfamiliar with the story, evidently a Penn State assistant football coach has been raping young boys at their facilities for a decade at least, and evidently the coaching staff and university knew to varying degrees that it was going on, and didn’t take steps to put a stop to it.  PSU’s head coach, Joe Paterno, was the longest-tenured and most admired coach in US college football, the symbol of Doing It Right.  So the idea of such an upstanding figure looking the other way, in a case like this, is something just about no one can feel neutral about.  The issue here:  while it happening is bad enough, people who know it happens–and allow it to continue–share at least some of the guilt.  In one especially bad aspect, an assistant (named, disastrously, McQueary) actually caught the rapist in the act at one point, and didn’t do anything about it so far as we’re aware.

Paterno, the AD, the boy-raping assistant, someone else in the athletic department and the president of the university have all been sacked, and several will face felony charges (not Paterno).  Look ahead to about ten years of litigation (probably longer than Paterno will live; he’s 84, had coached there since I was a toddler), profiting only lawyers.  The students are somewhat rioting in support of Paterno, and the country is taking sides.  You either want him and everyone involved hanging from a lamppost, or you think it’s a horrible disservice to the most visible symbol the school ever had.

My own take is that I don’t see either side doing a damn thing for the real victims, which are the boys who got raped.  I see all anger and recrimination, and I understand why, but I do not understand why no one can seem to spare some emotion for those who suffered most.  They certainly suffered more than a half dozen six- (in one case seven-) figure employees, though if a couple of those can’t buy their way into the nice jails, or out of jail altogether, those may get a taste of what the original victims experienced.  My dominant emotion here is not fury and punishment, but what can we do for the real innocents?

I wish I heard more of that, and less rioting and screaming and such.  We get so angry in these situations we forget to invest some energy in support for and kindness to the most damaged.