Recommendations, or not

Objectified wrap up

At the beginning of February I set out to make a blog post every day in the month about some object that I owned and would recommend. I managed 12. It wasn’t that I couldn’t think of things, in fact I have a list of many that I just didn’t get to write up, it was more the time and dealing with self imposed deadlines that got to me. That said, with 28 days in the month 12 is just shy of one every other day so I’m not terribly disappointed in the results. I thought I’d make a list of them all here so it was easier to reference and just in case someone missed something they wanted to read back up on.

Objectified 01 – Chrome Cobra Hoodie
Objectified 02 – Atwood G2 Mini Prybaby
Objectified 03 – Surefire Lumamax Flashlight
Objectified 04 – ExOfficio Unmentionables
Objectified 05 – Spyderco Delica
Objectified 06 – Kodak Zi6
Objectified 07 – CTAC Handgun Holster
Objectified 08 – Arc AAA Flashlight
Objectified 09 – Le Bistro Auto Cat Feeder
Objectified 10 – Chrome Messenger Bags
Objectified 11 – Sigg Bottles
Objectified 12 – Kryptonite Bike Lock

Watchmen Watch

Fucking nerds

If you are awake right now and want to see something interesting happening online, though I suspect this will continue all through the weekend – go look at this search for “watchmen” on twitter. The instant reviews coming in from people as they are walking out of the theaters are fascinating, I can’t stop refreshing that page! I just got back from seeing the midnight showing at the Arclight in Hollywood myself. It was actually my 2nd time seeing it and while I couldn’t say anything after the first time I saw it due to sekrit screening and protecting friends and loved ones from spoilers and bias, I loved it and thought it was even better the second time around. That feeling is not universal however but what’s interesting to me is that no one is giving it a ‘meh’ review – people either really loved it or really hated it. No in between feelings on this one which says something. I don’t know what it says exactly but making something that everyone has a reaction to isn’t an easy task so when it happens it’s very interesting to watch.

Walking out of the theater there were discussions about which fans liked it and which fans hated it. My instant tally among a handful of friends shows an interesting split. I had lunch with Mack Reed today who was telling me about his original button set he got while reading it when it was in series format and how he’s been waiting 20 years for this night and according to his tweets he approved. If you are reading this you probably already saw Wil Weaton’s proclamation from a few weeks back that it was “fucking awesome.” Conversely Tara hated it. [Turns out she was joking blowing this theory all to hell. Ooops!] She’s probably read it the most recently of anyone I know (and thus most familiar with the line by line story) and a few others I knew who read it in preparation for the movie didn’t like it either. I don’t think there’s any value in discussing new fans vs old fans, but there’s probably something to people who just read it and those who remember reading it.

When you read something like this, your imagination works overtime and you build a vivid picture of the world in the story. If you read the book sometime in the past 6 months or so then that picture is probably very fresh in your mind, if you read it many years ago the overall picture probably isn’t as strong and it’s more themes and highlights that you remember. I’m pulling this theory completely out of my ass, but I wonder if the people who read it recently and have the specifics fresh in their minds don’t like it while the ones who have a romanticized memory of the overall thing do. I kind of want to reread it and then go back and watch it again to see how that sits with me. Maybe the changes they made will become more of an issue. Maybe not. The end really pissed off Hiter though:

Another interesting split was the first time I saw it was at an industry screening and the immediate commentary after wards had nothing to do with the story but was either “Amazing! Those fight scenes were beautiful” or “Piece of crap. I can’t believe he went with those effects.” Same kind of thing, people liked it or hated it. I haven’t talked to anyone who hadn’t read the book yet but I want to, and I’m really excited to see and hear the different breakdowns from friends and reviewers over the next few days to see why people loved it or hated it so much. In either case it’s getting massive reactions and for me at least, that’s going to be very interesting to watch.

Objectified 09: Le Bistro Auto Cat Feeder

I travel a lot. You may have noticed this. I also have cats. The cats like to be fed. Sometimes I’m traveling when the cats are home expecting to be fed. You can see where the problem lies. Over the years I’ve had any number of friends help out with the cat feeding duties and I’m happy to say I’ve never had a single cat starve to death in my absence. However, always asking people for favors and the cats having to put up with different schedules is kind of lame, so I decided I needed to hire a robot to feed my cats for me. I didn’t find one of those, but I got the next best thing.

Cat FeederIf you look around you’ll find no shortage of automatic pet feeders. Most of them are variations on circular compartments with a moving cover that holds measured portions for 3-5 days theme. I thought those kind of sucked and the reviews I read online tended to agree. Plus I wanted something I could use all the time so the cats would be used to it, not something I’d just throw out when I was gone. I found the Petmate Le Bistro and it seemed like exactly what I needed so I dove in and bought one. It worked so well I bought a second one so they wouldn’t have to share.

It hold about 5lbs of dry food, and you program in how much food you want it to kick out up to three times a day. I have it set to give out a cup in the morning and again at night and it works flawlessly. The thing is, it’s got a bunch of secondary benefits I didn’t even expect. The first is that my fat cats trimed up. I was always trying to measure how much food I was giving them and was often giving them too much. The automagicness of this isn’t swayed by their cute little kitty eyes and gives them exactly what they should have every time no matter what. Additionally, the cats have all realized that their food comes from this machine instead of me now so when they are hungry they go over and hang out next to it thinking they can talk it into feeding them early, instead of climbing on my face or laying down on my keyboard whilst I type to get my attention. It’s amazing, it’s defected all their annoying leaving me to only focus on their snuggles. I’m a big fan. Plus, it does what it was supposed to do and if filled with a new bag can easily feed them while I’m out of town for pretty much anything. They still need fresh water and clean litter boxes, but one thing at a time…

Installing Ubuntu on a Netbook for Mac Nerds

I bought a netbook. I’ll explain the hows and whys of that in a later post but basically it’s cheep and good for traveling when I don’t want to lug too much stuff. Now, it’s important to note that as someone who has been using Macs forever, that last thing in the world I wanted was a machine running Windows. So I decided on Ubuntu which I thought would be a fun change anyway. So all I had to do was wipe the system and install it right? Well, turns out that isn’t quite so easy when the netbook doesn’t have a CD drive. Luckily you can install Unbunto from a USB stick too, but it’s slightly more complicated if you are a major noob. Like me, sort of.

ubuntu-logo-operaI realize I went about this a little backwards, but it worked. The first thing I did was just install a dual boot of Windows/Ubuntu using Wubi which was dead simple. A few clicks and let it run and it was done. Now I had the netbook run a dualboot but the partitions were all goofy and I really didn’t want Windows on it at all, so I needed to wipe it. For some folks, the dual boot might be just fine. Windows gives me hives so I had to kill it.

My first step was getting a USB stick that would work, something over 1GB. On my Mac, using ‘Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility’ I erased the USB stick and reformatted it as FAT for windows. While I was doing that I loaded up the netbook and downloaded the Ubuntu installer CD .iso file and saved it to the desktop. Then once the USB stick was prepped, I pulled it out of the Mac, jammed it in the netbook and it recognized it as UNTITLED. Perfect. Then, on the netbook running Ubuntu (still as a dual boot) I choose ‘System > Administration > Create a USB startup disk.’ I selected the USB stick I’d just formatted as the destination, and chose the .iso file I’d just downloaded as the source and hit go. From there on it was pretty simple and self explanatory. One of the options you get is if you want partitions or 100% Ubuntu which is what I selected since that was the whole point of these shenanigans. It ran it’s course and worked perfectly. I’ll explain the netbook thing in a post shortly, I promise.

American Airlines wants you to pay for their ads

Because I’ve been flying them for years and have platinum status I end up on a lot of American Airlines flights. I check in online and print my own boarding passes from their site to save myself the hassle of lines at the airport. As you might recall many airlines implemented ‘print at home’ passes in the last few years to help cut costs on their end and it’s a good idea. Last weekend I printed a pass and got this:
AA Boarding Pass

Click through to the photo for additional notes and a larger version. When I clicked print boarding pass I didn’t just get my boarding pass as you can see. I also got a short list of suggestions of things to do in the city I was flying to and a bunch of ads. A bunch of full color ads. A bunch of full color ads that mostly indicate I should click them. Yes, this is annoying and stupid.

Here’s why:

  • I have pay to print the ads. If they were in black and white that would be one thing, but they are full color and color ink isn’t cheap. This is totally inconsiderate that AA is making money by selling an ad that I then have to pay to produce.
  • The ads are useless to the advertiser. As you can see in the larger version of the pic, most of the ads are for something online – requiring you to click them to gain any benefit to the advertiser. Basically they bought and ad that can’t be used in it’s intended format. Maybe you could argue some name recognition, but is annoyance what they want to be associated with?
  • The ads are useless to me. Since I can’t click an ad on a printed page it’s a 100% waste for me. If the ad was a coupon I could take somewhere for a discount that might provide some value. As it stands, that isn’t the case.
  • Travel guide also fails. Since AA doesn’t know anything about me, the suggestions as to what I might enjoy doing in the city are worthless. If they’d partnered with some other site that knew what kind of things I’m into that might be cool. Again, since they don’t the suggestions are things like “Golden Gate Bridge” or names of people who I suspect might be performing or talking or something but I have no context for who they are. Of course, many of these suggestions are links, which again are useless once printed.

The bullshit of all this is that this company Sojern, that handles the ads is scamming everyone. They’ve convinced the airlines that this is useful their customers – it isn’t. They’ve convinced the advertisers that this will bring them some business – it won’t. And they’ve offloaded the cost to people who gain nothing from the whole situation.

This is so disappointing because again it’s a sign of major companies completely missing it. This had potential to be cool. Partnering with a site that knows something more about me could make the suggestions somewhat useful, or a quick glance at their previous records to see if I’ve been to that city before might help tailor it a bit more. If I’m flying to a city that I’m in 20 times a year, the most obvious tourist suggestions might not be fitting for me. The ads could be coupons. Give me a $1 off a coffee at the Starbucks at the airport, or 10% off at one of the airport shops. That would be useful and have value to me. Ads that I can’t click from a printed piece of paper don’t. If they have to have something online with links, promote it as that – after I print my pass give me an option to check out a page with this info full of links and ads. Then I can at least use them.

UPS Time FAIL

Me: “Hi, can you tell me the status of the pickup I scheduled?”
UPS: “Yes of course, looks like your pickup is scheduled to be picked up by 3PM”
Me: “Right”
UPS: “Anything else I can help you with?”
Me: “Yes, I want to know the status of the pick up, it’s 3:10 and it hasn’t been picked up yet.”
UPS: “Oh, I see. I can put in a call to the station and they can look into it.”
Me: “But what do I do?”
UPS: “Will you still be there for a while?”
Me: “What is a while?”
UPS: “A few hours”
Me: “Not really, that’s why I scheduled the pick up for 3pm rather than end of the day, I need to leave”
UPS: “I can have someone at the station contact you in the next 2 hours to let you know when someone will be there to pick it up.”
Me: “Did I do something wrong when I scheduled this? Because I really needed it picked up by 3.”
UPS: “No, it looks like you did everything correctly.”
Me: “But a driver might not come by until after 5PM anyway?”
UPS: “That’s correct. Anything else I can help you with today?”