Webs’ Random Ideas

Just a great TED talk on the importance of food in our children’s diet at schools. The problem shown in this video is only going to get worse and it’s growing FAST.

Windows mobile phones run about as good as a computer with Windows. I will admit that I have had less problems with Windows on my phones than computers, but I still had to do constant battery pulls and reboots. Then there is  the occasional phone freeze. Luckily that doesn’t happen often though.

So to solve the problem I hacked the phone and put a custom Windows Mobile ROM on it. This helped a ton because custom ROMs are made by people like you and me through what is essentially an Open Source process. The HowTos for making the ROMs are posted on a couple different forums and finished ROMs or cooked ROMs are posted on those forums too. This means both get scrutinized by geeks. Which leads to some pretty badass ROMs that run better than what will ever come out of MS. But the custom ROM wasn’t enough for me.

I wanted to see what else I could do, like Linux or Android. After some hunting and reading I decided to go with Android as it is well developed for Windows Mobile phones and out of the box will allow for me to do more. Plus I will be getting a full fledge Android phone this summer so I wanted to prepare myself.

Following this guide here I got Android up and running from my SD card. Which means it runs on top of Windows. Which might make one think Android would be pretty slow, laggy, and buggy. I certainly did, until I tried it. I was blown away at how responsive the touch screen is. How fast I can move around between programs and such. Very impressive for running from an SD card.

I highly recommend any of the Android phones to anyone wanting a smartphone. If you have a Windows Mobil phone, check out XDA developers forum and see if someone is porting Android to your phone. It will be worth your time!

Newegg Drops Supplier After Selling Fake Intel Processors

Well really this isn’t the only reason, but is one of the top ones. It’s not just their customer service, though that is a big piece of it. but Newegg took responsibility for one. Which seems like a rare trait for large corporations to have. Then they explained what happened without a cover up (full disclosure of their mistake and what happened). Again something that seems rare. Lastly, they offered customers a reasonable solution for refund or replacement.

As a customer or a general consumer what more can you ask for from a reseller? You rock Newegg!!

Why? Probably because it will cost them to implement systems that can charge consumers sales tax for specific states. I don’t really know, that is just a guess. ***Dave has a write-up on the issue here.

The thing that doesn’t make sense to me, granted I haven’t read the Colorado law so I am unaware of all contained within it, but all US online shoppers or consumers are supposed to pay taxes for anything they purchase where applicable. It doesn’t matter if you purchase from a brick and mortar or online, if your state charges sales taxes you are obligated to pay. Check your state government website and you will find the appropriate information.

So if we are supposed to pay sales taxes and we have been using online purchases as a convenience but also as a way to avoid the taxes, what is wrong with the state trying to get their money? Again I haven’t read the Colorado law, but what is unconstitutional about a state trying to re-coupe lost revenue?

If Tiger Direct can implement a system to charge sales taxes and still function as a business without going under, I would think others could too. And since businesses don’t want to step up and do what is right, Colorado has attempted to implement a law. I’m sure with this economy other states will follow suit too. Is anyone surprised by this?

I just heard something on the radio on my way home from work that upset me. I was listening to All Things Considered on the Health Care summit that took place today and they got a chance to talk to GOP Congressman Dave Camp. This is where things got a little frustrating.

First Camp wouldn’t admit that the plan Obama presents isn’t a Federal takeover. He kept beating around the bush essentially saying it wasn’t, but wouldn’t just come out with it. Ugh! What an asshole because he obviously knows there is a difference between Federal takeover and regulation.

They talked about some other topics but one of the last ones forced me to shut off the radio. Camp was asked about Obama’s plan in relation to the GOP one. Essentially Camp said the GOP plan would work better because it would lower health care costs which would allow Americans to have more and better coverage. Yup, in so many words that was the gist of his statement. At 6:00P NPR will have the full audio to the story on their site. I will update the loose quote once I get a chance to go back and listen.

It just really pissed me off. For one that statement assumes Americans don’t understand how corporations work. Everyone knows that when given the option to have reduced cost, corporations use that lower cost as increased profit, which is one reason why corporations are always looking to reduce costs. In other words, if a Health Care Insurance company just had their costs reduced by $50 million they aren’t going to turn around and spend that same amount. Instead they would, like any other company, use the majority of that amount as a means to report increase in profit and share value. Lower costs almost always mean higher profitability.

It makes no sense to think the company would turn around and re-increase their cost thus reducing profitability. Why would a Health Insurance company turn around and give health insurance to the un-insured or high cost/risk people? THEY ARE IN THE BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY AND/OR SHARE VALUE!! I find it hard to believe they will ever insure more high cost/risk people unless forced. It’s simple economics.

Things get even more frustrating knowing middle class people that support the GOP and agree with such a silly statement. Do they not realize what is going on? I remember watching a movie about credit cards where a pawn shop owner said he gets into discussions with clientele that are middle to lower class and Republican. He just shook his head, “I ask them, ‘Dont you get it? Don’t you realize that you are the one being affected by their policies?’ And he says they never do.

So what are we to do? How do you get it through to a middle American GOP supporter or a tea party’er? I dont know.

Number of pixels it takes in an email I was typing up in Outlook for MS to be a pain in the ass.

The arrow below points to the symbol that pops up informing me I made a paste. Which conveniently blocks text I was trying to read in said email. Why does this pop up by default? Am I too stupid to realized I have pasted something?

MS telling me I pasted something... What would I do without them?

So if you haven’t heard yet, Kevin Smith got kicked off a Southwest flight for “being too fat”. Which for starters, this isn’t anything new to any airline. Most just require passengers to buy two seats and Southwest is the only one that will reimburse that second seat purchase if the flight isn’t full. From the belly of the beast, Southwest is not instituting this rule to make more money off of customers. Rather the policy is around the safety and comfort of passengers. From the Southwest blog post Not so Silent Bob:

Mr. Smith originally purchased two Southwest seats on a flight from Oakland to Burbank – as he’s been known to do when traveling on Southwest.  He decided to change his plans and board an earlier flight to Burbank, which technically means flying standby. As you may know, airlines are not able to clear standby passengers until all Customers are boarded. When the time came to board Mr. Smith, we had only a single seat available for him to occupy. Our pilots are responsible for the Safety and comfort of all Customers on the aircraft and therefore, made the determination that Mr. Smith needed more than one seat to complete his flight. Our Employees explained why the decision was made, accommodated Mr. Smith on a later flight, and issued him a $100 Southwest travel voucher for his inconvenience.

Huh that puts things in a much different perspective than what the Internet has been abuzz with. Even Kevin Smith’s own podcast paints a different picture. Am I missing something?

Yup! Listen to the podcast from Kevin Smith if you haven’t yet. It paints a different picture and comes off less corporate trying to cover some ass and more sincere. What happened I can’t quote like the blog post from Southwest, but the main points were: the situation was handled poorly or what appears to be poorly from some individuals that likely have had a tough day. I won’t judge them and I thought Kevin Smith did a good job of that too.

I have worked in customer service all my working life and I know how bad things can get (shit I worked for Disney World), but when things get bad you step away and let someone else deal with it. Better that than blowing up or taking things out on a tweeter with roughly a million followers.

Another key point, it appears that someone had a personal motivation or took an official policy too far. I’m more inclined to think the latter cause I work in corporate right now and I see it all the time. Some person that can’t think for their self takes the “law” too seriously instead of taking a deep breath and thinking for a moment.

The last key point, Southwest did the same thing to another customer (a girl), that they did to Kevin Smith just a couple hours earlier. Really? So this isn’t an isolated incident and makes you wonder how often it happens. But to hear Kevin Smith describe the look on the poor girls face to go through what she endured just breaks my heart. It’s hard enough being a female or male to go through that, let alone trying to get home and having to put up with it and then relive the story to the passenger next to you.

My best guess is this policy was rolled out with some typical corporate training and the robots are just sent back out to the real world to deal with situations requiring brain power. All the stewardess had to do, or the person trying to get Kevin Smith off the plane, was talk to the two ladies next to him and make sure they were comfortable. If so, then get on with life. As Kevin Smith points out, he was able to put down both armrests and fit in the seat snug, but fit in the seat.

But corporate training doesn’t teach you this. They can’t as there are far too many real life situations to go over. The best you can do is try to get across to your employees to use their head for situations that come up. In my experience such discussion of using the brain rarely take place. Instead you get some training and get thrown out.

Before this event I swore by Southwest to everyone I talked to. I didn’t have enough positive things to say about them as I have never even had the slightest hint of a negative experience. In all aspects of flying. Same for my wife. While I cannot speak for my wife on this matter I can speak for myself.

I can no longer choose Southwest for just because reasons. The action taken by the employees and the lack of action taken by the company leave me to think twice about flying with them. The behavior exhibited by the employees was uncalled for and should not be tolerated. I can’t imagine how I would feel having someone do that to me.

So my last post forced me to learn something else tonight, this time about technology. Posting Picasa pictures in WordPress is rather easy once you know how.

Go to your web album and find the picture you want. Click on it till you get the larger view of it on the browser. I was still in Picasa, but the view was not one of just a thumbnail. Then right click and copy link location.

Now go to your WordPress post. Click the button to upload a picture. Go to “From URL” and paste in the link. If you ahve the correct link you should get the Green Checkmark. Choose your desired options, text, etc and hit “Insert”. You should now be back to your post and should see the picture in there. Do a preview of the post to make sure the image size is correct, newer versions of Worpdress allow resizing on the fly without editing HTML!

That is all I did and you can see from my previous post to this one things worked great!

The University of Northern Iowa (UNI) Freethinkers & Inquirers are hosting a Darwin Week at UNI. I unfortunately found out late, but in time to catch quite a speaker, PZ Myers from the University of Minnesota Morris (also known for his famous blog Pharyngula).

PZ Myers Evolutionary Developmental Biology Lecture at UNI

I wanted to jump on the opportunity to hear him speak because of his science prowess, specifically in the field of Biology. The topic of this lecture was on Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Its a new evolving field of Biology that looks into how the environment affects phenotypes which have an effect on genes to cause the evolutionary changes over time. In some cases, as PZ spoke to, they happen rather quickly and noticeably.

There was a study PZ mentioned that was conducted on a caterpillar that will change pigmentation depending on environmental conditions, from a very noticeable bright green to a deep dark black. The black is dangerous for a fat tasty caterpillar, but a great way to trap energy from the sun. The green helps as a defense mechanism. So can these black caterpillars change pigmentation over time and become green ones? If so how fast?

Well the study conducted indeed found they will change when the environment induces the change and the change happened just in 14 generations. Pretty remarkable. Its this effect the environment had that is studied under Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

This type of discussion is what the whole lecture focused on. PZ stayed clear of religious topics for this discussion which didn’t bother me one way or the other. I came with the expectation to hear someone speak about evolution and that is exactly what I got. I was happy and my brain hurts a little. All in all a great night!