Truly a Golden Age

Right now, I'm a few miles up in the sky with both kids passed out.

I've surfed the web, distracted the boy for over an hour with Fruit Ninja, then spent well over an hour catching up on my RSS feeds.

And now I blog this using free (airborne) Wifi.

That's not even the amazing bit.

I used Google Voice to send mom a text using my data plan.

I know! FU AT&T.

Yes, yes the data plan is 15 a month, but they would have jacked me for 20¢ a pop to send it using free bandwidth.

Loving it.

Quote of the Day - 12/20/2010

Today's winner courtesy of Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs, in response to the question "what was the worst job you ever tried?"

Of the 300 I would say for pure, epic horror - there's a thing called a lift pump and it's at a wastewater treatment plant. And a lift pump weighs about four tons and it sits in the bottom of a five story silo. And when the lift pump ruptures, the silo fills with whatever you flush.

And to make a long story short: you swim through the muck to the pump, you crawl on top, a crane lowers a cable, you affix it, you hang on. And the sound that a broken lift pump will make when its hoisted out of the silo and breaks the seal of poo that was holding it to the floor will haunt your dreams.

Why Was There a Crisis? GOP: Well... "Bubbles Happen"

(Via CJR)

It's hard to know where to begin after you read the primer conservative defectors from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Krugman gives us the primer's origin story:

Last week, reports Shahien Nasiripour of The Huffington Post, all four Republicans on the commission voted to exclude the following terms from the report: “deregulation,” “shadow banking,” “interconnection,” and, yes, “Wall Street.”

When Democratic members refused to go along with this insistence that the story of Hamlet be told without the prince, the Republicans went ahead and issued their own report, which did, indeed, avoid using any of the banned terms.

Here's a sample from the primer:

Bubbles happen. In retrospect, they always seem easy to identify, but as they are building, experts debate whether they exist—and, if so, why. The recent housing bubble was no different. Despite national home price appreciation well above the historical trend for almost a decade, and local markets with even more pronounced price swings, most homeowners and mortgage investors believed there were sound fundamentals underpinning their investments.

We will likely never have a complete explanation for why there was a housing bubble, but we have some clues. First, even without a big change in the costs of building a home, a sharp increase in demand for homes can cause rapid price increases until new homes are built, bringing prices back down.

Got that? We will likely never have a complete explanation....

Geez guys, couldn't you have just said No one could have conceived...?

CJR's Ryan chittum does us all a solid and directs us to Bethany McLean's column over at Slate.

She calls the primer what it is - bullshit.

...get ready for a few of the primer's breathtaking conclusions. "Put simply, the risk of a housing collapse was simply not appreciated." Shit happens. ("Bubbles happen" is, in fact, the first sentence in the report.) How about some exploration of why consumer advocates—who in the 1990s began warning the Federal Reserve and members of Congress that people were getting loans they couldn't pay back—were ignored? Here's another genius insight: "The panic ended when confidence returned." That one inspired me to check the definition of panic (a "sudden overwhelming fear") to make sure I wasn't wrong to find this a bit redundant. Daylight appeared when the sun rose. War ended when the armies stopped fighting. Hurt went away when the pain subsided.

In a way, we should be greatful to Vice Chairman Bill Thomas and commissioners Peter J. Wallison, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and Keith Hennessey for so clearly illustrating who they work for.

They wrote a report about the financial crisis and agreed to avoid using the words "Wall Street."

Ye gods.

Due to Our Incompetence, Your Data is at Risk

So, the other day while I'm reading a happy little letter from E's alma mater telling us in politely minimized language that her name and social security number have been potentially compromised. They'd stored this information in cleartext and (whaddaya know) somebody found a way to get to it.

They take great pains to point out they are not sure that the entire database was transferred (although it could have been) and that they don't know that anyone has used the data (although they could have) - all they're saying is that they were storing her personal data on a server that somebody had obtained unauthorized access to.

Well, great. This keeps happening to Universities - there are books telling you how to mine SSNs from universities - yet over 5 years later E's data sits in cleartext because they needed to "archive" their poor security choices.

Helpfully, they suggest watching our credit reports and account activity to see if anything "unusual" occurs. Forever.

Thanks, guys.

I don't believe that her data is likely to be put to evil ends that would affect us - but isn't it nice to know that that possibility will always exist?

-----

On a related note - I received an email from Gawker telling me that my account had been compromised. I honestly didn't remember ever having an account with them, but it's possible that I posted a comment there years back.

I'm set to ignore it when I get a second email from LinkedIn - telling me I should reset my account because of the Gawker intrusion.

So I reset LinkedIn and start on Gawker for good measure. Gawker's website is just godawful UI and (bonus) their email server is having problems, so when you try you get a "Reset Failed" message that appears for 2 seconds.

Well, thanks guys. I'm so glad that I tried, now I will try again.

And again.

And then wait 5 minutes and try again.

And then go away for an hour and then try again.

And so on - until the damn thing finally sends me a reset link.

You figure you have a security breach that requires resets, you might try to see if your reset process is actually working before you push the send button on the "we're so owned" message.

Fail.

Coding Horror has the goods on Gawker's data faceplant, and wow have they screwed the pooch.

The hack came complete with release notes from the hackers which goes out of its way to shame them.

They post the usernames and passwords of Gawker staff. Then they use the password of Gawker's Nick Denton to see how many other accounts they can get to.

Subtext for users: Don't use one password for multiple sites.

They post this bit of fun:

You'd think by now after being compromised Nick would change all his passwords.

He doesn't, instead his fellow circle jerkers convince him that it was his own fault,

That the account wasn't hacked but instead Nicks own fault by clicking a "link" lol.

They then post ftp logins for several other companies to drive home the point.

Nice.

The release notes detail the depth of the attack - and is illustrative for lots of reasons.

Forbe's has more detail.

What Could Gawker Have Done Differently?

Everything. Their founder noticed strange activity a month ago, and reported it, yet the investigation into it came to the wrong conclusions. It seems clear they do not have a good information security person on staff or that they can call. When they closed out the Nick Denton account on campfire, they could have realized that someone logging in as him to an internal system might mean that someone outside the company has access to internal systems or that the extent of the breach may be larger..

Subtext to businesses: don't be like these guys.

Get It Out

This year, the anniversary of Dad's death passed without a lot of observance on my part. Jen makes a point of sending flowers to Mom from the kids. My role in this is to accept that she is doing this and thank her for including my kids names on the card as well.

As if they are from me, or that I had the slightest involvement in them arriving .

I think the first year, I may have actually sent flowers - or conferred with Jen prior to her sending them - but ever since I've regarded it as something that was being handled.

Blogs being wonderfully self indulgent things - my observance took the form of heartfelt, yet virtual text. This year, I simply could not locate the right frame of mind to post.

In a self justifying way, I viewed this as progress.

Having spent countless hours bending depressing music towards my situation – this might actually be progress.

But there’s a certain amount of baggage that refuses to go quietly – and this is an attempt to shove it out the door despite the screaming.

What I’ve come to realize is that this stuff never really comes up. While this is good in lots of ways, it lays down a pattern of avoidance that is unhealthy. Maybe not for everyone, but certainly for me.

Mom is in the other camp – which is perhaps the reason I’m not. When I was in Norway, Mom started talking about Dad and Katrina with our assigned dinner group and I remember being angry with her. Angry because Mom talks about “the storm” a lot. It always seems to come up – any tenuous connection is an excuse for Mom to recount some storm-related factoid. “We didn’t have that during Katrina…”

You were in Katrina?

“Oh yes,” she’ll say with a sort of Now that you mention it… air. And she’ll start in with one of the stories I’ve heard too many times.

This is bothersome for all sorts of reasons. Ones that are easy to conjure up, but hard to articulate.
Trolling for pity, trading on the death of a loved one – or just simply the overwrought segue that precedes the story.

Now I say all this having vividly felt this – but having never breathed a word of this to Mom. I would never do that. Yet the moment we’d finished dinner with the Norway crowd - Mom all but apologized for it. “I know you don’t approve of that, but…”

I clearly need to restrain my facial expressions better.

Having thought about how little I’ve spoken to others about Dad – it occurred to me that I’ve managed to guilt my own mother about discussing what is clearly the defining event of her life right now. I so clearly failed her up to that point – and I can’t recall what I said – but I was too surprised to say anything intelligent.

Really. Why the hell should she hold back on that stuff?

This was my realization today. Think of any time somebody lets loose with a painful story. What happens? Someone else does the same.

I’ve always viewed these exchanges as a race to victimhood (“Oh, you think that was sad? Try this…”) and while I’m sure there’s some of that – think about these stories a minute.

They aren’t the box score for the local team - these are stories that never come up. They have no segue. Events that forever alter the lives of a person, or a family. Stuff that really matters, not some crap you saw on TV.

And you can’t bring them up without looking unseemly, or pathetic, or ghoulish.

My dad died from a heart attack brought on by massive head injuries. Who do I talk to about that? When does that come up?

Fricking never, is when. You can wait a long time for that perfect segue. And while you’re waiting, you build up a collection of anecdotes that are harmless to everyone but you.

Mom’s got it worse – she was there for the whole thing. Saw him sputter, watched the neighbor do CPR – and I’m slighting her for edging anywhere near that story? WTF is wrong with me …?

I’m beginning to believe that when somebody starts to lets something like that out, it’s because they need to. Yeah, it might come out as one-upsmanship or a rehearsed anecdote, but there are damn few opportunities to say what you’re really thinking.

Outside of blogs, that is.

You spend a lot of time conjuring up discussions that never, ever happen – and then you sit on them until one day something sets them off.

….

The lighted match of the moment are the words “passed away.” Some months ago, E surprised me by saying my exact thoughts on them – at least as they applied to my Dad.

As in – they don’t.

E said she couldn’t bring herself to say that my father had passed away. Because those words are the sanitized, polite form of what happens when a person lives to a ripe old age before going on to their final reward.

Passive. Passed away.

Gradual.

Internal

Only my dad’s death was not passive. It was active, external.

He did not go, he was taken.

And for some reason I’m sure I’ll one day realize in a sudden eureka-moment – I’ve resisted this categorization with the fervor of a fundamentalist.

Not “died,” but “killed.”

I wince even writing that, because I know how it sounds – but I refuse to put a polite face on something I find so offensive. And I don’t indulge others who try.

For some reason, it is also important that the blame be properly assigned. “Accident” is so beneath my father.

For years, my mind has saved a justification I’d direct at anyone who would try to exonerate the guilty party. My hope is that by giving it substance it can finally just go away.

If my mother is to be widowed,
If my children must be denied their grandfather,
If my grandmother must bury her oldest son,

If all of this must happen
– let it be a hurricane.

A storm like no other.

One that empties cities and erases towns.
One whose name is forever associated with destruction and loss.

If my father is to be brought down,
let it be a hurricane.

Anything less would seem inadequate.

(Via The Big Picture)

I'll just quote it - because there's no better way to introduce it:

Prepare yourself to be floored:

Google Maps keeps evolving, expanding the ability to drill down into granular detail. The latest updated trick? Mapping foreclosures for sale.

...

Google Maps Foreclosure Listings

1. Punch in any US address into Google Maps.

2. Your options are Earth, Satellite, Map, Traffic and . . . More. (Select “More”)

3. The drop down menu gives you a check box option for “Real Estate.”

4. The left column will give you several options (You may have to select “Show Options”)

5. Check the box marked “Foreclosure.”

Seriously. Do this, and see every foreclosed house plotted as a little red dot. I did my own address and was ready to zoom out to see any impact. Turns out, there are over 100 forclosures in the inital map results by my house (11 of which are within 3 miles of my house).

TBP posts a search on Detroit which just bends my head:

 Ye Gods.

AT&T? I Think I've Found Which Half of Your Marketing Budget is Being Wasted

Hot on the heels of AT&T being declared the worst cell carrier, I've decided to re-up for another two years with them (courtesy of my iPhone).

So, today I'm logging in to pay this month's bill and I experience something that can only happen at a fortune 500 company.

Let's set the scene...

I hit the AT&T log in screen:

The ice princess will see you now

and instead of the dashboard screen of my current balance, etc, I'm shown the following:

We interrupt your attempt to give us money,
to bring you the following...

I have to believe that the vast majority of users will simply click the (understated) link that will take them into their account, but I've heard some buzz that telcos are trying "mea culpa" marketing strategies and I'm wondering if AT&T is one of them.

After the crap they've put me through...I'd like to hear them grovel.

So, I click on the "Learn More" button - and I'm taken to this:

Thank you for logging in.
Now.... who are you and what do you want?

This is a seriously WTF page. I've logged in, asked for more information about upcoming changes to my account manager - and they're asking me if I'm an existing customer.

Worse, they want me to enter my phone number - manually.

I've fricking logged into your website, you know my damn number. Oh, and is this for a personal account? I don't know maybe you could remember how I got here:

But okay, this is AT&T - the land where the left hand doesn't know if the right hand even exists.

I check Personal account, enter my home phone number, and press 'Go.'

Then I see this:

Okay, three bullet points saying my account manager will do the same things it does now, only with a new look.

Whoopee. Oh, there's a video, too.

I click the video - expecting to see a sneek preview of what I can do online.

And here's the AT&T treatment in full flower: the video is 17 seconds long.

Here is the script in its entirety:

"Soon your internet and home phone account management will have new features and a new look.  Managing your account online will be more convenient than ever. Check back to see how we're making online account management easier for you."

Basically a video version of a bad powerpoint presentation - sans actual content.

Blah, blah, blah... but with pictures!

Eleven seconds into the video, you see a peephole glimpse of what a new page might look like

- for less than three seconds.

Roll credits. Fin.

This is what passes for marketing/customer outreach at AT&T apparently. Think of the dollars they wasted on this mess. Somebody proposed this, got it greenlighted and then paid developers to code, test, and deploy.

All to direct paying customers to a 17 second POS video whipped together by marketing's pet monkey.

And as a customer, I have learned what? That their website will change, in some unknown way, at some unknown time in the future.

Speaking as a person who helped pay for this - I'd like to offer my suggestions:

1. If your content amounts to "check back later" - I don't need to have a video. I'd argue you don't need to bother me at all, actually.
2. If you can't tell me anything concrete - maybe you souldn't interrupt me like this is breaking news. Just because CNN does it doesn't mean you should. A banner ad would have sufficed.
3. If you are going to interrupt a logged in customer, perhaps you should not ask them to fill out a form to direct them to your "content"

Frankly, the AT&T website experience isn't all that terrible unless you leave whatever silo you happen to be in. AT&Ts account manager allows me to do the basics quite well. Log in, pay the bill (or copy the amount and pay from my bank's website). These are basics - I'm not sure what more the website would do for me (other than summarize my bill better - oh, and beat the living F&**# out of whoever wrote their biling software).

AT&T's website tanks horribly any time you want lateral movement in the site. AT&T has no end of fault lines and every link runs the risk that the new page has no idea who the hell you are.

They want to impress me - they could work on that problem.

I'd watch a video about them fixing that. Hell, I might even congratulate them. I know that kind of fix is brutal.

But I know AT&T as well - and I think the odds are good that we'll get a lot more 17 second videos before we'll see any progress on stuff that customers actually give a crap about.

Huge

(Via NPR)

For a state that prides itself on aloha, Hawaii hasn't had much in the way of broad appeal entertainers - (De Lima, Reiplinger, Bumatai, - ack - Medeiros). But the Aloha state really caught a break with the instant likeability of it's largest, favorite son - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole.

I think the first time I heard Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's rendition of Over The Rainbow - was on E.R. It's one of those songs that immediately resonates with you. If iTunes had existed back then, it would have been downloaded a million times by the time the show ended on the west coast.

Assuming people could spell the name right.

I've played my copy for the uninitiated a few times and the reaction was the same. People stop, listen and say somthing like "sweet voice."

Because it is. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (all 500 pounds of him) had a voice like butter. NPR's story recounts his unlikely rise to fame and the equally improbable creation of his signature song.

Check this out.

It began at 3 in the morning. Milan Bertosa was at the end of a long day in his Honolulu recording studio.

"And the phone rings. It was a client of mine," Bertosa remembers. The client rattled off Israel's unpronounceable name and said he wanted to come in and record a demo. Bertosa said he was shutting down, call tomorrow. But the client insisted on putting Israel on the phone. "And he's this really sweet man, well-mannered, kind. 'Please, can I come in? I have an idea,' " Bertosa remembers Israel saying.

Bertosa relented and gave Israel 15 minutes to get there. Soon, there was a knock at the door.

"And in walks the largest human being I had seen in my life. Israel was probably like 500 pounds. And the first thing at hand is to find something for him to sit on." The building security found Israel a big steel chair. "Then I put up some microphones, do a quick sound check, roll tape, and the first thing he does is 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.' He played and sang, one take, and it was over."

That's just great from any angle.

Much as I loved the song, I've always wondered why he released a version where he screwed up the lyrics.

Knowing that he sang that song at 3 in the morning on the first take is somehow better than an explanation - More like a badge of honor.

Unvarnished, unrehearsed, unfiltered - he laid down vocals that rose above any other shortcomings.

Front Runners

(Via CJR)

Looks like the Fed finally coughed up some information about whose crap it's been buying all this time:

• Deutsche Bank (GER)- $290 billion
• Credit Suisse (SUI) - $287 billion 
• Morgan Stanley - $205 billion
• Goldman Sachs - $159 billion
• Citigroup - $185 billion
• Merrill Lynch/Bank of America - $174 billion
• JPMorgan Chase - $153 billion
• Barclays (UK) - $123 billion
• UBS (SUI) - $94 billion
• BNP Paribas (FRA) - $67 billion

For those of you keeping score at home - that's $1.7 trillion dollars, $861 billion of which is going to foreign banks.

The best bit:

It's not clear how much these firms profited by engaging in the kind of activity that allowed Gross to profit so well, known as "front running." However, it's abundantly clear that they did turn a profit.

Nice.

Free market, my ass.

(Also - isn't this kind of news dump two days early?)