Walt-O-Matic

So, we’ve just finished eating at Arby’s and are backing out of the parking space when suddenly we see white van whip behind us at incredible speeds, clueless that we were in motion backing out.

“He almost hit us!” exclaimed our driver.

I looked out the rear view matter and read the sign on the van, which as now in drive thru. Point it out to the others, I stated “wouldn’t have mattered, it’s a Progressive auto insurance evaluator — we’d be reimbursed on the spot.”

I just had another keyboard mishap moment this afternoon.

A keyboard mishap moment is when you go to press one key, and you get two. Or you type one letter, and you’re off by a keystroke. Or, perhaps, you press the key, but it doesn’t register. Either way, you’ve hit the return key and the message is sent before you notice what actually was typed.

eMail saves us from such events. Instant Messaging, however, makes such mistakes permanent.

Here’s my earliest KMM memory, followed by today’s.

Back in college we had a classic computer room, with a mainframe sitting behind glass, run by operators, while the students were at lab benches working on terminals. I was friends with a number of the assistants. Of particular notice was one named Shelaine, who was a good computer scientist and an even better biologist that happened to have long blonde hair, legs to match, and who was one of the few people I ever knew who’s figure made spandex look good.

Each time she’d sit down at the console, someone would come up to the divided door and ask for a printout off the line printer. This continued for a quite a while, and at was apparent we were not going to be able to hold any real-time conversation at the time.

What I meant to type was: You look busy!

What actually happened was… my finger hit the Y key just to the left, and what I ended up typing and sending was: You look busty!

Of course there was no undo, my face turned red, and she grinned as she erected the most perky and flattering posture in my direction. She knew exactly what had happened, and played up every moment of it. Pretty evil, as neither of us ever had a thing for the other.

Today’s KMM might have been worse.

I work with an intern named Paul, and he’d been tasked with a very demanding job and and even more demanding deadline.

So, rather than bothering him for a status report, I thought I’d have a co-worker check on Paul without disturbing him.

What I meant to type was: How’s Paul doing?

What actually happened was… my finger hit the key, as I rolled off the O, but it didn’t register, and what I ended up typing and sending was: How’s Paul dong?

The answer I got back was along the lines of, “I don’t think that’s a very appropriate question for a work environment.”

Jerry Carr is a cartoonist, known for monkeys, babes, and the graphic novel Cryptozoo Crew, which looks like it may be made into a movie, amongst other things.

While visiting Jerry’s Facebook page, I saw his status message was set to this:

Jerry is freshly motivated after a day at the Jim Henson Muppets display at the Smithsonian!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t help myself. I had to comment on his wall:

The display you really want to see is “Muppet Bodies,” where they take a bunch of preserved, dead muppets and puppeteers and cut them in half, showing you the insides.

You can see how the tendons connect to the distal phalanges in order to produce more articulated facial expressions.

Note, though, there’s a special baby muppets section, which shows the progression of muppet fetuses, starting from a simple spool of thread and piece of fabric. A word of caution, it’s pretty emotional, because at the end are a small number of muppets with birth defects; it’s very sad.

Forgive me Jerry.

This weekend, my sister and niece came to visit for the weekend. That meant going to a lot of playgrounds, getting wet in fountains, building things with blocks, and the big treat: going out for steak dinner. I invited my friend Marcus to join us.

During the ride home, I asked Marcus and my sister if either of them had heard any more news about the FAA being accused of hiding controllers’ mistakes by blaming them on pilots. Neither of them had heard anything about it, so I quickly conveyed the details and described by the Washington Post.

Figuring my niece was half-paying attention, I decided to drift the conversation more toward the way of life-lessons. “You know, it’s okay to make mistakes. You just have to take responsibility for them, and offer to help fix them. You’re more likely to be forgiven, than if you hide it — cause that will get you into more trouble.”

My sister chimed in about that being true, helping to reinforce the proper behavior at home.

Marcus added to that, “The people that fly the airplanes should simply follow the golden rule: do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” I nodded, and he continued, “Don’t lie… Don’t steal…” His inflection indicated he was starting to struggle for some more values to list.

My niece picked up on that, interrupting with “Don’t commit adultery!”

The car went silent. Absolutely silent.

Marcus looked at me, I looked at him, my sister went brilliant red. Did she even know what that word meant?

“I’m not exactly sure how that applies to pilots, but we can run with that,” Marcus recovered quite gracefully.

Unfortunately, I didn’t help. The next words out of my mouth were “Giggity-giggity.” The kid was right.

The other night I had the most sublime hot dog. I don’t mean it was good, I mean it turned straight to gas.

The place was the MCI Center, and I got to see the Wizards play the… oh, who am I kidding. I was trying to make out the cheerleaders from four stories up while eating 6 oz of cotton candy from a plastic $5 bucket. Which, I might add, I refused to throw out since I paid so bloody much for it.

The most enjoyable part of the evening was not the game, but the ride home. As we were waiting for the metro train to arrive, an old lady sat down next to my friend Mike and started to listen in on our conversation.

“So, Walt, we’re thinking of having you over for Christmas. Have you ever had lamb before?”

“Yeah…”

“Oh. What’d you think?”

“I didn’t care for it that much,” And as I noticed the old lady listening in, I quickly added, “but the Bar-B-Que kittens were delicious.”

This prompted the look I was after. And she instantly engaged Mike in conversation to check the veracity of our conversation. At least enough to ascertain that we were good friends.

As the conversation took a turn to prior places lived, it turns out Mike and the old lady had both been to Germany. And, much to the confusion of those around them, started speaking in German. And they did quite well, I must say.

Too well. Cutting me out of the conversation, along with every other eavesdropper in earshot.

I informed Mike that this was America, and that we spoke English here; then I asked to see his legal status. Normally, I don’t engage in this kind of bold maneuver with an armed officer of the law, but by now the overpriced confections instilled a bravery that only spun sugar can do.

Naturally I backed down as he has more ways to kill me in his little finger than a pissed off villain in a James Bond movie.

At this point the train arrived, and I sat down next to the nice little old lady. And her friend. And some other chick who thought it might be the wiser move to ignore me.

“So,” asked the little old lady, “how do you know each other?”

“Him?” I glanced to Mike. “He’s my parole officer.”

Mike over heard enough to flash his handcuffs at me. The little old lady looked mildly uncomfortable and changed the topic.

“Where were you seated?” she inquired.

I explained we were in the 400’s. She then wanted to compare ticket prices (like that mattered now). And then we compared how many times we’ve been to a game at the MCI Center.

There’s a lot of promotional stuff going on at these events, whether it’s Chipotle throwing burritos into the crowd or t-shirts being dropped from parachutes to lucky winners below.

“So,” she continued, “have you ever caught anything at a game?”

“A cold.”

While I got a polite chuckle for quick delivery, she had enough and said, “get your friend; I want to talk with him.”

I yelled over to Mike, who was standing by the door. “She wants to talk with you, apparently I said something again.”

The chick to my left had vacated at the prior stop, so I slid into her old spot, and Mike took mine in front of the old lady.

And immediately, she switched into German again. Clearly, she wanted to practice.

I leaned over and said, “excuse me, you’re talking in code again.”

Mike turned to me and said, quite loudly, “I’m sorry. She said you had a nice ass.”

Without missing a beat, I addressed the old lady, “It’s true. You may be wondering why I’m covering my lap with a bucket.”

Mike, it turns out, wasn’t the only person to bust out laughing, seems a lot of people were riding our conversation, not just the train.

Those who know me have come to terms that I’m interfaced into the Internet almost in real time. eMail is always the best way to reach me. When I’m sitting in front of a terminal, whether for work or pleasure, numerous chat clients are active in the background. Even away from a machine, my phones and automated scripts keep some kind of virtual presence active of one form or another. As a result, friends, family, and co-workers can see my status, location, and reach me with impressively short response times.

Today something interesting happened.

Last night, I was working on a fairly complicated piece of code and had set up a rather complex environment that I didn’t want to have to reinitialize in the morning. Rather than shutting down the machine, I took all my instant messaging clients off-line, and this morning I didn’t start them up, relying on the built-in chat facilities of Google’s GMail.

However, as I was researching, I accidentally closed the GMail window unknowingly, and to the Internet, I went dark.

I had not realized how connected I had become, using chat and emails as a primary means for others to reach me. Well, that was until a co-worker came rushing in to see if I was alright with genuine concern.

He was fairly certain I was in the next room, his email didn’t get a near instant reply, and there was no way to reach me interactively. For anyone else, this would have been no big deal. However, my heart was warmed by this sincere response.

Yes, folks. If my Borg-like collections goes down, please check on me. I might have died or be in need of immediate medical attention.

So some of our really cool friends who live in the neighborhood hold this amazing backyard party each year, in which they rent an enormous water slide that’s about as tall as their two story house.

The day after the party, their real friends head back over to help clean up. And that was what we were doing tonight.

As it started to rain outside, we all gathered the external lights, furniture, food, tables, and so forth. I made a run for a huge extension cord, feeling that electricity and water wouldn’t mix.

Their little girl decided to help me. And, while untangling the cord, she engages me in the most adult conversation that I’ve had with her in the past three years.

She begins, “So, how come you didn’t go down the water slide with me?”

“Well, we had some friends come over, and they wanted to talk.”

“I know. That’s all you do guys do is talk. It’s so boring.”

Remembering this feeling exactly while I was a kid, I thought I’d get her perspective. “Yeah, I know - what should we be doing?”

She paused, placing her finger on her chin. “I think you should do video games and play board games more.”

With a look that I had been given total enlightenment, I replied: “Oh my gosh, I feel like I’ve just been wasting my whole life away.”

“I know,” she agreed a little too quickly.

“Where’s you learn all this?”

She puffed out her six year old chest with pride. “I’m in the first grade.” And as I took in her achievement, she added “Yes, it’s true. I graduated from pre-school. I’m very, very smart.”

And together we wrapped up the rest of the cord, she carried it in, and I went down stairs to play video games with the adults. Honest to God, cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.

One of the big things holding me back from buying an iPhone in the first place, aside from lack of SSH (which was soon resolved), was an article about the hidden evils in the Terms of Service contract.

Well, not sure about whether to take things at face value or not, I bounced my concern off my friend Phil, who’s extremely knowledgeable about telecommunications.

He wrote me back a wonderful point-by-point analysis, which swayed my decision. Feeling that other people might benefit as well, I sought permission from him to reprint it here.

iPhone Requires a 2-Year Contract with AT&T.
1. True; they make the 2-year contract requirement pretty clear. This isn’t a great thing but it’s pretty standard in the U.S. when you buy a phone.

Expensive: Requires $2,280, Over $1,730 in Wireless Costs.
2. Also true, though he overstates the price. The service plan runs about $60/month ($40 voice, $20 data); if that’s too expensive, the iPhone is probably a bad idea. That’s still less costly than a Blackberry or Treo (both about $80/month when you turn on the features needed).

Double Billing. You and the Caller Both Get Charged for the Same Call.
3. True, but not unique to the iPhone. Every cellular carrier in the United States save for a few Nextel plans will charge airtime on both incoming and outgoing calls. If you call another wireless phone user, I suppose you could call that double-billing (though if that other user is on the same carrier [ATT], the airtime rate is the princely sum of zero cents per minute).

All Use of the Networks Are Always Rounded Up to the Nearest Kilobyte or Minute.
4. Standard practice for the wireless industry. The per-kilobyte complaint is pretty funny, though, since the charge per kilobyte for domestic data usage is zero cents per kilobyte.

Customers Are Billed for “Network Errors” and “Network Overhead”.
5. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but it makes no sense.

Billed Even Though the Call Doesn’t Go Through.
6. Basically untrue. Billing in a wireless system begins when the call is answered, though the timer starts when the call is initiated. In other words, if a call rings for fifteen seconds and then is answered, the clock begins at 15 seconds and counts up from there.

Bogus Fees Added to the Bill: Regulatory Cost Recovery Charge
7. While I agree that regulatory recovery fees are basically bogus padding, I challenge him to find a wireless (or, for that matter, conventional wireline) carrier that doesn’t do this.

$175.00 Termination Fee.
8. The early termination fee is pretty well standard throughout the industry. There are certain circumstances where you can avoid paying it (for example, if they raise rates during your contract term).

International Messages Are Charged Additional Fees as Are Files Over 300Kbps.
9. International text messaging (i.e. SMS) costs extra on every cellular carrier I’m aware of. The picture/video messaging charging he complains about isn’t even relevant to the iPhone. And the “additional fee” for large messages that he talks about is irrelevant to the iPhone. My phone communicates directly with my IMAP server over SSL; there’s no way that ATT can tell how large a message is, let alone bill me for those messages over 300K.

Over Your Quota: Get Gouged: 40¢ Per Minute and 69¢ Roaming Offnet.
10. Once again, he’s whining about something that’s absolutely standard in the industry: if you go over your bucket of minutes, you pay a pretty high rate. He conveniently neglects to mention that UNUSED minutes from your plan roll forward into the next month and can be used to offset high usage up to a year later. If that’s not enough, just call and switch to a higher plan and ask them to make it retroactive to your previous month’s usage.

The Services Are Not Secure and Can’t Block Your Phone Number.
11. “Not secure” is a leftover from the days of ANALOG cell phones, which could be listened in upon pretty trivially. And they’re saying that when calling certain toll-free numbers, you can’t block your caller ID since the recipient pays for the call. There’s a MENU on the iPhone that allows you set the default for whether you send caller ID or not; you can also set it per-call. In other words: JUST LIKE A LANDLINE.

The Current Mobile Email Service Doesn’t Support Attachments.
12. Absolutely false. You can send photos trivially (about the only sort of attachment that makes sense to create on a phone), and the iPhone will read a lot of formats (Word, Excel, PDF, JPEG at a minimum).

Prohibited Uses and “Unlimited” Sales Hype.
13. The prohibited uses language is pretty standard wireless carrier language. I agree with him that the claim of “unlimited” is pretty misleading marketing puffery, but it’s an industry-wide problem. If you use your FIOS connection at full bandwidth 24×7, you’ll soon discover that “unlimited” basically means that you’re not billed per unit of data, but that you can still be cut off if you abuse the service. There’s basically nothing you could do on the iPhone that would cause this to happen, though.

Service Is Not Intended to Provide Full-Time Connections: Unlimited is Hype
14. Same as above.

Wi-Fi Service is Limited
15. I think he’s deliberately misinterpreting this one. He’s talking about a completely different wi-fi service that one can purchase through AT&T that has nothing to do with the iPhone. There is of course no limit at all to the number of times in a given time period that the iPhone can connect to a wi-fi network.

“Offnet” Restrictions
16. Another deliberate misinterpretation, I think. “Off-net” usage refers to areas where you’re roaming. Since cell phone roaming charges basically don’t exist anymore for the consumer (the carriers charge each other, though), what they’re saying is that you can’t buy the phone and then use it full-time where, say, T-Mobile has service and ATT doesn’t.

Plan Goobly-gook
17. He’s so incoherent here that it’s hard to figure out what he’s mad about.

Comparing US and Other Broadband Countries: America Is being Laughed At.
18. Perhaps he should move! He forgot to mention that countries using the metric system think we’re pretty silly too–but I’m sure he would have if he’d thought about it. Seriously, he has a point: mobile telephony is more advanced in other parts of the world (largely due to standardization on one network type–GSM). But I’m not sure why that would be the fault of ATT and the iPhone.

My friend and published author, Danny Adams has expressed interest in writing a book entitled The Only Book About Men Women Ever Need.

In the book, we intend on soliciting questions from women (about men) and giving them an honest, yet humorous slant.

As part of an experiment, Danny used his Live Journal account to see if there was any interest.

There most certainly was.

Check out the comment section on Danny’s blog, and if you’d like, leave questions here or there.

Ok, I lied. They’re not ordered, and there’s more than ten. Which ones have your friends plagued you with?

Here’s a list of bad email habits that annoy recipients.

1. When you reply to an email, don’t hit Reply-All unless you intend to send to everyone.

   For instance, when you RSVP to a party invitation, everyone who’s been invited doesn’t need to know your response.

   There’s a difference between Reply and Reply-All, learn it, and use it wisely.
    

2. You do not need to insert your response above my email and send the whole thing back to me.

   When you hit reply, many mail clients copy the whole of the sender’s message so that you may reference it. Don’t whack a few returns, enter your response, and hit send. Delete the quoted message.

   I can’t stress how important this is for anyone who wants to maintain a sane thread of conversation. This is especially true for replying to Internet newsgroups and mailing lists.
    

3. Do not reply by inserting your text into the quoted text, even if you make it a separate color or font.

   The most unreadable email comes when people reply to a message, and then just type after a paragraph - usually without a line break. If the recipient’s mail client can’t preserve the color or font, it becomes unclear who said what.

   Those quote levels are there for a reason.
    

4. Reply-to-reply-to-reply-to-reply…

   You typically see this on mailing lists where someone responds with a short message, preserving the entire historical chain of messages up to that point. Stop it. If you see more than two levels of quotes, something is dreadfully wrong.

   There’s what you’ve said, there’s what everyone else has said, there’s what you’re saying now. If you see more than two levels of quoting, someone is committing at least one of these bad habits.
    

5. Check the To and Cc fields before you hit Reply-All

   If you’ve been blind carbon copied to a message, there’s most likely a reason the sender did so — that usually involves not wanting the public recipients to know you were included.

   For instance, I maintain a list of my friends’ birthdays. Quite often, I’ll send a happy birthday greeting, but BCC their other friends as a subtle reminder. When someone hits Reply-All, it lets the birthday person know that someone else had to be reminded.

   Be considerate to the sender when that person trusts you by using BCC.
    

6. Don’t attach a picture or video you found on the internet.

   Attachments take up space, they make getting mail slower, they take longer to download, they chew up quota. If you found something on the Internet, send the link, not the resource itself. The recipient can then use the most efficient means of getting it.
    

7. Learn to use image compression

   If you are going to send an email with an image attachment, then at least learn to use image compression so that you have a small attachment. I can’t begin to count the number of times someone’s sent me a megabyte jpeg of something stupid.

   Like the web, try to keep images down to 32K or less, if possible. Be respectful of the other person’s INBOX space.
    

8. Learn to upload content to a server

   Rather than clogging email with attachments, learn how to beam content up to a server, and then point the recipients at the content. The email will be smaller, often get there faster, not take as much space, and can be pulled from online faster.
    

9. Keep your signature block small

   I don’t need random quotes. I don’t need legal disclaimers. I don’t need ASCII pictures. I don’t need colors and fonts. I don’t need your picture. I don’t need advertisements. I don’t need a notice a virus checker was used. I don’t need your slogan. I don’t need your logo.

   Plainly put, if your signature block is equal to or larger than the content of your message’s body, something’s wrong.
    

10. Get a personal account, use it as such

    I hate automated legal disclaimer blocks, especially in signatures, and even more so if they are larger than the message content.

    “The information in this email is confidential,…”

    If you’re sending me an unsolicited personal email from your corporate email and someone thinks that legal block is somehow enforceable, forget it - you can’t just throw a legal stipulation on a person, especially if the mistake is yours. As such, I’m not bound to delete the message, either. This fluff is just annoying, and yes, most likely it comes from your work. So, get a personal account. Use it instead.

    You do know your work is legally allowed to read your private mail when you use their systems, yes? That alone should scare you.
     

11. Stop attaching your vCard on every email

    If you’ve sent me your vCard, I’ve got it in my address book - I don’t need a copy with every email.
     

12. Stop using backgrounds for the sake of backgrounds

    It’s one thing if your email has some functional layout and design to it, but if you’re just sending a background for the sake of adding texture, don’t. The most common occurrence I see of this is a repeating tile of textured background. Honestly, plain white is easier to read and prints better. Let’s do without the visual noise and extra attachment overhead.
     

13. If it’s a short message, use text mode.

    Fonts, formatting, colors, and embedded images convey additional information. If you don’t need it to get your point across or add additional clarity, don’t incur the extra overhead of making an HTML message. Plain text messages are much easier to read and respond to on mobile devices.

    We’ve all seen documents and adds that look busy or appear as font soup; don’t commit the same atrocities with your emails.
     

14. Stop putting pictures in Word and PowerPoint files

    I can’t count the number of times someone’s wanted to send me a few images, and was so clueless that they had to make an Office document to hold the picture. The amount of waste, inefficiency, and platform specific ties this incurs is mind boggling. I just can’t take people seriously who do this.
     

15. Don’t blindly forward and email and not tell me why

    I’m not a mind reader, I just play one on TV. Yes, the information forwarded may be pertinent, but unless you establish some kind of context, it may be perceived as junk.

    Never assume the reader of your message is going to get your message in a timely manner, or will be reviewing it with the same mindset or information you have immediately at hand.
     

16. Don’t use tiny fonts

    A number of corporate emails I get arrive as HTML documents with 6 point fonts. Yes, you might have a pretty poor monitor, and it may appear big on your screen, but if you force me to read something at a fixed size, my huge monitor will render it as the microscopic text that it really is.

    If you want me to read your email, make it readable.
     

17. Run spell check

    If you’re typing and a word is underlined in red, double check and fix it. Additionally, avoid cell phone abbreviations like using UR for “your.” You’re not limited to 120 characters, and you’re not being charged 10 cents per message. Use enough to be clear.

    Emails are often saved, and consequently searched. If the words in your email aren’t ones entered into a search box, then you’ve made if difficult for someone to find or reference your email.