A Mobile Shop on Every Corner

We are loyal customers of T-Mobile, which offers the best rates of all the main service providers in the US. Shortly before our trip to Germany this past August, we switched from our old, grandfathered-in plan to their Simple Choice plan, which included an amazing roaming package: free data and texting in most countries, and only 20 cents per minute on calls. It worked superbly in Germany. Data was at least 3G speeds in most places we were (read: big cities), texting was useful when Allan and I needed to split up (or when we got separated on a super-crowded bus and I had to text him to let him know at which stop to get off), and when Allan's father passed away while he was still in Sweden on business, it was great to be able to call his family (and have them call him on his US number) without worrying about roaming charges.

I digress. As valuable as this plan was for keeping in touch with each other and with our families back home (and using Google Maps because our rental car's GPS was utterly useless!), it didn't help when it came to keeping in touch with our German friends, whom we were visiting during this trip. I mean, we could call them, but they'd be calling an international number to reach us! So one of the first orders of business was to get a German SIM card. Should be easy, right? Not quite, when you arrive on a Sunday when all the shops are closed and your schedule is jam-packed, with your first day in a medieval town known for its charming Christmas shops and not mobile shops :-P

We finally went SIM card shopping when we toured Nuremberg on Day 3. I had done my research ahead of time to figure out what provider offered the best bang for our Euro, but I was a little concerned about how we would find a shop that sold the best cards. My worries were all for naught, because as soon as we entered the Altstadt, we were bombarded by mobile shops. There must have been at least two on each corner! And we lucked out at T-Mobile, where we were able to get a SIM card for only 10 Euros, which gave us 250MB of data and around 150 minutes of talk/text time. Easy peasy!

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. Germany (and much of the rest of Europe, I'm sure) has been ahead of the US in the mobile phone world for some time. When I arrived in Germany in 1998, cell phones were becoming very prevalent, and when I returned to the US in 2001, the US seemed to be just on the verge of embracing mobile phones. I went from a country where everyone had a cell phone to one that, despite being a leader in world technology, still regarded cell phones as a novelty. Things rapidly changed, of course. And during this time, there is one thing about the US mobile phone system that irks me to no end: you pay for incoming calls.

I don't know that any other country in the world does it. When I was in Germany, most of my colleagues use prepaid cards. Once the money ran out, they could no longer make calls until they reloaded their card, but they could RECEIVE calls just fine. Nowadays, with US plans offering variations of unlimited minutes, it's less of an issue, but I remember having to be careful not to go over my alloted minutes each month, even if I wasn't MAKING any calls. How ridiculous is that!?

Even nowadays, I feel like my German friends have so many more options when it comes to phone plans, both pre-and-post paid, than we Americans do. Similar to us, they have 4 main networks, but there's also a wide array of sub-providers that rent the networks and offer sometimes-cheaper, often-more-flexible options. They would balk at what we pay each month for service, and we already pay amongst the lowest rates of all the US providers!!

As with other things, I think the US could learn a thing or two from Germany... alas, as long as money drives the decisions, I doubt that would ever happen. One can dream, though, right? :-)

I'm posting every day in October as part of the 31-Day Writing Challenge. Click here to read more about it and to see the rest of my posts this month!

Friday Five: Recent Exclamations

I've noticed that in recent months, I've been blogging at a rate of twice per month: one post is a Karaoke Ring of Death post, and the other is a "normal" post. Which means that in actuality, I've been posting only once a month. One of the things I used to do with regularity back in my blogging heyday was the Friday Five. So I thought I'd try to get the blogging juices flowing again... with another installment of the everlasting meme :-)

1. What were the events leading up to your most recent utterance of oops?
2. What were the circumstances that led to your most recent utterance of aha!?
3. What most recently caused you to say ick?
4. What inspired your most recent utterance of yum?
5. Where were you (and what was going on?) the last time you said ooooooooh?

1. Well, Allan can attest to this one-- it invariably involves some kind of electronic device, whether it's a phone, a tablet, a laptop or a desktop computer. I have a reverse-Midas touch: every device I touch will, without fail, hiccup at least once. I'll bet you didn't know that Macs and Linux machines have BSODs, did you? Well, just leave those devices to my capable fingers... Anyway, while I don't remember the last specific instance leading to my utterance of "oops", I am quite sure it involved a device of some kind, and I'm quite sure it belonged to Allan ;-)

2. This one is less amusing: we'd gotten a letter from the IRS with questions about our 2010 tax return, and I was puzzling over why they thought we had so much unreported income. After sifting through our W-2s, pay stubs, and financial company statements, I figured out where they were getting those numbers (that was my "aha!" moment), and immediately printed out and organized my "evidence" to set them straight! Now I've got a nice little packet to mail back to them today. I tried to make everything as clear as  possible, and hope they will be able to sort it out. No offense to my father-in-law (the former IRS agent), but I have little faith in the organizational and comprehension skills of your average IRS agent!

3. This morning we held a little welcome breakfast for the new Chair of our department, and the subject, as it usually does amongst my co-workers, turned to food and local eateries. Someone brought up Jack-in-the-Box, which garnered many wrinkled brows of disgust, particularly at the tacos. Not me personally, as I like the place okay. But when my boss brought up how her husband loves JITB and how it sometimes doesn't agree with him, and a co-worker piped up with "yeah, JITB can be a real crapshoot", that certainly elicited groans at the pun and "ewws" at the visual!

4. Yesterday, a HS classmate of mine posted on FB about how he was cooking up sausage and kale soup. It sounded really delicious, and the thought of the dark, leafy green, healthful kale balancing out the less-healthful but undoubtedly yummy sausage made it sound even more appealing!

5. This week has two Fridays. Tuesday was a "Friday" because of the 4th of July holiday on Wednesday, and, well, TODAY is a real Friday. So what better way to celebrate a mid-week "Friday" than by going out and enjoying a good happy hour? My mind and lips were full of "ooooh"s as I scoped out various local joints to find out which ones had a good happy hour. Eventually, I settled on Tupelo Junction, which elicited the most emphatic "ooooh"s from both me and Allan. I mean, come on, just LOOK at their Happy Hour menu-- isn't that enough to make anyone salivate? Here's a small sampling of some of the many mini dishes we savored on Tuesday night: bread assortment (cheddar scallion, smoked bacon gouda, and sweet potato pecan) and fried green tomatoes with a corn and tomato salsa and buttermilk dill sauce. Blackberry mojito in the background:

 

How about you?

A Ring Is Not Just A Ring

This "Working Daze" comic reminded me of one of my favorite stories that took place shortly after Allan and I got married.

When we tied the knot, not many of our friends at school knew about it. So when I went to class the following Monday after our wedding weekend, one friend, Golnaz, immediately spied the plain gold ring I was sporting on my left hand. She gave me a coy, knowing look and asked: "What is that?" Before I could say anything, our other friend, Steve, overheard her question and sidled up to us. He followed Golnaz's gaze to my hand and studied my ring.

His earnest, excited reaction?

"Oh, is that from Lord of the Rings!?"

Golnaz stared at him incredulously for a few seconds before setting him straight: "It's a wedding ring, you dork!" I can't remember if she smacked him or not, but I wouldn't have blamed her if she did. Only a bona fide geek would see a plain, flat, gold band on the ring finger of a girl's left hand and automatically assume it's that sci-fi/fantasy ring, and not a wedding band! Apparently Roy and Kathy fit that bill! :-P

Good ol' Steve. This little anecdote has provided lots of laughter as we've recounted it numerous times throughout the years since then.We love him anyway! :-)

The Copier Warms Up

Our ancient copy machines take forever to warm up after a night of "sleeping". I had the happy "fortune" of having to wake one of these behemoths up, as I was the first one to use them one morning. I waited, and waited, and waited. Then waited some more. Before long, I realized that the screen kept changing pictures to match the warming-up progress. I decided to take pictures of it as it went along, not realizing that I'd have a whole slew of pictures by the time the copier was completely warmed up. It probably took a good 5 minutes, but at least I was somewhat entertained throughout it all!

It began with a space shuttle, ready for launch:

I missed the shot of the space shuttle reaching the top of that... whatever that scaffolding next to is called, but there is a screen where it has risen, plumes of smoke billowing out behind it. Then came a picture of the shuttle well on its way into space:

 

Distant planets are starting to come into view:

 I see meteors and other distant galaxies!

Finally, docking with another spacecraft. And now we actually get to see astronauts floating around in space.

Did you notice something interesting-- the progress bar to the left the entire time? It started out completely filled, and then emptied as the copier warmed up. Quite the opposite of what you'd expect in a progress bar, isn't it? Usually you expect those things to fill up, not empty, as it progresses. Definitely threw me for a loop the first time I saw it.

I have to admit, this sequence of pictures was actually kind of neat. kept me entertained during the wait, at least!

The Trouble With Remotes

Today's Drabble comic reminded me of a couple of funny television-remote-related anecdotes, as well as some musings. First up, the comic:

Yesterday my boss arrived at work, dug around in her purse for her keys to let herself into the building, and was surprised to see her TV remote in there. That's when she realized that in her morning rush, she'd inadvertently grabbed the remote instead of her cell phone... which happened to be sitting right next to the remote. When she left at quittin' time, she wondered aloud about what kinds of long distance calls her dog must have made in her absence ;-)

The mention of her dog reminded me of Ron and Debbie's late doggie-- Sammy. Apparently one weekend while they were out of town, leaving the dog to his own devices (see, unlike kids, dogs can do well on their own for a few days-- leave them some food and water, and they're good to go!), Sammy accidentally stepped on the remote, turning the TV on. Further actions-- maybe playing with it? -- caused the volume to go up. Way up. It got so loud that not only did it scare poor Sammy, but the neighbors actually called the cops because of the noise! The cops had to break in and turn off the TV. Who knows how long the TV was on before Sammy was rescued from the clutches of the noise pollution! ;-)

We're so attached to our remotes. Makes you wonder how on earth we managed to survive in the days of TVs that had knobs you had to manually turn. I remember growing up watching one of those small B&W models with the... what was it, 13? channels. That was before we moved into our house, and our living room apartment was so small we sat close enough to the TV that sitting up and reaching out to turn the knob wasn't too inconveniencing.

Why is it that when the batteries on a remote run low, we respond by pressing the buttons harder? Do we somehow believe that the weak connection will work better if we exert untold force on the poor buttons?

Amazing, isn't it-- in the span of just a decade or two, we've gone from the non-existence of remote controls to now having to keep track of 3 or 4. Let's see-- the TV, the VCR, the DVD, the stereo, the DirectTV console... yeah, it adds up. No wonder we're so attached to our clickers, we become virtually unable to function without them. Just like Ralph Drabble above :-)

Netflix Raises its Prices

There's been a lot of outcry over Netflix's recent announcement about changes in not only its prices, but its plan structure. We subscribe to the unlimited streaming + 1 DVD out-at-a-time plan, which currently costs us $10/month. When the changes take place in a month, that same plan will now cost us $16. Quite an increase!

Now, for us, the change isn't particularly drastic or unmanageable, for a number of reasons:

1. Netflix serves as a TOTAL replacement for cable, not a supplement. $80/month vs. $16/month is still an incredible savings. Plus it cuts down on channel-surfing-- we only watch TV when there is something we want to purposefully watch.

2. We use Netflix primarily for TV shows, secondarily for movies. There are really only one or two shows that we can't get either on Netflix or on another website (like Hulu, or the station's website), so Netflix's offerings, when it comes to what we like to watch, is pretty substantial. Between me and Allan, we probably watch nearly a dozen TV shows on a regular basis.

3. Now that we have our brand-new, huge flat-screen HD TV for the new house, we REALLY take full advantage of the Netflix streaming service, because the TV has a built-in Netflix app. We can watch everything that Netflix streams (commercial-free and in hi-def!) with just a wireless internet connection.

In fact, we're even contemplating upgrading to the 2-DVD-out-at-a-time plan, which would cost $20/month-- still a fraction of cable cost. Although I primarily use the DVD subscription to watch TV shows that aren't streamed, it would be nice to also be able to check out the occasional movie, without having to wait until the current DVD is finished.

So, although for us, it still makes economical sense to stick with Netflix despite their inflated prices, I can also understand where a lot of other consumers are coming from with their outrage.

First, Netflix did away with their combo plans and instituted separate DVD vs. streaming plans. So now we're essentially paying for two separate services: streaming and DVD. This makes sense when you have customers that use one exclusively over the other, but it penalizes those that actually use both. Why isn't Netflix offering a discount for those who subscribe to a combination plan?

Second, if the pricing structure is undergoing such a drastic change, why aren't existing customers being allowed to grandfather in their current price/plan, or at least have their prices raised by a much smaller amount-- essentially the same as receiving a discount for a combo plan? I know that when we significantly change features on our products, we try to mitigate the effect of taking AWAY a feature-- at the very least by making it user-configurable.

These changes don't seem to be making much sound business sense. I am really curious to see what happens to Netflix's customer base once the changes take effect. Whatever decisions they decide to pursue between now and then, or even afterward, it definitely won't be without lack of consumer outrage! Wonder how much they'll take that into account...

NUD-- stop cluttering Twitter with sports Tweets!

Apparently today is National UnFriend Day, courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel (and cameos by Wolf Blitzer):
I've never watched Jimmy Kimmel before, but maybe I should start, because this really made me laugh.



I'm not very particular when it comes to adding friends on Facebook, but (aside from a small handful of people I met from the Grab.com days) everyone I've added is someone I know from some aspect of my life-- high school, college, Army days, grad school, work or church. And in the small town of Santa Barbara, these circles sometimes overlap. At any given time, maybe 1/3 of my friends are actually active and posting, plus I hide most game/app-related posts, resulting in a pretty manageable feed. So for me, National UnFriend Day isn't really an issue.

I personally try not to clutter my own feed with a bunch of stuff back-to-back. Lately this isn't easy to to, as I'm posting both my NaBloPoMo posts and my Project 365 pictures every day, in addition to whatever status updates or links strike my fancy. So I at least try to space it out-- with the two blogs, I try to do one post in the early afternoon, and one in the evening, for example.

Now, where I am tempted to apply NUD to is Twitter. I don't actually follow a lot of people, less than 50, in fact. Keeps my feed clutter-free and only centered around people/websites I'm actively interested in hearing updates about. And for the most part, it works.

Until sports game days roll around.

Doesn't matter what the sport is, or where it's taking place-- football in the USA or soccer in Europe, if it has die-hard fans, I'm sure a couple of them wind up being folks I happen to follow on Twitter.

Here's a newsflash for those folks: you don't have to Tweet the latest play every 2 minutes! If I really cared that much about the game, I would be watching it myself. If you've got friends who are as nuts about the game as you are, then invite them over. Or IM them, if they are far away. Why do you need to clutter up your Twitter feed with updates that only a small handful of people will actually care about!? It's annoying to have my Firefox Twitter app (formerly called TwitterFox, now Echofon (yeah, I don't get that one either)) update and load about 20 Tweets from you every 5 minutes, obscuring other Tweets and just making everything really cluttered overall.

I kind of get where Jimmy Kimmel is coming from with the useless info that can clutter up your Facebook feed, but I've found that by and large, most people don't update their statuses as often as they do on Twitter (and I actually enjoy hearing the "drivel" from friends-- nice little bite-sized updates on their lives, because I actually care). If anyone needs to learn to curb their enthusiasm for posting every detail of their lives, those culprits are the sports fanatics (and other similar people) on Twitter, not Facebook.

You're publicizing details of your life to what more or less amounts to the general public. Please do so responsibly... and courteously!

User Experience is more than just visual!

I believe one of the points of pride in our company is that we hire honest-to-goodness user experience designers to mold and shape the design and user experience of our products. Unlike user interface designers, which are typically web developers (programmers), these folks are artists and psychologists. They work with aspects of aesthetics and the human psyche that we engineers would rather not deal with. Add that with another point of pride-- really listening to our customers and finding ways to incorporate their feedback into prioritized features. I think this presents a never-ending challenge for our user experience designers-- striking that right balance between customer wishes and good engineering practices. So I can appreciate how much work goes into creating as smooth and seamless a user experience as possible-- from logging into the website to purchasing the product, to actually downloading and then using the product itself. I think our designers do a fine job of striking that balance.

Which is why Friday night left me so frustrated that I shocked a few of my Facebook friends, who had never heard me cuss before, with my language (which was actually toned down from what I originally wrote!)

Friday night, with Todd in LA, I decided to catch up on some online karaoke. I was getting fed up with Myspace because I noticed they no longer allow non-members to view recordings. Which of course, I find utterly ridiculous. Most people I know jumped the Myspace ship long ago, it isn't fair to expect them to have to sign up all over again just to hear an occasional recording I post to Facebook or my blog. So, I started taking a closer look at SingSnap. I'd long ago stopped using SingSnap because they were locking more and more of their songs to paid members. But my frustrations with Myspace's changes led me to give them a try. I figured, I'll sign up for a one-month membership and see how it goes. If I like it, I'll pay for an annual (cheaper) membership.

Only one problem. For payments that small, I have to go through Paypal. Only semi-annual and annual memberships can be paid directly to SingSnap. That's totally understandable-- it's like the small mom-and-pop stores who require a minimum balance before they'll allow use of credit card as payment. The fees would eat them alive. And I have a Paypal account already verified and hooked up to a couple credit cards and my checking account, so no big deal, right?

Wrong.

I think something went wrong around the time I put in my Paypal password. I'm fairly certain I mistyped a key, but it was too late-- I'd hit "Enter" before I could fix it. No biggie, I thought. Most websites will give you an error message and let you try again. Most secure ones will probably lock you out after a number of failed attempts, but at least they allow you more than one attempt. Not so with Paypal. After my failed attempt, I logged in with my correct password, only to be met with a series of screens that indicated that my account was restricted.

What. The. Hell.

It was not that long ago that I attempted to use Paypal to make a payment, only to find out that because my account wasn't yet "verified", I couldn't send the money. The whole rigamarole of verifying my account was such a hassle! But I eventually got it verified and was able to complete my transaction... a couple days later. And I figured-- once verified, I should be good to go, right?

Apparently not. Now that my account was restricted due to "suspicious activity", I had to complete 3 tasks in order to restore my account. First I had to set some security questions. No biggie. Then I had to reset my password. This I wasn't too happy about, as I have a set pattern for passwords to different types of accounts, and this was going to break it. But okay, I can live with that, if begrudgingly. Finally, I had to verify my address. Oooh look-- it presented me with a number of options to verify the address. What's the fastest way?

First, I tried to select "verify by credit card". What should come up instead but a screen that showed my 2 stored credit cards, and an error message that said the card was either invalid or not found. WHAT CARD!? I wasn't even given an opportunity to select a freakin' card or enter any information!!!!!

Fine, let's try another option: oh, verify by mail. Nope, all that does is send me some instructions via snail mail. No thanks.

Ah, here we go: verify by phone. They'll call me and have me do some things. That should be instantaneous, right? Guess again... they won't accept cell phone numbers, and I don't have a landline. SOL on that front.

My only other option (besides waiting for the snail mail) was to upload a copy of my bank statement or some such that showed my name and address. Fortunately, online banking makes this a cinch, and I easily downloaded a PDF statement from my bank's website. But this verification process still takes at least a day on Paypal's end. Which meant that I could not complete my transaction that same night.

In the end, I resorted to paying SingSnap directly for an annual membership. I wanted the membership and I wanted it now, and I wasn't going to wait for Paypal to finish fucking around and restore my account. Fortunately, the SingSnap membership has been proving very worthwhile, but the whole experience with Paypal has left a very sour taste in my mouth.

I mean, think about it-- what triggered this "suspicious activity" alert? The fact that I entered the wrong password. Not multiple times, which may be indicative of a hacker, but ONCE. You know, because I'm only human and likely to make a mistake once in a while. Not very forgiving, if you ask me. And while I do understand that Paypal wants to protect the safety of my account, it's really not worth the added inconvenience. To add insult to injury, the series of pages I had to go through to restore my account were a joke. What few error messages they gave were totally useless and obviously buggy.

In short: Paypal offered the shittiest user experience I've ever seen. First, the whole hassle of restoring my account because I mistyped my password. Then, the restoration process itself was fraught with horrible UIs. So fuck you, Paypal. I only put up with you because there really isn't anything else out there, and because I do deal with occasional merchants that only accept Paypal. I just hope that you make the user experience of RECEIVING money a hell of a lot smoother than you the experience of SENDING it.

Grrrrrr....

Website Woes

You know, it always sucks when a site that you're a member of suddenly changes things and actually takes away features. I know that when we make changes to our software, we're cognizant of the fact that a feature that many people may not like are actually appreciated by a small handful, and if we're going to remove it, we should at least make it optional. Same goes with things on Facebook-- features that I'm sure very few people use but that I've come to rely on, are suddenly gone. And it's annoying. And frustrating. Especially when things are already buggy and now I no longer have a fallback fix (i.e. manually refreshing the RSS feed for Notes when it doesn't do so automatically). But hey-- it's free, I don't pay for it, it works for the most part, so I don't have much in the way of complaints.

But when it's something I DO pay for, then I'm going to be a little more picky about it :-P

I'm a little disappointed with Myspace karaoke these days-- the new layout is extremely buggy (of course, that is nothing new for Myspace) and now they have it set so you can't even VIEW member recordings unless you're signed in. I can understand restricting the ability to rate/comment to members only, but simply VIEWING it? That's ridiculous. So now I'm contemplating Singsnap. I've got a free account there, but lately it means nothing because they've been moving all their good songs to members-only. Plus, it's twice as expensive as Myspace membership (only because I got a great deal on Myspace and snagged a membership when it was on sale, nearly 50% off. And when it came time to renew, they gave me the same discounted price! Props to Myspace for THAT, at least!). On the other hand, they make it easy to embed their video player onto websites, making it easier to share than Myspace recordings.

That, however, raises the question of where I would embed such a video-- on my blog, right? Hah. That opens up another can of worms:

I'm really starting to regret moving from Blogger to Wordpress a year ago. The only things Wordpress had that Blogger didn't were:
1) built-in nested comments
and
2) per-post privacy settings.

However, these days, nested comments aren't really useful anymore because hardly anyone comments on the blog itself, and there are simple ways around the privacy settings. Some other disadvantages: I have to actually PAY to customize the theme to my liking, I can't embed anything but YouTube into my posts, and I can't put in JavaScript anywhere in the page. Blogger allows you to do all that-- for free. Sigh. And now my one-year subscription to the CSS editing capabilities is about to expire. I bought it last year on sale-- Black Friday ;-) I think I'm going to hold off on renewing this year to see if they offer the sale price again after Thanksgiving ;-)

Actually, I think I'm going to first re-examine whether or not I even want to remain on Wordpress.com. I know, I know-- I had really hoped that last year's move to Wordpress would be my final one. Seems like I've packed up and hauled off to different blog forums as often as I've physically moved within Santa Barbara. Feels rather flighty, and really-- needs and priorities change, as do the different sites and what they offer. Maybe I should consider registering and hosting a domain name of my own, that way I can change the underlying blog app whenever I feel like it. Hmm, something to think about.

Decisions, decision... any input from you, dear readers?

Passing Notes, Modern Style

Remember when you were in school, and you used to pass notes to your classmates? This was in the day before cell phones became so prevalent across high school campuses, and well before text messages.

Well, today Allan and I were in a meeting that got a little boring. Part of it was the subject matter, and part of it was the speaker, and part of it was the fact that the speaker was remote, so instead of having a live, talking, moving human being to at least focus on, all we had to stare at was the screen with the presentation slides, and a disembodied voice emanating from the speakers in the ceiling.

We'd whisper to each other, but that isn't easy to do or keep surreptitious. So I asked him to bring up a Notepad-style app on his phone so we could converse that way. It was almost like IMing each other... except we could look over each other's shoulders as we typed. I'd type on one line, and Allan would type on the next line:

(Helly in red, Allan in blue)

Look we can pass notes
Haha
We're naughty
How naughty? ;-)
Naughty enough. does this remind you of school days
don't know too long ago
Lol. I should blog this. Save and send: )

It all reminded me a bit of our recent trip to Vegas, where I lost most of my voice on the first day, and had to resort to using Allan's phone to type casual messages to him at the breakfast table... and try to save what little voice I had left.

So there you have it. Passing notes, updated a little from the old-school style of pen-and-paper. Ain't technology grand? ;-)

Name that duo

A bit of geekish background:

As part of his work, Allan has written a program to combine sound files, not only flush, but at varying intervals, kind of like when you sing "Row Your Boat" and the next person chimes in as you're halfway through, etc...

We had fun reading parts of my old blog entries out loud, recording them, and then mixing the ensuing sound files. When we mixed 6 different voice clips (3 of his, 3 of mine), the resulting cacophony didn't sound as bad as expected-- it actually sounded like you would expect a small room full of people to sound, each conversing with another.

Then I hit on an idea: what would it sound like to mix singing? Even more cacophonous than talking, I speculated. So he put together 2 voice clips of the same song, recorded separately. The amazing thing? Despite the fact that both were recorded independently of one another, the timing just happened to work out perfectly. Enjoy the results:

The mp3 (75KB):
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/2/2/725759/duet.mp3

In case, for whatever reason, the mp3 won't play for you, here's the original WAV file (1.2MB):
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/2/2/725759/duet_wav.wav

Can you identify the two singers?

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/415252556)

The Birthday Paradox (plus Friday Five)

Have you ever heard of the birthday paradox? It is a statistical problem with a surprising solution. Given a room full of X people, how large must X be in order to achieve a 50:50 chance of finding 2 people with the same birthday? The answer is surprisingly small: 23.

But I think I throw that statistic out of whack. Of all my friends and acquaintances (both offline and online), I know not one, not two, but THREE people who share my birthday. Even more amazingly? TWO of them were born the exact same YEAR as me. One of them is Nine from Germany, a Myspace friend. The other is Francois, whom I know through the Geekhouse at UCSB. In fact, we once tried to figure out who was older, in terms of hours. I think Francois won. And then there's Justin, who's a year younger than me. Now, the funny thing is that the three of us (me, Francois and Justin) learned about out our shared birthday during a cocktail party at the Geekhouse. Those aren't large affairs. There are typically only around 25 people at such shindigs. So, here we are, in a house with JUST the right amount of people to fulfill the birthday paradox... and we ended up with a 100% chance of finding 3 of us. Neat, isn't it?

Anyway, without further ado, here is today's Friday Five. And just to keep this post from getting too long, I shall join the rest of you in answering them on the comments.

p.s. if you're experiencing deja vu, it's because I recycled some of the questions from a birthday-themed Friday Five that I did a couple years ago on Grab. Ah, sue me-- it's been long enough that most of us will have forgotten what the others originally wrote ;-)

1. How many candles were on your last birthday cake? And when is your birthday?

2. Does anyone else (famous and/or in your own life) share your birthday?

3. Do you think your astrological sign fits you pretty well? Why or why not?

4. Surprise parties: love 'em or hate 'em?

5. What do you want for your next birthday?

BONUS QUESTION:

6. Other than your loving partner (heh), from whom would you most like to receive a birthday kiss?

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/389226471)

Warning: Powerful speakers cause false alarms

A few years back we rummaged through a garage sale and came across a little stereo system. It had a 3-CD changer which was broken, but the radio and cassette player portions worked fine. Its price tag? $5. Not bad, considering we did need a cassette player, but it seemed a bit large and unwieldy just for that. Allan, however, noticed something else: the nice Bose speakers attached, good quality ones which would easily have been worth over $100 retail. So we bought it, and then promptly put it in the corner to collect dust for the next few years ;-P

Since Todd moved back in with us temporarily last month, we had to rearrange the bedroom a bit to make room for his extra items. So, I moved the stereo to the nightstand on Todd's side of the bed, figuring I could play classical music cassette tapes for him to listen to as he drifted off to sleep at night. That worked well... until the following weekend, when it came time to vacuum the bedroom, and the large speakers sitting on the floor proved yet again unwieldy.

This weekend, Allan hit upon the perfect solution. He has long owned one of those fancy-schmancy sound systems with the big subwoofer and all those little speakers you can scatter around your living room, creating the perfect surround-sound experience, yadda yadda yadda... Well, he swapped out two of the little speakers for the two Boses from the garage sale, and voila! Problem solved! Except... now there was the matter of where to put the big Bose speakers with respect to our tiny living room's entertainment center (keep in mind our entire apartment is maybe 800 sq. ft total, so "big and unwieldy" is a relative term). Allan discovered that they fit perfectly on the TV stand behind the TV itself. Proud of himself, he flopped down on the futon and settled down to watch a movie, trying out the new speaker hookup for a test drive.

Things sounded great! And heck-- if you were a blind person you would never have noticed the next mishap-- odd color effects on the TV screen.

"Oh crud", thought Allan, "the TV's finally going out". His next thought was one of glee: "Yay, that means we can get the big flat-screen monitor!" Fortunately for our bank account (and for his physical well-being), he wisely decided to investigate and see if he could fix the problem first. Sure enough, what do you suppose the cause was? The strong magnetic force of the speakers was distorting the TV colors! He put the speakers back down on the floor, the TV returned to normal, and he shook his head sadly-- gone was the excuse to get a nice, big flat-screen monitor :-P

(originally posted at:  http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/359604236)

Jingle Bells with a Bonus

In April of last year I found a website that features online karaoke, and went crazy making my own recordings:

http://www.singshot.com/user.html?userId=9CszAnQKOps%3D

You can even tell at what point I stopped using my laptop's built-in mic and plugged in an external one (the sound of my computer's fan disappears). After blogging one of my songs on Grab, I promptly forgot all about the website.

Then, when Allan got his new laptop this past weekend, I rediscovered the karaoke sites, including one that lets you film yourself with your webcam as you sing. Since Allan's new computer comes with a built-in webcam, I waited until he put his new toy down before seizing it and exploring those features.

Here's a little sampling, a duet performed by Todd and me: "Jingle Bells". It's pretty ordinary and nothing to clamor about, but the entertaining part comes at the end of the song. I had forgotten to hit the "Stop" button when we finished singing, and though the mic shut off, the webcam continued to record. What follows is several (silent) minutes of Todd and me playing with SingSnap's various video settings and having fun observing our recorded selves onscreen. My new turtle, Pistachio, features prominently in this (don't laugh. Okay, laugh-- but not too hard :-P)






(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/345402522)

New Computer

I am typing this from Allan's new laptop, which arrived safe and sound last night, poor UPS man looking like a drowned rat. It's a pretty nice laptop, even if it IS a Mac ;-P The keyboard is a bit funky-- the keys are spaced out a bit more than they usually are, but I like it! It also comes built in with a webcam, here's a sample photo taken just minutes earlier:



I'm still miffed that there is only one mouse button. I don't think I'll ever take Macs that seriously until they start making laptops with TWO buttons. And yes, I know I can emulated right-clicks and middle-clicks but I prefer the convenience of actual, physical buttons :-P I also use the PgUp, PgDn, Home and End keys with more frequency than I realized, and the lack of such keys on a Mac laptop keyboard make it that much less user-friendly for me.

I enjoyed a nice, quiet day today, sans boys. Allan took Todd on an extended shopping trip south of town and I got to enjoy a nice, peaceful apartment in which to do whatever I pleased. So, I got a chance to catch up on lots of reading, yay! As much as I love my boys and love hanging out with them, it's always nice to have a "just me" day once in a while. Back to the grind now... starting with dinner! :-9

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/344737135)

Christmas Gift Flash Toy

Stolen from Jenny (ArmageddJenn). A neat little flash toy that lets you give gifts, customize the look of the wrapping, search for gifts that aren't already posted in their default list, and enclose a personal note. Thought I'd have a bit of fun and sign up for one of my own. Here goes!


(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/329495436)

I Hate Windows Vista

A couple months ago I blogged an anti-Internet Explorer rant. Today the rant continues-- not just about a web browser, but an entire operating system: Windows Vista. I was merrily typing away at an email and paused to watch some TV, allowing the computer to sit idle for a little while. The screensaver kicked on, and I turned back to the computer, moving the mouse to kill the screensaver and get back to what I was doing. Before my very eyes, my browser window (with my half-finished email) disappeared, as did every other application-- and the entire system shut DOWN! Fortunately I had an automatically-saved draft of my email and hadn't been working on anything else I could've potentially lost.

Still... who needs the blue screen of death when you can just watch your computer shutting down in an orderly fashion, without any prompting from you!?

The interface is tacky, too, I find. I guess it's designed to be "user-friendlier" but the only thing I like is the fact that you can right-click on your desktop and bring up ALL your preferences, not just display options. First thing I did when I set up my account was to revert back to the "Windows Classic" interface. And even then it's laced with Vista-specific foibles. It is still basically ugly and kludgy and hard to manage.

And then... my favorite email client, Outlook Express, which comes built into Windows, was repackaged as "Windows Mail". Okay, not a big deal, as the functionality and interface was basically the same. Until I tried doing simple things like watching a video on YouTube, and discovering it was extremely choppy. I thought it was a lossy internet connection so I downloaded the Flash Video file and tried to view it offline. Made no difference. So I pulled up the task manager to figure out what was going on, and what do you suppose I saw, hogging up an unconscionable amount of CPU power and memory? That's right-- Windows Mail. How can a program as basic as an email client consume that many resources!?!? Oh and speaking of memory-- let's not forget that just to install Vista itself requires an inordinate amount of "minimum" memory and hard disk space. Windows seems to get more and more bloated with each new version it rolls out!

So, in a nutshell-- I am no fan of Windows Vista. Crappy interface, terrible memory hog, unexpected shut-downs... yeah... as soon as we have time I'm gonna revert this thing back to good ol' XP.

Meantime... back to my email. My apologies to the recipient for the even further delays...

Once a Geek...

... always a geek.

I thought I'd share a random collection of funnies, mostly personal, to exemplify this.

First up, a bit of the cartoon that always seems to grace my blog :-D

These are a couple of my personal favorites because I can especially relate to them. The first one fits me to a tee-- how I don't go through withdrawals on weekends, when I rarely check email and stuff, is beyond me. The second one also describes me pretty well-- when searching for hotels, having free hi-speed internet access is among the top amenities I'm looking for! Our road trip this past summer perfectly exemplified it: free internet trumped free continental breakfast anyday!



The hot tub vs. internet cartoon segues perfectly into a real-life example that's very similar. Allan's been doing the job hunting rounds lately, and has been fielding calls from recruiters. One recruiter tempted him with the tantalizing prospect of having not one, but TWO monitors at his disposal. Not a big deal, you say? Well try on two 30-inch monitors for size! Allan's first thought? "Ooooh, sign me up! Salary? Who cares about salary-- we're talking about 2 30" monitors here!!" Sigh... geekish priorities...

And finally, geekery cannot be evaded even in the most un-geekish of settings, like a wedding :-D We went to a friend's wedding several weeks ago, and during dinner, we were given cards and a special pen (with long-lasting ink) to write our wishes for the bride and groom. Rather than the usual Hallmark-type fare, Allan and I decided to show our true colors (hey-- the groom is a geek, too!) by writing a bit of computer code. I took a picture of the card before we submitted it:



It's a tad blurry, so I thought I'd write out the code itself. My geeky readers (read: Wayne and Steve) should be able to decipher it ;-)

while (true) {
   scott.messup();
   scott.beg(forgiveness);
   brittany.forgive();
}

void beg (Goal g) {
   scott.plead();
   scott.cry();
   scott.buy (flowers, candy, jewelry);
}

I guess the point is not so much the content of the "code" itself, but the fact that we came up with such a geekish representation of our wishes to the happy couple. Not to worry, we flipped the card over and wrote our normal English greeting so the bride could keep some semblance of sanity ;-)

So... what's your favorite personal geeky funny?

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/313896189)

Easily Amused

... by geekish things, that is.

At work, I'm currently working on a web application, which, like most web apps, involve a web-based user interface interacting with a database behind the scenes. Yesterday I was busy checking out some of the entries (test entries, of course) in the database to see if my data had been stored correctly. In the process, I came across several other pieces of test data from previous programmers' work.

And I came across some amusing choices of names for the "Protein Name" field.

There was the usual bang-on-the-keyboard "asdfafds" and "kljkklj" entries.
The regular 'test' names like "test protein".
Some guy obviously named Joe had entered "joe's protein".

And then there were the beer varieties (ostensibly because beer is fermented, as were these proteins. Or maybe these entries were created on Friday afternoon, when Happy Hour loomed close by): "test beer", "icy beer", "foamy beer", "tasty frothy suds", and my favorite of the beers: "godzilla likes beer"

My personal favorite overall? "brainless monkey" (sounds like a moniker I could slap on a few people I've encountered, but that would be at the risk of offending monkeys the world over)

Okay, enough giggles for now. Just had to share it in case anyone else (probably only my geek readers) finds it funny :-)

(originally posted at:  http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/303042701)

I Hate Internet Explorer

Last night I spent the better part of an hour re-customizing my blog look. I had found the perfect picture-- an image of a parchment that could tile vertically, and that I could center on the page instead of tiling in both directions. It was large enough that it would look like an ancient scroll sitting in the middle of the screen. I carefully formatted the rest of the blog so the text would stay ON the parchment image and not spill over into the sides. At last, it was perfect. On Firefox, that is. I took a peek at my blog on IE and it was a messy disaster. So I had to stick to my second choice of "paper-like background"-- and you see the results here.

Even more fun was had battling Firefox vs. IE today, on my profile page.

I had inserted some code to automatically resize pictures posted on there, to a maximum width of 260 pixels. I did this to prevent large pictures from stretching out my comment section and knocking the rest of the profile page off center. It worked beautifully on Firefox-- the maximum pic width was always 260 pixels.

But today I looked at my profile on IE and noticed that they were shrunk down TOO much-- to 90 pixels! I played around with the code again and again and again before realizing what the culprit was-- IE treats ALL hyperlinked images as the same. In other words, that includes my friends' profile pics. That's why, Lisa, when you were posting your bug pic comment, everyone's pics were so huge, I was playing around with the sizes. And almost all the pictures posted in my comments section include hyperlinks. So, IE does not differentiate between a Myspace profile pic and a hyperlinked pic that a friend posted in the comment section itself.

So, the only solution at the moment seems to be: if you're gonna post a picture on my profile, please take out the hyperlink and post just the image itself, then it will get resized correctly and actually be VISIBLE and not a tiny thumbnail like you see now. I posted a couple pics myself on my own profile to test this theory, and yup, looks like that's the culprit indeed. Hyperlinks.

Or better yet-- just get Firefox. Then you won't have to worry about it, it'll show up correctly on your end no matter what ;-)

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/297601218)