Month: January 2009

Got a text from my youngest nephew letting me know that there will be a dinner celebrating my dad’s birthday and that I was invited.

After reserving the closest Zipcar to me (4 miles away), missing a bus that turned the wrong way and missed my stop, then having to walk a half-mile to catch another bus and having to walk another half mile to actually get to the car, then having to put gas in the car (curse you, whoever had the car before me!), well, I was late.

But I was there in time for cake! Dad got chocolate chocolate cake with chocolate chips in the frosting, yum.

Got to hear more stories of my sister and my birthday. Mostly my sister’s – apparently mom and dad were living on N. Vancouver when my sister was born in November ’63, and the taxi driver who took them to the hospital (St. Vincent’s, which was off of West Burnside) was very very nervous the entire ride. Dad was working in a camera store at the time, and they did not have a car. Luckily dad’s friend lent him a dark blue 1963 Corvette Stingray to bring mom and baby Lisa home. I believe that was a split-window coupe that year. Damn. No, my sister did not have a child-safety seat; she just rode home behind the passenger seat. Ah, those were the days…

Dad did not tell any stories about his own birthday, unfortunately.

Happy birthday, dad!

Barack Obama is already saving me money!

On my first pass through on my 2008 taxes, I owed the state of Oregon $55. Then I remembered my contributions to Obama’s campaign!

BAM! That dropped my payment to just $5!

Thanks, President-elect Obama!

Yes, I know it’s early for doing taxes, but since I’m expecting a $680 refund from the Feds I like to get that money in my hands as soon as possible.

I’d love to be able to make it all come out even, but this is the best I’ve done in recent years. I prefer to have as much of my money in my hands throughout the year.

Here’s hoping your taxes turn out for the better, too!

JetBlue responds well to Twitter. I know this because I watched Jonathon Maus of BikePortland blog a BTA staffer’s complaint about JetBlue’s handling of a folding bike, and later saw that JetBlue found out on it’s own and responded via Twitter. Final result? JetBlue changed it’s policy to a more folding-bike-friendly one.

That kind of customer service rocks. Does that surprise you? It doesn’t surprise me.

And reading it reminded me of a similar incident from last month. I didn’t blog about it at the time, but now I realize that I should. Good behavior should always be mentioned.

It started when J. D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly asked for input, via Twitter, on which online financial software was best.

I had used Mint but didn’t like it, and had just started using Quicken Online, a free service that interfaced with all my banks, showed me real-time what my balances were, and offered lots of ways to slice and dice the information. Did I mention it was free?

I’ve used the software version of Quicken for many years, but in recent years they seemed to abandon the Macintosh market; instead of the three different levels (and pricing) found on the Windows side, only the most expensive version was available for Mac OS X. I limped along by continuing to use the last version I got free pre-installed on my iBook, transferring the program to my new MacBook Pro, until it finally stopped working on the most recent version of Mac OS X.

So I’m very pleased with the free online version. It doesn’t have all the features found in the full install, but it has more than enough. For instance, it doesn’t handle cash accounts, and if you have a lot of stocks and bonds and investments you should probably pony up for the full version, you cheapskate (or pay your accountant better). Since I don’t have any stocks and bonds and investments (beyond my one share of AAPL that I own for philosophical reasons, I’m cool with it.

I summarized all that as best as I could in 140 characters or less.

The next day, Twitter user QuickenPRChels (if you can’t decode that, it’s a Quicken Public Relations person named Chels, probably short for Chelsea), thanked me, publicly, for the compliment.

Does that surprise you? It doesn’t to me. One of the things that makes Twitter great is that the vast majority of the conversation is public, and between the awesome search functions and the use of an RSS feed, it’s easy to find out if others are talking about a topic you’re interested in. I have searches for my own name and the name of my blog, for instance. Sadly, not many people talk about me unless they’re already my friend. But someday, someone’s gonna tweet something about me, and I will know. Hopefully it’ll be positive!

But, see, lots of people are likely to talk about large corporations, and Twitter, with it’s 140 character limit and “of the moment” feel, makes it easy to voice a complaint. So there are companies that have Twitter accounts, and they watch for complaints. That’s generally a good thing, unless the company in question just uses that channel to promote their products – that’s a losing strategy.

But actually responding to complaints and taking them to heart (as it were – corporations don’t have heart, but the people who work for them do) – that’s a step beyond.

Sorry for the background, but back to my story; when I saw that QuickenPRChels had thanked me for the compliment, I wasn’t sure if this was strictly PR, or if it was that one step beyond kind of service. I filed that away for future reference.

About a week later, Intuit “updated” QuickenOnline. But in doing so, they removed a simple feature that I liked; I had to click down another level or two from the main page to see the last time my bank account information had been updated. Did the total on the main page include my latest charges or not? Click, click, click – oh, there it is. Grr. I didn’t have to drill down in the old version.

Now was the time to find out about their customer service. I tweeted to QuickenPRChels my complaint. After a quick back-and-forth, which seemed mostly a limitation of the 140 character limit, I explained the problem.

And the next time I logged in to QuickenOnline, the last update time had been restored. Problem solved, and question answered. Intuit’s programmers were listening, and able to address customer complaints.

Does that surprise you? It doesn’t surprise me. Not anymore.

“This store has enough video cameras in it to float a battleship.”

Let’s say that someone had some beef that may or may not have been slightly bad. Like, f’rinstance, the “use or freeze by” date was the previous day. But the beef gets cooked and put into, say, a cheeseburger. And eaten, with some ketchup and a little mustard and Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese on some toasted 9-grain bread.

Y’know. Hypothetically.

Let’s further say that that all happened last night. And it’s now about 12 hours later.

Should the hypothetical person in question be sick by now? Or can this person stop worrying about it?

Feel free to leave your answers in the comments.

When I read this article, that talks about a study that showed that playing an involved video game that requires a lot of attention, like Tetris, immediately after a traumatic incident can ease the pain of that incident…

…I’d forgotten just how much Tetris I had played when I was younger.

Is there a word for the time when you’re having a conversation with a friend via text, and each side of the conversation is seeing and reacting to something entirely different because the texts are arriving out of order?

Because that’s so annoying, it needs a new word.

Like… noncontextism.

I was grumpy, it was cold and rainy. This was a couple months ago, so it wasn’t as cold as it has been, but cold enough. I stood at a bus stop, hoping to catch a quick ride over the bridge to get some lunch and get back to my office before my hour was up. I stood under the shelter, out of the rain.

A gaunt older man, in jeans and a flannel shirt and ski jacket, walks up, looking in the direction the bus will be coming. Not seeing one, he steps under the shelter, pulls out a pack of smokes, lights one up.

I was grumpy, it was cold and rainy. But, whatever, I can live and let live. Bus will be here soon enough. I pull out my iPhone and surf so I don’t have to pay attention to the smoker flouting the non-smoking rule at the bus shelter. I tune out.

Out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of some interaction between a car and a bike in the green bike box that ends with the car honking its horn. The smoker reacts with a laugh. “Did you see that asshole bike?”

No, I didn’t, but since the bike probably had the right of way, now the smoker has annoyed me. “Did you know that bus stops are non-smoking areas?” I replied.

He looked at me. “Oh. All of them?” I nod.

He leaves the stop and walks away, into the rain, cigarette still smoldering from his lips.

Last night, on my way home from work, I’m tired and it’s raining. iPhone tells me that the bus is less than 10 minutes away. A lady walks up, chattering on her phone, looks up the street, doesn’t see the bus. Out comes the cigarettes.

Again, as long as she stands over there and not near me I don’t care. I stand and wait, my back to her and the wind.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a bright red spark rush pass my foot. Startled, I look down and see that the smoker has dropped her ash and it had blown past my leg.

Now angered that she’s annoying me with more than just breaking TriMet rules with her carelessness, exaggerating it into my mind into willful endangerment (“She tried to BURN ME ALIVE!” echoes in my head), I turn and ask her if she knew that bus stops are non-smoking zones. I try (and likely fail) to sound polite and genuine.

“Only the shelters,” she says, standing just outside the shelter, her arm brushing up against the glass.

“Are you waiting for a bus?” I ask, more snark in my voice.

“Yes,” she says, the phone still hiding her ear. I had obviously interrupted her phone call.

“Then you’re at a bus stop,” I reply with impeccable (to me) logic, and I turn back to watch for the bus, which soon arrives.

She keeps glancing at me even after we’re on the bus.

Look, smokers, I’m sure you all feel like some kind of oppressed minority right now. We can all live together. But if I have to put up with your poisonous, carcinogenic smoke blowing around me, can you at least try to be polite about it? Can you not drop your fucking ashes on my shoes, or set me on fire, or make grating, annoying assumptions about other people?

I swear I only get pissy when smokers piss me off about something else. If you want to flout the law, don’t be a fucking dick about it or my own, inner, fucking dick will come out.

“I can’t tell you how appreciative I am that you all actually showed up.”