A Voice in the Dark

McDonald’s has done an interesting thing with the $1 value menu, in that they’ve completely hosed the value proposition of more = cheaper. Here are the three sizes of chicken nuggets on the regular menu.

Six chicken nuggets: $2.49, or 41.5 cents each.

Ten chicken nuggets: $3.89, or 38.9 cents each.

Twenty chicken nuggets: $6.29, or 31.45 cents each.

Turning to the value menu, we find four chicken nuggets for $1. That’s 25 cents each.

To maintain the pattern, it should be TWO chicken nuggets for $1. Trouble is, nobody will pay $1 for just two chicken nuggets. So what you end up with is luxury pricing: prices which inherently assume you will order what you want without regard to the price, while simultaneously ignoring discounted options.

The notion that McDonald’s practices luxury pricing is rather counterintuitive, isn’t it?

 

Filed under: Business, Economics
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This band rocks.

I saw them at El Corazon in Seattle last night, and this is one hell of a band. What strikes me more than anything is the modesty of the lead singer, Gabriel Garcia; the spotlight was on Zach, the bass player, most of the night. But then, Zach flubbed the audience participation at the beginning of the concert by asking how we were doing… Portland.

Unlike other bands I’ve seen, he was completely nonchalant about it when Gabriel whispered in his ear that they were in Seattle. He simply said “Oh, this is Seattle? Sorry.” Smooth as can be. Then he proceeded to say Portland was a great audience, and we’d really have to be something if we wanted to top them. Great recovery. Not self conscious at all.

Some random chick band was the opening act, followed by local boys Neon Knights. Both were pretty “meh”. Neon Knights not as much as the chick band… which seemed to be trading exclusively on “we have tits” rather than “we can play”.

Black Tide, however, stayed true to the modern aesthetic by opening with “Black Abyss” - the hit song off the CD which a lesser band would have saved for the close. During the show, I managed to drop the t-shirts I bought before the show, so I had to buy more after the show. Somebody got free t-shirts. Enjoy them, whoever you are; I have certainly picked up my share of free t-shirts at concerts over the years, so I’m not going to piss and moan about being on the other side of that experience now.

After the show, I managed to get Gabriel and Zach to sign my CD, although Steve and Alex weren’t about. Not that it matters, since Gabriel and Zach are the important members… but it would have been nice to get all four. I was standing around with them for about twenty minutes trying not to be a douche. There’s always that moron who hangs out after the show and acts like the band are his friends, you know? I didn’t want to be that guy.

Badass band, badass show. If they’re in your neighborhood, go see them. They’re on their first tour for their first album, and mark my words, years down the line you’ll be able to say “I saw them when they were just getting started” - and it will mean something. This band is definitely going somewhere.

 

Filed under: Music
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Have you ever had one of those days?

Multiply it by three.

First, on the way to work, I realise I’m almost out of gas. I pull into the gas station, get out of my car, and discover I have forgotten my wallet. Luckily, I have eight bucks in my pocket, which is just barely enough to get my tank filled to the point that I can get to work and back.

Second, I note that my car is making an occasional grinding noise and giving off a smell of hot metal. Great. I just got the damn thing fixed two weeks ago, to the tune of $1200, and now something else is happening.

Third, I get to work and sit down in my office. I crack open my briefcase to hook my laptop to the network and get started, and guess what? No laptop. I was up late working on some problematic netmon parsers, and while I could swear I put the laptop back in the briefcase, apparently I did not. Cascade failure: I have an 11:00 meeting, but now I have to drive an hour and a half back to Puyallup from Redmond so I can get my laptop. I won’t even get there until almost 11. Then it will take me two hours to get back (lunch rush), but I’ll have to leave an hour later to get my car to the mechanic in time for him to look at it. Looking at the reality of driving five hours for one hour of work, I conclude that the best thing to do is reschedule the meeting for tomorrow, so I go to my manager’s office to arrange it. He’s not there, so I have to go talk to the project manager about the situation. Not having access to email without my laptop, and needing to inform my manager of the situation before the meeting, I ask her to email him and let him know what’s going on. I leave for home, arriving a few minutes ago, and I can’t find the laptop.

Now I’m facing the very real possibility that I’ve just plain lost a corporate laptop with sensitive confidential work on it.

Yeah. My day’s going great. How about yours?

 

Filed under: Business, Microsoft
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Last week, I saw a LiveJournal post about a young lady’s problems getting her broken Zune fixed.

If you don’t want to read the whole massive thing, here’s the gist of it: Canadian has a brown Zune which breaks, and now cannot get a brown Zune. Microsoft support cannot help her because there is no Zune technical support in Canada just yet. She finds this simply insane, and insists she is going to go and buy a damn iPod.

Confidentiality prevents me from mentioning details, but here on the Redmond campus, we’ve been up in arms over this. We’re Microsoft. We can’t find a brown Zune and send it to Canada?

Well, officially, no. We can’t. (It’s an international commerce thing. Talk to a lawyer if you need details.) But some altruistic helpful soul could do that, if he wanted.

You guessed it; I was the first helpful soul to open my mouth and say “I’ll do it!” via comments on the blog post. Several other people have verified with me that I meant it and would follow through.

This afternoon, I verified that she understood the conditions: she mails me the broken brown Zune, I mail her a working brown Zune. The working one will be a different Zune (probably purchased off Ebay; they’re running about $135 over there), so none of her content will be on it. I’ll then get the broken one repaired (being on the Microsoft campus, there’s a solid chance I can get it fixed at no or low cost) - and end result, we both have a brown Zune and everyone is happy. 

If you’re outside the Puget Sound area, you don’t see this much, but Microsoft employees and contractors do this all the time. We see someone using a Microsoft product, and we’re proud of that. We see them having trouble, and we get personally involved in the problem. And if there’s one thing we like to do at Microsoft, it’s solve the damn problem no matter what it takes.

It seems odd, because you don’t get it anywhere else. But Microsoft is honestly full of people who honestly want to make things right for every user of a Microsoft product, and all you have to do is be having a problem at the moment one of us is looking in your direction. Microsoft won’t give me a dime toward making this happen, but I don’t care; I want it fixed, I want it made right, and I want the customer to walk away ecstatically happy about the experience.

And that’s why, if you try to compete with them, Microsoft pwns j00. You don’t have a small army of people fixing the problems you can’t fix at their own expense. We do. And I’m proud to be in the front ranks of that army, contractor or not.

Filed under: Business, Economics, Microsoft
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In response to my last post, I’ve received email taking issue with it.

Specifically, taking issue with how I had Bob and Joe “hump each other in the butt”.

See, whenever I talk about gay people, some gay person reads it and decides to complain that I’ve made an inaccurate portrayal of gay culture. (Because, you know, I’m not part of it.) And as I’ve been reminded many, many times over the years: gay guys mostly just blow each other. There’s not that much butt humping going on; sure, there’s some, but it’s not what gay men primarily do. I mean, once it’s been there, who wants to put it in his mouth? Eww. Yeah, some people do, but… eww.

The fact is, I remind people of butt humping because it is funny. Imagine the Burger King meets Ronald McDonald at a singles bar. That’s sort of amusing. Now imagine the King bringing Ronald flowers and candy; that’s slightly more amusing. Picture them frolicking through a flowery meadow, and you’ll probably giggle a little.

Now imagine the King humping Ronald in the butt.

Come on. It just doesn’t get funnier than that. Oral sex isn’t as funny, because you can’t see both faces. And it’s important to say something funny, because straight people - which, lest we forget, are almost all of the people - are uncomfortable with the subject of homosexuality. Just like the openly gay frequently adopt a humorous and flamboyant persona to defuse the apparent threat they represent to a man’s masculinity, not because it’s accurate, but simply because… well, you just can’t be angry at them. The sort of guy who has a problem with gays is usually the same sort of guy who won’t hit a girl, and when you’re even more girly than most girls, he simply can’t beat you up. That used to be rather important.

Face it, gay people are just funny by nature. It’s hysterical to think about how the first gay men got started; I mean, how uncomfortable was that conversation? Even if gaydar already existed, you had no clue what it was detecting. “There’s something about Larry.”

Homosexuality is still pretty new, as an open component of American culture. Give it time. It’s not like Europe, where gay is a word like tall: everyone’s a little tall, even the short ones… the question is how tall.

We’ll accept it in the end. We just have to relax, and take it slow.

Okay, that’s my last butt humping joke today. I have work to do.

 

Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy
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By now, everyone who cares has heard that Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern thinks homosexuals are a bigger threat to the nation than terrorists.

Well, the trouble is, she’s right. We have had one successful attack by terrorists on the World Trade Center, and a whole slew of successful attacks by homosexuals on state legislatures. If you consider gay marriage comparable to death - and in christian theology, gay equals sin and sin equals hell and hell equals death - every gay marriage is two deaths. In 9/11, there were about three thousand actual deaths (but, one would assume, no gay marriages). Between May of 2004 and May of 2005, over six thousand gay marriages were performed in the state of Massachusetts. That’s twelve thousand deaths, four times the toll of 9/11, in one state over the course of one year.

Bear in mind, you have to first accept the premise that open practice of homosexuality is equivalent to death. If you don’t accept that, and you believe the only thing comparable to death is… oh, I don’t know, death?… then the statement is ludicrous. Who cares if Joe and Bob are gay and hump each other in the butt? It’s not killing anybody.

But from Sally Kern’s perspective, it is. It’s killing Joe and Bob, they just don’t know it. And as long as Joe and Bob are running around saying “it’s okay to do this”, they’re effectively promoting suicide. So she feels it’s her duty to speak out about it, and to do something about it, and to enact laws that prevent it.

The problem is not that her perspective is wrong (even though it is). The problem is not that her perspective is offensive (even though it is). The problem is that her perspective is a religious perspective, and therefore has no place in American government. It is her duty as a representative of the American people to present a professional image and avoid the appearance of impropriety, but frothing at the mouth about gays certainly isn’t professional. It looks like she’s dangerously insane, even though she clearly isn’t - she just feels strongly about the subject.

I also feel strongly about the subject. I don’t agree with Sally Kern. Indeed, even though I understand her position, I disagree with just about everything she said; the introduction of homosexual topics to preschool classes isn’t intended to make preschoolers gay, it’s intended to ease the social interactions of the many children who have been adopted by gay couples. You can certainly have a problem with the idea that Joe and Bob are talking to your five year old about their sex lives, but if Joe and Bob have a five year old themselves, isn’t your child going to wonder why his classmate doesn’t have a mommy?

And, most importantly, shouldn’t any reasonably qualified parent understand this concept? What happens when the first black child joins a class? The first Asian child? The first non-English speaking child? The situation needs to be explained, and the conditions monitored, until the child is accepted as part of the group. Nobody complains that you’re trying to make the other children black, or Asian, or Spanish-speaking… except dangerously insane people.

How would Sally Kern explain it? “Little Timmy is the poor innocent victim of two evil sinful people who are going to HELL, and they’re raising him to be a Godless heathen sinner who will burn in hell himself. You should bring him to Jesus!”

Absolutely unacceptable in a public servant. Get that bitch out of office.

Filed under: Gay Rights, Parenting, Politics, Religion
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Late February: I’m at the AT&T Wireless store, where they offer an unlimited data plan for internet usage. I ask the very pretty young salesgirl why, if they can give me unlimited data, they can’t give me unlimited minutes. She says they’re different. I say no, they’re not; voice over IP works because fundamentally, voice is just data. There’s no reason why I couldn’t just buy an unlimited data plan and download a Skype client, which would allow me to use AT&T’s network to send and receive all the voice data I wanted. So why doesn’t AT&T Wireless offer me an unlimited voice AND data plan for the same price? She admits she doesn’t know.

March 3rd: I see the first commercial advertising Verizon’s unlimited calling plan. I look at my wife and say “now everyone else will do it, too”.

March 6th: T-Mobile advertises free nationwide long distance on your home phone. I say “they’re trying to compete with Verizon’s unlimited wireless, but it won’t work”.

March 10th: I see a Sprint commercial advertising unlimited calling. I say “T-Mobile will be next”.

March 11th: I see a T-Mobile commercial advertising unlimited calling.

March 12th: I see an AT&T Wireless commercial advertising unlimited calling.

I wonder if the salesgirl thinks I had something to do with this. Maybe if I went back to the store, I could get her number.

 

Filed under: Business, Economics
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Anthony de Jasay writes an interesting essay about the current teaching of economics. I do, however, take issue with his arguments.

When he covers the question of inequality, he calls the notion “undiluted bilge”. But the fact is, economic growth increases income inequality. The argument that capitalism causes inequity is, indeed, fact. What is not fact is the liberal assertion that income inequality is bad. Income equality - like trade - can be bad, but there are significant mitigating factors. What de Jasay fails to consider is that certain negative effects of income inequality are - in particular - bad for the government, and it is in the government’s best interest to mitigate them. While he correctly perceives that it is in no way society’s best interest that is served by government sanction, he fails to recognise that it is only incidentally in the liberal American’s best interest.

The liberal, after all, deifies the government. The government does not serve an economic purpose, nor does it serve an imperialist purpose; it serves to enforce the will of God on the people, or - in the liberal mind - to impress objective morality on the citizenry. Nothing could be further from the truth… government exists solely to maximize its own power and perpetuate its own existence. When the liberal willingly assists it, he drives toward the eventual removal of all individual liberty in favor of institutional liberty - which, to the citizenry at large, is no liberty at all.

The conservative (waves hand frantically and points to self) believes somewhat differently: that government is a necessary evil, but its will to power must be restrained by conscientious and self-sacrificing individuals.

Government officials are like zombie hunters; you send someone in to fight, and then you wait in a safe place until you see him wandering stiff-legged through the Capitol building moaning “subsidies, sanctions”. Then you have to shoot him in the head and put someone else into his office. It is inevitable that your representative will be corrupted; it is imperative that the corrupt are removed. You cannot win. All you can do is keep fighting until you run out of people who are willing to fight. Then you lose.

Filed under: Business, Economics, Philosophy, Politics
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Statements like these are why I support Barack Obama regardless of his “bring the troops home” rhetoric:

“You can’t make a commitment in March of 2008 about what circumstances are going to be like in January 2009. [Obama] will of course not rely upon some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or as a U.S. senator. He’ll rely upon a plan–an operational plan–that he pulls together, in consultation with people who are on the ground, to whom he doesn’t have daily access now.” - Samantha Power, former advisor

My translation of that: Barack Obama knows better than to make military decisions before he consults with military experts. That’s smart. And there’s more, from Obama himself:

“The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster. It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective.” - Barack Obama, July 2004

My translation of that… well, I don’t need to translate it. Just read it. That says exactly what you think it says: that we have a duty and an obligation in Iraq that we must not abandon. That shows discipline and honor.

Give me a smart President who understands discipline and honor any day. McCain can go to hell. Clinton could always go to hell. And anyone who complains that a conservative republican shouldn’t support a Democrat can go to hell, too. Barack Obama has every single quality I want in a President, and I won’t let some label change that. He went to a Muslim school as a child? I don’t care. His middle name is Hussein? I don’t care. He lacks experience? I don’t care. He parrots the Democrat party line in his campaign? I don’t care. He’s a nigger? I don’t care, and you’re an asshole.

Labels are just words. Actions speak louder than; Obama sponsored the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, and the Transparency and Integrity in Earmarks Act. If you’ve got your name on only two pieces of legislation, and both of them are all about displaying the government’s actual honesty and integrity or lack thereof to the American people… you have my damn vote.

Filed under: Politics
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You’ve probably noticed I post very, very rarely these days.

This is largely because I’ve got “nonspecific bilateral neuropathy”. That’s a nice way of saying “my legs hurt all the time and nobody knows why”. I have an area of my lower right thigh which almost always feels like it’s burning. Not “ooh a burning sensation” burning, but “OH HOLY FUCKING CHRIST ON A STICK MY FUCKING LEG IS ON FUCKING FIRE” burning. And as a Jew, it takes an awful lot before I’ll say the C-word.

I have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday to try and diagnose this better. I don’t have much hope, because my last neurosurgeon basically said we could do exploratory surgery, but it has roughly a 60% chance of finding any useful information, and approximately a 30% chance of doing permanent nerve damage which may affect my ability to walk.

Why does this affect my posting habits? Because I have a working method of dealing with it: liquor and narcotics. (Specifically, Vicodin or Percocet.) Unfortunately, that leaves me largely unable to write coherently.

The best guess as to what caused this is currently that I used to squat 855 pounds. The good news is that this puts me within 200 pounds of the world record. The bad news is, anyone serious about weightlifting is within 200 pounds of the world record. It’s the last THIRTY pounds that people have trouble making. I’ve been away from the weights ever since my legs started acting up.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized
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