New things afoot.

I tweeted recently that I felt as though a fortune cookie was coming true, though not a specific fortune that I had actually received at a Chinese restaurant. What I meant was that several things had seemingly fallen into my lap, though they were things that I hadn't really planned on, and in at least one case, wasn't sure I really wanted. That last one I don't think I will ever be able to speak publicly about, but another one I hope I will be able to blog about by the end of the week. Stay tuned!

I hear there's a new twitter.com.

The tweetosphere has been deluged with talk about the new twitter.com. Out of curiosity I went and looked today, and, yes, I have it. A couple weeks ago it was all about Google live search. Nice, sure, fantastic technology.

But I don't ever go to twitter.com or google.com in my web browser. Both services have exposed their functionality via APIs, and I use tools that access them via their APIs. So I really don't think fancy new skins for Google or Twitter will affect me at all, besides forcing me to ignore commentary about how great they are or how someone doesn't have the new new yet.

In this regard, I guess I have to agree with Wired: the web is dead.

Stop stealing my IP address!

I have had sporadic network problems at my client site.  On certain days, it seemed like my network connection would partially drop every 10 to 15 minutes. By "partially", I mean that some connections would stay up with no problem (like to an IRC channel, or connections to Google), but everything else would disappear, both locally and on the internet

My laptop worked fine on other networks, but it didn't work on any port at the client.  But this was only on certain days.  For a while it seemed like it was just on Tuesdays.  The only way I could get it to come back was to either restart NetworkManager or physically unplug and replug the ethernet cable.

With a little help from a number of online friends, I figured out the problem was an IP address conflict.  Switching to traditional ifup/ifdown, the log showed me exactly what was happening... the address DHCP was handing out to me was already taken by someone else.  (00:08:02:8a:1b:04, I'm lookin' at you. Stop hard-coding your ip in the DHCP range!)


Thanks to advice from the enterprising Matt Hunt, I used GNU Mac Changer to change my MAC address so that DHCP would hand me a different IP address, and everything now works fine.

IT FAIL

I'm not normally the kind of guy to complain about tech support, since I have worked in that business and know it's not easy. But the corporate IT process is just fundamentally broken.  Let me describe.

My laptop started freezing shortly after login time. Sounds like bad RAM to me, so I boot up the wonderful memtest86+ to see what it says.  Sure enough, bad RAM,  So I contact our helpdesk and start the process.

A very nice person in the Philippines picked up the other end of my IM session.  I explained the situation, and he said "Ok" a lot. When I described how I had run memtest86+ and discovered the bad RAM, his inscrutable response was "I can check that for you." I wonder how he's going to do that, exactly. Anyway, he issued me a ticket number and would have ended it there if I had not asked him what to expect next (a call from someone more local, apparently).

I got a call from someone at least in the same country with me, who told me I had to call Lenovo, since they have the warranty on this particular laptop. I'm not sure why I have to call them, since they're supposed to be the IT department around here, but sure, I'm game.

So I called up Lenovo, who helpfully looked up my laptop and told me I must have some third-party RAM since it only shipped with 2 gigs and I now have 4. So back to my IT guy, who told me to open up the laptop and pull out the third-party RAM and see if that solves the problem.

Now, I've opened up a laptop before (an old iBook, and boy was that scary), and I've seen a ThinkPad splayed open before, and I have to say that scared me too.  But it turns out it was fairly easy, since it's just RAM and not a whole motherboard, which I had replaced twice on my old ThinkPad.

Anyway, I pulled out the Kingston RAM and re-ran memtest86+, proving that the Kingston RAM was bad. Back on the phone with IT, he told me I had to call the reseller who put that RAM into it originally. Again, I'm not sure why I have to call, I don't have a relationship with the vendor; that's why we have an IT department, right?

Now I think I will have a new 2 gig Kingston RAM stick coming to me in the mail, and then I have to ship the original stick back to Kingston. Again, I'm not sure why I have to ship the thing, since I haven't ever bought anything from Kingston, but I'll do anything at this point.

What should have happened? I don't really have a complaint about the guy in Manila, there's not much he can do from the other side of the planet, and besides I still feel a little guilty about what we did to them a century ago. But local IT guy should have looked up my laptop in his asset management system and seen that I have some third-party RAM, told me that either one of them could be bad, so I could check which one was wrong to start with. After I determined that the Kingston one was bad, he should have called up the reseller himself and then called me back to tell me he was having new RAM shipped to me with a return shipping envelope for the old one.

I mean, really. This is why we have IT, isn't it?  What if I didn't know anything about computers?

The Problem with Zone 2

For the last couple of months I've been commuting weekly from my home near Atlanta to Dallas. I pretty much always take the same two flights -- I'm even starting to recognize some of my fellow passengers.

On each of these more than a dozen flights so far, exactly the same thing has happened: more than half the passengers are listed for an upgrade. The planes on this route typically seat about 140 passengers, and the upgrade list always has at least 75, sometimes more, passengers on it.

For those of you who are not familiar with Delta's upgrade policies, that means that 75 or more passengers on the flight are SkyMiles or SkyTeam Elite members (Silver, Gold, Platinum, or the new Diamond). The lucky one or two who get the upgrade get to board in zone 1; the rest get to board in zone 2.

To the business traveler, being able to board in zone 2 is important. It means that you have a chance of getting your roll-aboard bag into an overhead bin. Usually, you have a really good chance, because there are only some 25 of you. The seven zones of passengers behind you are the occasional travelers who won't be too bothered if they have to check their bags.

This all works fairly well on the typical flight. Zone 1 boards, gets their free drinks and hangs up their coats. Zone 2 boards and puts their bags in the overheads. Zones 3 through 9 get on board and try to find an empty bin for their stuff.

Do you see the problem? With 75 or more people in Zone 2, quite a few of them aren't going to find room in the overhead bins. So, to help increase the odds, all of them try and get to the front of the line when zone 2 is called. Once, just once, I had a gate agent call zone 2 by rows, which was a decent way to handle the traffic jam.

But there needs to be a better solution, because this does not account for different levels of elite status within zone 2. Remember how Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond members all board in the same zone? So it turns out a lowly Silver could get a bin for his bag while an exalted Diamond has to check his.

My hack for this problem is to check my bags and board some time well after zone 2. It's liberating to sit out the medallion crush, and just stroll on sans bag. Sure, I have to wait for my bag to show up, but it's just not worth the hassle of trying to carry it on.

On the road again, again.

In an unexpected turn of events, as of mid-November of last year I find myself back in consulting and immediately back on the road at a major client for a long-term project. It's been interesting to find myself back in place that I never expected to be again: commuting by air and living in a hotel for weeks on end.

I will try to find something interesting and relevant to blog about in this space.

Product feedback FAIL

I got the following spammy email today. All bold emphasis is in the original, and all names have been redacted.

Subject: company name redacted invites you to contep-test [sic] new company name redacted products

Dear niel,

The uncanny ability of company name redacted traders to predict the future is legendary ;-) That's why the folks at the company name redacted company, creators of the world-famous product name redacted, are eager for your feedback on some of their new product concepts.

company name redacted is offering $2,400 to be shared by those of you who will offer the most insightful feedback on 15 of its new product ideas. Only 200 of you will be selected to participate, so your chance of sharing the prize is pretty good! By participating, you will also have an exclusive preview of some new food products that might soon be on America's shelves, and which you'll have helped refine and optimize with your feedback!

The innovative collaboration platform we've developed for this purpose allows you to comment and rate product ideas, and also rate each other's feedback! The exercise is divided into four phases over 2 weeks starting next monday July 27th, but each stage offers its own set of prizes and is designed to require just a few minutes of your precious time: Commenting on the product concepts, rating the best ones, rating other people's feedback, and taking a short survey.

If you are interested in participating to this cutting-edge research effort on concepts for a share of the $2,400 reward, please register now at URL redacted. It will be fun!

Best regards,

company name redacted Team

Let me enumerate the FAILs.

1. The subject line contains a typo. What is a "contept-test"? My phish-filter tingled immediately.
   
2. A smiley in a commercial solicitation? Another phish indicator. If you want to be taken seriously, be serious.
   
3. Ooh, $2400, an arbitrary monetary payout! Oh wait, that amount is to be shared. Among the 200 of us who share the most insightful feedback. So that means 200 arbitrarily selected participants will each get $12. Hooray, I can finally get my mom that operation. Hey, giant corporation, you're offering only $12 for valuable insight? You're off by an order of magnitude.
   

The URL seems valid, though I did not click on it. The organization running the survey is a real organization, though not one that has previously done commercial product research as far as I know. The organization on whose behalf they are performing this research is also a real food manufacturer.

Forgive me if I don't participate.

UPDATE:

I had an email conversation with the CEO of the organization running this survey, and I'd like to make a few additional points.

First, I did not mean to imply that this message was a spam or phish, only that its content made my spidey-sense tingle in ways that spam and phish usually does. I am a registered member (although non-active) of the organization, but I do not recall having previously received any emails of this type from them.

Second, it seems I misinterpreted some of the terms. The $2400 is not to be divided 200 ways; rather, only 200 people will be selected to participate, and the reward will be divided among the top entries. So while the actual payout per winner is indeed higher than $12, I believe that statistically the expected payout is still $12 per person.

Finally, speaking as a product manager, I would never offer this kind of payout for product feedback. It's been a while since I reviewed the literature on this, but I believe that you would get better feedback either by offering no cash, or by offering a donation to the participant's preferred charity. Psychologically, by offering a cash reward you change the feedback profile, and you actually would get a lower participation rate.