Author Archives: Tarus

Me and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Weekend

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After a wonderful week at this year’s OpenNMS Dev-Jam, I came home on Saturday to find some problems.

On Friday there had been a pretty bad storm, and the farm lost power for over 12 hours. Earlier on Saturday Andrea had called me when I was packing:

Andrea: How many times do you have to pull on the generator cord to get it to start?
Me: Usually about ten times or so.

Andrea (calling me back): Thirty-five!

So, okay, perhaps I should run the generator more often. Of course, as soon as she got it going Duke Energy called to tell her the power was back on.

Anyway, due to the power outage I had to turn on a few machines when I returned. Everything is on APC UPS systems, but they only last 20 minutes or so. We have a room we use as an office that we call “The Study”, and I run a CAT6 cable from there to the living room. The living room is in the center of the house, so that’s where the DSL modem and the wireless router live, but for some reason I couldn’t get from the Study to the Internet. Also, I found out that my new Synology NAS wouldn’t even power on. No real worries, as I live by the rule that “RAID is not Backup“, but still annoying.

From what I can deduce, I think lightning hit near the house and generated enough of a spike that it was picked up by the CAT6 cable and the port on the router was fried. In fact, the port next to it was fried as well. When I moved the cable to the third port, the link light came back on.

However, that didn’t really fix the problem. Now that I could connect to the router, I could tell that it wasn’t behaving all that well. There was a lot of packet loss, etc. So, add a fried ASUS RT-N66U to the list along with the Synology.

I ordered a replacement from Amazon, but since I didn’t want to live without Internet, on Sunday morning I went to the office and borrowed an Airport Extreme we used to use for trade shows. It wasn’t a drop in replacement. First, this Airport only had three LAN ports (the Asus has four) and Apple’s software limits what network address ranges you can use. Of course, my network is different from their defaults, so I had to go around and renumber everything. I added in a small switch to make up for the missing port.

And it still didn’t work.

I wasn’t getting an IP address from Centurylink, so I called and sure enough, there was an outage (caused by the same storm).

Now, this year after Dev-Jam, several people followed us home: one Italian (Antonio) and four Germans. Antonio came in on Saturday and the Germans were landing Sunday evening. By this time on Sunday I needed to go pick up Antonio for the afternoon, and then we were going to go to the airport to pick up everyone else. So I had to leave the problem of the Internet connection for later.

The reason I got chauffeur duty was that I am the main driver of the new UlfMobile. Our company, OpenNMS, has grown to the point that we have a lot of people visiting from out of town and we need to rent a car for them. The frequency of these visits was costing us enough money that it made better sense to lease a company car. We got a Toyota Highlander, which can seat seven in a pinch as well as haul around gear for conferences, etc. Not my first choice in vehicle (I like small cars, preferably without tops) but now we had something that visitors could drive and instead of the hassle of renting a car (that more times than not shows up nasty) they can drive a nice, clean vehicle big enough to haul a bunch of people around.

Anyway, Andrea and I picked up Antonio, we had lunch, and then decided to visit the North Carolina Botanical Gardens. These are beautiful gardens in Chapel Hill and since it was a nice day it was a wonderful time to visit. As we were leaving, we noticed that the UNC police were in the parking lot. Apparently, someone smashed a window of a car to steal a phone. Andrea looked at me and said “Uh, I left my purse in the car”.

As I looked toward the UlfMobile, I could tell that the passenger side window was smashed, and was certain her purse was no longer in the car.

(sigh)

In all, the thieves hit seven cars in that fairly busy parking lot.

This set off a number of tasks. First, Andrea had to go and talk with the police officer. I had to call David to make other arrangements to pick up the Germans. And then there were all of the bank/credit card accounts to close.

The thief or thieves got her purse, which contained her wallet, ID, credit cards, ATM card, checkbook, house keys, car key, truck key, work key and ID. It also had a Nexus 5 that we were using as a media player (it didn’t have an active SIM card).

I called Citi to cancel the credit card and Bank of America to cancel the ATM card as well as close our checking account. Her work ID didn’t identify the exact place where she worked, so it was doubtful they could use the ID to get in or know where her car would be, but still I called to get it canceled. I then called my Nationwide insurance guy (if you are ever looking for an insurance guy in the RTP area, call Jody Shover) on his mobile phone and he promised to get that process started.

All in all it took about two hours before we were told we could leave. Then came the process of cleaning up the broken glass to the point where we could drive the car back to Pittsboro and return Antonio to his Bed and Breakfast.

I told Antonio, “Welcome to America”.

Of course, that didn’t end the evening. My Internet connection, which I could have really used to deal with all of this, was still down. I called Centurylink back, and when there was no “there is an outage in your area” message, I waited until I was connected to a support representative.

By this time I had my laptop connected directly to the DSL modem. It looked like the DSL circuit itself was fine, but it wasn’t passing data. I told this to Lei, the lady at Centurylink, and her response was “No, your Internet is okay, the light is green”.

(sigh)

Now I try very hard to be nice to people like Lei. But as the conversation progressed, she obviously wasn’t equipped to handle the issue, and to be frank I was pretty much at the end of what I could deal with at that moment. I started getting more and more angry, because, damn it, I just really needed to get one thing fixed before going to bed.

I finally just asked to be transferred to second level support. To my astonishment, she didn’t resist, and I found myself talking to Joseph.

Many years ago, when I worked at Northern Telecom, they had us go through a two day race relations course created by C.T. Vivian. It was one of the best things Northern ever did for me. It was intense. At one point we discussed the idea of “talking black”. It’s a stereotype that all black people talk a certain way and it can be harmful.

Anyway, Joseph immediately struck me as someone who “talked geek”. When dealing with technical support people, I often omit the fact that I run Linux and other open source software on pretty much every device I own. It’s just easier to lie. With Joseph, I just laid it all out. Look, I said, I have a Zyxel 660R that I’ve set up in bridge mode to talk to my router. I’m in the web interface and it looks like the DSL circuit is fine but I’m not getting an IP address.

He immediately went to work. The first issue was that it was provisioned wrong, and he adjusted the numbers which was immediately reflected in the modem’s webUI. Still no incoming packets, however. We tried a number of things but nothing seemed to work. I can remember at one point when I was resetting the router, he asked me to check the VCI/VPI values when I could get back into the interface. I told him “8 and 35” without waiting (I had seen it earlier) which turned out to be correct.

We narrowed it down to an issue with the cross connects in the DSLAM, but he couldn’t fix the issue remotely. About that time he gets excited and tells me that an outage has been registered on the device (apparently three people have to complain). They have people 24×7 who can work on things and he promised that my service should be better soon.

Centurylink needs to find Joseph and give him a raise. It makes me wish this XKCD comic were true.

So, I put everything back, brushed my teeth and by the time I got into bed the service had been restored. Yay! One thing off the list.

And it was a very long list.

I didn’t sleep well Sunday night. Knowing someone has your address and house keys is nerve-wracking. Even though I have a security system and two Dobermans, I knew I wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep until the locks were changed.

On Monday I didn’t go to work since I had to go with Andrea to the bank to open up a new account. That afternoon I worked from home as the NC DMV for being able to request a duplicate license on-line. It hasn’t shown up yet but it certainly beats a trip to the nearest office.

I did keep checking on Google to see if the Nexus 5 would ever show up with a valid location. It hasn’t, which I didn’t expect since there wasn’t a SIM card in it. What does frustrate me is that I do have the IMEI (358239-05-036647-7 if anyone is interested) but that doesn’t seem to matter. In the US that phone will only work on AT&T or T-mobile. The moment it joins the network they will know, and they should be able to associate it with a person. It doesn’t look like they do that, though. I don’t blame them entirely (they sell data services and are not police) but still – the technology exists to locate that phone.

A slew of other, small problems also arose but this post is long enough so I won’t go into detail. Weather delayed our replacement credit cards as well as my router. I run Tomato by Shibby and I was frustrated to find out that the configuration backup and restore doesn’t work across different modems (even those of the same make and model). Apparently the NVRAM settings are too specific. I tried to cherry pick a few of them but obviously didn’t get all of the right ones, so I ended up manually configuring the router. The hardest part was re-figuring out my Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel, but overall the process wasn’t too bad.

So, most of my home network is back in business. The Synology box is on its way to Washington State for repair, and we still have a few loose ends (mainly dealing with automatic drafts) to clean up, but things are getting back to normal.

Well, somewhat. I’ve noticed a change in my attitude toward certain things, such as surveillance. The Botanical Gardens are a public place, and had they put up a few surveillance cameras there is a chance that seven cars would have been unmolested. This isn’t a certainty (the UlfMobile was parked next to a metal fence with a clear view from a very busy street) but at a minimum it would have provided a few more clues. I’m still not decided about this, but had there been cameras I know I would have been grateful.

I’m certain that the people who did this will be caught. The theft was too brazen to be the work of cautious thieves, although I don’t expect to get anything back. I know that we’ll be more cautious in the future.

On the upside, I guess it can’t hurt to periodically reset your life. I know exactly where all the keys to my house are located. We have new credit card and bank account numbers which have yet to be used. I just wish I’d had more say in the matter.

Clean Bandit’s 60 Minute Workout

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I’m not sure how I got introduced to the music of Clean Bandit, but I found myself listening to their album “New Eyes” over and over again. It’s Electronic Dance Music (EDM) with a classical bent, and while the band is responsible for writing the music, they always have guest vocalists do the most of the singing. I like a band that focuses on their strengths.

I mentioned this on G+ and Seth pointed out that they were coming to the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro. Now, this was back in January, but the concert wasn’t until last night.

We hadn’t been to the Cat’s Cradle in almost 20 years (at least that’s what Wikipedia tells me, as we went to see the first tour by Garbage). They’ve redesigned it (you used to enter from the front, now you walk around back) and it holds around 750 people. The Clean Bandit show was sold out, so we expected a crowd. As I am too old to be “hip”, we got there a little early. As the crowd was mostly college kids, they were checking IDs. If you could legally drink, you got a blue stamp on your right hand. If you were underage, you got two red stamps on both hands.

I was easily the oldest person there, so when I handed in our tickets I mentioned I was applying for the chaperon position. Andrea found the idea of me chaperoning anything a bit frightening.

As I had no desire to stand and fight my way to the front of the stage, we found a spot behind and to the right of the soundboard where there were a couple of bar stools. As the place started to fill up, we realized that the air conditioning, if there actually was air conditioning, wasn’t going to cut it.

It started to get warm.

Promptly at 8pm the opening act started. It was a trio consisting of a drummer, bassist and the guitarist/lead singer named Roland. At least I think his name was Roland, my Google-fu is failing me and I can’t find any reference on the Interwebs. In any case, their first song was a cover of Let’s Go Crazy so I didn’t feel too out of place.

Their set was good, although I didn’t recognize any of the songs with the exception of a part of We Will Rock You played at the end.

By this time it had gotten really warm as more and more people showed up. Seth and Sarah showed up just before Clean Bandit took the stage.

I was wondering how they were going to handle the fact that the lead singers for each of their songs have other careers, and there was no way they would be able to get all of them to tour for a song or two each set. The answer was found in the more than capable voice of Elisabeth Troy. She handled most of the vocal duties, and I think she could front any band she wanted. A very talented lady.

The first song was Real Love which immediately flowed into Cologne. The latter is one of my favorite tracks off the album, and due to the heat I was grateful that all the beautiful, young people in attendance had thought to wear some. Cologne flowed into my favorite non-album track Stronger.

When I say “flowed” I mean that the whole hour long set was pretty much a 60 minute sprint. The only real pause came during the fourth song, Come Over, when Elisabeth got a little over active and managed to knock Neil’s violin out of his hand. There was a bit of a delay as they got the backup ready.

They played most of “New Eyes”. While Come Over was fronted by a male vocalist on the album, Elisabeth did a good job covering it, but they avoided other male lead songs such as Telephone Banking. There were two tracks I had not heard before, Nightingale and Disconnect. The latter featured Roland from the opening act on guitar and vocals.

They ended the set soon after 10pm, and we knew that they would be back out for the big hit, Rather Be. During the encore I thought it was funny to see all the young’uns recording video on their phones.

It was probably 95F by this time, and the concrete floor was slick with what I can only assume was sweat. Outside of the heat, it was a great show, and we were happy to step outside at the end, which although was still around 80F, was a welcome change.

I would say be sure to catch Clean Bandit on their tour, but this was the last official US date. I doubt they will be playing small clubs next time, but you can catch them at the Firefly Music Festival in Delaware before they head back to the UK. I had a great time and should really get out more (grin).

Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron

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First, let me state that I am an unabashed Joss Whedon fan. From Angel to Buffy, Cabin in the Woods to Dollhouse, and of course Firefly, I pretty much watch anything he creates.

I was on a business trip in Canada when the first Avengers movie came out, and we went to a midnight show the morning it opened. Since I was on another business trip, this time to Chicago, when Age of Ultron came out, I decided to do the same.

I didn’t really care for it.

Now before all the haters come out, I’m glad I saw the film and don’t feel that it wasted several hours of my life (unlike some movies) but I was disappointed.

What follows is why, and warning, spoilers a’plenty. It’s funny, when I review a movie I like it is easy to describe it with few spoilers, but in giving a slightly negative review to something with such a fan base I feel compelled to defend my view with examples.

Here, I’ll add some carriage returns so you can still look away. Last chance.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Okay, the movie starts out with our heroes raiding a Hydra base looking for Loki’s scepter. So far so good, although I can’t really remember when the scepter got lost but I went with it. Things seem to be going our team’s way until two mutants, erm, excuse me “enhanced humans”, named Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch join the fray. While the Avengers are ultimately successful in retrieving the scepter, the Scarlet Witch plants a vision into Tony Stark’s brain that he would be responsible for the death of his companions, and by extension, the world.

Liked that part, so I’m pretty jazzed.

Next, we’re back at Avenger HQ and Tony’s vision still haunts him. He has been working on project “Ultron” which would create a global defense system that will render the Avengers unnecessary, and all he lacks is the AI to animate it. In experimenting on Loki’s scepter, he and Bruce Banner discover that there is an AI in the gem. When they attempt to use it to complete the Ultron project, they unleash the intelligence who is now intent on destroying Stark and the rest of the world’s humans.

Here’s where I start to lose it. Let me state for the record that I am a huge fan of James Spader and I loved they way he brought Ultron to life. But I had a really hard time understanding why Ultron would immediately develop such a hatred for Tony Stark. There was almost no creator/creation interaction, and there was a lot of focus on Tony’s offhand comment “Peace in our time” (which I took as sarcastic WWII reference). Anyway, the monster is alive, angry, and after confronting the Avengers, he escapes (his consciousness can travel via the Internet).

And it went downhill from there.

The rest of the movie is pretty much the Avengers chasing Ultron around. Ultron builds himself a new, coolio body (which was much more expressive than I was expecting – I was thinking it would be more like V in V for Vendetta) as well as an army of robot soldiers he controls. He also goes to collect the remaining world’s supply of vibranium (the metal used in Captain America’s shield) and the Avengers attempt to stop him. This results in the Scarlet Witch putting the whammy on the Hulk and Stark has to don “Veronica” – a Hulk-busting suit – to subdue him. Ultron escapes with the metal and the Avengers are blame for the resulting destruction.

Okay, the suit was cool and I can still hear the line “go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep” but it really didn’t advance the plot much.

The Avengers retreat to Hawkeye’s house in the country, where we find out he has a family, and there is a period of “character building”. I almost fell asleep at this point, although that probably had as much to do with the reclining chairs at the AMC 600 as the movie (really nice theatre). Yes, I know that super hero movies can’t be all fight scenes and gadgets, but I found myself not caring by this point.

Now, the coolest thing, to me, about the movie was the introduction of another infinity stone. See, Ultron wants a more realistic (i.e. non-mechanical) body and he is using tech to build one. While it is growing in a capsule-like thing, he cracks open the gem in Loki’s scepter to reveal a smaller yellow gem, which he places on the new body’s forehead. Once the body is ready he plans to upload his consciousness into it. He must know the gem is powerful.

One of my all time favorite movies is Guardians of the Galaxy. As it was mentioned in that film, there are six powerful infinity stones in existence. The purple one is featured in that movie, and the Tesseract from the Thor films is the blue one. Now we see the yellow one, setting the stage for the upcoming Infinity War when Thanos attempts to collect all six.

Now, that is cool.

Anyway, Ultron is interrupted by the Avengers before he can complete the transference into the new body, and they make off with the capsule. Stark then puts J.A.R.V.I.S, an AI, into the body and there is a big fight scene between the Avengers as they attempt to decide if this is a good idea or not. Thor settles it by smashing the capsule holding the body with his hammer, and the resulting lightning (“It’s Alive!”) causes it to awake. The new entity is called “Vision” and features the infinity stone on its forehead.

Then the film heads toward the inevitable climax, which was pretty much the same as the end of the first Avengers movie. The team (now augmented by Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch who have switched sides) swat a bunch of flying things out of the air. Ultron and Vision fight (à la Loki and Hulk), and eventually Tony Stark flies into a glowing hole and sets off an explosion.

Yawn.

I know this movie wasn’t easy to make. You are dealing with a huge cast of characters, many of whom have their own entire franchises and many who could, and you have to cram a lot of plot development into less than three hours. I wish there was more reason for Ultron’s hatred and more interaction between him and his creator. I wish there was less sitting around the farm and more humor. And I wish the ending wasn’t so derivative of the first movie.

So I didn’t really care for it and I probably could have waited until it came out on Blu-ray.

Before all the flaming starts, please understand that it’s okay if you liked it. In fact, I hope you did – it doesn’t not make you a bad person. It just wasn’t to my taste.

I am, however, now very eager to see the Infinity War. I love Thanos as a villain and the whole infinity stones back story is cool. Thor mentions that four infinity stones have surfaced, but I don’t know where the green one appears. Perhaps an upcoming movie? Guess we’ll find out.

[UPDATE: Ken Kennedy pointed out that the fourth “red” stone was in Thor: The Dark World. Don’t know where I got that is was the green stone in my head, and while I saw that movie it must have slipped my mind.]

The Issue of Marriage Equality

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Several months ago I read How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams. This is the guy who creates the Dilbert comic strip, and while I like Dilbert I never miss a chance to read Scott’s blog.

Fully realizing the irony of taking life advice from a cartoonist (well, then again, there is Bill Watterson, so maybe it isn’t ironic at all), I adopted at least one tip of his which is to limit your exposure to negativity. While I used to be a news junky, news on the whole leans strongly toward the negative, so now I limit myself to mainly skimming RSS feeds. So I am aware of things like the unrest in Baltimore and the earthquake in Nepal, but I know enough to feel sympathy for the victims without working myself into deep sadness or rage.

In the USA Today that sits unread on the desk in my hotel room, there is a story with the headline “High court split on gay marriage” and a deck of “Justices seeing no easy answer to age-old question.”

I can solve the problem easily, although the Justices won’t do it: get the government out of the marriage business.

The word “marriage” is too loaded with religious connotations. In many religions, specifically Catholicism, marriage is a sacrament (“a Christian rite recognized as of particular importance and significance”).

Now the Justices are supposed to uphold the Constitution, and they have spent over two centuries trying to interpret its meaning. In the first amendment, there is the phrase that Congress shall “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. When asked for clarification, Jefferson (pretty much the dude who wrote it) stated it meant “building a wall of separation between Church & State“.

It will be impossible to both uphold Jefferson’s intent and use the word marriage to describe any government sanctioned relationship. Thus we should throw it out.

I propose the term “household”. A “household” is a social unit that exists for the mutual benefit of its members, to care and raise any of their children, and the sharing of resources and responsibilities.

Note that it doesn’t include any reference to gender or even number of people. I think it should be managed like a corporation, without the idea of ownership shares. Two or more people can form a household by registering it with the government, and there should be a method for both adding and removing people from a household as well as dissolving it altogether.

This would cover one man and one woman, one woman and another woman or one man and another man, a young person and an older relative, polyamorous groupings or even larger communal living arrangements.

I’m not proposing this to promote or encourage any of those living arrangements, but instead to build on some of the work of one of the best social engineers who ever lived, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.

I’m not claiming that we should adopt all of his policies, but he did institute a program that encourages people in Singapore to buy a home through payroll deduction (basically, a tax) that can only be used for that purpose. Having a large part of the population with a vested interest in preserving infrastructure promotes societal stability. In other words, people who own homes, even a small apartment loft, are a lot less likely to burn them down.

I think familial units, i.e. households, work pretty much the same way. By recognizing these relationships in a formal way, it gives them meaning. And by putting up at least some barriers to dissolving them, it gives them longevity. And thus we could apply similar tax breaks given to those who can file as “Married” on their current tax forms to promote this stability, and we can move the question of marriage back to churches and individuals.

Vanuatu

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I was very unhappy to learn about the destruction that hit the island nation of Vanuatu due to Typhoon Pam this week. We had the opportunity to visit this beautiful and friendly nation back in 2012.

It is kind of hard to get to the country. We came from Fiji, but most of the tourists arrive from Australia (which, trust me, is a lot closer than we are here in North Carolina). Most people arrive in the capital of Port Vila, and we were no different.

Vanautu was recently described as a “Hawaii without the hotels” and I can vouch for that. It’s rural, in many places unspoiled, and is filled with some of the friendliest people you could ever meet.

I also love the language, a pidgin called Bislama. “Me no tok tok Bislama quicktime, tok tok slowtime?” is a valid sentence that I used a lot while there.

While we flew into Port Vila, we spent most of our time on the large northern island of Espiritu Santo. The trip there was interesting. We got into a small plane with about ten other people. There was no metal detector and no safety lecture, and we stayed under 10,000 feet the whole time. The only thing that seemed to be important to the airport staff was that we had paid our US$2 travel tax.

Andrea went for the amazing scuba diving (the wreck of the SS President Coolidge is a popular dive site that she loved) while I snorkeled and read. I also believe I was the first person to ever wear an MC Frontalot shirt in country, and probably the region.

The beaches, such as Champagne Beach, reminded me a lot of places in Hawaii like Bali Hai, but without the crowds.

We stayed at a place called Moyyan House and I wrote to them to see how they weathered the storm. While Espiritu Santo was outside of the main path of the storm (and their website says that everything is okay there), the communication infrastructure for the whole country is having issues, so I have not heard back.

We did spend a little more time in Port Vila on the way home. I liked watching people play pétanque:

and we also had dinner with the newly elected Prime Minister.

Well, when I say “had dinner” I mean that we were in the same restaurant as a large party that was seated outside on a big deck, and when I asked who they were I was told that it was the Prime Minister and his guests, but, hey, he was eating and we were eating, so there.

Vanuatu still has a large part of the population that lives like they did hundreds of years ago. You may have seen the tradition of “land diving” that is done as a coming of age ritual on the island of Pentecost. With the distance between the islands and the numerous languages and dialects, it is no wonder that Bislama became the official language. Cannibalism has been outlawed (motto: “We haven’t eaten anyone since 1969“) and they make a seriously strong kava. They also have mutant, huge, poisonous centipedes but other than that most of the flora and fauna are well behaved (although, I am told, sharks can be a problem).

While I doubt any of my three readers are in Vanuatu, my thoughts are with the people there. If you ever get a chance to go, you should take it.

Review: The Lamps Plus Saga

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Okay, I debated a bit about posting this. There are too many people who would identify this story as a customer service “nightmare”. This isn’t a nightmare – it’s a first world problem that is a bit frustrating. Not being able to find food or shelter – that’s a nightmare. This is just a pain.

The story starts last fall. I was having some people over for a holiday party and I finally decided that I needed to replace some lamp shades that got busted in the move out to the farm – fifteen years ago. They weren’t that damaged when we moved in, but after having a number of kittens over the years all it takes is one small defect to interest them, and then, bam, that’s it.

As is my habit, I got on-line and did a search for lamp shades and found Lamps Plus (lampsplus.com). It was a good website and I was able to narrow the choices down to exactly what I was looking for, and with relatively little hassle I got some quality lamp shades. The only real problem was that the tracking number I got in the e-mail kept showing as invalid, and I was worried that they wouldn’t show up in time. They did and all was well.

Fast forward a few weeks. Where the “first world problems” angle comes in is that we have access to a cottage near the coast of North Carolina. The only issue is that it needs some furniture and my wife, who is particular about such things, could never find furniture she liked. That is until Lamps Plus sent us a catalog with this picture in it:

She thought that room would go perfect in the cottage and I agreed. Thus started the current saga.

I was going to place my order on-line, but I could not find the white armchair in the foreground listed. Plus, I had the additional need that anything heavy needed to be shipped to the coast (three hours away) but anything shipped FedEx should come to the farm.

I got in touch with a sales agent (I should point out that all the sales agents I’ve spoken to have been friendly and courteous), explained my situation, and ended up placing three orders.

The first was for the little teal side table, the coffee table and a television stand (not in the picture). Those would come FedEx so I had them sent to the office where we have a full time shipping department in the building.

The second was for the sofa and the teal console (seen in the back right of the picture). Those would come freight. I stressed that I needed them to be shipped together, since I would have limited time to get down to the coast (it’s at least a six hour round trip) and she said they should since they were both in stock.

The third was for two of the armchairs. She told me that they would be back in stock in March and I was so excited I ordered two of them.

So far, so good.

For my job I have to travel a lot. This week I was in San Francisco when the three items from the first order arrived, and on the morning I was leaving I get a call from the shipper that the console had arrived. When I asked about the couch, they didn’t know anything, so I called back to Lamps Plus and was informed that the sofa wouldn’t ship until March 2nd.

(sigh)

I spent about an hour going back and forth between Lamps Plus and the shipping company looking for options. I have a completely booked schedule for the next week and going to the beach was going to be a huge inconvenience. I asked the shipping company if they could hold the console until the sofa arrived, and they said yes but they would charge a $48/day storage fee. I asked Lamps Plus if I could just refuse delivery so it would be returned to them and they could ship it with the sofa, and they said “no” and if I did there would be another fee. If I had the shipper send it to my house instead of the coast, the fee was going to be more than the cost of the console.

(sigh)

I had no choice but to decide to go to the coast and get the console. Of course the shipper was as helpful as Comcast with “we’ll be there between 11am and 4pm”. My plan was to return back to North Carolina Thursday night, drive to the office and put the boxes from the first order in the car, and then get up early Friday and drive to the coast in order to meet the delivery truck.

Operating on little sleep, I made it to the coast just before 11am and started unpacking. The little teal side table was fine, but it turned out the TV stand had been damaged in shipment. There was no exterior damage but something had poked through the back panel of the stand:

You can’t really see it from the front and the last thing I wanted to do was to have to pack the whole thing up again (you can’t imagine the amount of gauze, Styrofoam, tape and cardboard they wrap around these things) so Andrea suggested I just ask them if they would discount for the damage.

Also, after unpacking everything, I realized that we really didn’t have room for both chairs I had ordered, so I called Lamps Plus back with the goal of asking about the discount and reducing my chair order from two to one.

I was connected to Jackie, who has been a real soldier throughout all of this. She was able to put in the order change and then she just asked me if I could send in pictures of the damaged TV stand. She also helped me change the address for the sofa delivery. I’ll have it sent to the farm and worry about getting it to the coast on my own, because there is a good chance it will show up at a time when I can’t make it down there and I can’t afford ~$50/day in storage fees.

I sent in pictures of the damaged stand, and by this time it was about 1pm. I called the shipping company for a status and they estimated that the truck would be arriving around 2:30pm, so I went out and grabbed some Chinese takeaway and came back to find an e-mail from Lamps Plus canceling the entire order for the chairs.

(sigh)

I got back into the phone queue for Lamps Plus and actually ended up back with Jackie. She was frustrated about the order cancellation (she had specifically noted to only delete the one) and said she’d fix it.

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. The console arrived without damage and, on orders from Andrea, I took lots of pictures of the furniture (her career is insanely busy at this time of year so she couldn’t join me) and headed home.

Later that day I got an e-mail offering $50 for the damaged TV stand (cool) and another one correcting my order to just the one armchair.

I thought everything was cool until I started showing Andrea the pictures. When I got to this one, she was like “what’s that?”

I had not noticed that they sent to us a brown coffee table instead of a white one, which was key to the look of the room.

(sigh)

So I wrote back to Jackie and asked what my options were. The best scenario I can think of would be to order a second coffee table. When that arrives, I will carefully unpack it and place the brown one in the box for a return. That’s the best I can hope for and I can think of a lot of other things that can go wrong, especially since I still have a sofa and a chair to get. As I sent that late on Friday I have not heard back as I write this.

I buy most of the things I need, outside of food, on-line. I am a huge fan of Amazon because they have insanely good customer service. I am comfortable dealing with issues, but I’ve been spoiled. I’m not sure what is up with Lamps Plus, but I think it may be one of those cases where they have taken on more things than they can handle. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, it is incredibly easy to buy lamp shades from them, but furniture is a totally different matter.

But the true measure of a company is how things are handled when things go wrong, and the jury is still out on Lamps Plus. I’ll update this post as the saga continues, and I hope it gets indexed by Google so that people searching for “Lamps Plus” and “furniture” and “problems” will have at least one data point to go on.

I just know that at this moment what was once a good vendor/consumer relationship has been soured, and I’ll be hesitant to order from them in the future.

drip.fm

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Last night I watched part of the Grammy awards show. I tuned in just in time to see Beck take Album of the Year, and I thought to myself that maybe this year the Grammys would be different (they weren’t). Just for full disclosure, I would have been just as happy (if not slightly happier) to see Ed Sheeran win.

What really rubbed me the wrong way was that just before the “In Memoriam” section, some old, rich white guy in a suit droned on and on about how stealing music was bad. That’s not exactly what he said, but it was along the lines of artists should get paid for there work (true) but what he was really advocating for was the continuation of the status quo where consumers’ access to music is tightly controlled by the record labels.

Screw that.

For decades record labels have been sticking it to both artists and consumers. For example, when I moved to LA in 1984 my record collection was stolen in shipment. I used the (minimal) insurance money to buy my first CD player. Back then CDs were about $15-$20 each, mainly because both the technology and demand were low. Now I can burn a CD for about 5 cents, but music CDs are still pretty expensive. Why? So that music labels could protect their profit margins.

[In case you care, my first three CDs were R.E.M.’s Murmur, The Police Zenyatta Mondatta and The Alan Parsons Project I, Robot]

I could drone on even more about how broken that system is, but instead I want to talk about alternatives.

With the near ubiquitousness of the Internet, the role of record labels is diminished. I no longer need them to tell me what is available. I can rely on friends and friends of friends, etc., for recommendations (I’m currently listening to Jim Boggia at the recommendation of my friend Ben – if you click through please excuse Boggia’s lack of updates on his website), and I can buy things directly from the people who create them (see Louis CK and Radiohead). That can work out better for both the artist and the consumer. I spend a lot of money on music and where I can I try to put that money as close to the people who created the content.

Now, in the software industry we often talk about “recurring revenue”. This is kind of the holy grail – can you come up with something useful that people are willing to buy again and again? Think about it: for a lot of artists they create an album, their fan base snaps it up, but then sales tail off until the next release. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to plan for finances as a musician.

Some of you may point to superstars like Beyoncé who don’t have to worry about money (billion dollars in an elevator, blah blah) but to continue with the software analogy for every Whatsapp there are a massive number of other applications without that kind of valuation.

So, what are the options? Recently I was introduced to drip.fm. This is a service that is building a subscription service platform to connect musicians and their fans. For example, I pay $5/month and I get access to Mike Doughty’s “drip”. He promises to post new content frequently and I get access to it for as long as I have my subscription. It’s mine – I can download it and use it on any of my devices – so the service is different from streaming where once you stop paying you lose access altogether.

But if you can download the content, wouldn’t that drive people to purchase a one month subscription and then drop it? Well, in drip all content that was added before you joined is locked. You get access to the new stuff, but you have “unlock” the older stuff using “release credits” which you earn for each month you remain a member.

At first I was a little upset that I had to unlock the other tracks, but mainly I was kicking myself for not signing up to drip when I had the opportunity. I supported Mike during a PledgeMusic drive and in return he offered us free trial access. I was too busy to check it out, and part of the reason for this post is to act as a public service announcement that if one of your favorite musicians starts a drip, sign up early (grin). You do start out with a number of release credits so you can get started unlocking right away, and it appears I’ve just gained about four more in just a week, so I obviously don’t have the whole thing figured out but I think it strikes a good balance between fending off the leechers without being too obtrusive.

I already think I’ve gotten my money’s worth. While Mike is promising us new songs moving forward, he has also uploaded a number of live versions of older songs and even complete concerts. To get another version of “Rising Sign” into my collection is cheap at twice the price.

For those artists who aren’t Beyoncé this may provide a nice, steady stream of revenue to keep them productive and, well, fed. He even talks about it during the “Live at City Winery” concert. Basically, give him money and he’ll use it to to buy these things called “sandwiches”. When I heard that I couldn’t help but think of MC Frontalot’s “Captains of Industry”.

Grrr – I just went to look for a link to that song and the first hit was Youtube. Since it wasn’t on Front’s official channel it appears some fan has dutifully uploaded most of his songs. While that can help gain exposure for an artist, it makes it hard for them to get paid, and that must be frustrating.

Anyway, as a drip subscriber, you get access to “Mainline” which is free content provided by other artists. And I love the fact that you can download your tunes in FLAC.

The website is pretty cool – easy to navigate and you can queue up songs and stream them if you don’t want to do that on your local device. It would be nice to have some sort of overall search facility. For example, I couldn’t find out if Frontalot actually had a drip. It will let me search my library, which includes the Mainline content, but it would be useful to see what other drips are available. My guess is that it is there somewhere, I just can’t find it.

To summarize: I think drip.fm has a lot of potential, and I like thinking that I can buy Mike Doughty’s lunch for three or four days in a year versus paying for the first of many martinis for a record executive.

Review: Super Bowl XLIX

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Even though I would not consider myself to be an NFL fanatic, I have a certain affinity for the Super Bowl.

I was born in Pittsburgh the year before the first one, and although we moved to North Carolina soon after that I’ve always been a fan of Pittsburgh teams (note that I do root for the Panthers as well, but when I was growing up there were no national sports teams in North Carolina).

Pittsburgh won Super Bowl IX on my ninth birthday, and continued on to win four of the first fourteen titles. Pittsburgh is the only team to have won six Super Bowls and is tied with Dallas and now New England at eight appearances.

When neither Pittsburgh nor Carolina are in the big game, I usually pull for the underdog, but I also tend to base my choice on who is in a better position to compete with Pittsburgh’s legacy. This year I wasn’t emotionally invested in either team, but since New England had the stronger Super Bowl record, I was pulling for Seattle.

Actually, all I was really hoping for was a good game, and this year’s title match didn’t disappoint.

Toward the end of the half it was 14 to 7, New England, but the score really didn’t reflect the game. New England was having a much better time of it on the field, and it was only an interception that kept the Patriots from having an even greater lead. But in a gutsy move, the Seahawks went for the touchdown instead of a field goal with minutes left and managed to tie it up at the half.

The halftime show was headlined by Katy Perry, and it was a nice change to see someone not eligible for AARP perform. Ever since Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” the NFL has leaned toward, say we say, “mature” acts. Even Prince was 50 when he did the halftime show. They also mentioned Lenny Kravitz, but while I think he is a very talented performer, I have no idea what he was doing there. Perhaps they wanted some adult supervision. Speaking of adults, I was happy to see Missy Elliot make a surprise appearance and add some life to the show. Perhaps it was because she’s been around as long as Tom Brady – I saw in the EW’s “Chart Flashback” that her song “Hot Boyz” was number seven on the Hot 100 back in 2000.

Speaking of entertainment, if my teams aren’t in it I watch the game for the commercials. My favorite was the Doritos airplane one

followed closely by the one from Loctite.

After the break it was all Seattle, and they increased their lead to ten. When the Patriots went three and out late in the third quarter, one might have thought the game was over.

It wasn’t. The fourth quarter was all New England, and with two minutes left in the game they were leading 28 to 24.

I find it amusing that when I watch football, if my team is up in a situation like this I am certain that the other team will rally and win, and if my team is down I think there is no way they will possibly score enough to win.

While this was a great game, one of the best Super Bowl games ever was the Giants vs. Patriots in Super Bowl XLII when the Giants put an end to the Patriots’ perfect season with an insane catch by David Tyree toward the end of the game. It seemed like history would repeat when Jermaine Kearse bobbled a pass deflected by Malcolm Butler but managed the completion. This left the Seahawks on the Patriot’s five yard line with over a minute on the clock and a strong running game.

Of course, in one of the worst calls in championship history, Seattle decided to throw it and Butler redeemed himself with a game winning interception.

Even then it wasn’t over. With Brady back in the end zone, he couldn’t just take a knee, but an unfortunate penalty gave them the five yards they needed to seal the outcome.

But what really disappointed me, and made me happy that New England had won, was the brawl that happened after the play. There was an actual fight, lead by Seahawk Bruce Irwin, that resulted in his ejection from the game – the first time in Super Bowl history and the first one I’d ever seen in 40 years of watching NFL games.

Combine that with the trash talk, the “poopdown” and not only did New England outplay Seattle, they outclassed them, and I just wanted to congratulate the winning team.

Review: Louis C.K. at The Comedy Store

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I’m a fan of the comedian Louis C.K. and I also really admire the way he markets his performances. When he does a special, he frequently offers it on his website for $5. With no DRM and high definition formats available, it is a great way to see and own his work.

His latest special is called “Louis C.K. at The Comedy Store” and I watched it last night. It was solid, like most of his work, but not quite my favorite. Don’t get me wrong, I think I got more than $5 worth of laughs out of it, but one of the issues I have is that the first thing I saw him in was also one of the best things he’s done, and one of the best bits of comedy ever made.

Note: for purists there may be spoilers below, so stop reading if your that type. Yes, you know who you are.

It was with Conan O’Brien, and while I remember seeing better versions, this is the one I found on the YooToobz and the quality isn’t great:

I’m a year older than Louis and I identify with a lot of what he talks about as we’re from the same generation. However, he is also a parent and I’m child-free, and I have a hard time relating to his parenting-based humor.

There were a couple of bits that stood out in this show. I like it when he talks about flying, as I am a frequent flyer, and he did a bit about traveling with crying children. Again, since I’m child-free, I don’t do crying children well (or deal well with those packs of pre-teen girls whose voices can hit vocal ranges so high it upsets the dog but that’s another issue) but I did find a great way to deal with them on planes. At the recommendation of my friend Ben I bought a pair of Etymotic 4P earbuds, and now that I can use my phone pretty much the whole flight, with just a little bit of music I can drown out almost anything.

In the show he tells a story about getting the “stink eye” from another passenger when his daughter was crying on a plane, and he talked about his limited options. He then pantomimed strangling the child and handing her limp body back to the guy. Okay, not everyone’s idea of humor, but short of that there isn’t much he could do about it, and that situational comedy appeals to me. I was watching this with my friend David and we both thought of the final episode of the show M*A*S*H during this bit.

Where he really shines is when he points out how lucky we have it and how spoiled we are as a society not to realize it. He riffed on people who are trying to “find themselves” and determine what to do with their lives by saying “Eat food”. Basically, wander around looking for food, and when you find it, eat it. While that is a vast oversimplification, if one were to deconstruct existence to its bare minimum, that would be it. So as long as you have enough to eat, consider yourself lucky.

My favorite bit was when he compared America to the world’s worst girlfriend; someone who does horrible things but justifies it every time by bringing up a past event when they were wronged. Of course he is talking about the events of 9/11, and I think we need more people talking about our reaction to that event. A lot of people died and a lot of money was lost on that day, but our actions after the fact caused considerably more death and destruction than 9/11 itself. To question it is often portrayed as being unpatriotic, but nothing is more patriotic than to question authority in a democracy.

I wanted more of that, and for me I found his Beacon Theater show more to my liking. In this one he does put a few images into your brain that you might wish to remove (I’ll never be able to watch “The Wizard of Oz” in the same way again) but there are a number of “gut laughs” as well.

Still a bargain at $5, and I eagerly await more from him.