Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

Product Placement

Random Thoughts

I was watching Flash Gordon the other night. No, not the movie (which is awesome), but the new Sci-Fi Channel TV show (which made dozens of needless changes to the Flash Gordon mythos but has potential if they can avoid more silly crap like the “IMEX”). In one scene, Flash goes to Google some information… no, wait, he doesn’t Google it, he “Snifferbot.com”s it, or something like that.

Seriously, does Google (or Yahoo or MSN or whoever) really charge a ton to be able to use their site in a TV show? This kind of little junk is usually what ruins TV shows for me. How can I ever suspend disbelief when they completely detach from reality like that? I thought companies paid money to get product placement… why are no TV producers taking advantage of having their actors actually drink Coke on screen instead of “Cola”?

Wake up guys. People are not watching commercials anymore. Except maybe during the Superbowl. If you want people to see your products, you need to get people in these fantasy worlds to be using your products.

On the flip side, last week when the esurance animated superspy chick showed up on Who Wants to be a Superhero? I threw up in my mouth a little bit. It was like someone hit the show with an esurance bomb and it got esurance goo on everything. There is a line… please don’t cross it.

Cinematic Cuisine

Random Thoughts

The other night I had lightning strike my brain. No, not literally. I mean that I had an idea, and its a whopper.

I love going to see movies at the theater. There is just something about the big screen and even the crowd (when they aren’t doing annoying things like talking loudly or text messaging) that I enjoy. And while I think ticket prices are outrageous, I’ve learned to modify my habits to get a better deal. AMC does $5 tickets for shows before noon on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. One thing I don’t like about going to the theater is the food.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I love having a bucket of popcorn, candy and a soda at the movies. But the prices are so insane that I will only buy something when I’ve got coupons that reduce the cost down to a more manageable level, or I just have the wife bring candy and sodas in her purse.

I’ve learned over the years that mostly this is because theaters make diddly squat from their box office and rely heavily on their concessions for revenue. This is where my big idea comes in…

Rather than have a couple of overpriced counters of undersized candy and a sprawling game room filled with games nobody plays, why not lease out space to food and candy shops?

The most obvious benefit is that the theaters could set lease agreements to make the space profitable, modify rent as needed. Next, they’d be able to cut their own overhead by reducing staff. A little healthy competition between 3 or 4 food/candy vendors would probably do the customers some good. Lower prices would mean more people willing to pay for snacks, and probably more revenue (trying to explain the “lower prices = more money” concept to some business people is infuriating though) for the stores. Better and more affordable food selection might even increase ticket sales since it might make a night out at the movies a little more enjoyable.

Really, I just don’t see why this couldn’t work out well for the theaters. Someone, please explain it to me if I’m completely bonkers…

Feeling a little beta

Random Thoughts

Two weeks and all I’ve written is a tiny review of a book.

That is not entirely true. I have written quite a bit, however, none of it is publishable. Either because it needs more thought and editing, or because it is about a beta.

A while back I lamented about how I stopped getting beta invites. My PC had fallen behind the curve and slowly had settled at the bottom tail end, dragging behind the curve like a tin can on the car of a couple newly weds. Then we bought new PCs. Then I had to kick myself because I had forgotten to go update the dxdiag on all my beta applications. Properly updated, the beta invites started coming in again.

So, World of Warcraft has been canceled, City of Heroes is on hold, and Lord of the Rings only remains because I jump in now and then (and their content patches look interesting, plus if I cancel I lose the founder pricing, makes me wish I’d just jumped the shark and bought the lifetime, I think they should always allow that to be an option for founders, at the founder price). These days I’m spending all my time on the XBox and playing games that are not yet ready for release.

I look forward to being able to tell you about them. In the meantime, I’m going to finish polishing up some other posts and see what I can do to end the drought.

A Case of the Mondays

Random Thoughts

To be honest, I do not have a problem with Mondays. I do, however, have a problem with all the people who insist on misusing a Monday.

The weekend, Saturday and Sunday, are time off for most people. They relax, they get away from the office and work. For other people, the weekend is time to get work done that can’t be done while everyone else is working. Programming is like this, especially when you are bug fixing a production level program. You can’t make changes to the underlying database in the middle of the day on a work day. You have to wait for late at night, or the weekend.

In one case you are returning to work and are in need of getting back into a work frame of mind. In the other case, you’ve spent the weekend doing one kind of work and are in need of getting back into the normal work mode.

Mondays, used properly, are great for this. On a Monday I like to wake up late, not too much, but about a half hour or hour late. Then I have a good breakfast, something I often skip later in the week. Next I’ll spend some time going through emails and sending out replies. I’ll pull out last week’s paperwork and merge it with the weekend notes, and make myself an organized task list of all the stuff that is still open and is still my responsibility. Just before lunch, I’ll gather up all the easy tasks and polish them. Most of them are so simple that I find myself actually thinking, “Why didn’t I do this earlier?” With the bulk of quick work done, I go to lunch. If I’m at home, I eat and watch some TV; if I’m at work, I eat and chat with coworkers. But in both places, in the back of my mind, I’m sifting and shuffling, organizing and prioritizing. After lunch, I settle in for the long afternoon. Tackle as much as I can in preparation for the rest of the week which is bound to throw me a curve ball or two. This is when I remember why I didn’t do that easy stuff sooner. By the end of a good Monday, the To Do list is half or more done and the coming week has a nice outline of work to be done.

That is how a Monday should be.

It is a shame that so many people insist on trying to cram status meetings and project planning on to Mondays. No one is ever mentally prepared. They are either still too relaxed, or they are just in the wrong frame of mind. All the meetings really do is to force people to rush into action, instead of easing into the week at a brisk walk or comfortable jog, Monday meetings make people hit the ground running… and its why by Wednesday they are begging for the weekend again. And because of the befuddlement and confusion of a rushed Monday, all those meetings will need to be repeated later in the week in some form or another. A giant waste of everyone’s time.

If you are a manager or project lead or anything of the sort, I beg of you to take this to heart. Hold off on those Monday meetings and rush whenever possible. Let your people, in fact encourage your people to, use Monday as a day of preparation. They’ll be much more productive later in the week, I promise.

Useless Technical Websites

Random Thoughts

Most of today I have spent my work time searching the Internet for a solution to a problem that I have. One of the things I have been looking for is information on how to best use HTTP Modules in .NET. Allow me to provide you with an depiction of 99% of the websites I found:

HTTP Modules are great and can do much if you use them well.

When using HTTP Modules, you need to consider exactly what you are trying to accomplish, and then take the steps needed to accomplish it.

In conclusion, HTTP Modules are awesome!

Now take that, make it five hundred or more words and you have a good idea of what I’m getting at. It is an article, written with wonderful verbiage and great care… to make sure they do not actually explain anything. No examples, nothing. Just “This is neat! Its neat because it does stuff! Isn’t that neat?!?” with no bother to actually go into any detail at all about what is does or how to actually use any of it.

And of course, every page is simply overflowing with ads.

Hey you… yeah you, the one who writes pages exactly like the one I described… you are ruining the Internet!

There is just so much noise, I can’t even tell if there is a signal at all anymore…

QuickTime and iTunes

Random Thoughts

I love QuickTime. I hate iTunes. Every PC I get I install QuickTime and all the browser plugins I need in order to watch videos both offline and online. I’ve got some really cool videos I enjoy watching once in a while, so I have to do it.

However, my most recent installation, on my Windows Vista PC, is annoying the crap out of me. I want it to automatically check for updates, but basically every couple days a window pops up and tells me there is a new version out… but it is NOT a new version of QuickTime. It is the exact same version of QuickTime that I have installed, but it is popping up a window to kindly let me know that I can download QuickTime+iTunes.

I don’t want f***ing iTunes. Go away.

Anyway… if anyone knows how I can keep automatic updates on but have it ignore the QuickTime+iTunes, please let me know.

Intent versus Action

Random Thoughts

I admire the sentiment, and I even respect the effort… but seriously, who are they kidding?

The parts that I like about it is that people should do more to conserve. I recycle, I replaced as many lights in my house as possible (and tolerable) with low energy bulbs… I try, and I’d like to think I succeed, even if just a little. My ongoing battle with junk mail isn’t just about trying to stop getting junk, but also doing my part to reduce how much of that wasteful crap they print. At least with junk email, there is no real waste, except the couple seconds a week I spend reviewing the junk folder before deleting it. And any effort to raise awareness has its merit.

The line that really gets me, though, is this one:

Organizers say the concerts will be as green as possible, with a tally of energy use being kept and proceeds from ticket sales going to distribute power-efficient light bulbs and other measures that will offset the shows’ greenhouse gas emissions.

This is what I mean by “Who are they kidding?” Directly from their quote, they will be distributing power-efficient light bulbs as part of their emissions offset. That’s a laugh, because 90% of the bulbs they give out at the concerts will be left on the ground or tossed into the trash (ironically, creating more waste than if they’d just not handed them out at all), and of the 10% that make it home with a concert goer I’d guess that maybe 10% of those will actually get used. So we are looking at 1 in 100 bulbs given out being put to use. That’s 99 bulbs in the trash or sitting unused in a garage or closet.

That’s almost as bad as the idea of buying emissions credits. “Well, we’d really like to help the environment, but rather than change our product or production, we’ll just write a check each year to pay for the offset.” Umm… what? The only possible way this works is if the money used to purchase credit is spent preventing or removing the exact amount of or more pollution the credit is buying. Otherwise, you just end up with the same pollutions and a bunch of money sitting in someone’s bank. I feel like I should have heard about buying emissions credits on Snopes where they would promptly debunk it as yet another email chain letter like that Nigerian gentleman who wants to give me millions of dollars.

It all just doesn’t make any logical sense…

No Means No

Random Thoughts

When I began to undertake my quest of removing unwanted junk from my life, I guess I never considered how much other people might want to send junk to me. While I would never ever in a million billion years shop at the Golfsmith and would prefer to never get catalogs or coupons from them, they apparently think that sending me unwanted catalogs and coupons is worth the expense to hedge their bets on the minuscule chance that I might change my mind.

My previous experience with them was that I contacted them directly and asked for my address (with my house’s old owners name) be removed from their mailings because I did not want them. And I thought I was successful because the mailings from them (sometimes two or three a week) stopped. But lo and behold, I reach into the mailbox today to find a new Golfsmith catalog. The only change is that it is now addressed to me instead of the old owner.

Obviously, since I’m already not a customer, ignoring me and treating me badly won’t hurt them… or will it? Like the website says… Probably not. I don’t wield enough consumer power to hurt their bottom line, but I can say for certain, at this point, even if I one day do decide to pick up the game of golf I will never shop at the Golfsmith. They’ve lost any chance of ever winning my business.

Right now, I’m experiencing a respite in the deluge of junk mail. My efforts appear to be working. I think I’ve only thrown out maybe two or three pieces of junk this week. But is this Golfsmith ad a sign of things to come? Will I never be able to escape the junk since they will send it to me even when I ask them not to? And do I have any recourse if they continue?

For now, I’ve emailed to the Golfsmith again asking them to remove me from their mailing list. We’ll have to see what happens next.