Appleʼs iTunes software has a habit of upgrading the music in a person's computer every once in a while, without telling them.
But if you're the sort of person who occasionally looks through one's file system, you see it in action, because anomalies arise when automation is allowed to make changes to something as arbitrary as music.
In the screenshot above, you can see the directory that stores a copy of the Tori Amos album American Doll Posse.
Of note is the song “Fat Slut,” which has been upgraded to “Fat S__t.”
The music isn't different. Mrs. Amos still shrieks, “Fat Slut!” into the microphone. But Apple has thoughtfully sanitized the song's file name to protect the sensitive circuits in its modern computers that might become offended by the term.
This is what happens when you don't validate untrusted input
So, if I set up an iCloud e-mail address, all of the e-mail that everyone around the world sends without an address will come to me? That doesnʼt sound like fun at all.
I always feel bad when a new company tries to make a big splash on the internet, and then has a hard time of it. I know how it is trying to do ambitious things with a small team and little funding.
In this case, it's a scrappy little startup called “Google,” and its product is called “Google Analytics.” As you can see, the web site is a disaster. Hopefully it gets some money and people to work things out.
Hereʼs another example of how Microsoft no longer understand Macs.
When trying to attach a file to a message in Microsoft Outlook, it gives the option to Browse this Mac. Thereʼs a reason that real Mac-native apps donʼt use that language. They just use “Browse.”
This is because the resulting file dialog allows me to browse not only “this” Mac, but also other Macs, as well as file servers, other locations on the internet, or even a P.A.N.
Microsoft used to have a very thorough and competent group called the Mac Business Unit. The Mac was where Microsoft tested new Office features before rolling them out on Windows. I guess all of that has been value-engineered into oblivion.
Can you figure out how to close this error message dialog box? No, itʼs not by clicking on the red circled × that looks exactly like a close window control. You do it by clicking on the ellipses.
A packet of Nutty Chocolate from Ampersand Coffee Roasters
Todayʼs coffee is Nutty Chocolate from Ampersand Coffee Roasters in Colorado.
Bull shit is good for fertilizing coffee crops. And bullshit is apparently a key ingredient in this coffeeʼs marketing. The package is so crammed full of sanctimonious later-day hipster buzzwords that thereʼs barely room for the trophy case of “look how extra I am!” stickers. The only thing missing is a gold participation star from Mrs. Keaneʼs kindergarten class.
Howʼs the coffee? Itʼs slightly below average. The flavors arenʼt as pronounced as the packaging would have you believe, and thereʼs a bit of a chemical-style aftertaste. It is unkind to say that the coffee doesnʼt live up to the hype, because no coffee could possibly accede to the level of boastful globalist hype cosplay in which this company engages.
Still, those poor coffee beans. The weight of the global order is on their shoulders. The only way to put them under more pressure is to actually put them in an espresso machine.
The package promises they will “[provide] the ultimate holistic coffee experience through quality coffee, womenʼs empowerment, environmental regeneration, and upward spirals.”
Itʼs a bag of coffee beans, not a United Nations resolution.
I find it curious that a company so aggressively engaged in forthrightness as performance art should describe its product as “An insane blend of our nuttiest and most chocolaty-tasting coffees.” I guess Ampersand didnʼt get the Slack message that youʼre not supposed to use the word “insane” anymore, as it offends those who choose to be offended on behalf of imaginary mentally unstable people they donʼt even know.
An outdated Samsung thinking everything is just fine
Today, Apple released a software update for my iPhone 6, which came out in September of 2014. That means this latest software update is for a phone that came out 100 months ago.
I also pulled out my Samsung Galaxy S7 to see if it had a software update. Nope. It stopped getting software updates in January of 2021. That means it only got software updates for 57 months — about half as long as the iPhone.
Sounds like a good reason to avoid Samsung phones.
At one of the entrances to Cruise Port Falmouth there is a series of signs telling the history of Falmouth. I donʼt think anyone ever reads them. The small fraction of people who leave port on their own and find their way back through this gate are too tired, hungry, and sunburned to care much about history.
I took photographs of some of them, and I leave these here in the name of posterity so that maybe someday someone will read on the internet what they didnʼt read in real life.
Sadly, the URLs printed on the big signs donʼt work. This is a good example of why you never print web addresses on anything thatʼs expected to last longer than a leaflet.
FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENCE
JAMAICAʼS QUEST FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT BEGAN IN EARNEST WITH NORMAN W. MANLEY ESTABLISHING THE PEOPLEʼS NATIONAL PARTY IN 1938 AND ALEXANDER BUSTAMENTE FOUNDING THE JAMAICA LABOUR PARTY IN 1943. A NEW CONSTITUTION IN 1944 ESTABLISHED A HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, POPULARLY ELECTED, TO SHARE POWER WITH THE GOVERNOR. IN 1957. JAMAICA BECAME FULLY SELFGOVERNED. ALL INTERNAL AFFAIRS HANDLED BY AN EXECUTIVE COUNCIL, AND LED BY A PREMIER. THE FOLLOWING YEAR, 1958, JAMAICA JOINED THE WEST INDIES FEDERATION, WHICH INCLUDED ALL OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS IN THE CARIBBEAN, WHICH DID NOT LAST LONG. DISBANDING IN MAY 1962. JAMAICA REQUESTED, AND WAS GRANTED, INDEPENDENCE FROM ENGLAND, EFFECTIVE AUGUST 6, 1962.
JAMAICAN MAROONS
JAMAICAʼS MOUNTAINOUS CENTER HAS ALWAYS BEEN A DIFFICULT REGION TO TRAVEL THROUGH, CONTROL, OR REGULATE. SINCE THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF 1655, THE MOUNTAINS OFFERED REFUGE TO RUNAWAY SLAVES OR MAROONS, WHO WERE ABLE TO ESTABLISH STABLE COMMUNITIES IN REGIONS THE ENGLISH CONSIDERED IMPENETRABLE. THE MAROONS ENGAGED THE ENGLISH MILITIA IN OPEN WARFARE ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; THE FIRST IN THE 1730S, WHICH SAW MAROON COMMUNITIES SHIFT FROM THE EASTERN MOUNTAINS TO THE COCKPIT COUNTRY IN THE WEST. THE ENGLISH OFFERED THE MAROONS A TREATY IN 1739 THAT GAVE LIBERTY AND QUALIFIED AUTONOMY IN THEIR REGION. SKIRMISHES BETWEEN THE ENGLISH MILITIA AND MAROON COMMUNITIES IN TRELAWNY REIGNITED IN THE 1790S, RESULTING IN A MASS DEPORTATION OF MAROONS TO NOVA SCOTIA.
HISTORIC PRESERVATION
THE HISTORY OF FALMOUTH IS WELL PRESERVED THROUGH THE HIGH DENSITY OF HISTORIC BUILDINGS THAT REMAIN IN TOWN. FROM LARGE MERCHANT STORE/HOUSES TO SMALL, BOARD HOUSES, CHURCHES, SHOPS. THE COURTHOUSE, AND FORT BALCARRES. RESIDENTS OF FALMOUTH CONTINUE TO LIVE, WORK, WORSHIP, AND SOCIALIZE IN HISTORIC BUILDINGS. FALMOUTH HERITAGE RENEWAL (FHR) HAS AN APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM THAT TRAINS JAMAICANS IN HISTORIC MASONRY AND CARPENTRY SKILLS: THEIR WORK CAN BE IDENTIFIED ALL OVER TOWN. THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA (UVA) RUNS A PROGRAM IN FALMOUTH TRAINING STUDENTS TO MEASURE AND MAKE ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS OF HISTORIC BUILDINGS. FALMOUTH EXEMPLIFIES THE BEST OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION BY OFFERING OPPORTUNITIES FOR EDUCATION IN A DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT. TO MAKE A DONATION TO FHR, PLEASE VISIT WWW.FALMOUTHJAMAICA.ORG/. TO GET INFORMATION ABOUT UVAʼS FALMOUTH FIELD SCHOOL IN HISTORIC PRESERVATION PLEASE VISIT -
WWW.ARCH.VIRGINIA.EDU/FALMOUTH/SITE/HOME.HTML
JOHN THARP
AN EXTREMELY WEALTHY PLANTER, JOHN THARPE CONSTRUCTED A PRIVATE WHARF IN FALMOUTH HARBOUR TO MANAGE SUGAR EXPORTS AND MATERIAL AND SLAVE IMPORTS FOR HIS PLANTATION EMPIRE AT GOOD HOPE, A FEW MILES SOUTH OF FALMOUTH ON THE MARTHA BRAE RIVER. LIKE MANY WEALTHY SUGAR PLANTERS IN THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THARP TRIED TO MANAGE HIS PROPERTIES WHILE LIVING IN ENGLAND; UNLIKE MOST, THARP RETURNED TO JAMAICA PERMANENTLY IN THE 1790S TO MANAGE HIS PROPERTIES IN PERSON. AFTER HIS RETURN, THARP WAS ACTIVE IN LOCAL AND PARISH POLITICS AND WAS A SIGNIFICANT BENEFACTOR TO ST. PETERʼS ANGLICAN CHURCH.
HISTORY OF FALMOUTH
ORIGINALLY FOUNDED IN 1769. FALMOUTH GREW THROUGH THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO BE THE MAJOR PORT AND THE SEAT FOR THE PARISH OF TRELAWNY, ONE OF THE MOST PRODUCTIVE SUGAR PARISHES IN JAMAICA. HISTORICALLY DOMINATED BY MERCHANTS AND TRADERS, FALMOUTH WAS IMPORTANT IN JAMAICAN SLAVESʼ STRUGGLE FOR EMANCIPATION. FALMOUTH HAS REMAINED A COMMERCIAL CENTER IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES, THE SITE OF A WEEKLY MARKET THAT DRAWS SHOPPERS AND VENDORS FROM SURROUNDING AREAS. THE REMARKABLE DENSITY OF HISTORIC BUILDINGS REMAINING IN FALMOUTH, MANY OF WHICH LOCAL RESIDENTS HAVE LIVED IN AND MAINTAINED, IS A TESTIMONY TO THE TOWNʼS RICH HERITAGE.
HISTORY OF JAMAICA
ORIGINALLY INHABITED BY THE TAINOS, THE SPANISH WERE THE FIRST EUROPEANS TO SETTLE IN JAMAICA, UNTIL THEY WERE SUPPLANTED BY THE ENGLISH IN 1655. BY THE START OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, SUGAR CULTIVATION HAD BECAME JAMAICAʼS PRIMARY INDUSTRY AND EXPORT, RESULTING IN THE IMPORTATION OF MANY THOUSANDS OF AFRICANS TO WORK IN THE SUGAR PLANTATIONS. JAMAICAʼS SLAVES WON EMANCIPATION IN 1834, ALTHOUGH PEOPLE WERE NOT FULLY FREE UNTIL THE END OF THE APPRENTICESHIP PERIOD IN 1838. A COLONY OF BRITAIN UNTIL 1962, JAMAICA HAS SINCE OPERATED AS AN INDEPENDENT NATION, ITS GOVERNMENT CENTERED IN KINGSTON ON THE SOUTH COAST.
ARRIVAL OF COLUMBUSʼ FIRST SHIP
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS FIRST LANDED ON THE ISLAND OF JAMAICA DURING HIS SECOND VOYAGE, ON MAY 5, 1494. AS HE SAILED INTO THE HARBOUR OF ST. ANNʼS BAY, ON THE NORTHERN COAST, A FLEET OF ABOUT SEVENTY CANOES, FILLED WITH TAINOS, CAME OUT TO MEET HIM. IN JULY 1494, AFTER EXPLORING PRESENT-DAY CUBA, COLUMBUS SAILED AROUND JAMAICAʼS SOUTHERN COAST. COLUMBUS RETURNED TO JAMAICA DURING HIS FOURTH VOYAGE IN 1503, WHERE HE SPENT ALMOST A YEAR WAITING ON SHIP REPAIRS FROM SPANIARDS IN HISPANIOLA. STRANDED NEAR WHAT WOULD BECOME THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW SEVILLE IN ST. ANNʼS PARISH, COLUMBUS AND HIS CREW RELIED ON THE TAINOS FOR PROVISIONS.
Well, hereʼs something you almost never see: an error message from the B&H web site.
B&H takes its web presence very seriously, and is among the planetʼs biggest targets for criminals. But somehow the boffins on 9th Avenue manage to keep the fraudsters at bay, while maintaining a web site that is fast, complex, and fairly easy to use.
This error message didnʼt last long. Only a few seconds. Perhaps today is a good day to buy a lottery ticket.
Silicon Valley tech companies gotta Silicon Valley. Amirite?
Apple has a new version of its HomePod device available. Much like most of its previous devices, itʼs built for people who live in the greater San Francisco area, where the weather is largely placid, boring and uneventful. In other words — entirely unlike most of the rest of the planet.
The web page about the new HomePod includes this footnote about its temperature and humidity sensors:
Temperature and humidity sensing is optimized for indoor, domestic settings, when ambient temperatures are around 15°C to 30°C and relative humidity is around 30% to 70%.
Well, 15°C is 59 degrees. How often do people let it get down to 59 degrees in their homes? All the time.
There is no shortage of basements in places like Green Bay, Minneapolis, and the entire nation of Canada where people have a basement that has been kitted out as a family room, or a den, or a home office and that remains unheated most of the year. One of Appleʼs scenarios for using the HomePod temperature sensor is that it can be paired with other HomeKit gear to automatically turn on a heater if it gets too cold. Great. Except that if your chosen temperature for activating the heat in your unused basement or attic rec room is below 59°, Apple admits itʼs not going to be reliable.
On the hot side, OK, itʼs unusual to have an indoor temperature above 86°. But Iʼve had it in my house many times when the humidity was low and I lived in the desert. Many days in the spring and fall when Iʼd have the windows wide open enjoying the warm breeze and low humidity, the indoor temperature would get to 86°. If the cat was sleeping, that was fine. Sheʼd eventually wake up and start complaining, and Iʼd have to close the windows and bring the temperature down to 80-ish for her. But thatʼs to be expected, since she wears a fur coat. If I didnʼt have the cat, Iʼd probably have the temperature higher. And Iʼm not alone. Thereʼs a reason millions of people retire to hot places.
The humidity range is oddly narrow, too. Iʼm sure that 30% humidity is bone-crackingly dry in Cupertino. In Nevada, itʼs a bit clammy. When I lived there, the outdoor humidity reported by the National Weather Service was regularly in the single digits. And both of my indoor humidity sensors almost always showed readings well below 30%. Both of them appeared to have the same sensor under the hood, since they both stopped reporting humidity at 10%. These werenʼt expensive high-tech scientific humidity sensors. One I bought at the Apple Store for about $100. The other came from the supermarket, and cost about ten bucks. But it was perfectly happy reporting humidity far lower than what Apple considers reliable for its equipment.
Living in the Bay Area, Apple employees canʼt possible envision indoor humidity above 70%, but guess what — thatʼs a perfectly ordinary occurrence in most of the southern United States, including Florida, New Orleans, and Houston — the fourth-largest city in the nation. According to my HomeKit-connected humidity sensor, the humidity inside my house has been over 80% five times in the last two months.
All of this continues a pattern at Apple of designing products that only work well in the very specific, very ordinary weather conditions of Silicon Valley. Things like iPod headphone cords that get brittle in a Chicago winter, and iPhones that shut themselves off in temperatures that are common for millions of people who live in desert environments.
Apple has the money, the resources, and the people to do better. Why it chooses not to remains unclear.
Iʼve had bad days. But at least Iʼve never been a Microsoft employee that got locked out of Microsoftʼs system while demonstrating how great Microsoftʼs products are to a group of 50 potential customers.
It must be interesting to work for a company big enough to invent its own HTML entities.
It must also be interesting when your boss lets you know that you didnʼt escape them, or parse them, or whatever and theyʼre showing on the public web site.
I presume that &NFi; is supposed to be parsed as <i>, and &NFi_; as </i>.
iPadOS 16 may not be quite ready for prime time. At least not the part of it that only shows an icon placeholder graphic when you try to do math with it.
I know that Iʼm not perfect. I know that while I think my web sites work on every device, thereʼs probably a configuration out there on which they fall over. But the University of Houston/Downtown really has no excuse for this.
How is it possible for an organization to put out a public web site in 2022 that doesnʼt work on mobile phones? Itʼs bad enough that this page from UH/D is cut off on the right side, but there is no way to even scroll to the right to see whatʼs missing! And this is on a recent iPhone, not some obscure open source homebrew kit.
I preview every single web page I build for desktop, tablet, and two mobile phones. Every one. Sometimes dozens each week.
The University of Houston/Downtown brags that itʼs the second-largest university in Americaʼs fourth-largest city. Surely, someone on campus must have a smart phone to test with.
Today I had the misfortune of trying to use Starbucks customer service. I donʼt know which middle manager got a big bonus out of this scheme, but do hope that someday that person has to use the system he set up. Itʼs a masterpiece of outsourcing failure.
I placed an order on the Starbucks web site to send an e-gift card to someone. Immediately, I received an e-mail receipt. A few minutes later, I received an e-mail stating that “We were unable to process your eGift Card order from Starbucks.”
I placed the order again. Once again, the receipt came immediately. Then the same automated processing failure letter.
I tried once more, the next day, with a different payment card. Same story.
Finally, I decided to call the phone number. After all, customer service is available seven days a week. It turns out all that means is that the phone number is answered seven days a week. It doesnʼt mean anything can be done to fix the problem.
After being transferred three times, and reading the order number to three different people, I was finally informed that all the people who answer the phone are allowed to do is send an e-mail to another department letting them know that I'd like to place an order.
Eventually I received another e-mail from Starbucks “customer service:”
We were unable to reprocess your Gift Card order.
However, if you are still in need of a gift card we recommend replacing your order.
Good idea. As suggested, I “replaced” my order. I replaced my Starbucks gift card order with one for an Amazon.com gift card.
Amazon Music stating that music that it can no longer play some music that it used to play
Streaming media is one of the many areas of technology that has failed to live up to its hype.
Streaming services use vague marketing words promising “unlimited” this and “endless” that. But the seldom-acknowledged fact is that if you rely on streaming music services, the music you love could just disappear tomorrow with no notice, or recourse. Thanks for the money, donʼt let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
Just like how newspapers publish lists of whatʼs going to disappear from Netflix at the end of the month, streaming music also gains and loses music and artists regularly.
The screenshot above is Amazon Music telling me that it no longer has any songs by Comsat Angels. It knows Comsat Angels. It used to have Comsat Angels music. But not today. If you love Comsat Angels and give money to Amazon Music, youʼre out of luck.
Streaming music is the same thing as renting music. You donʼt own it. It can be taken away from you at any time.
Itʼs similar to when Microsoft abandoned its e-book store and millions of people lost the millions of books they thought they owned. A digital librarian sneaked into their homes in the middle of the night, emptied their shelves, and left behind a note reading, “Didnʼt you read page 640 of the EULA? You only rented these books. Sucker.”
This is all fine if all you care about is whatever is trendy over the last 48 hours. But people connect to books, movies, and especially music emotionally. Thatʼs why people create music. And to have those emotions yanked away from you is going to be hard on people once they realize that the things they once loved have disappeared and they didnʼt know it was going to happen.
As for the Comsat Angels, Iʼll hit the local record stores to find what Iʼm looking for. Then Iʼll own it. For real and forever.
A series of e-mails from Walgreens that I ignored until someone was at my front door
I spend too much time pointing out the shortcomings of modern technology. Thereʼs a reason that Tech and Fail are among my most populated blathr tags.
Today, however, Iʼd like to point out what, on the surface, looks like a tech success story. But at a deeper level is the success of a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer to adapt to changes in society in order to — literally — deliver better than a tech company did.
It started a couple of days ago, when I ordered something medical from Amazon.com. In general, I donʼt buy anything that goes on or in a living being from Amazon. Between counterfeits, people selling used items as new, and a constantly-growing list of other reasons, relying on Amazon just isnʼt safe anymore. When your company canʼt even prevent selling bogus copies of books, you have a problem.
In this case, however, I ordered from Amazon because the medical thing I needed was not available from any of the CVS or Walgreens stores that I can reach, and purchasing from Walmart meant waiting two to three weeks for delivery. Walmart used to be safer than Amazon, but has recently decided to trod the same road to unreliability by embracing unknown, unverified, and dubious independent sellers.
What Amazon delivered was clearly not suitable. Instead of being in branded packaging, the item was in a Zip-Loc bag. Legitimate medical items arenʼt packaged in consumer baggies. Legitimate medical items are also not labeled by hand in ball-point pen. And they also donʼt spill their contents during shipping, unless they are seriously mishandled. The box that the item arrived in was in fine shape, and the medical item sufficiently padded.
Exasperated, I went to the CVS web site to see if perhaps the item was back in stock my local store. The CVS web site would not function. So I tried Walgreens. Except, this time instead of specifying a store that I can get to easily by train, I let the Walgreens web site pick one. And it did a splendid job.
The item I needed was in stock at a Walgreens in an area I would never think to travel to. So I put two in my cart, selected “Same day delivery” and went back to reading my New York Times.
Before I could finish the International section, there was a guy dropping a paper bag on my doorstep.
I checked my e-mail and found that the time from when I placed my order online until Walgreens notified me that my order was ready to be delivered was four minutes. Four minutes. It was picked up minutes after that, and delivered to me straight away.
The total time from when I placed the order to when I received my Walgreens order was 22 minutes. For an item that I couldn't get at a drug store near me, and that Amazon sent a counterfeit of.
Yes, I had to pay $3.99 for the delivery. But the item was a dollar cheaper at Walgreens than at Amazon, and I ordered two of them. So the cost difference was $1.99. More importantly — I got what I paid for.
Walgreens is better than Amazon. Man bites dog. The sky is green. Everything the tech bubble has been preaching about the death of brick-and-mortar is wrong.
An error message triggered by asking Microsoft to stop selling my personal information
Funny how Microsoft has no problem at all automatically opting me in to sharing my personal information with its “partners” within four seconds of me creating an account. But if I try to opt-out, it suddenly canʼt cope.
If a simple toggle of a button can bring Microsoft to its knees, why would I trust it with anything at all? Is this the power, resiliency, and scaleability of the masterful Azure “cloud” its always talking about?
The Walmart app has a filter labeled ”Show available items only.” Seriously? Why would I want a store to show me things that it doesnʼt have?
Who goes to a store, or looks at a storeʼs app and thinks to themselves, “I wonder if they donʼt have this?” “Hey, Walmart, show me all the things that you canʼt sell."
What kind of things are on Walmartʼs list of things it doesnʼt have. Fabergé eggs? The Loch Ness Monster? Maybe the Popeʼs mitre?
Walmart is far from the only store guilty of this. Amazon is among the worst offenders. Target and Walgreens, too.
How does showing things you donʼt have benefit a customer?
H.E.B. notifying me that my groceries will arrive in 17 minutes
When H.E.B. says the grocery delivery person is 17 minutes away, thatʼs how I know he's standing outside my door unloading his cart. It's always exactly 17 minutes. I get the text message, look for the cat acting up, and can see the shadow of the delivery person outside my door.
Consistency is a good thing. And “consistently wrong” is a type of consistency, right?
An error message from Houston Methodist Hospital's Epic system
Houston Methodist Hospital has eighty-brazillion dollars and ninty-brazillion employees. If it canʼt keep its webview from breaking a leg, what am I supposed to do?
Also, someone should fix that grammar. It's probably Epicʼs default, but that doesnʼt make it right.
It's nice that iOS 16 lets people know the phone is too hot when it does things. It used to do things, but not tell you.
When I lived in the desert, just having an iPhone in your pocket or on a table could sometimes cause the phone to turn itself off. If you were lucky, you'd see something very quickly appear on the screen about “Entering thermal shutdown” or some such. A minute later, you were out in the desert without a working phone.
Apple, and most tech companies, build their products for the environment where Apple, and most tech companies, are located — San Francisco. When I talk to tech people who work at these companies, sometimes they simply cannot wrap their brains around weather conditions that are commonplace elsewhere.
Another example is iPhone wired headphones. Theyʼre made with plastic that gets brittle in the cold. Of course, when youʼre bundled up against the cold is when you need your headphones the most. That was how I learned about Bluetooth headphones, and got a set of Sony headphones for use with my SonyEricsson M600c when commuting on the CTA in the middle of the night during Chicago winters. Apple wouldnʼt make its own wireless headphones until over a decade later.
“Insufficient” means “not enough,” it doesnʼt mean wrong. “Incorrect” is closer to what FortiClient is trying to say. This is why tech companies should hire a proofreader for anything that leaves the building, even if only on a contract basis. It makes you look amateur, and in the case of this security app — insecure.
Also, if you use “credential(s),” rather than just counting the number of credentials and using the correct word, thatʼs just lazy.
I guess someone on the iOS 16 team at Apple didnʼt check for NULL before shoving the date data into the string formatter. The lesson is, of course, that while you never trust external data, sometimes you can't trust internal data, either.
Still, Apple is the single largest company on the planet right now. If it canʼt do software, what chance do I have?
The ITV News app does not allow you to reject cookies. Not even optional ones. The only choice you have is to agree to its folksy question “You ok [sic] with our use of cookies?”
Another screenshot from the FAILed ITV News app
But, wait — it gets worse. Even if you accept the cookies, all that happens is the over-friendly “Agreed!” button gets greyed out. You never actually get to proceed to the ITV News app.
…Now select “Hyperlink” … No, the other “Hyperlink” … No, the one with the control decoration indicating … No, the other one … No, just mouse over “Hyperlink” … No, the other one …
This is why Iʼm reluctant to help people through their Microsoft woes.
There's a big push in large healthcare companies to make things easier for patients. It sounds dumb to have to state that, but there has not always been the institutional will to care for patients on their level. But a lot of studies and computer models have shown that something as simple as repeating instructions to a patient can improve the outcomes of treatment in a percentage of people. With so many people in the world now, even a small change can mean enormous savings in money for hospitals, insurance companies, and the patients, themselves.
Unfortunately, we're still at the beginning of the process of bringing the healthcare institutions down to the level of the people they are supposed to serve. The use of regular language and easy methods is spreading, but remains uneven.
To wit: The image above, which is the first question asked when trying to book an imaging appointment with Houston Methodist Hospital.
This is an online form for patients, not doctors. When a regular person phones Methodist to make an imaging appointment, it suggests you use this form to make the appointment online.
I am not a doctor. How am I supposed to know if I need an “MRI 1.5T Wide Bore with Contrast,” or an “MRI 3T without Contrast,”, or a “Fluoroscopy,” or something else? It turns out the type of appointment I need isn't even listed in the options.
As someone who builds healthcare web sites for a living, I understand the technical reasons why this is the way it is. But I also understand that it doesn't have to be this way.
There are people in healthcare who care quite a lot about making things easier, and therefore better, for patients. That caring and understanding rarely pervades and entire organization. But it has to.
What we see here is, in my semi-expert opinion, a breakdown in the chain of caring. Something got outsourced to an external company that doesn't have to care. Someone didn't get trained in the importance of making things easier for the patients, and let this awful thing see the light of day. Some web developer somewhere doesn't have the authority, confidence, or will to question what's been handed to him to produce. He's just there to push buttons and cash a check.
Every person at every level of a healthcare organization not only had to be told to care, but trained to care. Even, and especially, the directors and C-levels. The upper levels are told about how much money can be saved by making healthcare more accessible to ordinary people. But they aren't trained in what that actually looks like, so they are not able to spot mistakes as they're happening, so they can have the people under them correct the problems before they persist and spread. Allowing people to say “That's the way we've always done it” is evidence of a sclerotic organization.
Similarly, and as alluded to above, with the continual outsourcing of functions, you also end up outsourcing caring. Someone pasting together AJAX snippets from StackOverflow in an SalesForce application on the other side of the planet doesn't care that the web site is useless to 90% of users. They've done their job, and that's all their staffing company cares about. It's important to understand that lack of detail and care makes your healthcare company look bad, and it hurts your bottom line by making your treatments less effective, and making your doctors work more.
Everyone in a healthcare organization has to not only care about the patients, but be trained in this. Not just the hands-on people like doctors and nurses and patient liaisons. Everyone. The people who process forms. The people in accounting. And, yes, the I.T. people. Every single person in a healthcare organization affects patients in some way.
To its credit, of the dozens healthcare organizations I've interacted with in dozens of states, Methodist is among the better and more advanced with regard to how it treats its patients. But the process is incomplete.
Healthcare companies talk a lot about caring. But unless there is an ethos of responsibility to the patient that includes every single person in that organization, it's all just marketing.
Iʼm always trying to explain to my coworkers the importance of future-proofing what you publish.
Here we see a happy coffee sleeve touting Houston Methodist Hospitalʼs rank as the number 16 hospital in the nation. Except that it isnʼt.
Methodist is actually number 15. Sixteen was last year. But some middle manager thought it was a good idea to order fifty brazillion coffee sleeves flogging the #16 position, and now itʼs stuck under-bragging until they run out.
I'm not sure where the Amazon.com chatbot picked up the phrase “Thank you for understanding here.” But, inspired by its gratefulness, I think Iʼll understand “over there” next.
Netflix says today marks one year since I've had Netflix. Which is not true. I've had Netflix for 24 years. But Netflix doesn't have a way to put an account on hold when you go on vacation, or move. Instead, you have to cancel your account, then sign up again when you come back home or arrive in your new place.
Amazingly, and much to its credit, when you sign up again, your Netflix queue is restored, and you're right where you left off. So I guess it's only ½ a fail.
Every time I use Microsoft Windows, I manage to find another way it simply doesn't make sense to me.
In this example, I have instructed Microsoft Outlook to “Save All Attachments” from a particular e-mail message. Instead of saving all of the attachments, it pops up a modal window asking which attachments Iʼd like to save. Well, Iʼd like to save them all. Which is why I clicked on “Save All Attachments” and not “Save some, but I'm not sure which ones I might want, so why don't you stop me in the middle of my work instead of doing what I've instructed you to do.”
There would be no shame in Microsoft adding a “Save Some Attachments…” item to its already ample menu structure.
Looking for a fine collection of photos depicting Mozambique, Italy, Japan, and the Middle East? Just search Adobe Stock for “Atlantic City, New Jersey.”
A repair guy working on the super-duper high-tech coffee robot machine. Which is almost always broken.
The Costa Coffee machine at Whole Foods is broken. Again. I've been to this particular Whole Foods in Midtown Houston nine times. The coffee machine has only been online and functional once.
It's either bad timing for me, or a bad machine from Costa. Either way, it's bad news for Whole Foods.
Picture of a Chinese city in the Apple Maps entry for Midland, Texas
Crowdsourcing used to be all the rage in the tech industry. It was a way to get content for your project for free. Use your automation system to ask enough people for content, and some small percentage will happy oblige. The problem with crowdsourcing is quality control.
If you let anyone contribute anything, anyone will contribute anything. I once built a crowdsourced system for people to share photographs of landmarks. A significant percentage of the photos contributed were people standing in front of a camera holding up their resumes, presumably hoping that someone searching for a photo of the Berlin Wall might magically hire them to write code in India.
In the example above, we see the result of two levels of folly. Getty Images allows anyone to upload photographs to its system in order to sell those pictures to other people. That's the crowdsourcing. Then Apple outsourced photography for Apple Maps to a bunch of entities, including Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, and also Getty Images.
The result is a photo of a city in China among the photographs that are supposed to depict the West Texas city of Midland.
Vagueness is not a virtue. I can only imaging that the git commit history for Amazonʼs eero team looks like “Update,” “Update,” “Update,” “Update,” “Update.”
This sign at Midway Airport helpfully lists 18 coffee options in the gate area. I had a couple of hours to kill, so I went looking for a cup of joe. No luck.
More than half of the locations were closed, either temporarily or permanently. Most of the rest had lines 30 people deep. Probably because so many of the other restaurants were closed.
When I did finally find a place with a reasonably-sized line, they had no coffee. Didn't know they were supposed to have coffee. And were surprised to see their location listed on an official airport sign as having coffee.
This LED pylon was a big deal when it debuted 20 years ago. Even though it only showed promos for WLS-TV news, it was considered a major work of public art, which is why it was allowed to take up space on a public sidewalk.
The last time I checked on it was in 2017. It was broken then. It was also broken today, when I checked on it again in 2022. I can only hope that I just have bad timing, and it hasn't been broken for five years. State Street is already a lot shabbier than when I lived a few blocks away.
An empty newspaper rack at Adams and Dearborn in Chicago
It was just a decade ago that newspapers were fighting for space in Chicagoʼs downtown newspaper racks. Now, nobody cares.
The racks were installed by the second Mayor Daley as part of his efforts to clean up downtown, where busy street corners would sometimes have ten, 15, or even 20 newspaper boxes all chained together, spilling out into the street and blocking both pedestrians and traffic.
The new street furniture brought order, but also controversy. Small and marginal publication accused the city of playing favorites. There was always room for a Tribune drawer, or a Sun-Times drawer, or a Crainʼs Chicago Business drawer; but neighborhood, non-English, classified advertising, and pornography publications couldn't always get in.
Lawsuits were threatened, but I donʼt know if they ever went anywhere. Perhaps simply because right around the same time, people en masse decided to get their news from the internet for free, instead of paying for dead trees. It didn't help that both of the big newspapers doubled their prices (or more) as the internet ate their revenue.
Today, about the only place to get a newspaper in downtown Chicago is in a drug store. And even then, you might have to go to two or three different stores to find one, since so few are printed. There's no need, since work-from-home has made a 2022 weekday lunchtime on LaSalle Street feel like the same location at 6am on a Sunday in 2012.
The Discover Chicago store at Midway Airport. Closed for business.
I know that Mayor Lightfoot put a lot of work into the retail experience at Chicagoʼs airports. One of her big successes was populating them almost exclusively with local restaurants. Great idea. But you can't highlight local businesses, if those businesses aren't open.
This photo was taken at on a Tuesday at 5:37pm. It does a pretty good job of illustrating the retail situation at Midway Airport. Even though this was prime time for travelers, very few of the shops were open.
First impressions count. And millions of people will have this as their first impression of Chicago when arriving at Midway.
This e-mail from the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority reads “You unsubscribed.” It also says “You will receive an email update when new
information becomes available.”
So, am I unsubscribed, or am I going to receive e-mail updates?
Smells like a white linnen sheet flapping in the breeze atop a grassy hill
Saturday, July 30th, 2022Alive18,722days
My debit card, after a million tumbles in the dryer
I lost my debit card a month ago. I found it today, wedged under one of the fins in the dryer. That means it not only went through the washing machine, it went through about 30 dryer cycles.
The card still works. The chip is fine, and the mag stripe works OK on newer machines.
I see people on the internet all the time claiming that plastic cards and cash are things of the past, and no longer needed. Thatʼs only true if you never go anywhere interesting, never eat anywhere unusual, and never do laundry.
Iʼm supposed to have super-duper awesome benefits with United Airlines because I have a Chase credit card. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to see what those benefits are. Naturally, the link on the Chase web site was broken. It just looped though a login screen over and over.
Since Iʼm a paying customer, I moaned about it to Chaseʼs customer service.
I ended up booking my ticket on another airline, and forgot all about it until I got this in the the mail today. I guess someone at Chase figured it would be faster to mail me a book about the benefits than to fix the link.
I guess this ends up being a story about good customer service, because not only do I have the book, but I just checked, and the link is fixed, too.
Have you ever noticed that if you search for “doctor patient vaccine” in Adobe Stock, 90% of the fake doctors injecting their fake patients are using the same technique that a junkie uses to mainline skag? Have these photographers never received any kind of vaccine ever in their lives?
Today I learned from tech support at Citibank that Safari is not supported for “security reasons.” She recommended that I use the vastly less-secure Google Chrome browser, instead.
I sure wish I could book a flight on United Airlines. But for three days in two different browsers on two different computers, all I get when I search is this screen, which never changes.
My headless M1 Mac Mini crashed hard, so I had to hook up a monitor and re-install macOS Monterrey, which after 30 minutes helpfully tells me, “About a minute remaining.”
And by “About a minute” it meant a little under three hours.
Dominoʼs Pizza made four billion dollars in 2020. It should have enough people working on its web site to make sure the CAPTCHA doesn't overflow its container.
It also shouldnʼt use Google's reCAPTCHA service, but thatʼs a different bucket of plastic monkeys.
If I had an Instagram account, I could tell the supposedly Texas-style Howdy Kolache company that saguaro cacti donʼt grow in Texas. They only grow in southwestern Arizona, hundreds of miles away.
Iʼd tell them myself, but like many hobby companies these days, the only way to make contact is via the one random social media app of their choice.
Part of the Amazon Music screen says “purchased.” Another part says I canʼt download the music I paid for.
Trying again in 15 minutes didnʼt change anything. Nor did trying again in 30 minutes, or 45. An hour after my purchase I got on the blower with Amazon customer service, and was told to wait 24 hours to download the music I paid for.
Thatʼs OK for me, because I'm patient. I was able to download the music when I tried a couple of days later. But isnʼt the whole point of Amazon Music that people are supposed to have immediate, unlimited access to their music?
Today I learned that Chick-fil-a is not interested in serving the 50 million Americans, including the elderly, the poor, and some disabled people, who do not have or cannot use a mobile phone.
Also, anyone whoʼs phone has run out of battery, or anyone has dropped their phone, or pays for data, or is from another country.
I think that the word “unexpected” is pretty high on the list of words you donʼt want to hear from your bank. It ranks right up there with “insolvent.”
Fortunately, Citibank is only the third-largest bank in America. Itʼs not like its web site is used for anything important.
If Citibank canʼt keep its web site from going all pear-shaped, what chance do I have?
An error on the self-service point-of-sale machine at Shake Shack
The self-service ordering gizmo at Shake Shack canʼt cope with my hot dog order. Which I find a bit ironic, considering that Shake Shack started out as a hot dog stand.
This is what I get for using a computer to replace a personʼs job. Thereʼs a perfectly good human being ten feet away who can take my order if I wait 90 seconds, and my bag will never be out of sync.
Remember when technology was going to make our lives better?
After four phone calls, and a total of 74 minutes on hold with Bank of America, I was finally told that the people who can fix my problem donʼt work on Saturdays. But I can go to my local branch.
Except that all of the local branches are “temporarily closed.” So I canʼt even close my accounts in protest.
An error message on one of the Houston Chronicle's web sites
One of my newspapers didnʼt come today. So I tried to let the Houston Chronicle know it has a problem. Naturally, since the conglomerate that ate Houstonʼs paper of record doesnʼt have customer service people on the weekend, I have to fill out a report online. And, naturally, the web site doesnʼt work.
Even if I had to wait on hold for a while to speak to someone about it, a human being could solve the problem immediately. Instead, I have to remember to call the newspaperʼs customer service people during the week to get credit for the missed delivery.
Remember when computers were going to make our lives better?
Today I learned that Edible Arrangements won't let you buy anything without using a credit card, and without being put into “the system.”
I just want to buy something, hand over some money, and walk away. Why is that so wrong? Why must I be signed up, tracked, tabulated, collated, and sold in order to buy fruit?
My actual thought process this afternoon: “I should stop by the drug store on the way home. Oh, wait, my phone isnʼt charged. I wish I had some cash with me.”
The Costa Coffee machine at Whole Foods being repaired again
If you ever want to know what the inside of an automatic barista machine looks like, just head to Whole Foods in Midtown Houston. Thereʼs a good chance itʼs inner mechanism is open and available for you to examine.
Iʼm not sure how many times Iʼve been to this Whole Foods store — maybe a dozen times — and the coffee machine has never been working.
Every time I go, thereʼs a repairman busy tinkering with it. Which seems like quite a coincidence. Either Costa Coffee has an employee whose job is to repair this one machine full-time, or thereʼs something about me going to Whole Foods that causes the machine to kill itself.
I think I have found the worst government web site on the planet: New Jersey Family Care.
Its many technical faults aside, it looks like something a kid whipped up in Geocities in the 1990ʼs, not something dealing with healthcare. And certainly not something that taxpayer dollars paid for.
My apartment building has a Stockwell vending machine in the basement.
Unlike the vending machines of yore, this one is just an open cabinet with a camera that watches what you take off the shelves and uses magic A.I. fairies to send you a bill. That is, if it works. Which it doesnʼt.
I canʼt even get the Stockwell app to acknowledge that the Stockwell machine in my building exists.
I guess Iʼll spend my snack money at the convenience store across the street, instead. Where I can pay by cash, or credit card, or Apple Pay, or even food stamps if I had them. And if something goes wrong, there are intermittently friendly people to help me out, and not some Silicon Valley robot barking, “object has no attribute.”
I swiped up to unlock, and instead the screen sort-of half swiped left. The lock icon, the unlock instructions, the wallpaper, and a dark overlay moved left, revealing another copy of the wallpaper underneath. Meanwhile, the time, the music panel, and the quick keys stayed put.
Fortunately, all was solved ten seconds later when the phone shit itself and rebooted.
An Atari Pole Position cart with a misspelled label
I got a new Atari cartridge today. Itʼs Pole Position.
Iʼm not big on racing games, though I enjoy watching other people play them. My problem is that Iʼm not very good at racing games. The one racing game I actually like and am also good at is Ridge Racers for the PSP.
This Pole Position cart wasnʼt a deliberate purchase. It came in a box with a knot of other games, but Iʼll keep it for two reasons.
First, because I do have some nostalgic memories of playing Pole Position when I was a kid. I wasnʼt any good at it back then, either. To me, a joystick was entirely the wrong control method for this game, especially considering that every Atari console shipped with perfectly fine paddle controllers, and many people also had the racing version of Atariʼs paddles left over from other games.
The second reason Iʼll keep it is because the end label is wrong. It reads “POLE POSITN*.”
Label errors werenʼt uncommon on Atari games, and got more and more common as the years went on and the company moved from sprinting to walking to hobbling with a cane to shuffling with a walker to its inevitable dirt nap. But this is a pretty glaring error, and I do enjoy knowing that other people make mistakes, too, so Iʼll put this one in a protective sack to keep it fresh.
Iʼm getting tired of all the lazy developers talking about how great Electron is.
I guess they donʼt have to use Microsoftʼs Azure Storage Explorer, which crashes on a weekly basis, taking down the entire machine and all of their work because itʼs built in Electron, and is not a real program.
In spite of all their fancy JavaScript, and invasive telemetry, I donʼt think online stores really have any idea how much money they lose every day by making their shopping process so complicated that the web site breaks.
Simplifying the stack would save development costs, management costs, and increase sales.
But nobody in tech gets promoted for making things less complicated.
A piece of expensive high-tech equipment didnʼt work right in 2021? Shocking!
The error message makes no sense? Thatʼs impossible!
Oh well, Iʼll just look up error number -6753 in the imaginary manual that didnʼt come with the HomePod, and also doesnʼt exist online, or anywhere else.
Today I learned that Appleʼs HomePod canʼt play the music you own, stored on your own Mac, in your own home, even with so-called “Home Sharing” enabled.
After 10 years of “Rip, Mix, Burn” can you imagine someone telling Steve Jobs, “We have this new music gadget, but you canʼt play any of the music you own on it.” Only rental music.
Someone would be fired before he even finished that sentence.
Today I learned that not only does my HomePod run Apple TVOS, its firmware has a “Bogus Field Not Actually Ever Used,” and a “Bogus Measure Not Actually Ever Used.”
The use of “bogus” confirms the “Designed in California” label.
If you wonder why your ad in the New York Times didnʼt result in many sales, itʼs probably because people were put off by the three pop-ups you forced on them when they scanned your QR code.
Well, hereʼs a new DGPR fail. Not only can I not decline to be tracked by The Onion, I canʼt even accept to be tracked because the Accept button doesnʼt work.
After enduring four pop-ups, I click on “Gifts” and get a 404 error. Good job, Diptyque. It looks like the marketing department runs the web site, not IT.
Why do so many Apple programs use five-pixel-tall fonts? Who thinks these are a good idea? Even back in Commodore 64 days, we knew that nobody could read a five pixel font.
You donʼt have to be visually impaired, elderly, or even drunk for these to be completely unreadable on a computer screen.
For all the puffery that comes out of Apple about accessibility and inclusiveness, this has to stop.
iRobot is so laser-focused on customer acquisition that its web site gives me two ways to create an account, and zero ways to log in to the account I already have.
The reds of the Valley of Fire, as it actually often appears to the human eye, which is hard for people who live in humid places to understand
When I load photos of Valley of Fire into programs like Lightroom, they automatically crank the color down 15 notches because the programmers at Adobe in Seattle canʼt conceive of a place that isnʼt as humid and grey as where they live.
Yes, reusing plastic shopping bags is one way to save on airline baggage fees when visiting Las Vegas.
But in case your oversized TJMaxx carrier blows out a block from your hotel, disgorging all of your worldly possessions onto sidewalk, you might want to have a Plan B.
Ever have one of those days when you think, “Wow, my web sites are really fast today!” and then you realize you spent the last hour tinkering on localhost?
I got a letter in the mail from my bank stating that it wants me to stop by so it can take my voice print to be used for accessing my safe deposit box.
My safe deposit box is 2,300 miles away, so good luck with that.
Not to be outdone by the Amazon delivery guys who throw my packages over the gate, UPS appears to have actually run over my wifeʼs Christmas present before handing it over to the Postal Service for the last-mile delivery.
An error message on the Library of Congress web page
If the Library of Congress — the federally-funded keeper of all the nationʼs facts and secrets — canʼt keep its web site running, what chance do I have?
My main media drive ate itself away, wiping out 4TB of movies, music, and TV shows. So I spent most of the last week pulling my hair out trying to reconstruct the files and metadata.
Tonight I remembered that I make monthly backups. My brain hates me.
A photo of a cockroach as a featured image in a hotel listing
My first thought was to blame the webdev for using unvetted user-uploaded photos when no other pictures of the property were available. Then I realized I should blame the people who run the motel for the condition it is in.
An important service alert from a transit agency in some other city.
An obviously fake friend request from someone who thinks a Sharpie is an eyebrow pencil.
A promoted post from some company Iʼve never heard of pushing something I donʼt care about.
“People You May Know” who are all people I donʼt know.
Someone elseʼs memory of an event 5 years ago I wasnʼt at and donʼt care about.
A post from a “neighborhood” group on the other side of town.
A “Suggested Post” about something I donʼt care about.
A post in a language that I donʼt speak, but thatʼs OK because I do follow the Yomiuri Giants.
A post from the state parks people about a state park 400 miles away.
An image caption repost of a repost of a repost of a repost from someone who thinks that lifeʼs problems can be solved by re-posting other peopleʼs refrigerator magnet thoughts.
An ad for a coffee chain in another city with no locations within 700 miles.
A “Breaking News” weather alert about a dust storm last week.
A news item that a local TV station posted three months ago.
A photograph of someone I donʼt know who is friends with someone who is friends with someone who might know this person
A photo from an actual Facebook friend, but itʼs of his tween daughter in a leotard. Ummm…
An ad for a coffee chain in another country.
One of those “URGENT! URGENT!1!11!! Please help us find out dog!” re-posts from someone 2,500 miles away.
A re-post of a image caption thatʼs been around since the 1990ʼs.
Good job, Facebook. Glad to see the $70 billion spent on “user engagement AI” is working out for you.
