Someone's freedom, rights, and dignity are not something that can be put in a Christmas stocking or wrapped up in a bow. They are something built into their existence that we use oppression and degradation to rob them of.

So I created this graphic...

TO PLEAD, PRINT OUT THE ENCLOSED TICKET AND SEND IT TO TOWN COURT, CHATAM HALL., PO BOX 117

Then there's a .zip file attached. DO NOT OPEN THE ZIP FILE.

The e-mail I got actually originated in Spain, not New York. It's disguised to look like it came from nypd.gov, but it didn't. Furthermore, after receiving a number of these kinds of notices (long story, paperwork mix-up that got another guy's tickets sent to me), I can tell you that they don't come from the state. They come from the city or county court that has jurisdiction over the violation. They come on paper and they identify both you and the car involved specifically. They also identify the location of the violation and the officer who is certifying the evidence of the violation.

It's a good trick, seems legitimate. Basically, since they can't shove a virus down your throat, they're trying to trick you into swallowing it. When you open the zip file and double-click the file inside, you're going to get a virus, and you'll have given it to yourself.

Here's a link: Disney Cruise Line Internet and Cellular Services

They charge $0.75 a minute unless you buy a pre-paid block of minutes that lowers your per-minute rate to between $0.55 and $0.30. You cannot upgrade from one pre-paid block to another nor are unused minutes refundable. Service is slower than normal WiFi hotspots and not guaranteed to be available at all times. And if you're on a 6-night cruise, you can buy a package of 100 minutes for $40, but if you're on a 7-night cruise, the same package costs $55.

But the worst part of all to me is not the perminute rates, but that they charge per minute at all. Anyone who knows about networking knows that data is "bursty". Someone will use data intensely for a few seconds while they download something, then they'll spend some time using little or no data while they process/read the data they just downloaded. So you really only need the wifi for the 3 seconds it takes to download a web page, but Disney bills you for the 3 minutes you spend reading the web page.

The amount of time someone is connected to the network is not, in and of itself, a good indicator of how much they're actually using the network.

And it's not like Disney is creating a new connection to the satellite for every user who is on their network. The connection to the satellite provides a data stream which can then be shared throughout their onboard wireless network. There is little or no incremental cost for each user who is connected to the shipboard WiFi network, but not activelty transferring or receiving data. Their cost really only comes in general maintenance for the network and for the data being moved.

Charging each user by the minute is disingenuous, because they're not incurring costs by the minute for each user. Furthermore, their system is slow by their own admission and I've read complaints of it taking 10-15 minutes to send an e-mail. If they charge by data usage, then whether it takes 1 minute or 10 for sending an e-mail, you're paying for the data, so it's the same price. If they charge bt the minute you're paying extra when the system is especially slow. While it would still be annoying for it to take 10 minutes to send an e-mail, it becomes infuriating if every extra minute is costing you $.30 to $.75.

I looked into mobile satellite internet services for businesses and internet-addicted RV'ers who want a connection while they're outside the range of most cellular nets. Prices were generally on a monthly basis with a DSL-comparable speed (3-5 megabit downloads, 1-2 megabit uploads) with a usage cap of 3-9 gigabytes. For a 5 megabit plan with a cap of 9 gigabytes, it was 839 a month.

Assuming Disney is getting better speeds and better rates because of their ability to run more/bigger dishes and negotiate bulk deals, their cost is $0.09 per megabyte or less. If they added on an over 200% mark-up, they could sell a 100 megabyte package that let you check your e-mail and a few favorite sites every day and post a few photos to Facebook for $30. Or maybe they could sell the 100 megabyte plan for $50 and do a 500 megabyte plan for $150. It would still be pricy, but it would be based on how much data you actually used.

But since there's no competition once you're onboard, you pay what they charge and you pay it based on the unreasonable metric of how long you're connected to the network instead of based on how much data you use.

I was surprised and pleased to find out Disney Cruise Lines didn't pull the trick of making juices and other sugared beverages free, but charging you $2 a pop for diet sodas. But I guess some of the cruise line overcharge mentality had to worm its way in somewhere and it's wormed its way into how Disney charges for internet access onboard. Such a shame.

I will be joining my wife and our children at our ranch outside Everett, Washington, where I can do some soul searching and figure out how I can best use my sexiness to help the American people.

Thank you and God bless.

Here's the text:

Thank you for your interest. After viewing your resume on careerbuilder.com, we have decided to contact you.

We have an excellent opportunity for you.

We are looking for:

Responsible and motivated individuals to assist in Company’s financial business. We value the exceptional people and provide our employees with an environment conductive for productive and long-term employment.

We offer:
- New concept. Commissions without sales.
- VERY competitive salary plus attractive bonuses plus commissions with each order
- No Fees
- You can start tomorrow
- Compensation: $85,000 - $95,000 per year
- Employee Type: Full-Time/Part-Time
- Vacation (2 weeks for Exempt employees)
- 4 paid Company Holidays / 2 paid floating holidays

Large and stable corporation

Requirements:

- MS Office (Word) - basic knowledge
- Internet access and e-mail
- A sufficient level of work ethics
- Ability to learn fast and perform tasks in a timely fashion
- U.S. resident or green card holder
- You are not required to quit your current job.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

- Assist in company’s financial business.
- Perform financial tasks.
- Make reports.

We offer opportunities for internal advancement for the responsible employees. During the initial stage of work you will receive precise instructions and any possible help from the company’s Manager. Qualified candidates will be offered flexible schedules of work, competitive salary, bonuses and other benefits. Company covers all the reasonable expenses.

You will be able to plan your own working schedule (few hours weekly).

Please reply to this email if you are interested.

Hiring Department

The reply address is diagnosticparts@aol.com.

Read through my "job scams" tagged posts and you'll see this come-on over and over. Financial job, easy hours, work from home, perform financial tasks, good pay. Sounds too good to be true... because it is. The job usually entails receiving "customer payments" via forged checks or hacked PayPal accounts. You cash out the payment, take the cash to Western Union, and wire it off to your "employer" in another country. You're instructed to take a percentage of the payment for yourself as your commission.

Sounds great until the check fails to clear or the PayPal fraud is discovered, as always happens. Then the money for it is pulled out of your account. If you had enough to cover it, you're out the amount of the check. If you didn't, the bank that gave you the money wants it back and will involve the police.

No legitimate company needs a U.S. representative to cash checks for them and wire them the money via Western Union.

If someone you don't know offers you an amazing job cashing checks or receiving and forwarding packages (stolen goods paid for from hacked PayPal accounts or with credit card fraud), they're usually a criminal and they're trying to make you an unwitting accessory. They will leave you owing money you don't have, and maybe a few weeks closer to financial ruin because you weren't out job hunting because you thought you had a new job.

Be safe out there people, and if you are job hunting, good luck.

Current Release 0.5.0 Beta (download - .zip - 16k - CC 3.0 Attribution license)

What Is A Heatmap?

Thanks to siewlian for our underlying photo

A heatmap is a way of visually overlaying hostspots of incidence/concentration on a grid. The hotspots can represent a clickstream (I set up a little AJAX script to record every time I clicked on the photo above and then rendered the data of where I clicked as a heatmap), or it could be the incidence of robberies or concentrations of zombies on a map.

Long story short, I got curious about heatmaps last year, but all the solutions I'd found were not in PHP, used the ImageMagick library, had a complex API, produced a heatmap I thought sucked, or multiple elements from that list. Eventually, because it produced the kind of map I wanted and could work simply, I first ported "The Definitive Heatmap" from Ruby to PHP.

I still didn't like the fact that it used ImageMagick (because many people on shared servers might not have access to ImageMagick), plus it executed the ImageMagick commands to the shell, which is not as secure as I'd like. So I re-wrote the whole thing to use PHP's built in graphics library, GD. That came with its own set of pitfalls, most notably being that GD has no Multiply blend mode. I had to create a GD Multiply blend in PHP from scratch. For those of you who arrived here specifically because you were Googling for a PHP script to do a Multiply blend with GD, you'll find that code in the overlayDot() method of the class.

I added a few functional modifications, did about an hour of testing to make sure it worked, wrote up the README, and packed it up.

The download package contains the class file, a README with instructions on how to use it, and a graphics folder with a color strip and dot image needed to create the overlay images. You'll need a basic knowledge of PHP and arrays to install this and make it work with the sample code.

Enjoy the class and if you have any questions, comments, bug reports, feature requests, or just plain praise, please post your thoughts below.

Current Release 0.5.0 Beta (download - .zip - 16k - CC 3.0 Attribution license)

September 2011
Nominee
Vote

I ordered 2 Android phones with a family voice, text, and data plan. I gave them the two numbers to port from Sprint. And I waited. The phones shipped a day later than I hoped, but that was not a big issue.

On the morning of the delivery day, problem 1 occurred. They ported my number off my Sprint account and to my new phone before it was delivered. For the next 6 hours, I had no cell service. It's been my experience in the past that you order the phones, you get them, you call to activate them, and the number is ported then. This was new... and annoying.

When the phones arrived, there was no indication which had which number. In fact, the Android phone identity screen in the settings said the phone number was unknown on both phones. I called T-Mobile and they told me to call #6# to find my number. This is where we encountered problem 2: they had ported my number, but had not ported my wife's. They put my wife's number through the porting system and got it from Sprint, but then there was an issue with the SIM card being "reserved" and they couldn't issue my wife's number to her phone. They said they could request the reservation be removed, but that would take 24 hours and might not work.

What were my other options, I asked. They asked if I had a spare SIM card. Yeah, I'm coming from Sprint which doesn't use SIMs, so how would I have a spare SIM lying around? I asked what I was supposed to tell my wife when her phone was basically out of commission for two or more days. They suggested I call Sprint and ask them to port her number back until they'd run the fix through their system. "Um, hi Sprint. I know I just tried to leave you, but could I come back for a day or two while T-Mobile gets their asses in gear?" Seriously?

I asked if I could go to a T-Mobile store and get a new SIM from them. Yes. So off I went to the closest store. First thing that happened was I pissed off the manager... not intentionally. See, web orders started 8 days before the stores were supposed to get the phone, but T-Mobile had told the manager they wouldn't be shipping until close to the store release date. Instead, I had mine 6 days before store release. But he assigned me a service guy who took the phone, put in a new SIM, called T-Mobile and got my wife's number put on the phone.

If only it had ended there...

Problem 3 occurred when we discovered that somehow in all that craziness from problem 2, my wife's data plan got stripped off her phone. We never really noticed because she mostly used the data features at home when the phone was getting its data from our WiFi, not T-Mobile. But when she was out with the kids on Sunday and trying to Google something, she was told she did not have a data plan and would need to upgrade to one.

I called T-Mobile that night, after we got back from "Captain America", and they told me that was correct. She had no data plan. I'd have to add one for $20 a month. I said I'd signed up for a family plan with voice, messaging, and data for both phones... just give me the plan I signed up for. No, they said, we had to upgrade her data plan. I gave in, figuring if the numbers didn't add up, I'd haggle it out with billing. They said it would take 2 hours for the data plan to kick in.

At this point, the stress of them switching my plan without my authorization and the rest of this bull gave me a massive stress headache. So when the 2 hours was up, a bit after midnight, I was still awake, because I had this terrible headache that wouldn't respond to ibuprofen and wouldn't let me sleep, and I could determine that it wasn't fixed. Luckily I was still awake from the headache at 3 a.m. when their east coast customer service opened for the day. I was too worn out to be upset, and yelling would have made my headache worse. I got on with a rep who tested various things, escalated it when they didn't work, and basically got it fixed. Somewhere around 5 a.m. I got to sleep, but I had to call in sick to work, and since I'm a contractor, I have no paid sick days.

Today, I checked my account to see how they'd screwed up my service and encountered problem 4. According to their web site, whatever messed-up stuff they'd done had raised my monthly charge by $40. So I got on chat with customer support. They said the web site was wrong and I was on the plan I signed up for at the rate I signed up for. So why was the web site wrong? Maybe I'd briefly been shuffled onto something more expensive, but it was corrected, and the web site can take 72 hours to update.

They also mentioned I had two activation fees pending. I said they should pay me activation fees for all the trouble I'd had to go through cleaning up their mistakes. They said they couldn't do anything.

I pressed. This had taken so much time, been such a series of screw-ups on their part, why shouldn't I just return the phones, demand my money back and be done with them? They hemmed and hawed, then said since they messed up the activation on my wife's phone, they'd give me a $35 credit for the activation fee, but that I was only allowed one "goodwill credit" on my account, and if I accepted it, I would not be able to ask them to compensate me for anything for the rest of my contract term. I tell him that it's not enough and their massive series of screw-ups demanded a greater level of consideration.

Then the guy addressed me as Richard (my name's Greg) and I asked him if he was trying, in a veiled way, to call me a dick. I demand to talk to his supervisor. He said his supervisor had reviewed the account and approved the $35. I reiterated it wasn't enough. He said that's all they would offer. I said it wasn't enough. He asked if there was anything more they could help me with, and I said "I think you've done more than enough to alienate me, Richard."

The problem is I love this phone. There is no phone currently on the market that presses my buttons like this one does. But I've got a 14 day return window that I'm only 5 days into.

T-Mobile insists on not only screwing up this badly, then low-balling me on the "goodwill credit" AND telling me that if I take it, they're free to screw up as much and as badly as they want and I can't ask for anything again.

I'd have to switch to a phone I wasn't as wild about on a more expensive carrier, but I am so gobsmacked by T-Mobile's unparalleled combination of incompetence and arrogance, it's really hard to justify staying. I mean when I had a problem with my DVR on Verizon FiOS, they comped me a whole month of my cable bill to say "sorry". They showed they meant it and I stayed.

T-Mobile says "sorry" too, but an offer of $35 to cover what they put me through PLUS a stipulation I can't ask for another credit if they screw up again? They're not sorry, and they're either telling me that I'm a grinder who they think will try to get a credit at every turn or they're so sure they'll screw up again that they want to make sure they cover their butts.

Either way, I've got 9 days to decide if I'm returning these phones. Unless T-Mobile has a serious attitude adjustment, I can't see why I'd reward this kind of mistreatment by keeping them.

Lunchadoodle has just launched.

Basically, it works like this... The wife and I were drawing doodles on our oldest son's brown bag lunches. We thought some of them were funny or cute enough to share with our friends on Facebook. They seemed to like them. So we're blogging them at Lunchadoodle.

Stop by and check them out.

Making a recumbent bike "desk" with off-the-shelf parts for under $400. Is it possible? I'm finding out.

I've needed to get back in shape for a while, but I'm working full time, then add 3-4 hours a day for day-care pickups, dinner prep, baths, bed time stories, etc. Then add another 60-90 minutes after the kids are off to bed that I have to be at home because the wife's still at work. The only way to get to the gym is to go at 10 p.m. or 4:30 a.m. The rest of my day is mostly booked.

But I'm sitting at my home office's desk right now, writing a blog post. I'll be sitting at it tomorrow, working on my novel. And I'll be sitting at it next month, working on learning Flash and programming a game. So why not get in some exercise while I'm sitting at my desk?

I could do a treadmill desk but they run pretty expensive, in the neighborhood of 2-4k. Additionally, the point of an exercise desk is that you exercise slowly enough that you can still concentrate on work, but you end up putting in more time because you do it for a few hours.

So, because it was cheaper, lower impact, and it looked more comfortable for putting in hours per day, I picked a recumbent bike. But when I went looking for an office solution, there was nothing. There were some hobbyists and a cheap upright bike with a desk. There were some stand alone pedaling thingamajobbers that go under your desk, but there were no solutions with completely "off-the-shelf" products that guaranteed I would not be bumping my knees whenI pedaled or having to sit too far back from my desk to reach the keyboard.

I started looking for something that I could fit over or around a recumbent bike, adjust to accomodate the movement of my legs, and maybe tilt up a bit in back and down in front to make it more friendly.

If you've ever been in the hospital, you've seen those long, thin tables for the hospital beds. They're sort of shaped like a big U on its side, so the wheeled base slides under the bed, the table slides over the bed, and the "bottom" of the U is adjustable so the table can be at the right height. I figured a table like that, coming in from the side, with adjustable height, would possibly create the right work environment.

Imagine my surprise when I found there are laptop caddy tables that offer a single support at the side, or at least off-center.

I ordered the Schwinn A20 recumbent bike from Amazon for $248.99 and the Windsor laptop stand for $89.99.

And here's how they look together...
  

It all works together nicely, but just works. Having it in a comfortable position puts both the side pole and the under-table support within an inch or two of being hit by my knee/leg. I was, however, able to do a nice 2 miles on it in a test run during the set-up without hitting anything and comfortably typing away. When I needed to do something sort of precise, I found myself slowing down my bicycling so I could concentrate on what I was doing with my hands, but overall it worked very nicely.

Two things that will take some fine-tuning to cure. The first one is that I have everything angled so I get the reflection of the office window on my glossy screen. Turning/positioning the whole shebang better should handle that. The second was that the table is slightly wobbly on carpet. Sliding a board under the bike and putting the table on the solid surface helped immensely with the wobbling.

Now the question will be whether I can use this consistently and knock down the miles and calories while I use my laptop, and whether I can actually work at it well, not just answer e-mails, facebook, and watch videos.

I'll post again in a couple of weeks to let you know.

Click here to view the movie

Now, the thing is that it does convey an important message about treating your customers in ways that show you value them and consider them special. It keeps them coming back, builds goodwill, and turns them into evangelists for your business. And those things can be as small as a little thought of the day from a loveable bagger.

But it also raised a very important question for me:

Why was the only one in the store who "got it" the one who was least equipped to "get" anything?

"Johnny the Bagger" has Down's Syndrome. Obviously, what Barbara Glanz was saying was simple enough that someone with below-average intelligence like Johnny could understand. So what was going on that stopped all of Johnny's smarter co-workers from taking these ideas to heart until after he proved they worked?

I'd say they were jaded. Part of that could be due to some Gen X/Y hipster cynicism, but part of it could also be poor management and a corporate culture that made them feel deeply disconnected from the "suits" who sent yet another motivational speaker to talk at them. Essentially, they were conditioned not to care.

Once Johnny succeeded and customers started coming in with brighter attitudes, it inspired the rest of the staff. Basically, service inspires customer happiness and loyalty, and customer happiness and loyalty inspire service. It's a positive feedback loop.

Your average business can't rely on having a Johnny to start the ball rolling. Managers have to lay down a foundation of happiness and pride that inspires their employees do the little things, or they're going to find themselves with a staff that's too smart to see the simple truths.

First a note on prepping the edamame (soybeans). I defrost frozen edamame, then put them in a bowl and cover them with boiling water for 3-5 minutes, then drain.

In an electric chopper or small food processor process together:
1 cup edamame
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 seeded roma tomato
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp salt

Process the mixture to a grainy consistency. Then add:
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp black pepper
1.5 tsp cornstarch
2 tsp cumin
1/2 cup whole weat flour

Mix the ingredients until they become a dough and let rest 5 minutes to let the flour hydrate.

For balls, you can use a tablsepoon disher to scoop balls into a deep fryer (with the oil at 360-370 degrees), or you can form 1/2 thick patties and fry in a frying pan with about 1/4 inch of oil in it. Get a nice deep brown color and they're great with a hummus or some raita.

If you like your food spicier, try adding 1/2 tsp of cayenne (or more) to the recipe.

1.5 cups corn meal
0.5 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp salt
1.5 tbs baking powder (1 tbs + 1.5 tsp)
1/4 brick of extra firm silken tofu
1 small onion (I used mayan sweets)
1 cup buttermilk

Using a hand mixer, puree the tofu and buttermilk together. If you have a soy allergy or are just personally opposed to tofu, use one egg instead. You might want to back off on the baking powder by 3/4 teaspoon or so because the egg brings a little leavening power the tofu doesn't.

In an electric chopper or food processor, chop the onion to a fine, almost pulpy consistency.

Mix the cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and onion mixture together. Mix in the buttermilk and tofu mixture and let sit for ten minutes to hydrate the cornmeal a bit then mix in the flour. Let sit another 10 minutes to let the moisture permeat all the dry ingredients.

Preheat your oil in a deep fryer or large sauce pan to 360-370 degrees and scoop up the batter with a 1-tablespoon disher, frying until gonden brown. Paula recommends peanut oil in her recipe. I used canola and it worked just fine.

Serve with hot pepper honey (I personally use about 50% more red pepper flakes and cook it right in the pan, omitting the double boiler).

"Furthermore, most of these people became millionaires through a relentless drive for self improvement and success, making sacrifices, and not taking the easy road."

"If you want to be on 'Cribs' get off your ass, and start *working* toward a goal. You may not ever reach it, but you'll get more of what you want by working for it than by watching it on TV and wishing for it."

Wanna suggest another warning label? E-mail burgerguy@gmail.com

I tried to go back to the page in Chrome to look at the source, but got a warning that the page was hosting malware from myblindstudioinfoonline.com.

A month or two back, Baja Fresh was sporting broken links and broken graphics on their pages because one of their designers didn't realize their internal URLs are case sensitive (if you design on Windows, all your URLs work regardless of case, but when you upload to a Unix system, case starts to count and they can break). Then the noob had the gall to upload all the pages, not check them, and take off for the weekend.

Now, going to the Tacos page of their menu, I get hit with a malware attack???

WTF Baja Fresh? Seriously. Does your web person have pictures of the head of your company screwing a goat?