Hope your 26th is/was a good one.

Everybody else: hope you had a good day too.

Wondering if you’ve won the lotto? Don’t ask the Iowa Lottery (the drawing originates in Des Moines) or Powerball.com. More than a few people are probably interested in the answer to their $340 million question, but for some reason the lottery folks can only say “Results pending” nearly two hours after plucking the balls (and is that phrase ever fun to say…)

C’mon guys, it takes barely a minute to update a Web page, and the freakin’ TV station already has streaming video of the drawing.

By the way, this offends me as a Web enthusiast and not a lotto “player”. I’ve never actually bought a Powerball ticket, as I tend to see the enterprise as optional taxes…

P.S. Suckers.

UPDATE [Mon 00:36]: Updated now. To be fair, they do add a bunch of additional information (“one Powerball jackpot winner [in Oregon] Wednesday and 4,412,468 additional players won prizes totalling more than $34 Million” — boy, that database must be a monster to manage) but still there is no excuse for not releasing the real info that people want — the damn numbers — right away.

I know dreams are only interesting to the person who had them, but I felt like sharing this one all the same:

In the dream, my cousin Trisha has come to spend the night at my house. In that way you just know things in dreams, I’m aware that she was the original designer for Motorola’s RAZR cellular phone, just as I’m sure that the squirrels are pissed that she stole the idea from them. Thus, they send a fat, leprechaun-sized giant squirrel as an enforcer to come get her. As I’m swinging a full-sized ironing board to fend off the bushy-tailed intruder, Trisha sighs, “This happens every time I come here…”

Then I woke up.

American Express has introduced a new card, “One from American Express” (which almost makes me think of a “Who’s on First?”-style routine: “So what’s the card?” “One from American Express.” “I know, but what’s it called?”) They’re trying to stand out in a crowded market by pitching it as the card that helps you save. Not save as in discounts, save as in 1% of your purchase value is placed in “an FDIC-insured High-Yield Savings Account in your name,” offering around 3% interest.

While I applaud the straightforward approach to rewards (points and double-points and such pale to cash) I find the whole campaign somewhere between a wildly optimistic trip to MarketingLand and just plain idiotic. For example, the ads ask “Any way we can spend and save at the same time? There’s one.” Oh really? Here’s a tip: if you buy something for $100 and later you get $1 back, you’re not “spending and saving at the same time”, you’re spending a little bit less. You’re not really “saving” at all, you’re just getting a rebate with interest.

Now I can imagine one scenario where this makes sense. If you use your card exclusively for things you would need anyway, such as gas and groceries, and you religiously pay it off when due, you might find it worth the trouble to pick up a penny on the dollar. Except… whoops, there’s an annual fee! Yes, your spending+saving card will cost you $35/yr. So in reality, you don’t see any benefit until you’ve spent$3,500¹ on the card.

So let’s see: spend a dollar, get a penny — after you’ve spent 3,500 dollars. Or hey, how about this: just take two twenties and put them in the bank.

¹ Technically, you could front-load your spending to the first week of your annual cycle, and accrue interest on that such that you realized $35 in interest on roughly $3,400, depending upon when interest was compounded.

Tucked away in an otherwise boring newspaper story (“Among straight brothers, gay student finds a home“) is this lovely nugget (emphasis mine):

“There were a couple of members who did have reservations about it back at the beginning,” said Ben Larson, a Teke and a seventh-year senior in civil engineering. “But now, nobody does.”

Ahh, Ben Larson, good for you. Personally, I spent 5 years on my degree*. When people who graduated in four (such as my brother and sister, overarchievers) or the truly insane, those who graduated in less, harp on about how they finished college right on time blahblah, I just gaze at them and shake my head.

Then I beckon them closer and say “Yes, yes, congratulations. You hustled your way out of the only place on earth where 12 hours a week is considered full-time.”

* Technically I spent more than 5 years in college. I got my B.S in 5., then later went back for a B.A. in a different major, then switched to an M.S., then got bored of grad school and fucked off to Australia.

The other day I got it in my head that it might be interesting to compare downloaded TV show figures with Nielsen ratings, to see where they matched and where they differed. While it’s obvious that the popular shows such as “CSI” will do well in both cases, I thought it would be particularly interesting to find programs that might be more influential online than on-air.

I think the idea’s sound, but it’s incredibly difficult to execute. There are many torrent sites and trackers, and the number of torrent downloads does not necessarily correlate to file downloads. Then there’s what magazine circulation audits refer to as the “pass-along” multiplier, not to mention newsgroups, which also carry TV episodes but can’t really be tracked (except by individual ISPs.)

So, essentially, it’s not going to work — which is okay, because in the process of discovering that fact I stumbled onto a new question. Over at Mininova, the biggest torrent directory to my knowledge, they’ve recently added public access to various statistics.

As of this writing, the most popular torrent of all time is an 8th June 05 episode of “The Daily Show,” with more than one million downloads. This seems like it has to be a glitch — the next most popular “Daily Show” is just below 100,000.

So now I’m wondering: assuming the stats hold up, what happened on that day in June that resulted in a 12-fold increase in Stewart love?

I was just poking around in VLC‘s advanced options, and I found this panel (excerpt):

I love the first two options, as they imply I can ratchet them up and the system will dodge bugs and errors; but the really fun one is that checkbox: “Hurry up.”

I think everything should have that option. On any form, I should be able to check “hurry up” and get faster results. Dry cleaning? Driver’s license? Doctors’ offices?

The possibilities are endless…

Today’s mail brought a check from my brokerage. Not a disbursement, mind you, but a free check for $5, with a letter urging me to consider electronic statement delivery. If I sign the check, I get the five bucks and then they just keep my statements online.

Now, I’ve got a few of these before (for phone service or “credit protection”), and I’ve always trashed them because endorsing, of course, bound me to some service with a monthly fee. But this is different. It’s a free service, I can cancel at any time, and the way it’s implemented is shockingly clueful: already, TD Waterhouse has an online archive of every monthly statement they’ve sent me for the life of my account (nearly a decade) and they’re all accessible. They’re just urging me to rely on it instead of the postal version.

I just find the whole approach so refreshing. Here’s a company that doesn’t pretend that getting me to switch to electronic statements is all about my convenience — they know they’re going to save more money and provide me with less, so they give me some cash and work to provide the online equivalent in an easy, reassuring way (contrast this with my former credit card company, which would only provide the last 5 months of statements, with anything older incurring a fee.)

So: well done, Waterhouse. (I hope Ameritrade doesn’t fuck you up in the merger.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the ATM…

Today marks my 28th year here on the blue marble, and I plan to spend it wih the Wonder Dog and my family, all of whom are coming in from points west, east, and more east.

Thanks to everybody who wished me well (and a special shout-out to Cath “Rockstar” Bender, who sent me Tim-Tams from Oz, and a hilarious “WWFSMD?” mug — Cath, hope we can do the Slam together again soon!)

I hope y’all have a great weekend, because I sure plan to!

I was e-mailed my credit card statement the other day, so I fired up the Web browser to pay it online. (Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I wrote a check. Years and years.) Anyway, I clicked “Make a Payment” and got this:

Now, this statement is due next month, which is of course October. Yet for some bizarre reason, the first suggested day for my payment to take effect was January, 2007. Not relishing the prospect of 14 months of late fees, I clicked the little calendar icon and was rewarded with a pop-up suggesting I might like January, 2005. (Now that I could use — imagine being able to wipe out interest charges by just backdating your payment!)

The thing that really confuses me is the fact that just a portion of the days are hyperlinks. “Yes,” the system seems to say, “you can have this payment post 8 months ago, but not before January 20th!” Really makes you confident in their skill at handling electronic money transfers, doesn’t it?

Seems somebody at Citi should spend a lot less time policing passwords and a lot more time fixing bugs.

I’m not taking a position on the article itself, but this is a hell of a nugget:

The [New Orleans] police inspire so little trust that witnesses often refuse to testify in court. University researchers enlisted the police in an experiment last year, having them fire 700 blank gun rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood one afternoon. Nobody picked up the phone to report the shootings. Little wonder the city’s homicide rate stands at 10 times the national average.

Excerpted from Slate’s “Don’t Refloat: The case against rebuilding the sunken city of New Orleans” by Jack Shafer, links in the original.

This weekend, I had a chance to catch up with my good friend Debbie, who I hadn’t spoken to in awhile. I called her on the cell, and so before launching into an extended exchange I made sure she was free to talk. “Well,” she said, “at the moment I’m at the store. Buying underwear, actually.”

“Excellent!” I replied, with gusto. “Perhaps you can settle a question I had…” — at which point I launched into an observation that the previous week’s mail had included a postcard for “1 free panty” at Victoria’s Secret. “Is that right?” I wondered. “Isn’t ‘panty’ like saying free ‘short’ or ‘pant’? Why do we say ‘pair of shorts’, anyway? Is it all about the leg holes?” To which Debs chuckled and said, “Only you could change a visit to the lingerie section into a conversation on weird grammatical rules. I’m so glad you called. I needed my John fix.”

Truth is, I know I get interested in weird little quirks, such as Victoria’s “panty”, or Mike Chertoff’s reference to “‘dewatering’ New Orleans” or the way my local grocery store likes to put up bright yellow signs reading “PRICE DECLINE” when “New Low Price” or “Sale” is shorter and simpler. Often, I can even figure out what might motivate people to make these perhaps odd choices (because “1 free pair of panties” might be construed as two, he’s a pompous ass, and head office said so, respectively.)

Anyway, now that we’ve established that odd things grab my attention, could you indulge me? Take this photo:

This group is the Buy.com affliate team. This is the introductory photo, so you can imagine who’s answering your e-mail or some crap like that. At least, you could, if they hadn’t blurred them out.

Seriously, have you ever seen a team photo that obscures some of the players? I understand why they highlight the front two women, at least — they’re actual Buy employees. The people in the back are employees of the company Buy has contracted to run the program. But isn’t that clear enough just from their relative size and position? Or even in the caption, which separates names by company?

I’d like to say “what were they thinking?“, but as with the other examples, sometimes I’m not sure if these people are thinking at all…

On 30 Aug and 31 Aug, planes from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Geodetic Survey (Remote Sensing Division) flew over affected areas in Katrina’s wake, gathering images of the storm’s aftermath. By combining these images with U.S. Geological Service data (including LANDSAT 7 imagery, streamflow information, and a LIDAR survey), scientists will be able to get a sense of the damage wrought.

But what about us mere mortals? The answer, as ever, seems to be Google. For (many) addresses in New Orleans, Google has now provided an overlay of the NOAA images in Google Maps. Zoom in on a New Orleans address and in addition to the usual ‘Map’, ‘Satellite’, and ‘Hybrid’ options, you’ll find a red ‘Katrina’ button. Alternating the ‘Satellite’ and ‘Katrina’ options can make a chillingly effective before and after series. For one example, consider this image (Click the ‘Katrina’ button for a post-flood view.) Those with Google Earth can get an even more sophisticated view.

For an on-the-ground view, the NYT interactive features are blowing me away… (See lower-right box, click “Storm and Crisis.”)

“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now,” Shanks says. “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there — and now we’re going to start over again.”

So says Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, as quoted by Agape Press (“Reliable News From a Christian Source.”)

The folks at Repent America fully agree:

Just days before “Southern Decadence”, an annual homosexual celebration attracting tens of thousands of people to the French Quarters section of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina destroys the city. …

“Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” stated Repent America director Michael Marcavage. “From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Southern Decadence,’ New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge,” he continued.

No word on why God chose to go comparatively easy on the high-sin tourist areas and slam the poor (presumably Christian) minorities with flooding.

The BBC has covered Katrina under a stark headline:

New Orleans crisis shames Americans
By Matt Wells
BBC News, Los Angeles

At the end of an unforgettable week, one broadcaster on Friday bitterly encapsulated the sense of burning shame and anger that many American citizens are feeling.

The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better.

It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the invulnerability of the American Dream.

The party in power in Washington is always happy to convey the impression of 50 states moving forward together in social and economic harmony towards a bigger and better America.

That is what presidential campaigning is all about.

But what the devastating consequences of Katrina have shown – along with the response to it – is that for too long now, the fabric of this complex and overstretched country, especially in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, has been neglected and ignored…

I, for one, am deeply ashamed that our government — at every level — has failed to properly help these people in their hour of greatest need.