Ever since dumping MBNA, I’ve done business mostly with Citibank, but now I’m regretting even that. First the overzealous fraud department has called me six separate times over a $15 monthly charge (the hosting for this site, actually.) Each time they promise they’ll make a note in the file, etc., etc. then suddenly I find I can’t pay at the pump because they’ve fucked up again and are freezing the account.

It gets worse. I haven’t been able to sign in to the account online site since an “upgrade” over a month ago. I pay everything I can by EFT, and in fact last wrote an actual check on my checking account in 1996, so this is more than a little annoying. As was the tech support jockey, who hurried me off the phone with an annoyed instruction to just re-register the card as if I was activating it for the first time.

Which I tried, just a few moments ago, and failed. Failed twice, actually. The second time was because of some unknown failure, but the first was for something even dumber: an unacceptable password. Citibank defines an unacceptable password in a jaw-droppingly broad way, including:

Citibank Vulgar Language Policy
The Citibank Vulgar Language Policy prohibits User IDs or Passwords containing language that:

• Is sexually explicit, vulgar or obscene.
• Is racially or ethnically offensive.
• Exploits a minor (any person under the age of 18).
• Defames, abuses or threatens physical harm or death to others or oneself.
• Represents violence.

We reserve the right to delete User IDs that contain any language contrary to the policy above at any time without consent or warning. A new User ID will then have to be created to access Account Online. Determination of whether there has been a violation of the policy, and whether any action is warranted, is made at our sole discretion. We also reserve the right to make changes to these guidelines at anytime, and you agree to be bound by any changes. Please check periodically for updates.

Got that? If your 6-32 character password contains “vulgar” language, by their definition (which they reserve the right to change without notice), then they’ll kill your account.

Which is a bummer, because right now Death2theCitiFuckers is seeming about right…

P.S. For the record, my pass wasn’t vulgar. I think it was getting mad because I was using my initials (shock!) but due to their cluelessly vague error message, I’ll never know…

Last night as I was driving back to my bed I saw what seemed to be a huuuuuge moon hanging impossibly low in the sky. I was sure it had to be some sort of billboard or something similar — it was way too large and bright to be the real thing.

Today I learned from NASA (via Kottke) that I saw the Summer Moon Illusion.

Still not quite sure what caused the effect, but good to know I’m not crazy.

My aunt got a new laptop yesterday, and this is what the media player looks like:

I wonder how you say “usability testing” in Mandarin?

For the past few weeks, I’ve been receiving Slate’s round-up of the day’s papers in my e-mail. I don’t always read it (it’s actually better on the site, the e-mail version being truncated and affected with links that track what you click) but when I do I enjoy the way the authors manage to condense the issues at hand. Take this one, from a week ago:

The Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal business box, and New York Times all lead with GM’s announcement that it’s phasing out 25,000 U.S.-based workers by 2008. GM crowed that it will save $2.5 billion per year. But analysts weren’t impressed, saying the move doesn’t really address GM’s larger problem: Its cars suck. “Only new product can save GM,” said one industry observer.

Really cuts to the heart, don’t it? (By the by, does anyone else think that GM’s “Employee Discount for Everyone” is just embarassing? Or, as my father puts it: “Wow, what an interesting time to work at GM. Your job might be in jeopardy, and your number one perk is being given to anyone who asks.”)

A few weeks ago, Pech and I stood before an SR-71. With a top speed of Mach 3.3 (that we knew about, at least), the “Blackbird” is a plane, friends. It’s also old as hell: the plane’s first test flight was in 1962.

Seven years later, the famous Concorde was first tested, and by 1976 we civilians got the chance to soar beyond Mach 1.

Great achievements, all, but three decades later I ask: when’s the last time you broke the sound barrier? Concorde has been retired, the -71 is in mothballs, and the current state-of-the-art in airlines is basically a 747 with a tumor.

Which is why I’m thrilled to learn (via Gizmodo) that the French and the Japanese are cooperating in an effort to build a new supersonic airliner. It can’t come soon enough.

Now when do I get my jetpack?

Earlier this month, B-don was kind enough to point me to a free trial to Blockbuster Online, the rental giant’s Netflix competitor. I was a Netflix subscriber wayyy back in the day (when the logo looked like this) so I figured what the hell, I’d give it a whirl, see how the modern stuff compares.

And the answer is: so far, not so hot.

I’ve only been a member for 8 days, so I don’t feel comfortable commenting on shipping time and other availability questions, but there’s still plenty that could be improved. For example:

1. The links aren’t links. For some idiotic reason, they’re using JavaScript (specifically an onClick event) when you click the title. In addition to being generally dumb, this hampers people who prefer to open pages in new tabs. I know I’d love to take the “Award Winners” list and scroll-click the titles of interest, allowing Firefox to load them all in different tabs in the background. But no, I have to click, wait, read, back, click, wait, read…
2. ‘Remember Me’ doesn’t. Even when I’m actively using the site, I get the sign-in prompt far too often. It’s not clear how long a session lasts, but it’s too short. Either dump all pretense of “remember me” or give some specific message such as “Your session has timed out after 5 minutes of inactivity.”
3. I get weird errors. At the time of this writing, I’m actually locked out. I’ve gotten SSL certificate mismatch warnings, “Server returned an error” dialog boxes, and truncated responses. Growing pains, perhaps?
4. Descriptions are inconsistent. Consider Bent on Blockbuster vs. on Netflix. BbO has no information at all. No summary, rating, year, photo, related titles… Nothing. For shit’s sake, fellas, you’re the world’s largest video store operators. Run a query, and send some interns to look this stuff up. It’s embarassing.
5. The ‘most rented’ list is too broad. I’m (mildly) interested in the most popular movies, but not in a big list of the top 100 discs site-wide. Why not break down the lists by category, as Amazon does? Then I can find the top 10 rentals in, say, Anarchic Comedy.
6. The recommendations are…odd. Perhaps I’m a particularly challenging case, but whatever algorithms they’re using to suggest additional titles seem weird to me. How is “Band of Brothers” related to Y Tu Mama Tambien? A little refinement wouldn’t hurt.
7. I have no idea how returns work. I’m not going to comment about shipping in general, but I do note that I dropped off 3 discs around 8pm Monday night, bound for MSP, two mailing days away. The next morning (at 11:50), Blockbuster announced they had shipped a new title to me. Wednesday, at 4:39pm, I got a message that they shipped the second. The third was checked in today.
8. You can’t search your local store. Before the launch of BbO, it was a pain in the ass to search your local store’s inventory (you had to search for title, then enter a ZIP, then click your store) but you could do it. Now BbO has shunted all the physical store stuff to a low-profile position, and they require registration for access. I can’t figure out how to search inventory anymore. That’s dumb enough, but what’s really weak is how they don’t even integrate it into the BbO experience. If I’m viewing a title, why not add a little banner: ‘Carried at your local Blockbuster store’? I get the additional information with no extra effort, and who knows, it might just inspire me to go plunk down four bucks to rent the disc instead of wait for it to show up in my queue.
9. You must maintain separate memberships. Sign up for BbO, and you’re providing contact information and a major credit card. You’d think they would add a checkbox such as ‘Also enroll me at my nearest Blockbuster (at [blah address]).’ Then they could just stick the card in with your first shipment.
10. You have to print coupons. I get two free store rentals a month — provided I print out the barcoded coupons in the ‘My Account’ section. There’s no way to print multiple coupons on a single sheet, and more importantly they can’t seem to manage having them show up on the computer at the store itself: “Sir, you have two free rentals with your online account remaining, would you like to use one?”
11. Your store rental history doesn’t transfer. Once they get #6 sorted, I wouldn’t mind if they brought my store rental history over. I was a Blockbuster customer (by default) for many years, in their high-volume Rewards Gold category. If their recommendation system could analyze the hundreds of titles I’ve rented before and then make suggestions based on those, I’d be interested to see them.
12. They call their mailing list an “E-Newsletter.” That’s like two cliches in one.

As you can tell, it surprises me how poorly Blockbuster has integrated their online and retail arms.

I had a fuckin’ raging headache last night so I went to bed at the totally atypical hour of 9pm.

As a result, I was up at the equally odd time of 7:45a, and I even had cereal! (What’s this? Breakfast food?)

Not even four hours have passed, and now I’m both dying for lunch and bored off my ass.

Honestly, how do you people cope with mornings? Oh, that’s right: you have jobs. And co-workers. And money.

Sigh. I guess I’m going to have to do some reading.

• Did you know the back of the ticket says you agree not to provide any data about the game? I wonder if “moblogging” counts…
• I wish the people who designed movie theaters’ stadium seats actually designed, er, stadiums’ seats.
• You can’t go to a game and doubt that wristbands are well and truly played out. (I saw one kid with 14 bands on his right arm.)
• Together those dudes in gray made more in a year than the people of Palau. Everyone knows that, but it’s still amazing.
• I wonder: if the “Kiss Cam” showed two guys smooching, how would the crowd react? What about two girls?
• Music selection continues to have all the subtlety of a Mack truck: for the visitors, “Under Pressure” for mound conferences, then “They’re Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!” for pulling the pitcher, but “New Sensation” for the home team’s substitution.
• Is it just me, or do hot guys travel in packs?

Wow. Northwest was offering 3 fl. oz. of water or orange juice. That was it. A lousy third of a cup of liquid in foil-topped, Jell-O style containers. (Strangely, Northwest Airlink, the regional operator, offered a salty snack and choice of soft drinks.)

I wonder how long it will be before the toilets are coin-operated.

Megabucks, what did I ever do to you? Boomtown, indeed…

Tonight, I called 911.

Just a few hours ago, I was lazily computing away when I heard an overworked engine mixed with the sound of spinning tires and gravel. They’re doing some work on the water mains throughout the neighborhood, so I at first put it down to some kids joyriding, kicking up some of the fresh construction material as they took a corner too fast.

But this was something else entirely. The noise got louder, more insistent. When I heard a loud bang, I sprang to the window. As I looked down from my second floor position, I saw to my shock that a van was driving off my lawn at high speed. In fact, in the intervening seconds, the van had jumped the curb, rocketed through a narrow passage between a hydrant and a telephone pole, then circled through a turn that brought it so close to the house that the van’s left tread disappeared into the garden before scraping against the front step with such force it sheared off a large chunk of concrete. Even after this collision two feet from my front door, the vehicle was moving so fast it left treadmarks on the concrete walkway.

After watching the van bounce back into the street, I paused in surprise. What the hell was that? I thought at first. I rushed around to other windows to see if I could still see the van. Instinctively, I doused the lights as I did so. No sense revealing my position if some maniac ran aground nearby — and perhaps I was imagining it, but didn’t it sounded as though the racing engine was still close?

I couldn’t see anything, so I decided it was time to call the police. I walked downstairs and began to flip through the phone book excitedly. Is this an emergency? What’s the non-emergency number? Is it under ‘Police Department’, ‘City of’, or in that blue government section? I flipped the pages in a hyper fashion. Fuck it, I decided. Time is of the essence.

I dialed 911, and though excited, tried to be brief and professional: someone drove through my lawn, yes, a van, no I’m not sure of the color… I gave my address and the nearest cross streets and listened as the dispatcher put out a call for a “possible 1055,” then told me to call back again immediately if I saw him again.

A few minutes later, as several cruisers converged on the intersection two houses down, I slipped out onto the lawn and surveyed the damage — but was immediately distracted when I noticed that the van itself was just up the road. After peeling out of our lawn, he’d careened off a tree near the corner house, finally slamming so hard into a hydrant that even after slipping a heavy chain around the back axle, a tow truck couldn’t disengage the two. In yet another close have, the van had just missed the newly installed hydrant that crews hooked up last week. Had he stopped three feet to the right, there may have been water works.

I say ‘he’ for convenience, as the driver was missing. As the cruisers zipped around my block, I got the story from the police captain: someone had stolen this van from a house 20 blocks south, and in fact may have stolen another car before that (there were reports of an entirely different van: white, no plates) in another part of town. As barefoot neighbors streamed out of nearby houses, the story spread. Everyone gossiped excitedly about the car thief who was clearly drunk, probably injured, and last seen entering the woods behind my house. Several late arrivals trooped down to get a look at my “stoop.”

Interest soon waned once it became clear the man wouldn’t be found. After the tow truck took a different approach and managed to extricate the van, everyone returned to their beds to sleep.

But I didn’t. I turned on the exterior lights and walked the Wonder Dog around the house, then returned to my desk. And when, a short while ago, I heard the sound of sirens and speeding cruisers once again, my first thought was: I hope they caught that fucker.

Single blond enjoys costume jewelry, airbrushing, and rubbing her face with huge burgers.

Paris Hilton. Under normal circumstances, she falls in the category of “things that I know exist, but will pretend otherwise.” Sort of like Southern Baptists. Or Olestra.

Yet somehow, the recent coverage of the underchested heiress’ new burger ad pierced my protective shell, and I found myself curious enough to visit the site and watch the commercial.

Curious, you understand, not just because of what the overwrought Parents’ Television Council calls its “raunchy, sexually graphic” content, but because of the incongruous nature of the elements: waif-thin honorary anoxeric pitches burger with 72g of fat. It would be like making Bush the dean of Oxford: comedy gold!

Surely they were making it to play up this contrast? Sadly, no: the commercial disappoints. Except for the great bit when she randomly interrupts her washing to take a tiny simulated bite from the monster burger, it’s like every cheesy Ferrari/model poster you’ve ever seen (except Paris manages to look less sultry.)

All is not lost, however, for those with a sense of humor — check out the supporting materials. There’s the “corporate commentary”, which is unintentionally hilarious. Watch as the company marketing director, who’s billed as a “mastermind” by the link, says they picked Paris because her “signature line is ‘that’s hot,'” and the burger is, too! Snicker as the pointy-haired director calls Paris perhaps “the biggest blond female celebrity” and bills the 2 seconds of burger time as a chance “to see who’s hotter, the burger or Paris.”

Then there’s the best bit: downloadable backgrounds. Here’s an excerpt:

Is that not the least hot thing you’ve ever seen? Oh my do I laugh every time I see it. Can’t you just picture some marketing exec saying “where’s the burger? We have to see the burger!” Yet they want the holy “buzz” of Paris. So they make this bizarre burger/bitch/Bentley combo.

Wouldn’t you just love to meet the person who would actually want that as a computer background?

Hmm. On second thought, perhaps not.

There’s a great little term newspapers use for how they write news stories: it’s called “inverted pyramid style.” Writers start with the most important information and then work their way down, putting the least important bits at the bottom.

One of my J-School teachers said the practice began back when putting a story “on the wire” meant using the telegraph; thus it was important to be sure the main idea was covered even if the transmission was interrupted. (Probably apocryphal, but fun.) Today, of course, the inverted pyramid style is used for copyfit purposes — layout staff know they can lop off the final few sentences without messing with the meaning.

I mention this basic bedrock of journalism because some people seem to have forgotten how it works. Take CNN, which recently ran this story:

Girl buried alive thanks God for rescue
Officer tells of finding 8-year-old under concrete slabs

LAKE WORTH, Florida (CNN) — An 8-year-old girl who police say was raped and left for dead in a landfill asked for a pastor “so she could thank God” shortly after her rescue from beneath a pile of stones, her godmother said Monday.

Police said the girl also identified her attacker even before she was removed Sunday from a trash bin at the abandoned South Florida landfill.

“She stated that she wanted a pastor to pray with her so she could thank God for saving her life,” Lisa Taylor, the godmother, told CNN. “She’s 8 years old. Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard?”…

So, judging by the headline and the lede, the most important fact about this story is what the girl’s godmother said. Not how she was found, or by whom, which are in ‘graphs 25 and 26. Not who’s been detained for the charge, which is ‘graph 8. Not the words of the police chief, who in the penultimate para calls it “a miracle, [with] some luck and a lot of good police work.”

To CNN, all of this pales in comparison to the adorable factor, with the little girl asking for a pastor. Now that’s a sweet image, definitely. But it ain’t journalism.

For bonus points: try to find the paragraph where they say the girl thanked the rescuers.

I don’t check the stats very often, because they’re not too interesting (and I have to wade through the 2,000 people a day who do image searches for this Beckham picture) but every once in awhile I have some odd reason to check the JSP.o records.

Yesterday, I did just that, and saw that a few people (two of whom I knew — hello Cath and Joel!) had used the search box to leave me a message. Then of course there were those who were using it to, you know, search, and one of those was someone looking for “iPose”.

If you saw my “April Tool” post, you know that the iPose was a fundraising effort, and I called out a guy for having a damp spot on his shorts. Well, here’s where the small world part gets going. See, my visitor came from a Google search for “ipose Nate”, so he was looking for references to that guy in particular*. So big deal, right? Well, the other piece of the puzzle is that this visitor was using the computer at 128.196.166.(xx), AKA (xx).alpha-epsilon-pi.arizona.edu.

So, short story long, within 5 days of my posting about the project, someone from inside that very frat, and probably the model himself, was reading it.

Oh Google, how I love you and yet fear you so…

* Sharp-eyed readers will note the word ‘Nate’ doesn’t appear in the body of the post. Google was actually scanning an alternate description I put in for users with visual impairments and/or limited browsers.

For all the boredom and isolation that living in a small town entails, there are also benefits. Today’s paper carried the “County’s Most Wanted,” with 12 people under active arrest warrants still at large. These n’er-do-wells have allegedly committed the following crimes:

• Sexual Abuse (3rd)/Indecent exposure
• Violation of probation/Abuse (3rd)
• Violation of pre-trial release
• Violation of probation/Burglary/Theft
• Forgery (3 counts)/Theft (4th)
• Driving without a license/proof of insurance
• Assault/Theft (5th)
• Criminal mischief (4th)
• Filing a false report
• Possession of drug paraphenelia
• Theft (5th) (2 counts)
• Filing a false report

That’s right, we have a couple of genuine thugs, plus a forger, some false reporters, petty thieves, and my favorite, 28yo Jana M. Pringle, who’s wanted for “criminal mischief”. They only have photos for half of this list, and though Jana was spared the indignity of a skeezy likeness, she still probably wishes they proofed it a little longer.

That is, unless she does weigh 1,505 lbs.