KnoBlog

A few days ago I got an email from a friend of mine, a flying buddy from my radio control hobby/addiction, who said that his credit card had been compromised and several mysterious charges have shown up. He also referred me to a thread on WattFlyer, which is one of the discussion forums for electric flight, but not as popular as RC Groups, which is where I usually hang out.  The people in the thread on WattFlyer had narrowed it down to a particular hobby supplier, FMA Direct, which sells some very popular RC battery chargers, batteries, and accessories among other things. I checked RC Groups and decided that since there has not been any discussion of this, perhaps people were not aware, so I made a couple of posts to the forums there, one in the batteries and chargers forum and one in the vendor discussion forum.  I just warned people to read the thread on WattFlyer and check their credit card statements for suspicious activity.

What I didn't realize is what a storm of activity my posts would set off: in the last two days my threads have had more than 150 posts, mostly from people similarly affected, and 3000 views.  Also, except for a couple people who contacted them directly, FMA was not aware of the extent of the problem, so these threads also served to generate a response from the company.

Now as is typical in such situations, sometimes the blame falls on the wrong shoulders.  This incident has led some people to say that they will not purchase from FMA again, or until they are assured that the leak is plugged, but those people don't understand that a credit card number, especially from an online purchase, travels through many different places before the card actually gets charged.  The vendors, the web hosts, the credit card interface, the credit card clearinghouse, and finally the credit card company.  There are many possible places where the breach could have occurred, and right now there is not enough information to pinpoint the leak and fix it.

I'm sure this will have some effect on FMA's sales in the short term, but hopefully people will realize that it's likely not FMA's fault and continue to buy their chargers and batteries.  The important thing is that FMA and their web hosts take all possible steps to prevent this from happening in the future, which it seems like they are in the process of doing.  This is the most important thing to instill confidence in their repeat customers.

I've had an Amazon.com Visa card for a number of years now.  I was recently invited to "upgrade" my card to one that gives more reward points for certain shopping categories.  They also said that I would not have to change my account number, which is convenient since I have some automated billing going to that card.   I said, great, sign me up!

So today I got my card, except it wasn't my card.  The bank screwed up; they sent the right letter to the right person with the wrong card attached.  Of course this means that someone else probably got my card!  These days, you just never know, so I immediately called customer service and was connected to the security department.  After verifying my information they said the only thing they could do was to close my current account and open a new one with the new card number, and transfer everything over.  Great.  Of course since this is my most-used card, now I have to use another card while I wait for the new card to arrive, and I can't transfer the automatic payments that get made on this card until I have my new card.  Plus, since I haven't been receiving paper statements for a year, now I can't even access my online statements from the old account and have to have customer service send me copies of those.  What a pain in the ass!  I have a feeling that I will be making several more calls to customer service as well to have them fix this problem.  All because they sent me the wrong card.

Ok, this whole "purchasing green credits" to offset your carbon emissions is getting ridiculous.  Now even REI is getting into the act, saying that they purchase "Green Tags" to offset all aspects of their customers trips taken with REI.

Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly support "green projects" such as wind, wave, and solar power generation, I even own stock in one of the top solar cell producers in the world, but this whole practice of purchasing "green credits" is nothing more than trying to make ourselves feel good about our pollution.

Let's face it, there is really no shortage of investment in green companies these days.  Venture capitalists have long been investing in these projects, and believe me they put a lot more money into it that we ever could.

If you want to support solar, wind, and other green energy projects, then let's call that what it is and send them a donation, just remember it's probably not tax-deductible.   But if you actually want to reduce your carbon footprint, then take steps to reduce your carbon footprint.  Drive more fuel-efficient cars (or bike/walk to work), change to more efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs, add insulation to your house so you're not using so much electricity/oil/natural gas to heat it.  That's going to be a lot more effective than supporting companies who take a little off the top (don't forget "management fees") and spread the rest around.

Here's another tale in my adventures with contractors.  This time we needed an old outdoor hot tub removed, and the privacy fence that was next to it.  It never worked since we bought the house and would have been too expensive to fix.  I got some estimates from the "big" junk removal companies, then went with a small local guy who posted on craigslist.  I like dealing with small businesses in cases like this since I am one.

I got a very good price from them for the removal, and a guy (not the owner of the company with whom I spoke the previous day) showed up the very next morning to start the job.  He got the fence cut down in a half hour then got to work on the hot tub.  Once he got it drained he was able to use a lever to put it on its side. At this point it tipped over and fell on our Carrier AC unit that we just got installed a year ago, putting a dent in it and causing some of the paint to flake off, leaving the metal exposed.

The owner showed up with another guy about 10 minutes later and was very apologetic about the accident.  Fortunately it didn't seem to affect anything mechanically, so I was willing to live with the small dent as long as the paint got touched up in a timely manner so the metal wouldn't rust.  Since this was already the end of the week, I was promised this would happen early the following week.  He also offered to take away the small pile of rotten wood we had sitting in the back for free.

Unfortunately I did not hear anything back and called the owner on Thursday or Friday.  He was surprised to hear that nothing had happened because he told his painter to come over and take care of it. Over the course of the next week we played phone tag and I got promises on two or three occasions that someone would be over in just a few
hours, but no one showed up.  Then my phone calls stopped being returned (I was actually restraining myself and calling only once a day until yesterday, when I called twice).

I got pretty pissed off last night (after two weeks of no follow-up, mind you) and did a Google search for the company, then posted comments in three places that allowed comments or reviews.  I posted as factual an account as I could given the limited space.  I figured they might actually see it.

Ok, granted I could have gone to Home Depot, spent $5 on a can of Rustoleum, and had this thing touched up in a half hour, but at this point it was really the principle of the thing.  I just hate being jerked around.

This morning I got an email from the owners wife (who does their Internet marketing) and a bit later a phone call from the owner saying that he will be here in an hour.  True to his word, he was here,touched up the metal with some Rustoleum, and took away the rotten wood as promised.  Plus he gave me a coupon for a free haulaway of a fridge or couch.

So what have we learned from this experience?  First, I think that we both learned that no matter how big and strong the employee looks, it's probably not a good idea to let him move anything as big as a hot tub by himself.  Waiting 10 minutes for the owner and other guy to show up would have avoided the whole accident in the first place.  Second, I learned that it's not a good idea tomake full payment on a job if there is still work to be done.  That was my mistake, and I should have held back at least a portion of the payment until the touch up was done.  Third, I think we were reminded that expectation management is so vitally important to customer relations.  If you say that you are going to show up at a given time, then show up or at least follow up with a phone call to say why you are not showing up.  Otherwise you are wasting my time and trying my patience.

I can see now how the old marketing adage of "a happy customer tells one person, an unhappy customer tells ten" can certainly be true.

So many people trust their firewall software, but what if the firewall software is preventing your other software from running properly?

Case in point: some older versions of Norton Personal Firewall will allow our software to access the Internet on a customer's machine after the user answers "yes" to the allow/deny dialog that pops up, but if our software is upgraded on that very same machine, Norton will not allow our software to access the Internet and does not even pop up the allow/deny dialog again.  The customer things that our software has stopped working, when it's Norton blocking the connection.

Case in point: some firewalls will deny our software access to our own web sites (but allow access to more popular sites such as microsoft.com) without popping up any kind of dialog alerting customers to that fact, so again our software appears to be broken.

These kinds of problems just cause headaches for customers and waste our time trying to track them down and figure out workarounds.  The process is especially difficult for customers who may not be as experienced with computers.  Customers mistakenly think that they have to disable their firewall software in order to get our software to work on their machines, when it is only necessary to learn how to use it properly.  We can only hope that the firewall software vendors make it easier for their customers to diagnose these kinds of problems (by providing proper feedback) and to fix them (by making the interface easier to understand).

We visited Niagara Falls, Canada recently, and an interesting thing happened.  Since this was the first time we had traveled out of the country with our boy, we had not even considered bringing any kind of identification with us to prove that he was ours.  The customs agent on the Canadian side asked about a birth certificate or any kind of identification, and after a little scrutiny let us through with a reminder to bring it next time.  At that point I was thinking... ok, how are we going to get back into the US?

Apparently getting into the US is not a problem, as the customs agent on the US side on didn't even ask about the child, and I think we were all a bit surprised by that.  So what does that imply exactly?  If I leave without a child and I come back with one, as long as he isn't screaming that's ok?

I guess we didn't look suspicious enough.  But that does bring up an interesting point, and this is something I obviously don't know since I'm not in the business: what kind of training do the border agents get in identifying suspicious characters?  A few years ago one of our relatives was temporarily detained coming back into the US from Canada, possibly because he has dark skin, a mustache, and speaks with an accent.  I don't know if they are racially profiling, but the guy is Russian, not Middle Eastern.

How much of what border security does is just for show?  Sure, they swipe your passport and look on their screens, but unless the computer tells them to detain you, are they really experienced enough to recognize a real threat?

Very interesting article in Newsweek.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/151758

More silliness from PHP.  This comes from my business partner, Yermo.

<?php

$retval = "eventdone";

if ( $retval != true )
   print "retval is not true\n";
else
  print "retval is true";

?>

PHP 5.2.5 under RedHat Linux yields "retval is not true".
PHP 5.2.4 under Kubuntu Hardy Heron yields "retval is true".

Trust not completely in machine translation, my young padiwan.

http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2008/07/then-well-grab.html

A guy posts a video of his new plane on rcgroups.  Someone comments on it:

> That's pretty cool - can it turn to the right?

The guy's reply:

> Yes, been watching too much nascar I guess

Actually it seems the Russians are already here, judging by the number of them I've met recently.  Maybe it's just because I've been getting out more, especially having a kid, but I've met at least four at the playground with their children or grandchildren, one at the Hair Cuttery who cut my hair, and one today who was the checkout girl at the Trader Joe's.  Plus the conversations in Russian that I've overheard at the mall, or in the grocery store.  It seems there is quite a large Russian settlement here in Northern VA, and I had no idea.  At least I get to practice speaking Russian now, at least a little bit at a time. 

Jerry Yang has his hands full.  Not only was his lunch eaten by Larry Page and Sergei Brin and he's playing catch-up, now he's also forced to do battle with Carl Icahn over who gets to sit on the board of directors.  Icahn, like any good investor, wants to see the value of his shares go up, so he is doing what he thinks will make that happen.  But in the meanwhile, Jerry Yang has to split his focus between trying to run the business and fighting off Carl Icahn at the same time.  I can understand wanting to increase "shareholder value", but is this really the right way to go about it?

Unfortunately I don't know what else Yahoo can do right now to reverse it's fortunes.  It seems that Google can just out-develop Yahoo, and many unique features that Yahoo had are quickly duplicated and improved.  Kinda sounds kind of like Microsoft doesn't it?  Google is also developing a lot of unique technology independently and has a lot of the public and corporate mindshare.  It seems that Yahoo may be in a no-win situation.

This isn't really an original thought by any means, but it struck me today as I was reading some posts in one of the forums I frequent: I think text messaging on cell phones is ruining the ability to write proper and complete sentences.  Suddenly, even when people have a full keyboard to work with, they feel the need to abbreviate like they are writing a text message.  Suddenly, "does anyone think a plane with forward swept wings is possible" becomes "does any 1 think a plane with 4ward swept wings is possible".  Y, Y, Y?  Maybe I'm too old for this now, but it actually takes me more time to think about substituting "one" with "1" and "for" with "4" than to just type the right word in the first place.  Plus the person reading it has to actually think about how to transform it back 2 the correct English word, so it takes longer to read the message.  I think that when 1 does this in a public 4um, it makes 1 seem uneducated, not clever.  Please, everyone, save the abbreviations for the cell phone.

Once in a long while we will order Domino's pizza delivery.  Some time ago delivery used to be free.  Back when I was in college, you would even get your pizza free if they didn't deliver it in 30 minutes.  Well, I'm not expecting free pizza, but in the last year or so Domino's has started charging a delivery charge.  At first it was $1.50, but today I noticed it is up to $2.  I thought this was an interesting development from a business point of view, considering that no one else charges for delivery.  I would think that it's a competitive disadvantage.

I guess this at least ensure that the driver gets a couple dollars tip, but are people so unkind that they don't tip the driver at least a couple dollars anyway?  Our average order was around $20, and I used tip two or three dollars, but after I saw the delivery fee I no longer felt inclined to tip.  So I asked our delivery guy if his tips have gone up or down since Domino's started charging the fee, and he said they have gone down.  So now I question whether it was wise to raise the fee to $2.  Ok, I felt bad for the guy so I gave him $2 on top of the delivery charge.  This time.  We'll see about next time.

My wife just called me to tell me that our son said "bus" for the first time, after he saw a bus drive by.  At about 15 1/2 months, it looks like we are definitely getting to the stage when he's going to start to pick up words pretty quick.  In the last couple of weeks he started saying "mama", "ice", and "apple".  And now "bus".  Plus "this", "uh-oh", and "bye bye" from before, and it looks like we have seven words.  I guess we're going to have to really watch what we say around him; our friends just taught their little one to say "Obama".