Friday, July 25, 2003
Role on
Barbie (who knew!) has a blog. Thanks to Christopher Ireland for the pointer.
More to a different point, Christopher and everybody else at Cheskin, an excellent market research company in the Bay Area, now has a blog. Check 'em out.
And thanks to Allan Karl for pointing to the Cheskin developments, too. (And, originally, to Barbie.) I used to cross paths with the Cheskin folks back when I lived in the Bay Area, and always liked their work.
From the Danish Italian Wine Country of California
Quite aside from the teeth-grinding experience discussed below (it's still going on), the espresso machines I really like start at around 4x the price Starbucks wants for a Barista. Salvatore is the brand, and the machines are hand-made by gen-u-wine eye-talian craftsmen, right over the hill from here, deep in the South Coastal Wine Country, in the faux Danish town of Solvang.
Dig the funky variety of models these guys put out. Amazing stuff.
Yep, I think that's what we'll want, two houses from now.
PayHole
On the one hand, I believe PayPal is one of the greatest inventions in the history of the Web.
On the other hand, I hate it.
I think I may have made one successful payment for something with PayPal, a long time ago. But since last Fall, I've been in PayPal hell, and I can't get out.
That's because my account was "limited" last Fall, for some dumb reason, I think because my VISA card got a new expiration date. Whatever, it set off a "flag" from which there is no escape.
Changed expiratoin dates cause problems with other automatic payment services; but, generally speaking, fixing the problem isn't complicated. You just give them the new expiration date, and maybe the extra security code on the back of your card, and that's it.
With PayPal, you need to fax a copy of the credit card statement with a cover sheet PayPal provides; and that's at the end of a process that puts you through a maze of clicks and pages.
My main problem at first was that I didn't have a fax machine. I mean, this is the 21st century, ferfucksake, why should we need a fax?
So I got a fax machine and sent in my credit card statments with their cover sheet, over and over again.
Here is a list of subjects from PayPal inbound emails (some in response to my faxes or outbound emails) going back to November of last year:
Your PayPal Account has been Restored
Notification of PayPal Limited Account Access
Re: Still limited
Request for additional information on case
Enter Your Member Number
Important information about your fax
Request for additional information on case
Request for additional information on case
Account Review Required
Request for additional information on case
Request for additional information on case
Re: Request for additional information on case
Dear PayPal Customer
Dear Paypal Customer
Paypal Security Measures
PayPal Account Security Measures [ticket #xxxxxxxx]
Paypal Privacy Notice
You see the problem.
Still, I thought it was solved somewhere back there, but didn't know (or much care) because I didn't attempt to buy anything using PayPal.
Then, just this week, I decided to replace our old Starbucks Barista espresso machine (highly recommended, by the way). It's our second one, and about six years old. (The heavy calcium in Santa Barbara water killed it, I think. Lesson: use bottled water.)
A new one is $400 at Starbucks, with no discounts except in December and April, according to one of the store managers, so I decided to look around for alternate sources.
Well, it turns out there are a few of them on eBay, and they all run about $300. So I decided to buy one today. I was hoping to just pay for it with a VISA card somehow and avoid the PayPal mess, but apparently eBay is welded tight to PayPal, which it now owns.
(Okay, I can send a personal check, a cashier's check or a money order, but I want to do this electronically, if possible, since I'm far more disorganized in meat than in cyber space.)
So now eBay tells me I've completed the purchase while PayPal tells me I haven't because my account is still "limited."
I just got off the phone with PayPal. Spent a long time trying to get their fax to answer or accept calls. The guy gave me another number, which also failed. So right now I'm redialing and redialing, hoping to get through.
There has to be a better way.
[Later...] Says here Roland Tanglao and his partner Pete have one. Check it out.
Also Sprach Wutjunge
Francis Scott "Frank" Paynter interviews "the avuncular" Chris 
Locke. (This is so weird. One of the cool things about Manila is that it allows you to post a picture by just quoting the name of a file in the picture directory at the server. I put RageBoy in quotes in that first sentence, so Manila swapped in that picture. Anyway, whatever.)
Says Frank:
Talking with Chris one is aware of one's own contradictions: the thousand hypocrisies and social compromises that get in the way of honest communication.
Says Chris:
So yes, Esther and I first met there in 1985. This was of course long before our much publicized affair, the details of which Doc Searls -- usually able to keep a secret -- divulged at the first Digital Identity conference in Denver last year. I want to go on record right here in saying that during the entire period of our intimacy (now sadly ended, but no hard feelings) she never once offered me a free subscription to Release 1.0 or invited me to speak at PC Forum. Well, maybe some hard feelings, but really very few. Esther, as I have said elsewhere, is a brick. A British expression, if you're not familiar. Those fucking Limeys come up with the weirdest shit, don't you think?
Savings
Here's the TLC (Technorati link cosmos) for Saving the Net. Impressive.
Oddly, I don't see Richard Bennett's lengthy and informative reply. He nails me, as usual, for being an oversimplifying utopian. And, as usual, he's right. Our argument, roughly, is between the real (Richard) and the ideal (me), and about how much of the ideal is embodied in the real — something some of us keep harping on. We need informed push-back from veterans like Richard.
Also check out 3375537's reduction of the piece. In fact, check out 3375537 in general. For example this from My First Celebrity Sighting:
The sad thing is, I barely even notice people I actually know. Face recognition deficit disorder. Surely there’s a pharmaceutical for this by now.
However, yesterday I was redeemed. While driving down Franklin Ave on the way back from picking up OldestDaughter from college, Lawrence Fucking Fishburn on a Harley pulled up next to us at a light. He gave us a significant nod, barely perceptible, yet a nod. The bike was lots of chrome and had a custom American flag gas tank. Very Fishburn cool, really bad skin looking good and some non-matrix see through shades.
Obviously he was impressed with my cool ride: 1997 Gold Chrysler mini van with gold rims and minor body damage and no a/c. You get kinda used to people gasping with admiration as you drive down the strip. Oh yeah.
I lie, I mean about Fishburn being my first. I did see James Woods at the dentist when I was bringing OldestDaughter to have her teeth cleaned. It’s just that I can’t stand James Woods, even though he has bad skin and everything, I think he’s a smarmy bastard who is always talking about what a fucking genius he is and how his I.Q. is something like humpty elevendy nine or some such nonsense. So I’m not counting Woods; he doesn’t count.
I think we can agree on this.
And thanks to CRBL for pointing 33&c's way.
Polytics
Three items.
First, Kevin Werbach's summary of what's up with the FCC right now:
Meanwhile, Congress seems poised to revserse key elements of the FCC's recent decision to lift ownership caps on big media companies. That story is really more symbolism than substance. The difference between 35% and 45% of households is just not the end of the world. But the degree of controversy over media ownership, especially given the massive political power of the broadcast lobby, is breathtaking. The FCC has managed to strike a huge nerve.
Michael Powell is smart, honest, committed to serving the public, familiar with the FCC, politically well-connected, and from the party than controls all the major institutions of the federal government. How could he be failing so miserably in implementing his agenda?
Second, John Robert Kelly's report from Afghanistan, on Instapundit:
Those who disparaged the American efforts in Afghanistan have seriously underestimated the constructive changes wrought in this city in such a brief period. Despite dozens of missteps, made mostly with good intentions, it has been the understated but forceful American influence, not the UN and the hundreds of NGOs, that has taken the major gambles here. The Americans have displayed admirable flexibility in altering tactics and strategy when necessary and achieved this dicey, delicate transition.
Third, Hunter S. Thompson in ESPN:
Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world.
The Stock Market will never come back, our Armies will never again be No. 1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of our lives.
HST is nuts, of course; but I always enjoy reading him, so there ya go.
Take away partisanship, and how do things appear? Not all that bad, really.
More in the morning after I've had some sleep...
Okay, I'm up.
For some reason I'm remembering a hunk of something Doctor Dave wrote a long time ago:
We hold these truths and try not to drop them:
That all men are created gooey
and endowed by their creator with lefts and rights
and that among those are rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of property.
My point, when I was writing this up last night, I think, was that it's possible at the same time for all three of the quotees above to be completely right and in nearly full contradiction with each other, and even with the facts that inform, or fail to inform, their opinions.
That's why we have to keep diggin', as Dave says.
Speaking (in all eight meanings) of which, I love what Dave digs about Beauty in Women:
Hey if you want to know where I'm coming from, go get a copy of Joe Cocker's You Are So Beautiful. In his crackly, squeaky imperfect way he speaks for every man who has ever loved a woman. Hey I know I'm a dork, but I love you. Now if we can all accept that about ourselves and each other, think of all the fun we can have.
You are so beautiful to me. You are so beautiful to me. Can't you see? You're everything I hoped for. You're everything I need. You are so beautiful. To me.
Same goes for the public diggin' we call blogging.
Brand free flying
Esther Dyson, reporting from Moscow:
...as I sit here on Aeroflot, I’m bemused by a world without branding. There’s no menu, just a flight attendant offering me chicken or fish. (Maybe I’ve been flying FC too much to expect anything more…) There are no brand names on the food, either: no little promotional flyers, no packaged potato chips or cookies, no attempt to leverage any other brand name. On other airlines, the menus are prepared by the chef of some famous restaurant. As airlines get into the business of selling food, they are wise enough to understand that their own brand names might not cut it…