Foray into Fiber Optic Internet Service

The letter from my ISP stated that it would be installing optical fiber. The letter encouraged me to upgrade (warned me, actually) because repairs to my DSL soon would incur a service fee.

I ignored the first two letters, but then decided I’d look into the matter.

The upgrade process started with a call to customer service. The agent went over the available tiers of service and their costs. I chose 500Mbps because I know that bottlenecks in speed occur at the server and the device. Higher speed service is good for large families that have several users and devices all vying for bandwidth, but that’s not me. (I was happy enough with 20Mbps, actually, but that was just the download speed. I was limited to about 1.6Mbps upload speed, which made teleconferencing problematic.) The 500Mbps was for both download and upload.

The agent scheduled a date and time for a technician to visit – I had to be home for this. She also looked into the details of my account and informed me that I had overhead service. This was wrong. The neighborhood had overheard wires; however my wire was (mostly) underground. But the agent was unconvinced. It didn’t matter too much; the technician would see it and correct the record.

I liked the technician. He saw the DSL wire – it was lying on the ground near the house. He pointed out that the wire was meant for overhead installations. He showed me where the fiber would come down from a different utility pole – he even pointed out that box it would connect to. So the new “wire” would need to be trenched on the other side of the property. Since the ISP didn’t realize I needed the fiber buried, he decided to expedite the order. But first, the property needed to be surveyed by the “Call Before You Dig” (CBYD) program. I did not need to be home for CBYD or for the cable to be buried. But I was glad I was present for both.

When the CBYD technician arrived, I went out to meet with him. He was puttering around the pole to which the old DSL was connected. I told him that the ISP would be digging at the other pole. Nevertheless, he indicated “No Water / No Gas” and placed flags over the electrical service. He didn’t bother to mark the cable or DSL – I guess that service doesn’t matter.

The guy came out the next day to put down the new cable. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon. I didn’t know he was there until I heard some sort of thumping and went out to investigate. He was attempting to manually dig a trench on the wrong side of the house, navigating near the cable! I explained how the installation needed to go, and he was relieved because it meant that he could use the gas-powered trench digger. He seemed not fluent in English, so he probably didn’t read the ticket. Anyway, he completed the job, and I took photos of the two exposed ends.

The technician would return on Friday, but someone still needed to connect the cable to the box on the pole. Would he do that? I hoped so.

The next day, I got a frantic text from my wife. The (VoIP) land line phone was not working. And the cellphone service was dropping her calls after 20 seconds. So she had no way to call anyone!

It turned out that the ISP canceled our service. So we were without Internet service for four days!

The weather forecast for the Friday installation day included a severe thunderstorm watch. And still the cable was not attached to the box on the pole. But eventually the guy came in the bucket truck and made the connection pretty quickly. I guess he was spurred on by the thunder clouds roiling nearby. About 30 minutes later the deluge began.

Then the technician came to put in the new modem, router and WiFi. This all went amazingly well. He even set the WiFi passcode to what it was before; I didn’t have to re-authenticate all my devices to the new WiFi. The only surprise was that I was left with no battery backup. The technician removed the old UPS, which had only 12Vdc output -- it was useless for the new system. He said he was glad to see I had my own UPS for the computer and cordless phone system, and he plugged the Modem and Router into that. Indeed, I got a message afterward alerting me to the fact that the VoIP system would not work in the event of a power failure.

I’ve had the service for several weeks. At first the Ookla speed test reported about 500Mbps for both upload and download when connected to the ISP’s own server. However, when connected to the nearest (non-ISP) server, the speed was under 30Mbps. As well, DNS lookup was problematic, and I’ve had to restart my computer prior to the start of my work-from-home day.

Voice mail was the next problem. The upgrade came with a whole new voice mail system. We opted out of the voicemail system that came with DSL As before, the new voicemail answered when our line was in use, and callers would leave messages expected that we’d hear them. We had no idea this was going on, and we missed some messages from medical providers. So I used the web interface to set the number rings before pickup to 12. But that did nothing. I needed to spend about 45 minutes over two sessions with customer service before eventually it could be disabled.

But lately, things have improved. In fact during a recent severe thunderstorm, the Internet connection remained steady even though cable and electrical power was intermittent. Wet weather would always degrade the DSL service – now this seems to be another tale of hardship we had to endure, like 9600 baud rate modems, text-based message board systems, and 1.2 MB removable media.

Lately, the speeds to local non-ISP servers have improved; although the advertised rate still isn’t being met.

A Novel Way to Gain Followers

I heard the news today that, “Neuralink, the neurotech startup co-founded by Elon Musk, announced Thursday it has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to conduct its first in-human clinical study.”¹

This technology is meant to “help patients with severe paralysis control external technologies using only neural signals. … patients with severe degenerative diseases like ALS could eventually regain their ability to communicate ... by … typing with their minds.”

All I could think was, “He must be desperate to get new followers on Twitter!”

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¹https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-brain-implant-company-134631197.html

Fear Our Autonomous Future

We’re supposed to have faith in self-driving cars. Yet we can’t seem to prevent two trains from colliding.

This is a reference to the March 1 head-on train crash in Greece. According to the BBC and The Guardian, “The passenger train and the freight train were travelling in opposite directions but ended up on the same track”¹ and “The two trains are thought to have travelled along the same track for 2-3km before they met head-on.”²

Maybe the problem with trains is that they’re confined to a limited number of paths (tracks), which increases the chances of a crash. The reason we have so few airplane collisions is only because of how improbable it is that two planes would occupy the same space during most of their flights.

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¹ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64813367

² https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/01/greece-train-crash-deaths-injuries-larissa-collision-derailment

High Blood Pressure vs. Computer Use -- Correlation?

Tonight I prepared for a 7:20AM fasting blood draw. Here’s how.

I have an outstanding balance with the lab, so I decide to pay it online and add a record to my database of paid medical balances.

I fire up my brand new laptop and navigate to the lab’s patient portal to accesse my account.

But before I pay any medical bill, I always verify that the balance does not exceed the Patient Responsibility as determined on the Insurance Provider’s Explanation of Benefits (EOB). So I also go to the insurance company website. While at the login prompt, I open my password manager to get the password for the site.

Unfortunately, the site rejects the username / password combination. The password had been created in 2018, so it must have expired.

At this point I could just reset the password. But then I would need to update both my work computer and the old computer. So I decide to start up my old, slow laptop and check the password manager on that computer. But the password manager offers the same old password for that site.

That’s not a problem. All I have to do is open Chrome, in which I save nearly all my passwords. But Chrome is running extremely slowly; seconds turn into minutes, so I take a break to feed the animals.

After I feed the animals, Chrome finally is loaded, and I find the new password in its password manager. I write that down on the invoice and transfer it over to the new computer via “SneakerNet.”

And this is where things spiraled into high blood pressure territory. The insurance company decided it was time to do maintenance on its website; it refused to display the login page any more!

I decide to call the insurance company, which is open after hours and also a few time zones behind me. Hold times are long. “Of course they are,” I told myself. “No one can log into the website!”

Finally, an agent picks up. “Hi, I just wanted to verify a Patient Responsibility – I can’t get into the website to do it.” The agent says, “I’m sorry but I can’t get that for you -- our computers are down. But they’ll be back up tomorrow morning.” “Oh, you too, huh?”

So then I decide that I’d just pay the darn balance. I’d rather pay online and download a receipt for my records than pay in person and get a paper receipt.

I switch tabs back to the lab’s invoice of my previous blood draw, the one I need to pay. But the information is gone – too much time had elapsed! So I’m required to re-enter the account details. I do that, and I’m able to transact the payment easily.

Next, I want to enter a record of the transaction in my database. I have a flat file database implemented in spreadsheet form with LibreOffice’s Calc. A brand new installation of LibreOffice, it loads quickly. Unfortunately the links to all my receipts and EOBs are showing up as #NAME. Now what?

It takes a while, but I figure out that I use =CELL(“FILENAME”, $A$1) to obtain the spreadsheet’s full path and file name. And then I use a home made function LG_GetPath() to strip away the spreadsheet’s file name and extension, returning a string that contains just the drive letter and directory. It’s this string (CWD) that prefaces all the links to the receipts and EOBs.

I go back to the old computer, open the Macro Editor, export the module, email it to myself (in case I can’t get it through the home network) and enter it into the LibreOffice installation on my new computer.

Finally I’m able to enter a record of the bill payment, the last step of my procedure for paying medical bills.

How long did this take? I recall that I finished feeding the cats at about 6:30PM and that I was able to finish my supper at 7:30Pm (thereby reducing the 12 hour fast to eleven-and-change). Given that it took me at least 15 minutes to eat, the process took nearly 45 minutes.

But from the way my heart was beating and the arteries throbbing in my neck, I’d say the time that was wasted was secondary to the increase in blood pressure.

And now, exactly eleven hours before tomorrow morning’s fasting blood draw, I’m quaffing the dregs of a Murphy’s Irish Stout.

We do not need medication to control blood pressure; we need new lives.

Some Things Never Change

For over two thousand years, engineers had to contend with manufacturing issues.  We're still doing that today...

"... its design conception exceeded the engineering precision of its manufacture by a wide margin—with considerable cumulative inaccuracies in the gear trains, which would have cancelled out many of the subtle anomalies built into its design."

From the Wikipedia page "Antikythera mechanism," Google's feature for today, 2017-05-17.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Clinton -- the Computer Illiterate

Did Hilary Clinton's discomfort with technology cause her to lose the election?

After reading the FBI summaries of the Clinton email debacle, Garrett Graff reports that Clinton could not use a desktop computer and preferred to use a single outdated BlackBerry (Curve 8310) for both business and personal correspondence rather than use the government-issued device for State Department business.

Click here for the podcast in which “Sean Cole talks to reporter Garrett Graff, who read the 247 pages of interview summaries of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Graff concludes that it’s not the scandal most people thought it was. Not a sophisticated, Machiavellian scheme to evade federal rules and record laws. The interviews 'depict less a sinister and carefully calculated effort to avoid transparency than a busy and uninterested executive who shows little comfort with even the basics of technology, working with a small, harried inner circle of aides. Reading the FBI’s interviews, Clinton’s team hardly seems organized enough to mount any sort of sinister cover-up.'”

Here's a link the Garrett Graff's article on Politico:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-emails-2016-server-state-department-fbi-214307

Presidential Candidates' Answers to the 2016 Top 20 Science and Technology Questions

For this election cycle, ScienceDebate has included the Green and Libertarian party candidates in its list of 20 questions regarding the most pressing "... Science, Engineering, Tech, Health & Environmental Issues in 2016."

You can read it all here: www.sciencedebate.org

Taking the Plunge

Several weeks ago I took the plunge and bought myself a cell phone.  This leaves my brother as possibly the only person in the USA who doesn't have one.

Many years ago I bought cell phones for both my wife and daughter.  But I scoffed at the idea of using one myself.  "No one wants to talk to me," I'd say.  As for emergencies, I'd say, "Everyone else has a cell phone.  I can ask someone to call for help."  And I could send texts via e-mail for free to my daughter's cell phone from my tablet.

So why get one now?  My motivation was not self-interest.  I got one so that my chronically-ill wife could get in touch with me easily in case she had a flare up.  As well, the tablet could send e-mail only when connected to a Wi-Fi network, so I'd have to struggle to find free public Wi-Fi in order to text my daughter.  Now that I have a cell phone, I can exchange texts with her wherever I happen to be.

Which cell phone did I choose?  Which plan?  Naturally, this Luddite was compelled to look for the cheapest and most basic phone and service.  But the Geek in me tempered that with technological requirements.  For example, since we already had two cell phones in use at our home, I looked for a device that would connect to the same (GSM) network.  I also wanted a device that could be charged through a microUSB port so that I could use a generic charger.  And I wanted push buttons, not a touchscreen.

I decided that for my needs, a pay-as-you-go plan would be far cheaper than a contract.  So I researched the plans and found out which providers used the network we were already using.  And I kept my eyes open at drug stores for those providers' phones.  And then I found a push-button phone, discounted 50%, for $4.99.  I bought it, despite the fact that I couldn't tell how it connected to its charger, and despite the nagging feeling that it was already obsolete.

Well, it turned out that it was obsolete -- I wasn't able to activate that $4.99 cell phone.  The company's customer service explained that the device wasn't supported in my area, and that they'd send a different one.  And the phone didn't have a microUSB, either. But I hoped that the replacement device would have one.

I waited, and I waited, for the replacement phone.  Finally, after two extra phone calls to customer service, which involved promises that I'd get it in two days, I got it.

They sent me an LG touchscreen phone.  I was initially disappointed about the touchscreen, but I tried to maintain an open mind.  "At least the device charges through a microUSB port," I told myself.  Also, this device had a "3x minutes, texts and data for life" plan associated with it.

It activated easily enough.  But something seemed wrong.  Every time I tried to make a phone call, the keypad would disappear from the screen as soon as the call connected.  So I wasn't able to "Press 1 for English" or anything like that.  (See, that's why I want a push-button phone.  Real buttons hardly ever disappear.)  Eventually, I figured out how to get the display to turn on.  If I held the power button down as if to turn off the phone, the screen would light up asking if I wanted to turn off the phone.  I could then respond "No" and gain access to the keypad without the phone disconnecting.

Even though I was able to use the phone, I decided that the phone was defective and needed to be replaced.  First, I visited the LG website and quickly found a customer service agent to chat with.  She "talked" me through the steps of rebooting the phone and then asked me to retest the phone.  It continued to misbehave, so she suggested that the proximity sensor was faulty and encouraged me to contact the provider to get the phone replaced.

I saved the chat text and sent it to one of the provider's customer service contacts, who again asked me to reboot the phone and try it again.  Finally, I got them to agree to send yet another phone, which arrived quickly and worked properly.

All of the sending and returning of phones, although time-consuming, was paid for by the provider.  I probably could have asked to have some minutes refunded because of all that I wasted while testing the phone, but I decided I was still ahead.

Eventually I bought more minutes and extended the activation period out 2 years.  I figured that the phone and service cost about $6 per month, assuming the phone lasts the entire two years.  So overall I'm pretty happy about it.  The only issue I have now is this: how do I carry the thing around all the time?

Trials with an Old Computer

About six years ago, I mused about what to do with an old computer, a 500MHz Pentium III.  My idea was to reformat the hard drive (20GB) and install one of these operating systems: Windows 2000 (already obsolete); Windows XP (facing obsolescence); and Linux (Ubuntu, although I don't recall why I decided on that flavor).

I tried all three plus Dyne:bolic, a Linux variant specialized for music and video production on under-powered computers.  Here's how I fared....

Dyne:bolic was easy to try out, and I didn't have to reformat the Window NT drive to do it.  So I tried it first.  After downloading version 2, I burned the ISO image to a CD.  It booted up just fine and I ran it from the CD.  It performed well, but it was set up for a single root-level user, and it wouldn't "play" Flash content.

Next was XP.  The first problem I had was that I couldn't activate the OS, even though I had a valid key.  But I played around with it anyway during the evaluation period.  Just twenty minutes was enough to know it would be way too slow.

Then I installed Windows 2000.  This involved a lot of tedious business with multiple CDs for the OS itself, then Service Pack 6 and then more CDs with security software and utilities.  Everything went well until I installed the antivirus program and updated it.  After that, the OS would not start.

Finally I decided to give Linux a try.  Rather than download images files, I decided to search the local public library system for Linux books that had accompanying CDs.  And I limited my search to old books, too, since I really needed the installer to be on CD-ROMs and not a DVD.  There were some Red Hat Linux books, so I got one and tried it.  It installed and ran really well except for the web browser, Mozilla, which had me pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del and longing for Task Manager to come up so I could kill it.

Of these four options, Dyne:bolic was clearly the best.  Unfortunately, by the time I got around to realizing it, Jaromil released version 3.0.0, whose 1.6GB image now must be burned onto DVD, not CD.  (I can't find the CD that had version 2 on it. And booting from USB is not an option in this computer's BIOS.)  This latest Dyne:bolic is totally awesome -- I tried the Live CD on my main home desktop (a P4), and I created a small virtual machine on my work computer, which boots the image file.

In order to run D:B3 on my PIII, I need a DVD drive.  Since I had two on my main desktop, I removed one and installed it on the PIII.  But, alas, it didn't work.  The computer detected the drive, but it won't boot from it, and Linux won't mount it.  So I think the laser is shot.  I've encountered a few non-functioning DVD drives in this manufacturer's computers, so I really do think the drive is defective.  In fact I wasn't able to boot from the drive recently when it was in the P4 that I took it out of.

So this is where I am now.  I need a working IDE DVD drive, which are expensive and/or refurbished.  There are adapters that can convert a SATA drive to IDE, but that's an extra expense I didn't want to pay.  Plus, I'm not sure this small form factor case will have any room for it, although I can put the new SATA drive with IDE adapter into the main desktop and move the working IDE DVD drive from the main desktop to the PIII if I really had to.

If / when I clear this hurdle I'll check in again.  Hopefully D:B3 will still be available!

Blackphone and Webroot

Friday on NRP, Morning Edition featured the Blackphone, a smart phone with privacy as its number one priority.  Also mentioned were Black, Boeing's super secure smart phone, and Webroot, a security application.

Read more at http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/28/283523473/a-smartphone-that-tries-to-slip-you-off-the-grid.

Android Tablet Possibly For Sale

So far my tablet is leading me to the conclusion that it's not worth buying one.  While the portability of it is really neat, it's still not small enough to fit in any pocket, except perhaps a generous jacket pocket.  Sans jacket, I've stowed it inside my button-down shirt by opening one button, slipping it in, and then closing the button.  But during bouts of warm T-shirt weather, I'm forced to either hold the tablet or put it down somewhere when I'm not actually using it.

For example, when I went grocery shopping last week, I placed the tablet in the "seat" of the shopping cart.  When I was done shopping, and I had loaded the car, I returned the cart to one of the spots set aside for the empty carts.  As I walked away, I glanced back to make sure I didn't leave anything behind in the cart, and then I drove home.  And as soon as I got home, I wondered where my tablet was.  I realized I had left it in the cart.  And the reason I didn't notice it when I walked away from the cart was that it lay atop a store circular that had been folded over it by the wind.  Luckily it was in the same spot I left it.  But had I not been able to find it, I'd've not bothered to replace it or even miss it.  I might've felt a bit relieved.  In fact, right now I'm wondering how much I can get for it.

I like having a computer.  It enables me to communicate through e-mail, blogs, message boards and even social media.  And the mobility of it would be extremely fantastic if: 1) Free WiFi were accessible everywhere; 2) It didn't take ten times longer to compose meaningful content.  BTW, I'm typing this right now on a public library computer, even though I have my tablet with me and have access to free WiFi.  Even with the Nexus' Speech-to-Text feature and the Hacker's Keyboard, I still prefer to enter content through an "old fashioned" keyboard.

The marriage of location-aware note-taking and image capture that Evernote provides would be useful if the Nexus had a good-quality rear camera.

Android Tablet -- a GPS Device Poser

I concede that I was exaggerating a bit when I referred to my new tablet as "a GPS device, RF scanner, MP3 player, eReader, camera, digital voice recorder, hand held gaming device, clock, portable translator...." It's the "GPS device" boast that's questionable.

Well it depends on how you define GPS Device. If it's a merely a device that displays a map and shows you where you are on that map using the Global Positioning System network of satellites, then, yes, the tablet is such a device.

But if you expect the device to allow you to enter a destination and provide real-time instruction on how to get there, along with an reasonably accurate estimate of when you can expect to reach your destination, then the tablet is merely a GPS Device Poser.

On my Nexus 7, directions are provided by Google Maps, which does a very good job of routing. But something called Navigator assumes the role of proving the actual turn-by-turn directions and arrival time.

Navigator works fine as long as you follow the initial route and as long as traffic conditions do not change during the trip. For example, if you start out at home while the tablet has an Internet connection, Google Maps will check the traffic conditions and provide both a route and an estimate of arrival time that's fairly accurate. You have the option of downloading a rectangular map that encompasses the route, too, so you can use Navigator offline.

But during the trip when the Internet connection is missing, Navigator cannot adapt to a traffic problem. Well, that's to be expected, and it's no reason to find fault in the app. The real problem is that Navigator does not recalculate the trip when you deviate from the route.

On my 20-minute commute to work, I can take one of four different major routes, two of which are on state highways, both of which are littered by red traffic lights. So I like to take the back roads, which are scenic and have fewer stops, albeit longer. It's reasonable for Navigator to prefer the state highways. But when I ignore the chosen route, Navigator refuses to recalculate. Instead it provides directions to return me to the point where I went off course. So the closer I get to work via the back road, the longer the trip time. I've seen the 20-minute commute spike up to 1 hour and 45 minutes. And when I finally do come to an intersection with the highway, it will actually direct me in the opposite direction, presumably to reach a way point on it's own route.

Well there are other GPS apps, even free ones, that can provide turn-by-turn directions. Right now I'm evaluating Navfree USA: Free. It does a better job of dealing with my willful disregard of the planned route. But it's a little rough. For example, it fails to give you the first instruction at the beginning of the trip. Also you need to have an Internet connection in order to get directions to an address because it queries Google maps.  (That's not an issue if you've saved your destination as a Favorite.) I'm assuming that the same is true for Points of Interest.  The biggest problem with it, though, is that it will crash after 30 to 40 minutes and need to be restarted.

So alas, I'm not about to give up my Garmin Nuvi just yet.  It would provide real time traffic updates in some areas and serve as a backup to the tablet in the event that I needed to follow a detour.

---

Edited on 2013-04-13 to add two sentences to the Navfree paragraph.

My Geeky Reward

Recently I took my stash of credit card rewards and, all at once, I bought a GPS device, RF scanner, MP3 player, eReader, camera, digital voice recorder, hand held gaming device, clock, portable translator....

That's one heck of a reward!

Well, if you haven't guessed by now, I bought a tablet.  I suppose "RF Scanner" might've thrown you off, but with the Scanner Radio app, you can turn an Android tablet into a police scanner as long as you're connected to a Wi-Fi network.  Plus you can listen to the goings on of the LAPD¹ from the East Coast.

The six $50 gift cards that I bought with $240 of rewards allowed me to pay for the Google Nexus 7 tablet, tax included, plus the two-year warranty extension, which I chose because I was not paying by credit card.  I usually decline such extended warranty plans on the grounds that my credit card offers the same coverage.  But since I wasn't using the credit card to pay for the purchase, and I was saving so much money anyway, I figured I might as well go for it.  Although I do realize that the device might be obsolete before it expires.

Anyway, I love the device.   I found an app that works with my public library's downloadable book collection.  So if I'm in the mood to read Dave Barry late at night, I can use the app to borrow Dave Barry in Cyberspace, for free.

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¹ Los Angeles Police Department. The radio traffic of the LAPD and that of San Bernardino County was very popular a few weeks ago during the manhunt for Christopher Dorner.

Presidential Candidates' Answers to the 2012 Top 14 Science and Technology Questions

ScienceDebate.org invited thousands of scientists, engineers and concerned citizens to submit what they felt were the the most important science questions facing the nation that the candidates for president should be debating on the campaign trail.

ScienceDebate then worked with leading US science and engineering organizations ... to refine the questions and arrive at a universal consensus on what the most important science policy questions facing the United States are in 2012.

...We call on the candidates for President to also debate these Top American Science Questions that affect all voters' lives.

https://www.sciencedebate.org

How I Became Paging System Monitor

One of my unofficial volunteer work responsibilities is that of Paging System Monitor.  This is someone who listens to a page over the public address system and then verifies that the pager hung up properly.  Because if the person does not hang up the phone, no one else can issue a page.

Generally this doesn't happen often.  But when it does, it's inconvenient.  It can be embarrassing, too, if the pager continues speaking, thinking that the conversation is not getting broadcast to all the bosses.

Usually it's an easy job to find the off-hook phone, if the person included the (correct) phone extension number in the page.  When you hear, "Joe Smith please call 73," for example, you can assume that the pager used the phone at extension 73.  Then if the phone was not hung up properly, you (or Joe) can just call it, and that phone should ring on the second line.

But if it's one of those generic announcements, such as, "It's starting to rain.  If you left your car windows open, now's a good time to close them;" or "I'll be rebooting the file server in five minutes.  Please close all open files;" or "Would the janitor please come to the men's room -- it's an emergency.  Please bring a mop," then the process turns into a fun game of deduction.

Well, in the case of the call for the janitor, you can assume that the phone is near one of the men's rooms."  So you can walk over to any nearby office and check the phones.  But if a location isn't implied, then you have to revert to recognizing the sound of the voice and then figure out whom it belongs to.  This is easier than you might think.  In fact, I had a good lesson in grade school in how easy "voice recognition" really is.

We were reading a story out loud, and the plot hinged on a character figuring out who someone was just by the sound of his voice.  I asked the teacher how that could happen, and I expressed doubt that you can know who was speaking to you without actually seeing the person.  So the teacher decided to really convince me.  She invited me to close my eyes.  Then one by one, each of my classmates spoke, and I had to guess who it was.  There were only two out of about 30 voices that I couldn't figure out (and one of them belonged to someone named Joe, in fact).  Yes, the teacher was pretty cool.  But it was Open House Day, and our parents were also in the room.  So I suspect she might not have done this if she weren't showing off for them.

Anyway, once you know who the person is, you can usually resolve the problem by calling his or her extension.  Or you might have to walk around and find the person and then ask which phone was used.  I had to do this recently for an announcement the janitor made about locking up the building.  Usually he locks the building because he's the last to leave.  But since he was leaving earlier than usual, he wanted to let us know that one of us had to lock up.  It's a good thing I found him because he used a phone deep in purchasing that I wouldn't have guessed right away.

All this rigamarole wouldn't be necessary if the phone system's PA mode were designed to "time-out" after 30 seconds.  But again, technology fails us yet again, and we resort to wasteful effort to compensate.

Recalculating

I bought the GPS about one month before driving my family to Washington DC.  In order to get used to it, I would use it on my work commute.  I quickly discovered that it had an undesirable habit of choosing congested roads with many traffic lights.

It didn't seem to matter whether I choose Shortest Route, or Quickest Route.  It was oblivious to the Avoid Highways setting.  Even the intriguing Econo-Route setting made no difference.  It was stuck on an undocumented mode I call "Maximize Encounters with Red Traffic Lights."  And where I drive, at least every 1 of 4 traffic lights will be red on any given commute.  If you know how many traffic lights (L) are on the route, you can get a realistic arrival time (if you obey the speed limit) by adding this many minutes to the arrival time the GPS claims: T = 0.5 * L.  My meager 10-mile commute to work features an amazing 21 traffic lights and is ten minutes shorter at 3am when most lights are either green or disabled.

And unlike Monty Python's Flying Circus, I hate traffic lights, even when they're green.  Because a green light is one that is bound to turn red just as you get to it.  Of course anyone who has read my rant on traffic lights (and the follow up post) knows where I stand.

Obama's and McCain's Answers to the Top 14 Science Questions Facing America

"Science Debate 2008 worked with ... leading organizations ... to craft the top 14 questions the [Presidential] candidates should answer.  These questions are broad enough to allow for wide variations in response, but they are specific enough to help guide the discussion toward many of the largest and most important unresolved challenges currently facing the United States."

Read the candidates' answers here:

http://www.sciencedebate.org












http://www.sciencedebate.org/news20080830.html

The Personable Computer

We call them Personal Computers. But why can't they be Personable?

The other day I was typing an e-mail. I thought I had on-the-fly spell checking enabled. Then I typed the word "triennial" and didn't see the red squiggly underline. I wondered, "Did I really spell that right?" and "Is spell check really turned on?" I decided to run the spell check manually. And it ran, finishing with a disappointing absence of fanfare over my correctly spelled word.

Why couldn't it respond, "Hey, great job at spelling triennial, big guy"? I am an engineer, after all, so I'm supposedly disposed toward bad spelling.

How should that response have worked, exactly, without actually being annoying? Certainly a focus-stealing pop-up would've been downright annoying. And a little checkmark after the word might not have been effusive¹ enough. Perhaps a message in the status bar would've afforded the best trade-off between noticeability² and interference.

The reason computers don't provide this kind of feedback is because of how intensely users loathed Clippy, the default Microsoft Office 97 help mascot. Clippy was best known for saying, "It looks like you're typing a letter. Would you like some help with that?"³ Of course users loathed that. We know how to type a freaking letter. We don't appreciate being patronized by something with half the intelligence of an earthworm. Whoever designed that hadn't ever held a door open for a feminist.

But if Clippy had offered praise instead of assistance (or perhaps in addition to assistance), he/it might've been accepted or at least tolerated. And it would've been better if it weren't so dorky looking.

I'm sure we'll see a return of something like Clippy, albeit well-disguised. It's just too tempting a feature to ignore for long.

---

¹I spelled this correctly the first time, too!

²But alas, I did not spell this correctly the first time.

³And there are wonderful parodies⁴ of this too, such as, "It looks like you're typing a suicide note. Would you like some help with that? Okay, first tell me, how do you plan to kill yourself? Choose one: Gunshot to the Head; Slash Wrists; Overdose; Jump Off Tall Building or Bridge; Step In front of a Moving Train, Truck or Automobile. Great! Thanks! Next, tell me the reason why you're killing yourself: No One Understands Me; My Lover Left Me; I'm Broke; I Can't Stand This Asinine Clippy... And so on.

⁴See, for example, One Egg Shy's Clippy's Guide to Suicide Notes, or his Clippy’s Guide to Ransom Notes.

Hey buddy, can you spare a few CPU cycles?

Do you leave your computer running and connected to the Internet? If so, why not donate its idle CPU cycles to scientific research? You could help figure out the cause of Alzheimer's disease, predict climate, or search for evidence of gravitational waves or extraterrestrial intelligence.

The Folding@Home distributed computing project is committed to exploring protein folding. Its goal is to gain an understanding of:

• Alzheimer's Disease
• Cancer
• Huntington's Disease
• Osteogenesis Imperfecta
• Parkinson's Disease
• Ribosome & antibiotics

All it takes to get started is to download and run a small program. Click here for more details. Other protein research projects include Rosetta@home and Predictor@home.

Other things your computer could work on:

• CPDN: climate prediction.
• SETI@home: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
• Einstein@Home: find spinning neutron stars.

Download an installer and join the research!

Cell Phone Angst

What is it that spurs people to get a cell phone? In our case, it was separation anxiety. More precisely, it was my wife's concern over losing our daughter to School.

As the dutiful family provider, I made sure that this new vital piece of technology was in our hands and working properly before the first day of school.

And I did a great job. I had come across a great online deal from AT&T Wireless back in 2001. I ordered the phone and service sometime during Labor Day weekend and received the phone on Tuesday. I was impressed with this ... er ... impressive service.

The only problem was that AT&T didn't own any base stations in our area. Nor did they have any stores nearby. And customer service was reluctant to give us the address of the nearest base station, perhaps as a security policy. So activating the phone was tricky. Eventually, I drove through various towns until I happened to cross into home territory. When the phone finally connected, it registered itself on the network, and I was able to use it.

The phone worked extremely well in our home, and I saved lots of money on long distance by using the cell phone instead of the land line. I liked the idea of calling my wife from the supermarket to ask her whether Land-o-Lakes Swiss Cheese would be okay to substitute for Finlandia Swiss. Unfortunately, there was no signal at our daughter's school and at our church.

The phone's battery out-lasted the contract, but it did fail. Rather than buy a new phone or get an upgrade, I canceled the service and got a new plan, along with a new free phone. Even though the separation anxiety was gone, the cell phone had become indispensable, at least to my wife.

Eventually, AT&T was forced to give up its wireless service. SBC's Cingular service took over. By then our contract had already expired. But we continued with the new phone and the same service on a month-to-month basis.

By this time, my wife was using the phone as a pager for her new on-call job. She was not hesitant to point out its short-comings, the biggest of which was that she couldn't get a signal inside certain buildings. But it gave her some freedom away from home and allowed her to respond to work calls while gardening or walking the dog.

One day in May, her work place complained that when they called the cell phone, they got a message that the number was not in service. When I called Cingular, they traced the problem to a billing issue. Specifically, the credit card that they were charging to every month had expired. Rather than notify us, they did the sensible thing and shutdown the service. (That's sarcasm, BTW.) After I pointed out that they should've called us before shutting off the service (which is used to provide on-call medical service) I was told that I wouldn't need to pay the $25 reinstatement fee.

So with that behind us and the contract expired, we had only to wait for the battery to fail on this new phone. I was intrigued when Cingular (now owned by AT&T) sent us a upgrade offer. We could replace the phone and increase from 120 to 400 minutes for a one-time fee of only $19.99, probably less than the cost of a new battery. I could see the catch, though. They were hoping the new phone's additional features would cause us to use the service more. The new phone was capable of Internet access and could do IM, both of which require premium service.

It was Independence Day weekend. As I mulled this offer over, my wife's work place called our land line number to tell us that they couldn't connect to the cell phone. Instead of ringing, they would get our voice mailbox, as if the phone was turned off or out-of-range. At first I thought that maybe the voice mailbox was configured to intercept the call. But after navigating the voice mail menus, I couldn't find a problem.

Customer service remarked that there were service problems in our area. They expected that it would be cleared up within 24 hours. But in order to add our account to the list of the ones needing service, I had to give them three phone numbers that failed to ring the cell phone. Well, the work place was One. And our land line was Two. Cingular also tried (and failed) to ring the cell phone. Could they be Three? No. I was supposed to call someone right away and ask them to call me back. On a lovely summer Saturday afternoon. On Independence Day weekend.

The one person I was able to reach directly couldn't actually hear me because of all the noise at the pool. I gave Cingular the number anyway.

After twenty-four hours, the problem still was not fixed. I encouraged my wife to turn her hostility away from me and direct it instead at Cingular. They placated her by telling her it would be fixed on July 5.

On July 5, she called again. This time they explain that the problem is with the phone. It's obsolete. "How old is that thing, anyway?" they ask, oblivious of the fact that they gave it to us less than three years ago. We would need a new phone, and it just so happens that we have an upgrade offer to take advantage of. Isn't that nice? (More sarcasm.)

We complained about the coercive tactics used to get us to upgrade, which pissed off the customer service clerk and got us a reduced upgrade fee. If it were up to me, I'd've canceled the service. But my wife has been brainwashed into thinking that she cannot live without a cell phone.

The new phone, BTW, has only a few ring tones, two wallpaper images, and no free games (other than demos). Of course we're welcome to buy additional content. This is the epitome of progress -- develop new ways of getting more money from the customer.