Random Musings

Just a few quick thoughts today.

First, if there are any racing fans out there, check out American Race Fan. It hasn’t got a lot of bells and whistles, but it’s a good source for racing headlines and results. I had nothing to do with the current website design, but I did design their logos and a portion of the original site layout (a long time ago).

Second, the new Tungsten T is working out pretty well. I’ve managed to transfer most of my stuff over to the new unit, with only a few exceptions. The biggest issue is the fact that some apps don’t work well (if at all) under PalmOS 5; in some cases I’ve had to find a few replacement apps (SplashPhoto instead of FireViewer, for example), and in others (e.g., PDA Cookbook), I’m just going to have to wait until OS 5-compatible versions come out. But, in any case, I’m happy with this solution.

And finally, I’m gonna kill that damned groundhog...

Trying Out Tungsten

The new Tungsten T just arrived; they were certainly accurate when they said they’d overnight it. Score one for Palm. It certainly looks and feels nice, if a little on the heavy side. I’ve got to charge it up and transfer all of my apps and information (no small feat) before I can really evaluate it, though.

Unfortunately, no matter how good it ends up being (and if the reviews I’ve read are any indication, it will be good), I can’t help feeling that my entire experience with it will consist of waiting for the other shoe to drop. But who knows — maybe time will allow me to get beyond that.

I’ll keep you posted.

Baby Boom

Seems like, for me anyway, babies are everywhere. Both of my brothers (well, their wives, actually) had babies this past year, and a friend started back at the office this year after taking her own maternity leave. Unlike my lazy brothers (a college professor and lawyer — I mean, what can they have keeping them busy?), Hillary has begun chronicling the trials of new-motherhood on her own weblog (she’s actually had both the ’blog and the encompassing website for a while, but has started updating a little more regularly of late). It’s been fun reading about some of the things my wife and I went through when our first daughter was born, sort of a pleasant reminiscence.

Good luck, Hillary — with both parenthood and the continued sharing of it with the rest of us.

How I Fought “Customer Service” and Won

This was going to be a tirade against the incompetence of the Palm support department, but again, I’m in a bit of a holding pattern.

As recounted earlier, Palm had agreed to send yet another replacement m505, the fourth in this ongoing fiasco. Unfortunately, they were a little slower in getting the device out than they had in previous incidents, and the device arrived while I was away on the Des Moines video shoot. No problem — I’d be back in the office for at least one day, Tuesday the 18th, before heading up to Boston, and I could pick it up then; still plenty of time to get the unit, transfer my data, and package and send the defective one back. Well, then the snowstorm hit, and the office — along with the rest of the city — was closed. I came in anyway, since I had a lot of prep work to do before my Wednesday flight, and I had to pick up that Palm.

Mission accomplished — I got the new unit, transferred my files (though I wasn’t able to do as thorough a double-checking as I would have liked), and sent off the old unit, braving a poorly-cleared parking lot to get to the Airborne drop box. Then it was off to Boston; nothing more I could do about it. Upon my return, I checked the Airborne tracking system and confirmed that the package had arrived at Palm on Friday morning. All taken care of.

Until I arrived at work this morning, and found a fairly terse e-mail message from Palm saying that the unit had not been received as of Monday morning, and my credit card would now be charged for the full amount of the replacement unit.

Needless to say, I was livid. This was the last straw. I didn’t mention it before, but this was the second time Palm had claimed they hadn’t received a unit that a simple tracking check showed they had. The first time, I sent them a moderately peeved e-mail; they never responded directly, but they did send the standard form notice a couple of days later saying whaddaya know, they had received it after all. This time, I was in no mood to remain so polite. I debated calling, either the standard number or the so-called “corporate escalations” number I’d received last time, but neither option seemed likely to produce any rational results.

So I composed an e-mail. A scathing e-mail. I won’t reprint it here, but it made clear that any attempt to charge my credit card would be considered an act of criminal fraud, and I would do everything in my power to ensure that nobody I spoke to would ever buy a Palm product again. Of course, I figured this would mean nothing if sent solely to the support department...

Palm’s website didn’t list the e-mail addresses of the senior executive management team, but a little poking around did allow me to crack the address naming system. Insert the appropriate names and... voilà.

The letter had now been copied to the entire Palm executive suite.

I got a call two hours later. Not from the support department, but from the corporate office. The caller apologized profusely, and said that they were anxious to get me “out of the 500s” right away.

They’re overnighting a brand-new Tungsten T in exchange for the m505.

Can’t say it makes up for everything, but it sure feels good to get a little attention for a change.

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“Classic” reader comments:


Hillary · Tue, Feb 25th 2003, at 10:34AM

Bravo! Ingenuity will get you everywhere.

It's truly amazing what kind of results you can get when you figure out the right people to contact. I have done this with several companies (restaurants, computer stores, clothing stores) and in each case I was more than compensated when I talked to the right people. It's not always too hard to find them.

Geoffrey · Fri, Feb 28th 2003, at 12:40PM

That's AWESOME. Heh heh heh.

Back From Boston

Well, another successful trip, and just as busy. Alas, thanks to the snowstorm, our flight up to Boston was canceled, but I was able to book on the next shuttle, only losing an hour in the process. Of course, this meant I had to sit around the airport for an extra hour, but that’s what laptops are for, right?

I found it curious that the official reason for canceling the flight was that the flight crew was unavailable. Obviously, this was a result of the weather, but by phrasing it that way, the airline gives themselves a bit of an out: Technically, if a flight is canceled due to weather, the airline has to make certain concessions, potentially including free travel on a later date (they don’t publicize it, naturally, but if you insist, you can get some consideration). I suspect, however, that by officially blaming the flight crew, they can weasel out of the “weather cancellation” rules. Wasn’t worth my pursuing in any case, so I guess I’ll just be left to wonder.

Our late arrival did force us to miss out on our scheduled shooting on Wednesday afternoon, though; we managed to salvage a bit by shooting some exteriors and other “local community” shots, but it was still a little disappointing. Otherwise, the shoot itself went very smoothly; we even managed to continue through some ill-timed illness and slipping-on-the-ice injury (everyone’s all right now). I’m confident that we’ve got plenty of material to use in editing; what we missed on that first day, we made up for in a couple of whirlwind tours on Friday. In the end, we probably didn’t waste as much time shooting B-roll, in that we were able to narrow down our list of required shots (having already completed a substantial portion of the interviews).

I was struck by how well the Boston area managed to clear away the results of the record snowfall. Admittedly, there were a lot of huge (visibility-inhibiting) snow piles, but for the most part, the streets were completely passable. I managed to squeeze in a couple of visits to see my new nephew (he’s adorable) — oh, yeah, and my brother (on his birthday) and sister-in-law, too. On Friday, we ate at a wonderful little seafood place in Cambridge, Summer Shack, and the baby slept the whole time. Not inexpensive, to be sure, but the best lobster I’ve had in recent memory — highly recommended to any Boston residents or visitors.

On a technology note (again, getting back to the alleged purpose of this weblog), I’ve developed a new infatuation: The disembodied voice of the Hertz NeverLost lady. I’m wont to anthropomorphize my technology; my laptop is named Murphy (after a similarly titanium-encased police officer), and I’ve adopted a coworker’s appellation for our office voice mail system, Glenda. In the absence of an official name, I dubbed the NeverLost lady Brenda (I imagine she’s Glenda’s sister). With the exception of Logan Airport (which nobody can navigate), Brenda was very adept at guiding me around the Boston area. If it weren’t for what I’m sure would be an outrageous cost (at least for someone on an artist’s salary), I’d jump at the chance to install Brenda (or her consumer-GPS cousin) in my own car.

In the end, I’m back, I’m exhausted, and I’m looking forward to at least a couple of days’ rest before diving into the daunting task of piecing these videos together.

Back Up at Inkblots

In all the excitement, I completely missed the fact that my new critique is up at Inkblots, which is now publishing on a daily schedule. I don’t know how long they’ll be able to keep that up, but I certainly wish ’em luck.

Check it out, all!

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“Classic” reader comments:


Geoffrey · Fri, Feb 28th 2003, at 12:40PM

About two weeks, with more to come. Trying to organize stuff to post daily is like herding cats!

Return From the Heartland

As I mentioned, no readily available ’net access in Des Moines (at least not that I could take advantage of). Other than that, though, a very productive trip, the details of which I will commence to bore you with here. Feel free to tune out as appropriate.

Tuesday

Because we had shipped out the equipment beforehand, we didn’t have to worry about getting it onto the plane. Perhaps largely as a result, arrival at the airport was much smoother than I’d anticipated. I needn’t have worried about the rumored nightmare of security checkpoints. Not that we didn’t have a gauntlet to run, but National Airport (I still have trouble calling it “Reagan National,” given that the man’s still alive) really seems to have gotten the procedures down pat. Efficient and polite — even friendly — all around. It didn’t take us any longer to get through the whole thing than it had in the past (taking the shoes off was a little awkward, but certainly not the unpleasant experience I’d feared).

The flight actually took off a few minutes early, and was an uneventful trip. I’d never flown Midwest Express before, but I’d been led to believe that it would be a positive experience. For one thing, they’d widened the seats from the DC-9’s original configuration to fit four seats (two seats, aisle, two seats) across rather than five (three, aisle, two); not first-class proportions, but more accommodating than traditional coach. For lunch, we had a choice between chicken salad and bratwurst. Naturally, I chose the bratwurst — how many times you gonna have that option on a plane? And yes, Kori, they did serve cookies (I figured they would, since their boarding-pass sleeve actually has a picture of the cookies in question).

Arrival was a little hectic; our first interview subject was only available for brief window, starting one hour after our plane’s arrival. Fortunately, luck was with us at the airport, and we got out quickly. Travel wasn’t too difficult, due less to the hotel’s location than the fact that it’s, well, Des Moines (we got a real kick out of what they referred to as “rush hour”). It got tight there for a while (particularly given a painstakingly long hotel check-in process), but after picking up the equipment, we ended up being only a few minutes late. As expected, there was a little confusion at the hospital reception desk at the sight of a camera crew, but everybody handled everything very well, and the interview went off (pretty much) without a hitch. One thing about the midwest — the stereotype of friendly, helpful people is right on the money. The PR department at the hospital was extremely accommodating, and we were given every bit of assistance we could have (reasonably) asked for.

Tuesday evening, our host (in effect the “star” of our video) took our team out to dinner at the exclusive Embassy Club, atop the tallest building in Des Moines — 41 floors up. No skyscraper, perhaps, but in comparison with the vertically stunted burg of Washington, none too shabby. The view was gorgeous (you can see for miles), and both food and service were fantastic. It’s nice to see how the other half lives every once in a while (and you know you’ve hit that point when they don’t bother to print the prices on the menu).

Wednesday

Wednesday morning was our officially designated “B-roll” shooting time at the hospital. Adam — my able right hand on this project — and I headed out a couple of hours before our first scheduled interview to shoot background material to intercut with the slew of talking-head footage. I was a bit concerned about being able to get enough, and with the lack of “must-have” shots. That’s a bit counterintuitive, but I’ve historically found it easier to set up a list of shots, and check them off — gives you a good sense of how you’re doing. In this case, though, the nature of the video (administrative rather than clinical) didn’t lend itself to much in the way of obvious material. Not dynamic material anyway: “Ooh, look, spreadsheets!” We’d have to wander the halls and get a lot of general footage, hoping it would fit together in the editing (“Fix it in post,” as the saying goes). Fortunately, thanks to the help of the hospital’s PR rep, we managed to hit most of the visually interesting areas of the center.

And then it was on to interviews — a full day with a (brief) break for lunch; we found it particularly amusing that the hospital walls are filled with patient education posters touting the evils of fast food, and yet there’s a McDonald’s on the premises. All of our setups went well, with enough variety in the arrangements to keep things at least nominally interesting.

Despite recommendations for another upscale restaurant, we decided to keep dinner a little more casual — I think all of us just wanted a chance to unwind a bit before Thursday’s early start...

Thursday

Thursday was the granddaddy of taping days, with establishing shots of the aforementioned “star” starting at 6:15 a.m., followed by a virtually nonstop parade of interviews, along with attendance at a larger meeting, both so that our staff could present to the group and that we could get the requisite “meeting” shots. Most of the day ended up blurring together, and — twelve hours later — Adam and I begged off dinner so we could track down the local FedEx office and ship out some of the equipment we had finished with (we knew we wouldn’t be able to set up detailed lighting rigs on Friday).

After that, dinner at the hotel lounge and a few head-to-head computer games (hey, it was Des Moines, for crying out loud) wrapped up the evening.

Friday

Friday was primarily a B-roll day, with only one scheduled interview. Everything went well until we started hearing the weather reports. Given that the storm made national headlines, I’ll refrain from going into further detail, but we managed to get out of Des Moines just ahead of it all (although Adam and I did get a slew of funny looks from the security folks as we played our computer games while waiting at the gate).

Right in time to get snowed in at home for three days.

And tomorrow, it’s off to Boston — which, in this case, we know is pretty much snowed in — to try it all again. So far, the flight’s still going...

Performing Without a ’Net

Nope, no (reliable) access here. At least not on the Mac — I’m sitting here typing this from a colleague’s PC, so I’m not going to take a lot of time to write now. In any case, we all got out here to Iowa safely, and the video is proceeding apace. I’ll drop in a more detailed report when I get back.

By Air to Iowa

Well, it’s off to the airport, and sunny Des Moines, Iowa. We’ve got a pretty full shooting schedule, and thankfully, Lisa, our client and coordinator of this whole shindig, has made dinner plans for at least a couple of the nights we’re out there (’cause I can’t imagine there’s gonna be a whole lot else to do out there, other that freeze our asses off). Even so, I’ve packed a couple of books, DVDs and computer games to occupy myself during the long, midwestern evenings.

I can’t help but be a little nervous, what with the Fuschia Alert (or whatever the hell they’re calling it) our illustrious leader has issued. Although frankly, I think it’s all a case of CYA. Think about it: There’s not a damned thing you or I can do differently, but at least this way, we get to be really nervous about it (as with the fnords). But if something actually does happen, Homeland Security can say, “Hey, we warned you.”

Looks like shipping the equipment out ahead of time was the way to go, as I’ve already determined that it’s arrived at the hotel (I don’t know what we did in the days before the Internet). Ideally, I’ll post the occasional update, but as I mentioned, ’net access is questionable. So if you don’t hear from me for a couple of days, Happy Emperor Norton’s Birthday... or Happy Daredevil Release Day...or maybe just Happy Valentine’s Day, all!

Franchise Fascination

I’ve always believed there is a place for so-called “franchise films” in the world of motion pictures, but a couple of recent installments have seriously made me doubt that belief.

Franchise films are rarely the artistic equivalent of individual pictures; they’re a lot like series television with better production values. The crux of any good story is the transformation of the protagonist. You can’t keep doing that over and over again; the underlying assumption is that the character isn’t the same person at the end as at the beginning. Franchises pretty much throw that out the window. Oh, they’ll sometimes toss in a little (strictly temporary) pseudo-development from time to time, but for the most part, franchises are all about plot; character is secondary.

A lot of these franchises started out as an individual film, but over the course of numerous sequels, they’ve largely forgotten their protagonist’s original development, or figured out sneaky ways around it. The original Lethal Weapon was an interesting study of two characters dealing with psychological crises; the sequels just concentrated on the action and comical elements. Die Hard was (at least on one level) about a man’s coming to grips with his own insecurities; beyond that, we were left with cardboard cut-outs. Dirty Harry dealt with the conflict between two often conflicting objectives: Protecting the innocent and upholding the letter of the law; afterwards, we had one-liners. Indiana Jones went through a profound crisis of faith in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was initially cheated by making a “prequel,” then conveniently forgotten for the series’ final (I hope) chapter.

That’s not to say that franchises can’t be enjoyable, even if only on a purely escapist level. The Back to the Future films had no creative originality beyond the first film, but they were an exciting romp. The Star Wars films, though plummeting in terms of overall quality, are still visually stunning. There’s something comfortable about knowing what you’re in for, like getting together with a bunch of your old college buddies: You may not have a whole lot in common anymore, but it’s still fun to catch up.

And that brings us to two of the longest-running franchises still running: Star Trek and the James Bond films. I’m a little late to the party, but I finally got to see Die Another Day at a second-run theater; I saw Star Trek: Nemesis during its opening week.

It is so easy to kill a franchise (witness Batman and Robin or Superman IV: The Quest for Peace). And in this case, if any series deserved to die on the basis of their most recent outings, it’s these two. I’ll refrain from giving detailed reviews of either film, first because neither is still in widespread distribution and second, because I’m finding it exceedingly difficult to find much nice to say about them (and I try to keep my comments balanced).

The unofficial word is that Star Trek is dead. It looks like Paramount is planning to put it out to pasture, perhaps even canceling the currently-running television series Enterprise (though they’ve not made that decision yet). The rationale is that people are tired of Star Trek, as clearly evidenced by Nemesis’s spectacular box-office failure. I’ve enjoyed Star Trek — both on television and theatrically — for years, so maybe I’m bringing in a bit of personal bias, but wake up! You made a really bad movie! Whether or not people are tired of Star Trek is beside the point. Nobody wants to pay eight bucks to watch a laboriously plotted, poorly directed snoozefest in which your least offense is trying to pass off a “clone” who looks nothing like Patrick Stewart.

Die Another Day just stretches incredulity to the point of the ridiculous; nothing new in the Bond milieu, perhaps, but they usually make up for that by being exciting. There was just no tension this time around, no sense of peril, or even amazement. Villains with no discernable motives. Plot holes you could drive a truck — or in this case a stupefyingly ludicrous invisible car — through. Storytelling strictly by the (double-O) numbers, but even so, you’d think they’d be smart enough not to directly lift the villain’s hardware from their own franchise (i.e., the laser satellite from Diamonds Are Forever). And I don’t care if you’re Bill Gates, you’re not building an ice palace for a onetime product demonstration.

Unlike the Trek outing, however, Die Another Day did just fine at the box office. They’re already talking of giving Halle Berry her own spin-off vehicle. The same misinterpretation of reality, only this time, instead of dumping the franchise, they’ll be looking to recreate all the stupidity that “worked” this time around.

If that’s the case, then maybe next time, I’ll just stick with watching original ideas.

Blogging Against the Big Boys

There’s an interesting article in The Washington Post on the whole ’blogging phenomenon (Blogger gets a mention, naturally). Not much to add, other than the observation that ’blogs — or any individual ’net publishing — also serves as one of the last bastions of independent “news” publishing out there, now that most of the major media are merging into a few massive corporate conglomerates. I don’t pretend that this kind of publishing can replace the mainstream media, but the very arguments against it — inaccuracy, bias, lack of “fairness” in reporting — could just as easily be leveled against any other, more established medium.

Only in the case of the big boys, those things are more often deliberate.

Let It Stop, Let It Stop, Let It Stop

Okay, maybe that last one was a little blunt, but frankly, I couldn’t think of any other way to say it that truly captured my frustration this morning. The one day when I’ve got to scramble to get a million things done is the day we get six-and-a-half inches of snow. First thing I did upon my arrival at the office was dash off that quick little summation of my sentiments.

Fortunately, things are starting to look a little more under control right now. I’m preparing to head out to beautiful Des Moines to shoot a case study video next week, followed immediately thereafter by a similar trip to Boston. The Boston trip at least has the advantage of allowing me to see my new nephew, but trying to figure out how to get 100 pounds of video equipment (safely and reliably) out to Iowa, then up to Boston, then back to D.C. is proving a little stressful. It seems like we’ve got everything under control, but I can’t help feeling that we’re leaving something out.

I’ve also just discovered that the Holiday Inn at which we’re staying (in Des Moines) is the only one without high-speed ’net access. So it looks like I’ll be coming back to the dreaded slew of e-mail messages upon my return; I’ll be back in the office for a grand total of one day before embarking on the second leg of my little video journey (where, fortunately, we’ll have an Internet connection). I’ll try to post updates on our progress as time permits, but given the shooting and editing schedules we’ve got, I’m not promising anything.

In other news, I’m trying to get all of my separate financial accounts organized on line, and it’s proving to be a lot more difficult than I’d planned. Every institution has different rules for user id and password formats — often for different accounts at the same institution — making it impossible to remember anything, and none of them are really set up to talk to each other. Or to Quicken, for that matter. After several weeks, I still haven’t been able to access my SunTrust accounts.

The only one that gets an “A” has to be USAA, where everything works beautifully. Unfortunately, I got spoiled by setting up that account first, and now I’m feeling nothing but frustration. It’s doubly frustrating when you realize how much money the banks are saving by allowing people to conduct business digitally — shades of the ATM scam, where they charge you coming and going for transactions that cost them a fraction of what they did using tellers (another area in which USAA gets an “A,” for not only not charging you for using a rival bank’s ATM, but reimbursing you for whatever the other bank charges). It’s seriously enough to make me want to do everything face-to-face, not because I prefer to do things that way (I don’t), but because I know it costs them through the nose.

Hey, two can play at this game.

Place the Blame Where It’s Really Due

Fucking groundhog.

Shuttle Memories

Well, I’ve had a few days to let the whole Columbia disaster sink in, and as much as I want to concentrate on this incident, I find myself focusing more on the past.

I remember when Columbia first launched. Hell, I remember the cheesy songs they used to run about the Columbia. But most significantly, I remember where I was when I heard that the Challenger exploded. I wasn’t watching the launch itself; I’d been following the news stories about the launch, the selection and training of Christa McAuliffe, but I had to be in class at the time of the launch, and naturally figured I’d have plenty of time to see what was going on.

I was in a religion class — I went to a private school — and a few students entered several minutes late. The teacher scolded them for their tardiness, and one of them (I can still picture him as clearly as if it were yesterday) said simply, “The space shuttle just blew up.” He repeated himself just once, and I remember thinking about the old scriptwriting rule that claims you need to repeat disaster news three times for it to sink in. In this case, he only had to tell us twice. After class, we all saw for ourselves what had happened, and it occupied our thoughts for the rest of the year. I even remember a “mentalist” entertainer performing at a school assembly, and how the climax of his show was the opening of an allegedly sealed time capsule in which he’d predicted the disaster (in naturally vague terms). Even then, my skepticism was fairly developed: I knew it was all a series of tricks, but until that point, I’d been willing to suspend disbelief and enjoy the performance. When he brought out his little “prediction,” I just felt disgusted that he’d be so blatantly exploitative.

The Challenger explosion was a defining moment, not only for me, but for all of Generation X. The baby boomers had the Kennedy assassination, and I’d venture to speculate that the September 11 attacks (I refuse to trivialize them by using the colloquial “9-11”) will fulfill the same role for Generation Y. There have been any number of other “major” events in the past three decades — the Reagan shooting, the Wall Street crash of ’87, the 1984 Apple Superbowl ad — but nothing else had nearly the same impact.

And unfortunately, that’s the case now. The destruction of the Columbia — not to mention the loss of life aboard — isn’t any less important in the global scheme than Challenger’s demise. It will certainly have a similarly crippling effect on the American space program; it’s doubtful there will be any further shuttle launches this year. There will be just as much blame thrown around — though perhaps nothing so dramatic as Richard Feynman’s now-famous dunking of the O-Ring sample in a glass of ice water. And for a while, the powers-that-be (assuming they don’t scuttle the program) will be willing to spend the money it takes to actually maintain safety considerations (unlike in the case of the previously recommended escape devices). But it’s a lot like public health spending — when nothing terrible happens for a while, nobody feels the need to “waste” funds on an invisible problem.

Let’s hope we actually learn something this time.