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Apr
30
Service Falls
Filed Under Finance, Life | Leave a Comment
I use a dry-cleaner from time to time for slacks and sport jackets (and a few non-wet-wash outfits my wife wears). Recently, I took two pair of slacks in and returned to pick them up 2 days later, as agreed. They were ready and the damage was a little over 10$ since I was a special class of customer.
When I picked up my cleaned slacks, I dropped off two more pair (so as to have all my regular work wardrobe freshly cleaned and creased). Two days later, I picked up the second set of slacks. They were ready on time. The damage was a little over 12$ this time. Surprised, I said something about a price hike and was told by the clerk (same person each time) that no, the price was correct. I was then requested to pay for them, which I did. After paying, I received a receipt which, upon examination, did not include my special customer discount.
Upon mentioning this to the clerk, the person looked at my account and said something like “Oh, that isn’t on there anymore. I guess we’ll have to put it back.” No offer to refund my 2$ was forthcoming.
I left the establishment. I’ll not be returning (for my 2$ or anything else).
Apr
10
Of a Truth
Filed Under Learning, Life | Leave a Comment
Just received my copy of Michael Yon’s Moment of Truth in Iraq. I am enjoying the read, not because it is enjoyable (in terms of the sometimes brutal subject matter) but because Yon does not shy away from what seems to be blunt honesty. However, in with all the detail of operations and challenges, the carnage and caring, he sometimes speaks to life in general:
Bad morale reveals itself through apathy. Soldiers might be quiet and sullen. When they do speak, it’s often in argument. They neglect the mission and focus on their own needs and feelings. They become petty, complain about small problems and become risk-averse. They find ways to look like they’re doing their job instead of doing it.
One could replace the word “soldiers” in this sentence with “employees” and have a pretty good picture of what companies go through at times. Yon doesn’t gloss over the realities, but he does place matters in a three-dimensional context. I’m looking forward to the rest of the book.
Apr
9
Free Speech in the Attic
Filed Under Legal | Leave a Comment
Our neighbors to the north are experiencing some trouble with the principle of free speech. As a direct result of this trouble, the following bloggers/creators are being sued for defamation by Richard Warman.
Contribute to the necessary legal defense (search for “paypal” at the page linked right before this text) if you are able. Link to and otherwise support the defendants regardless of whether you can contribute dollars to the defense.
Educate yourself and pass it on. Free speech is essential to a free society, whether for US or the Canadians.
Apr
9
Update on Eating Ins and Outs
Filed Under Finance | Leave a Comment
Back on January 1, I wrote a post in which I addressed the cost of groceries. At the end of that post, I said I would update month by month. However, I didn’t do that. Life (and death) both happened in the family, keeping things rather busy at times. My wife and I now feed 3 little ones (ages 4, 3 and 0, if one rounds properly).
I will now update you for each month within the last quarter (which should actually provide more useful information). What I’d like to do is two things: provide the raw data for January - March for 2008 and provide data from the same quarter one year ago for comparison.
2007
January : 469.29
February : 471.48
March : 476.17
2008
January : 411.44
February : 433.64
March : 329.46
Now, leaving out March of this year, which was lower because of food gifts which arrived about the same time my son did, the average cost for our groceries has dropped by right at 50$ per month. Not a terrific savings to be sure, but when one considers that at the same time our total expenses went down, we added a family member and also saw the price of meat, milk, cheese, flour, pasta, etc go up (in some cases by 20% or better).
Room for improvement? Absolutely. However, I think we are progressing as we should. I don’t know that we’ll ever make it to the point which a friend of mine spoke of years ago when he said:
Yep, had a dog once. Nearly broke him of eating, but he up and died on me.
Then again, I’m grateful that we do not need to be quite so drastic, aren’t you?
Apr
8
OneNote Possibilities
Filed Under Clutter, Geek | Leave a Comment
Since my job involves extensive, fact-gathering meetings with clients (both internal and external to my company), I have been grown interested in the possibilities provided by Microsoft’s OneNote 2007 application.
Most importantly (at least for my tired fingers) would be the possibility that I could record our meetings directly to audio and just type/write in notes for critical information, thereby leaving me free within the meeting to interact with the client more consistently. I’ve noticed that when I’m the facilitator and the note-taker for a given meeting, one of my roles is, of necessity, rather unfulfilled.
But beyond just recording the material, I was very excited about the OneNote functionality that would actually apply voice recognition algorithms to the speech and then let me use a text box to locate the terms in the audio. This would allow me to jump quickly the section of a meeting which was pertinent to the questions at hand.
Alas, it was not to be so easy. First, I recorded using a small but powerful digital audio recorder (Olympus WS-300M). Then a coworker who has OneNote installed (since I am not upgraded to Office 2007 yet) imported the audio file into a notebook (the rough equivalent of a folder in OneNote) and tried searching on the very clearly spoken words in the audio file. Nada. Then, we tried recording directly into OneNote, since it seemed from the documentation that OneNote might only be able to perform the voice recognition if it got to create the file itself. Nada, since the laptop didn’t have a microphone. Oh well, more testing to come.
I must confess that I will be pleasantly surprised if OneNote actually does a reasonable job of the voice recognition for audio files. I’ve yet to see any software, short of insanely expensive niche software, come close to a useful level of voice recognition without extensive training of the person speaking and the software listening.
Apr
7
Writing Like It’s 1884
Filed Under Geek, Language, Learning | Leave a Comment
Mr. Waterman started it all with his original fountain pen. I’ve recently purchased a rather modern looking, updated version of a similar instrument. It goes by the rather lengthy title of Cross Century II Starlight Midnight Blue Fountain Pen. I think I’ll call it True Blue (though it is currently loaded with black ink).
It is a very nice size for me, not nearly so bulbous as many of the fountain pens I’ve hefted over the years. Of course, the trade-off is that one needs to fill it with ink more frequently, but I’ll manage, I’m sure. The nib is fairly stiff, but glides quites smoothly across the paper. However, I’ve not had the opportunity to try it out on the very nice paper which costs entirely too much per sheet. I’m guessing that it will perform fine.
Now that I’ve promoted this writing instrument as my daily note taker, I shall see just how well I like it when using it in more than a cursory fashion.
On a related note, a coworker remarked upon my spending 65$ for a pen. I responded by asking how her 55,000$ truck procurement had turned out. In ten years, my pen (with care) may be worth more than I paid originally. It’s unlikely her truck with retain 1/10 of its current value.
Hmm. Maybe I should be investing in fountain pens instead of 401K plans.
Apr
7
Writing Like a Blogger?
Filed Under Language | 2 Comments
Seth Godin makes an excellent point here. However, before this writer writes like a blogger, this blogger needs to blog like a blogger.
Got that?