License to be ill

People are idiots. Well, not those of you who are smart enough to be reading this, and probably not some of those NASA guys, but a whole lot of the rest of humanity could write the book, Idiot's Guide to Being an Idiot. If they could write, that is.

That said, I believe it is the duty of the few of us reading this to begin to license certain activities. We'll call our effort the Balanced Life License Commission, because that sounds like the kind of thing that would gets lots of government funding from a Democratic congress. We will create tests that humanity will have to pass in order to engage in certain of life's possibilities. While there are many things that should probably require passing a test in order to do, such as have kids, get a credit card, and buy a remote control with more than 5 buttons on it, our first new license will be issued in the realm of self serve lines in retail/grocery stores.

I like self serve lines. I don't have to engage in any sort of fake banter with the cashier, I don't have to wait while they spend 3 minutes exchanging two rolls of nickels and two rolls of pennies for a five dollar bill (which they double count), and I don't have to wonder how clean the hands are of the person loading my watermelon into my cart (with my own hands, I KNOW how dirty they are).

Now, I have used lots and lots of self-serve lines. They all work pretty much the same way. If the store has some sort of "bonus card," you scan that first, then you scan your items, you place them in bags, you choose your payment method, you pay, you gather your receipt and you get on with your life. This is how it goes 99.9% of the time for me. On the rare occasion I have an issue, it is always because the machine ran out of register tape, or something scanned but was unrecognized. It would seem others could perform these same tasks with the same relative success rate I enjoy. Not so.

Here is an actual story from the grocery store that I personally witnessed over the weekend. A couple had about 15 things in their basket, so I chose their line. After all, they only had fifteen things, and there were TWO of them, so the odds of one of them possessing sufficient gray matter to successfully navigate the complexities of a machine designed to be understandable by a third grader seemed pretty high. Alas, it was not to be. They started by trying to swipe their "bonus card" on the credit card machine. Three times. I stepped in and let them know they needed to scan the bar code and kind of demonstrated what I meant. They got it and started scanning their groceries. All went well until they got to their fruit. Since they had bagged this themselves, they didn't know what to scan. Since I had wised up by then, I pointed to the "produce" key and suggested they press that. They did it and then seemed to be completely flummoxed by the visual they saw, which was two buttons. One said Fruit and had a picture of an apple. The other said vegetable and had a picture of an ear of corn. Since they didn't see a picture of the oranges they had, they were stymied. But, they did finally read the words and pressed the apple. Now they had two choices. They could punch in the item number for their oranges, which was on a little sticker right on the orange, or they could page through the visuals of the fruits, looking for oranges. They chose to page through. When I noticed they also had some bulk candy in their basket, I moved to another line.

As bad as that was, Walmart was even worse. If there was ever a store that should not have self-serve lines, it's Walmart. I buy cleaning supplies at Walmart because my wife is OCD, and I like to spend money on things other than cleaning supplies occasionally, so I buy them where they are cheapest. I also buy them in large quantities for the reason mentioned previously. So, I'm holding one of those monster-sized laundry detergents, some dryer sheets, some Lysol Floor cleaner and a bag of cookies (while not technically a cleaning supply, cookies are also a frequent Walmart purchase). There are two people in front of me in line. The other lines are all very long, so I am felling pretty happy with my choice of lines. The person at the front of the line made the grocery store people look like the founders of MENSA. She apparently had no idea that a connection existed between the UPC code and the scanner. She turned every item around and around and moved it all over the scanner. She seemed quite delighted when something actually rung up 'like magic." Anyway, several agonizing minutes later she does manage to pay with cash and go on her merry way. The guy in front of me steps up to the plate. To my mind, he looks like a regular guy, which I define as someone who looks like someone I would potentially go have a beer with. This classification as "regular guy," or RG, comes with an accompanying assumption of intelligence. I don't assume he is an Einstein, but I do assume he knows that Einstein is not just some guy who sells bagels with his brother. Bad assumption. First off, this guy seems to believe that he has to unload everything from his cart onto the the roughly 2X2 space next to the scanner. The creates several "Laurel and Hardy go to Hell" moments as he tries to stack everything from his cart onto one small space.

Many, many moments later, after the mostly-asleep attendant has helped him three times, he finally goes to pay with: A Traveler's check.

License Revoked.

Posted by trupundit @ 10:27 pm EDT | Permalink | 5 Comments

Mind Control

OK, these are kind of long, and I don't normally stick videos in my blog, but, these are really really cool.  They are by this guy named Darren Brown, who is a master at manipulating how you think and what you do.  check him out on youtube - there are lots of cool ones, but these two really stood out for me.

This first one is about how easy it can be to manipulate someone's thoughts without them realizing it.





Really makes me wonder just how much I actually do like Doritoes.


OK, now this next one is really just clever as hell. 




Two bonus points if you had it figured out before he explained it.

Posted by trupundit @ 12:51 pm EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

Language

I like English.  It's a baffling array of psuedo rules and odd pronunciations.  I suppose that is why I love it so much.  Anyway, here's some English language stuff.

Say this out loud: "There are no English words that rhyme with orange."  While that is true, I am more interested in how you said that last word, orange.  It's a two syllable word, but much of America, including me, pronounces it "ornj," with one syllable.

Now say this one out loud: "We had some orange sherbet."  How many "r's" did you put in the word sherbet?  There's only one.

What is interesting about this word?   Unprosperousness     Answer: it's the longest English word that repeats every letter at least once.

How about this one? Strengths     Answer: it's the longest English word with only one vowel.  That one will come in handy when you are playing Scrabble some day.

Here's one of my favorites, by which I mean it is one of my most despised.    I could of had a Pepsi.  It should be "I could've had a Pepsi."  It means I could have had a Pepsi.  "I could of had a Pepsi" means nothing really, especially if you really wanted a beer.

Here's a tougher one.  "I could care less."  This is really half of a statement that would go something like "I could care less if I was paid enough to do so."  What you usually mean when you say that is: I could not care less.  This means it is not possible for you to care any less than you already do.

That's it for now.  I could of done more, but I could care less. 


Posted by trupundit @ 8:21 pm EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

Binoculars or maybe Kenny Chesney

The plot or the subplot? Where to spend the time?

So, OK, we had tickets to go see Kenny Chesney's Flip Flop Summer Tour last weekend. This was good, because they had five acts, and both my wife and I had a favorite in the mix. I'm a a big Brooks and Dunn fan and she is in love with Kenny Chesney and may also know one or two of his songs. Anyway, this was a stadium concert so since I live near Cleveland, we were a-goin' to Browns stadium.

Now, we jumped on-line for tickets the day and time they went on sale. Does this get us in the front row? No. Does it get us in the first ten rows? No. if we go by lots of ten rows, this will be my longest blog ever, so let's safely assume that we did not get seats very close. Since it was clear we were not going to get up close, we went for "Club Level" seats. There are actually much nicer seats, with actual seat cushions, cup holders, and an entrance that the usual riff-raff can't get through. I have sat in the Club section for Browns games, and it generally rocks. You have your own concession stands which serve fare much nicer than the usual dogs and nachos (although you can get those too). They have a full bar available. They have people who will go get your stuff for you if you want them too and are willing to wait for that.

They are also, obviously, more expensive seats. But, having sat in the Club before, I assured my wife they were awesome seats are worth the dough. And, had we been going to a football game, I would have been absolutely right. But, this wasn't a football game. First off, our seats were on right about the 45 yard line. Unfortunately, the stage was in the opposite end zone. So, we weren't too close. This isn't noticeable when watching a football game because there is a whole field of action to keep up on, and the height and angle from the 45 yard line club section is a great boon to following the game. However, when your wife's primary goal in going to the show is to see how good Kenny looks in his tight jeans, 45 yard line club seats aren't exactly ideal.

Anyway, I knew that Club level seats wouldn't be right on top of the stage, so I told my wife I'd go out and buy some small binoculars. Now, I have some really nice, really heavy binoculars, but I wanted something small and light that we could wear around our necks for 6 hours without feeling the weight too much. So, I go to my local Dick's Sporting Goods store and I try out about 5 pairs of smaller binoculars. The salesman is patient considering all of them are locked up and I take each pair to the front of the store to look out at the parking lot so I can really see how well they work.

Well, I have it narrowed down to the ones I think are right - a nice 12X Simmons folding model. But, I want to compare the field of vision to my big, nice binoculars which I have in the trunk. So, I tell the salesman I'll be back (in my best Arnold impression which he thankfully laughs at) and I go out to my car and get my binoculars and start looking around the parking lot. This turns out to garner a lot of attention from people in and around the parking lot. This may be because I find a number of interesting sites around the area and end up looking around with high powered binoculars for maybe 7 or 8 minutes. Yep, when I put them down, I notice I have people from maybe 6 stores all looking out their windows right at me, as well as a number of people who are walking to their cars.

I go back inside Dick's sporting Goods, but, now I have a dilemma. I know the best ones to get are the 12X Simmons, but, they only have them in camo. I also know my wife will wear something in camo for 6 hours right about the same time hell freezes over. So, I call her and tell her that the best ones are 12X but camo, or they have some 10X that are in black. Well, since she is wearing pink to the show, you more fashion-conscious folks (I'm looking at you, tait) will recognize that the only possible response she can give is for me to get her the black ones. So, I do.

The binoculars prove to be very good ones, although you have probably guessed that my wife swapped with me once Kenny got on stage so that she could get 2X closer to Kenny's jeans.

The show was really, really good. Brooks and Dunn were awesome, Sara Evans and Sugarland both put on good shows, and Kenny's jeans did not disappoint all the drunk ladies. About 8:15 a water main burst at the stadium and so all the bathrooms and all the concessions were closed. This proved to be a bit of an issue, since much of the crowd was comprised of rowdy, hard-drinking country fans and women who were getting drunk hoping to make their way onto Kenny's Tour bus. The stadium had to bust out the port-o-potties, the lines were very long, and there were none in the Club section at all, so not only did we have to mix with the common folk, and the common folk's wastes, we also had to walk a long way to get there. So, we only made THAT trip once and then held it the rest of the night. From what I hear, there were quite a few "ladies and gentlemen" who came up with their own solutions. I will be forever grateful that I did not sit near any of them.

Posted by trupundit @ 10:42 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

iDone

OK, iPhone finally launched.  My project is done.  The war room is over.  The 15 hour days are over.  I get to go home tomorrow.

iPhone has been the most challenging project I have ever worked on.  The worst part has been not being able to really say much about it.  Until now anyway. 

In case you are not a regular reader (not that I have had time to be a regular writer lately), I work for AT&T.  And no, that does not make me inherently evil, despite what you might have read on the Internet.   Anyway, my project was to work on the team developing training for all 17,000 AT&T wireless retail emplyees.  Now normally, this would be no problem at all for me.  I do big projects all the time, and do them pretty well most of the time.

This time though, was difficult.  I officially refer to the iPhone project as a Tale of Two Projects, for it was indeed the best of times, and the worst.

To begin with, I should never have been on the project in the first place.  I work for the Wireline side of the house.  Mobility (Cingular) has it's own training department and it's own training designers (not to mention it's own marketing, it's own Sales Ops, it's own IT department, etc etc etc).  Anyway, just before we reached a point where the training needed to be under development (February), Mobility started one of it's largest training projects ever.  Once they had committed to it, there was no going back, so, incredibly, they were short staffed to tackle iPhone training.  Enter the monkee.  I was loaned to Mobility.  But, I had to accept the project without knowing what it was because, back then, it was pretty much verboten to even say iPhone aloud in a company building.  You think I am kidding about that last sentence, but I am not.  For the first four weeks I was on the project, I couldn't even list it in my time management program.  I had to list it as Project  X and only my boss knew what it was.  Anywho, I accepted the project and found out it was iPhone.  Let me tell you that that was a true high point for me.  Not only was I the only person in all of (landline) AT&T training working on iPhone, I was close to being the only person from landline PERIOD working on iPhone.

So, I signed my NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), and entered the secretive world of the iPhone.  Let me tell you, EVERYTHING was a secret on this project.  Compounding that issue was Apple's reluctance to share all the details with us.  So, while I knew quite a few secrets early on, like the self-activation, the price of the plans, and lot's of technical data, there were other things I found out at the same time you all did, such as YouTube.  Since one of my training pieces was a wbt (web-based training) about just how cool iPhone was, it was quite frustrating to have some of the cool features held back from me.  But, we got through it anyway.

And, there were some pretty cool moments.  I had a meeting in Cupertino with none other than the infamous Bob who starred in all those demo videos.  I was encouraged to spend time trolling the mac rumor sites.  I have to tell you that some of the best times we had on this project was in reading all the theories and rumors that weren't even close to the truth.  I also got to work with a number of folks from Apple.  They are a pretty cool group and very talented, if a little paranoid at times.  Good folks though.  I also got to work with a lot of Mobility people I would never have otherwise met.  They are also a good group of folks, although they work too **** many hours.  Plus, Mobility HQ is a pretty doggone nice building.

But, there were also the not-so-fun times.  I haven't had a complete day off since mid-May.  I have worked well past midnight way too many times.  I've had to tell friends over and over that I was sorry I couldn't tell them anything.  Then there were the leaks.  If you trolled any of the rumor sites, then you undoubtedly saw several different AT&T training manuals and whatnot shown on them.  As cool as it kind of was to see something you'd contributed to become such a hot commodity, it was not cool at all to know that someone else had broken rules you had kept.  Oh well, doesn't matter now. 

So, to those of you who bought one, thanks for the business.  To those of you who bought one and experienced any kind of trouble at all, please accept my apology and understand that we were all working very hard to avoid issues in the first place and also to fix them as soon as possible when they cropped up.  Our work to rectify issues certainly didn't satisfy a few crabby bloggers, but believe me, it wasn't for lack of effort.  I have spent the week at Mobility headquarters in Atlanta, and let me tell you that there were a whole pile of us there well into the wee hours of the morning every night this week.

Finally, the best thing about Project iPhone is that it's over and I get to go home.  It was a wild ride at times, and I'm looking forward to some well-deserved R&R. 

Posted by trupundit @ 11:54 pm EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments