The perfect gift?

Where do all these vendors get the idea that something is the perfect gift for me to give or get?

My mail box and the newspapers and the store shelves all point to “The perfect gift”.

A new phone is not the perfect gift for someone who is satisfied with the one they already have.  A gift card for a store the recipient will never visit is not a perfect gift.  EBay, Apple, your local hardware store, Walgreen’s, on and on goes the list of purveyors of “the perfect gift”.

The only true perfect gift is world peace and no crime.  And we have far too many people that would rather kill people they don’t like or even know for world peace to be close at hand.

Election prediction and telephones

In 1948, the headlines were “Dewey Wins”.  However, the result was that Truman won.
See “Dewey Defeats Truman”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman.

See”A ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ Lesson for the Digital Age”, Jim Gutenberg, New York Times, 2016-11-09, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/business/media/media-trump-clinton.html;
“Case Study 2: The 1948 Presidential Election”, https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case2.html

However, what really counted was how polls were taken, often by telephone.  In 1948, many who leaned towards Truman did not have telephones and weren’t called.  See “Dewy Defeats Truman, Joe Walter, “The True Facts, 2019-05-31, http://www.thetruefacts.com/dewey-defeats-truman/

So, were the predictions off because too many people don’t answer their cell phones if they don’t recognize the number?  I know that I do.

Another thought, maybe many of Trump’s supporters who did answer their phones didn’t admit that they were Trump supporters.

“Seamless" came apart at the seams

At about three last night, I was woken by constant thunder and lightning.  It was continuous, more continuous than I have ever heard in my life.  Then strong winds and heavy rain were added.

Fortunately, we only had one set of windows open and I was able to close them before much rain came in.

Then the lighted clock went dark.

I tried to sleep, but the light of every lightning bolt went right through my eyelids.  I laid on my stomach and hid my face in the pillow.

I don’t know how long it took the storm to pass, but it did.

At about seven, I woke up and checked Duluth news on my iPhone.  It was quite a wide ranging storm causing outages and deaths.  Trees were toppled blocking roads and damaging houses.  No travel was advised.

All day our cell phone service has been erratic.  Sometimes our phones work, sometimes we can’t even get a signal.

I can see a cell phone pole from our house, but I can’t remember if it had visible equipment at the top or not.

My wife couldn’t even call on her phone.  The call could not be completed.

The strength of signal was one bar most of the day; my phone is now up to four.  But instead of 4G or LTE service, it only shows E, whatever that means.

I was able to get websites, now loading some of them gets stuck.  I wonder how much local data there is.  Just now I could not load Yahoo! Finance, but I could get most of the New York Times.  But going to a different article is going very slow, but maybe that is because convention news is so popular.  On the other hand, the online banking page of my bank is not making any progress loading on my iPhone.  Meanwhile, I started and finished reading a convention article.

So much for the seamless, at-our-fingertips operation of our gadgets we rely so much on.  We are retired and it is only a nuisance.  But there are many people who depend on these gadgets to do their work.

Now, how long will this take to post?  Essentially, quite a while.  As soon as I typed the first sentence, I tried loading blogger.com.  Firefox could not find the page!

Finally!  At 4:30 pm the web seems back to normal.  I have five dots and LTE on my cellphone and Yahoo! Finance came right up!

Can our electricity be far behind?

Clawing out of the Abyss

As of this writing, we are into week two without cellular access on our iPhones (See “Cutting the cord and falling into the abyss” in last week’s Reader).

I think the biggest thing I miss is reading the Duluth News Tribune, Star Tribune, and the New York Times at breakfast and lunch.  To check email, statements, and other important and unimportant information, we have to go to the library or coffee shops.  I’m drinking a lot more coffee than I normally do.

The easiest is to walk to Chester Creek Café at the corner.  But we don’t want to take up a table when there are many lunch or dinner customers.

Perk Place is a quiet place, but for some reason I could not log on to their server.  Another Mac user had been successful.  I wonder if he was using a newer operating system.  A staff member did get me signed on using the coffee shop account.

Once upon a time I would walk to Bixby’s and other shops at Mt. Royal, but every year the hill up Woodland Avenue seems to get steeper, especially with a backpack with a computer.  And so I wimp out and drive.

The Mount Royal Library may or may not be crowded.  When I went on Thursday it wasn’t, but it did take a bit of effort to log in.  I was successful with my iPhone and iPad, but I never managed to click all the right buttons for my laptop.

A diversion at the library was looking for a follow-on book after viewing “The Young Victoria”.  The movie had a lot of follow-on summary information.  I wanted to know more about her reign and her successors.  I used my iPhone to sign on to the catalog and select some books.  Having the call numbers of the desired titles on my iPhone sure beat copying those numbers onto paper from the library computers.

Caribou at Mount Royal Market is spacious and quiet.  It’s biggest drawback is that there are no power outlets at the tables.

And at the cabin we are completely disconnected from the web.  At least, we can still use our phones.

So, I have to carefully plan all my work before hand.  I am writing this at home and will go to one of the coffee shops to email it to the Reader.  I have to write most of my email beforehand.  I have to plan ahead what web sites to visit.

One of those plan-ahead sites was the Apple Support Community.  While at a coffee shop I downloaded thirteen threads about excessive data usage.  It’s nice to know that I am not alone with this problem.  Some useful advice, some blaming the user, but no really clear cut advice.

I do know first hand that solving computer problems can be a long, arduous project.  Relevant information comes in dribbles from the customer and lots of digging by programmers.  I was the lead investigator of frequent crashes of a Univac 1108 in Sweden.  Many of the memory dumps showed a particular program was active.  I badgered to customer into giving me a copy of the program.  I took the copy to another site and the program crashed because it was putting data outside of its assigned space.  To make the story short, the problem was they were using an outdated library and that their computer had a memory protection failure.  I think it took three months from the first alarm to final resolution.  And those computers were a lot simpler than what we carry in our pockets now!

Once upon a time it was said that Mac owners never used a manual.  I did look up a few things now and then, mostly just what keys did I need to push to get å, ä, é, î, ö, and other western European characters.  The Mac’s were described as WIMPs: Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pictures.  Just about everything you needed to know was obvious from one of these.

Even then, many users came up with seemingly intractable problems.  Apple’s answer was to encourage user groups.  Unfortunately, often there was nobody at a meeting who had an answer.  I remember somebody asking why they couldn’t make their “Whiz Bang” printer work on a Mac.  The leader would ask if anybody had a solution and look around the room.  Not a hand went up.  This happened over and over again.

The human interface, the computing power, and the range of software has improved exponentially in the last 31 years (remember the 1984 Apple ad).  We can do many tasks quickly and easily just by poking the screen or dragging a finger over it.  But when things go wrong!  Hoo boy!

I think I caused my problem with an inadvertent reset.  My choices include going back to the last iCloud backup, but would that be done before the coffee shop closed?  By reading the manual, I found that I can double-click the home button, swipe up on the screen, and then slide through all the open apps.  I can close an app by sliding its image up.  This doesn’t remove the app from my iPhone, it just stops it from doing any harm.

Once September rolls around, we’ll have the data part of our Consumer Cellular contract restored.  I think the closing apps plan is my best alternative.  I’ll start with only keeping the supposedly harmless apps open: Weather, Mail, Calendar, and a few other standards.  Then I’ll have to wait until all the data is in for that six-hour period.  If usage seems normal, I’ll keep a few more apps open.  Either I’ll eventually find the run-away app or that the conditions are such that the app is now behaving.

Meanwhile, I’ll be drinking lots of coffee.  I thought of having beer instead, but it will be just my luck to knock over the glass…

Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/08/26/5837_clawing_out_of_the_abyss.

Cutting the cord and falling into the abyss

We received so many unsolicited calls on our land line that we stopped picking up the phone until we knew who the caller was.  Too often, no message was left.

I received almost only junk email on my cpinternet account through our CenturyLink account.  Besides offers of garage door openers and of sex, I received messages in Japanese and Turkish.  Very rarely did an old contact use this account.

Besides, our nominal 7Mbps speed was often under 4Mbps.  We were eligible for an upgrade to 12Mbps, but we had to call an 800 number to find the details.  Once upon a time, Qwest, the predecessor to CenturyLink would state on its website how much 256Kbps, 512Kbps, and 1Mbps would cost, exclusive of taxes and fees.

A digression on telecommunication taxes and fees: the telecommunication companies (telcos) can’t give these accurately because the vary widely from locale to locale and narrowly from month to month.

We also had an iPhone 4s through Virgin Mobile (VM) because we got a deal a few years ago from Best Buy.

Along the way, we started using cell phones through Consumer Cellular: you can’t miss their ads, especially if you are an AARP member.  Consumer Cellular (CC) stated on its website the exact cost of each service and its level that you requested.  You could change these at any time, either up or down.  I eventually bought an iPhone 5s from CC.  They piggy back on the AT&T network (at 3G rather than 4G).  Not only could I use the iPhone in Brimson, but I could use the phone as a hotspot for my iPad or MacBook.

With all of these providers, our total monthly payments seemed to be getting out of hand.  I did a small spreadsheet to compare using only CC instead of multiple providers.  If we bought another CC iPhone, our costs would drop about a thousand dollars per year (not including monthly payments for new phone.  Even then, we would still save hundreds of dollars a year.

One problem was our wireless printer.  How would we access it without our DSL modem?  I pulled the phone cord from the modem and found that the printer still worked.  The DSL modem was our router, even if it was not connected to the phone system.

We ordered a new CC iPhone 5c, and when it arrived, we set it up for my wife’s use.  We could also use it as a hotspot, and so she wouldn’t have to depend on my iPhone if I was elsewhere.  Also, because it worked in Brimson, we could use our phones as walkie-talkies.  We would have much better reception, and nobody else would be listening to our calls.

Except, we couldn’t get her phone to work because we couldn’t transfer the VM number without an account number.  None of our VM bills had an account number, only the phone number.  We had to call VM, and of course, the first person we talked to couldn’t do it.  We were switched to someone who suggested we might get a better deal.  Unmentioned was the cost.  After I don’t know how many minutes, we were told our account number.  Then we called CC with it and they activated my wife’s iPhone.  We didn’t have this hassle when we dropped our land line at our cabin and put it on a Home Base wireless system.

Next step was to call CenturyLink to cancel our phone and DSL.  Again, we were routed to someone who tried selling us faster service.  We declined, and sometime in the next day or two the phone no longer worked, but the modem still accessed the network.

Ah yes, we had separate ISP, CPinternet, from the bad old days when we had only 56Kbps dial-up (56 Kilo bits per second for those too young to remember dial-up).  When we started with QWest at 256Kbps we kept CPInternet as our provider.  CPInternet really had great customer service, too.  Then CPInternet was bought by Hickory Tech of Mankato.  Then Hickory Tech bought Enventis and assumed its name.  Still great customer service.  Then Consolidated Communications of somewhere bought Enventis.  I didn’t have much need to call customer service, until we wanted to cancel our ISP connection.  My first attempt got the automatic wait message of something like “Enventis is now Consolidated Communications”.  On the ninth reiteration of this, I hung up, and tried another time.

Then new problems started, some of them my own doing.

The printer works from my wife’s iMac, but not my MacBook, the one I tested printing from.

I attempted to reset my wife’s old iPhone to erase all our data before recycling it.  It needed the password for her Apple ID.  We thought we knew it, but all the variants we tried were rejected.  I spent over a half-hour with Apple Support trying to resolve it.  Terry cheerfully assured me that he had seen many problems like this. Unfortunately, he had to admit defeat and suggested we take it to a Genius Bar in an Apple Store.

In all my attempts to reset her phone, I picked up my iPhone and clicked reset.  Ah! My Apple ID.  My password worked.  Dummy!  You just reset your own iPhone!

I’m running out of space, but I’ll give the short story on the next problem.  We used up our quota of CC data and were automatically cut off.  I finally figured out that my iPhone was still trying to load the one program that was no longer available from iTunes, over and over and …!

Iiee-
ee-
ee-…

This also was printed in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-08-20 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/08/20/5807_cutting_the_cord_and_falling_into_the_abyss.

Free market? What free market?

Certainly not in telecommunications!

All but one telecommunication company* that I know of violates two of the four requirements of a free market.

1) Many buyers and sellers (there are only a few sellers)
2) Buyers and sellers are free to enter and leave the market (we can give up our phones, but…)
3) Buyers and sellers have all the information they need to make a decision (the sellers sure don’t want to give you complete pricing information)
4) All costs are in the sale, that is, no externalities (well, there are externalities like telephone wires, but few really care about their existence)

This little screed was triggered by my desire to have better internet speed than about 5Mbps (nominal 7).  In Duluth, I can get 23Mbps on my cell phone, but if I use it as a hotspot for my laptop the speed drops down to less than 2Mbps.  That means I can’t easily replace my DSL modem by using my cell phone.  My cell phone is with Consumer Cellular* which in turn uses AT&T.  My DSL modem and home phone are with CenturyLink.

AT&T does provide quite a menu to match what you think you need with what is available.  Plans can get pricy if you use several devices, say two tablets and two computers.

The best deal I could figure out was a mobile hotspot with 4GB/month of data at $50.  I can only guess on how much I use.  The mobile hotspot (Unite Pro) costs $200 but is $50 with a 2 year contract (“excluding other account charges”).  If could be sure that we would stay in that limit, it might be a good replacement for our DSL.  Dropping the land line entirely, we could add a home base for our telephone and use our Consumer Cellular account.  That would only be a $10/month charge.  But, how much more voice time would we use?

As for staying in the 4GB/month, I can’t be sure.  My wife spends a lot of time on Skype.

Also, I can’t be sure the AT&T hotspot would always get above 20Mbps.

Also, just how much are those “other account charges”?

On the other hand, CenturyLink is offering 100Mpbs in certain locations.  Try to find those locations!  I got a gibberish page.

To get more detailed information, I had to have an online account.  I won’t go through the hassle I had for that, but I need not have done that.  My wife already had an online account.

When I eventually got my account working, I found the best we can do is 12Mbps.  I can’t find out the price until I request the upgrade!!  So much for the free market.  New subscribers can get it for $19.95/month.  If we’re paying about $60/month for phone and internet (including “other account charges”).  If the cost is split, we’re paying more than new subscribers for our nominal 7Mbps!

Do I go for an AT&T hotspot or do I replace our nine-year-old CenturyLink modem?

*Consumer Cellular is about the only telecommunications company that I know that tells you all of your costs (except “other account charges”).  Not only that, they warn you if your usage might go over your selected usage limit.  And you can change your limits up or down at any time.  The only problem I have, other than the cell phone as hot spot is not as fast I thought it would be, is that the max data limit is 2.5GB/month.

Decisions, decisions!  Computers may be more powerful than pens and paper, but buying pens and paper was a lot easier.

Summer Idyll or Sweat Farm

Here I sit in the screen “house” about noon at our cabin after hauling some chips and cut brush. The sky is blue, the trees are green, the wind is blowing through the trees, and birds are chirping. Do I even want to move?

The weather forecast was for 30% chance of thunderstorms, but I am going by my own weather “advisory”.  If bad weather is predicted, there is often a bigger chance that the weather will be just fine.  This is one of those “just fine” days.

We are here on a too infrequent four-day weekend.  Even though it is the weekend of the Fourth of July, there are surprisingly few neighbors around.  The only thing we heard from neighbors who often shoot off fireworks was some late evening hooting.  Maybe they were watching a soccer match on TV.  Somebody was shooting yesterday in the woods, hopefully not on our land.  The only person who I think might have had access to that area is already gone.

“Don’t make it a sweat farm” was from Bruce Berggren, a DNR forester, who gave us a stewardship plan in the early Nineties.  I don’t remember if we had more than a dome tent, a picnic table, and a tarp then.  We weren’t doing more than cutting brush to expand our “living area” and to make room for planting trees.

Now we have a “yard” that is three times as big as our yard in Duluth and three loops of trails with some side paths.  But, because we found much to occupy ourselves in Duluth, two of the loops and the side paths have grown over.  On the other hand, the “yard” seems to be getting bigger.

Our first major “expansion” was to put cots in our dome tent.  Oh!  We had so much more room. We could put our packs and coolers under the cots.

Our first building was an 8x8 shed that I built probably within our second year here.  We moved our cots into it.  Oh! We had so much room.  We could even dress standing up. We could even put a propane heater in it and stay overnight in the winter.  With each stay, it seemed more and more space was taken up with tools.

A couple years later, I built a cabin with some assistance from others.  We decided that a nominal 12x16 should be sufficient for our needs until we built a house here.   When I first put in a cot, Oh! We had so much room.  Over the years, we have added more and more.  Before the second winter we had a wood stove.  We added a foldout couch and a card table.  We used an Ikea counter for our “kitchen” counter.  I had used it for my darkroom when we lived in Sweden.  I cut a hole in it for a sink which drains into a bucket on the floor.  We added a microwave and a mini-refrigerator.  I forgot to mention that we had electricity and telephone before I put the wallboard up.  We stuck a portable toilet in one corner.

At some point, I built an outhouse.  We can even use it in the winter in “comfort” with a small heater screwed onto a 20-lb propane tank.  Last year I installed a solar shed light.

The same year we moved to Duluth we had a well dug.  It’s only twenty feet deep, but the water was so nice to have.  Then came the drought years and we were back to hauling water.

We built an 8x12 sauna with the help of some friends.  A battery and a solar panel provide lighting.

Other buildings include a ramshackle woodshed built out of scrap lumber and a metal shed where we store our power equipment.  I wish I hadn’t been stingy on the cost.  I’m constantly bumping my head on the low ceiling.

A recent plus is that we have better internet service.  From 25Kbps (that’s right, K not M) with a landline to sometimes 10Mbps with cellular.  As this is off my cellphone contract with Consumer Cellular, my guess is that I’m paying about a third for phone and internet at the cabin than I was for the landline.

One big project I would like to do is get rid of all the “Toimi sand”.  Toimi is the neighboring township and the sand grains are from fist-size to boulders to climb onto.  This area is also called Kivi Country, kivi being Finnish for stone.  I would really like to get rid of many of them because those that stick up only an inch or two are lawnmower busters.  Even bigger ones make it hard to pull a cart over.

Two years ago I really hurt one shoulder using a ten-pound hammer on a 4x3x2 boulder to no avail other than chips flying all over.  I wonder if a small electric jackhammer would work.  Probably I couldn’t take the strain.

Well, I better wrap this up.  It looks like 30% chance of thunderstorms getting closer.  There are more clouds, some even dark, in the sky and the wind is getting stronger.  I hope I can cut the grass on at least one short path.  Oh well, if the rain comes, I still have many books to read and last week’s Reader Weekly.

Mel did get more than one path cut, edited this, and sent it.  The rain still hadn’t come.

This was also published in the 2014-07-10 issue of the Reader Weekly at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/07/10/3701_summer_idyll_or_sweat_farm.

Who needs comics? We live them!

Yesterday my wife came back from Japan via Minneapolis.  She was to call me on her cell phone when she was in line to board the flight to Duluth.

That was the first of many delays.  The plane had not arrived yet.  It needed to be de-iced at its previous landing, but the de-icing equipment was broken.  This wasn't so bad, I don't think it left Minneapolis more than 45 minutes late.

When she called, I started off on several errands before I met her, figuring I could do quite a bit in an hour.

The first was to dump food scraps for compost at a neighborhood restaurant.  I did that then went in to pick up the latest Reader Weekly.  It wasn't in yet.  I came back to the car and it wouldn't start.  Oh, no!  I left the lights on?

What do I do?  Walk the block back home and get the other car?  Or do I just bring the battery charger?  I opted for the latter.  Then I couldn't get the lid off the charging contact.  Even with the pen knife I had recently bought to replace the one I lost.  I kept trying and eventually got the lid off.  I hooked up the cables and nothing.  I put the ground at a different place, and vroom!

OK, I can go now.  But as I shut the hood, I forgot to take out the prop.  For the second time this year I bent it!  So, there's five more minutes to straighten that out so I can close the hood properly.

Next stop is to mail a bill and a Netflix DVD.  That went OK though the mailbox access was not the best.  And I managed not to get my door banged by other traffic.

Now it is too late to do my next errand.  So, it's straight to the airport.

As I'm on the way to the airport, my cell phone rings.  The best I can do is peek at the caller and see that it is my wife calling.  She has landed.

OK, so I go directly to Arrivals and call her to say that I am out front.  No answer!  I try again and again assuming she either went to the rest room or has it buried in her purse.  After six or seven tries, I loop around to the "cell phone lot".  I try two or three times more.  #%&!  I drive to the pay lot and trudge across the cold, windy, snow-packed lot to the terminal.

What do I do first?  Yell and scream at her for not answering the phone?  Give her a big hug because I'm so glad that she has come back safely.  Of course, the latter.  Then I "yell and scream" and she admits she had turned her cell phone off!

She is ready to trudge across the lot with her big suitcase, our granddaughter, and our granddaughter's little suitcase.  I say no, I'll drive up to the Arrivals and meet you there.

So, I trudge back across the cold, windy, snow-packed lot to our car.  I have $2 out because that is the cost for the first hour.  I present the ticket and $2 to the attendant.  He presses a few buttons, says it's free, and gives me my $2 back.  Second best thing of the day after my wife coming back.

The rest of the day was "normal".  She had enough energy to visit the store I had planned to visit first, to go to two other stores, and to go out to eat at the restaurant that I had stopped at first.

Then she crashed!  Then woke up and couldn't sleep.  Then she crashed and slept to ten this morning.

Maybe in a few days, we'll be back on our normal cycles.

Oh, my wife also suggested that maybe I forgot to press the brake as I started the car with keyless entry.  Did I?  Didn't I?  I vaguely remember both!

Why do corporations keep proving their inefficiency?

After the stellar, personal service I received from Mike at the Duluth AT&T store, AT&T customer support gave incomplete and insufficient service.

I received a bill in the mail today for $88.93.  As I had cancelled the service within the 14-day return window, I wanted to check if I could get a revised quote or if I would get a refund in the next billing cycle.

I called the 800 number on the bill and after the usual automated rigamarole, I reached a tired sounding human being.  After asking for the last four digits of my Social Security number (already entered as part of the rigamarole) she heard me out.

She then transferred me to another department.  More rigamarole including the cell-phone number I already entered and the last four digits of my Social Security number!!!  Then I heard, "This number is no longer in service."  So much for AT&T service!

On top of that, in the first rigamarole, an automated voice gave a dollar or so less balance due and a one day earlier due date!

I tried going to att.com but didn't have any better luck.  It wouldn't let me login or register.  After all the combinations I could think of for userID and password I tried with the phone number to retrieve them.  It wouldn't give them to me.  It gave me a few other paths to try, but it wouldn't let me complete any of them.

I think I'll just post this and then print out a copy for Mike as well as a copy of the other blog entry.

Maybe I should also send copies to my members of Congress as a comparison to complaints about the Affordable Care Act.

Helpless help desks revisited

Well, for the fourth time this year I've asked for help from a major corporation and for the fourth time I've given them a solution.

The first time was when our DSL from CenturyLink was squirrelly.  It would go on and off.  The first person I spoke with diddled with some settings from her computer and our speed was up again.  The problem returned.  On the next few calls, the help desk insisted that I should get a new modem.  I did not because I was sure the problem was storm related and in CenturyLink's lines.  We still have the old modem and we are getting around 6Mbps on our nominal 7Mbps service.  See "Efficiency (or inefficiency) - generalizations do not apply".  CenturyLink apparently repaired the lines that I insisted were the problem.  Or we haven't had many really windy storms since then.

The second time was when the keyboard locked up on my MacBook Pro.  It was still on warranty from Best Buy and so I took it to the Geek Squad.  They kept if for a day or two and could find nothing wrong.  It wasn't until I had it at home for a day or two that I discovered that it was Microsoft Outlook, which Geek Squad had closed, causing the problem.  My database probably had gotten too big and Outlook had an error that was writing outside its area.  I compacted the database and the problem went away.  See "Computer withdrawal symptoms".

The third time was when the Westinghouse solar shed light would not turn on again after I turned it off.  See "Simple questions don't get simple answers from corporate bureaucracies".  The light is working fine after I put in newer batteries.

The fourth time was when I found out that our improper time on our cabin answering machine was because I needed a firmware update.  None of the friendly folks at Consumer Cellular seemed to understand that the AT&T network was resetting the time.  I found this out when I read the answering machine instructions and learned that telephone networks send the time with caller-ID information.  When we used a land-line we didn't have caller-ID.  Caller-ID is standard with cell phone service.  I found that I needed a firmware update from a search of AT&Ts support forums.  One user responded to another last month with the solution.  I sent email back to Consumer Cellular about this.  I wrote that I was tempted to send them an invoice for two hours of Level 2 support work.

I don't expect to have a response from Consumer Cellular until Monday.  Meanwhile, I searched the AT&T website for instructions on getting the firmware update.  Nada!  First, it gave me over 3,000 hits where the first two pages didn't have anything relevant.  I searched on the web for the model number and found that the original manufacturer has instructions for upgrading the firmware to the latest level, for those with a Windows computer!  I did another peek at the AT&T site and found a page for the "Wireless Home Phone".  It had no information at all on updating the firmware!

There are some economists (and many non-economists) who say that the only objective of a corporation should be to provide shareholder value.  But to provide shareholder value doesn't a corporation need to provide customer value?  At some point a captive customer base may burst their shackles and go elsewhere.

Surveillance Allowed Days

In its first 24-hours, "No Surveillance Allowed Days" had only seven page views, fewer than most of my other blog entries.  I guess it is not a very popular idea.  I'll consider keeping to some of its tenets on No Surveillance Allowed Days, but I won't be rigid about it.  Sort of like paying cash for most of what I buy, I'll pay with credit or debit card when it is more convenient.

I should have known better.  "No Surveillance Allowed Days" had as much chance of success as my attempt to get 90% voter turnout or better at every election.

No Surveillance Allowed Days

This entry was inspired by "FAQ: What You Need to Know About the NSA's Surveillance Programs" by Pro Publica, reprinted in the Reader Weekly of Duluth on 2013-07-11.  You can find a long list of similar stories by Pro Publica with the search terms "FAQ: What You Need to Know About the NSA's Surveillance Programs" "Pro Publica".

If you think government has overstepped its bounds on surveillance, you can protest in a "simple" way: don't use a phone, the Internet, or a debit or credit card each No Surveillance Allowed Day (NSAD).  If the usage of these drops significantly every Wednesday, the large corporations such as Google, Yahoo, Verizon, AT&T, Visa, and many others will certainly notice.  I am sure you have noticed that large corporations have more clout with Congress and the Administration than we ordinary citizens.  No Surveillance Allowed Days could manipulate the large corporations to influence the government not just for their benefit but ours!

This won't be "simple" because many of us need to use the telephone and the Internet for work and for other matters that can't wait until another day.  But you might find some things among the following ideas that you can do to make a small contribution to make the large corporations notice.

If you live outside the United States, especially in a country with heavy-handed censorship, you can stage your own small non-violent resistance with little fear of government retaliation.

On No Surveillance Allowed Days, think twice about any phone calls you might make, especially cell phone.  Can the call wait until tomorrow?  Does the call even need to be made?

On NSADs, avoid using the Internet.  Can you look up that burning question with Google on Thursday instead?  Can you make that online payment that is due on Wednesday a day early?  If you read newspapers online, can you buy a paper copy on Wednesdays instead?  If you don't buy a paper copy, you you could catch up online on Thursday.  If you must use the Internet, avoid clicking on any ads and avoid any sites that give you a short advertising video before showing you what you clicked for.

Oh gosh!  Our Social Security checks are deposited on the fourth Wednesday.  I guess we don't need to check online that they are in our accounts that day.  We can assume that they are there.  Besides, if we're avoiding the Internet, we won't be making any online payments until Thursday.

Finally, pay cash on NSADs instead of using a debit or credit card.  Or can you wait until Thursday to make that big purchase with one of your cards?

If we spread the word that we are doing these things in protest of the National Security Agency's wide-ranging snooping on our lives, we might get the attention of the large corporations who control our phones, our Internet use, and many of our purchases and payments.  If they are being hit in the pocket book, even one day a week, they might make a big squawk that will be heard in Washington.

No matter how much you plan to participate, would you at least spread the word about No Surveillance Days?  If you do so, please pass on the link to this entry (http://magree.blogspot.com/2013/07/no-surveillance-allowed-days.html).  That will give me some idea of how well this idea is catching on.  I'll periodically post how many views have been made of this entry.

Thanks, and may you sleep well, knowing you have done your part to stop excessive government snooping.

Free market and the Internet

Like lots of people, I'm looking for faster internet or even internet.  One thing I can say for certain that it is not a free market - few sellers and very little useful information.

At our cabin, we use dialup on our phone that costs us about $37/month.  Periodically I dig around Frontier's web site to find information.  The latest pricing is $50/month additional for "up to 6Mbps".  If I had a internet-dependent business this might make sense.  But not for 4 to 8 evenings a month.

In Duluth, our phone bill is $58/month, but I can't break it down at the moment.  My wife doesn't save the detail pages of our bill.  Given that we used to pay $23/month for land line, then we are paying about $35/month for "up to 7Mbps".  I just did a CenturyLink speed test that showed 6Mpbs at 12:50 on a Sunday.  Other speed tests in evenings have shown 4Mpbs.  Trying to determine what higher speeds would cost is a big hassle.  See http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=787754 for some users experiences with CenturyLink.

When I bought my iPhone, I switched from Verizon to Virgin Mobile because the pricing was more advantageous to me, only $30/month including data.  When we visited our daughter at her lake house near Grand Rapids MN, I thought I would be able to use my iPhone to access the web.  I was, sort of.  I would get a one-bar 3G signal, then without moving I would get a roaming signal, then no service, then searching, then back to one-bar 3G, even standing by an upstairs window.  Our daughter's house is 10 miles from Grand Rapids and less than 2 miles from a major highway.  Granted that there are many trees, but can waving leafless trees cause that much variation?  The second surprise was that we thought with the iPhone and a low-power FM-to-car-radio cable that we would be able to listen to Minnesota Public Radio all the way back to Duluth without changing the dial.  No such luck!  On the major highway we were on, the cell signal kept coming in and out.  Oh, well, at least the Virgin Mobile/Sprint coverage map doesn't claim that that area is covered.

I knew that AT&T had put up a couple of towers in the Brimson area where we have our cabin, but I've heard many complaints that many AT&T's customer are not satisfied.  I checked AT&T's coverage map and did discover coverage areas in Brimson; they are a whole bunch of small islands that make no sense.  Besides telling me that our cabin address is could not be matched (other web sites can find it), it shows a coverage area that starts just west of where our cabin is and ends less than a mile farther west.  That's too iffy to make a decision with.

The lesson is that you have to make a long checklist of all the features you want in a product and then spend hours and hours to find out what portion of those features are available to you at a price you want to pay.  Nobody else is going to help you.  And of course, after you buy the product, you'll find a new feature you want but your choice doesn't provide – like listening to public radio without switching stations.

I still don't believe the polls

… and I don't really have any well-based predictions of my own.

Consider that our phone rings several times a day.  We don't answer and very few leave a message on the answering machine.  Those who do leave a message have some meaningful connection to us.  Given the approaching election, these "empty" calls are

1) Robo-calls for a candidate or a party
2) Person calls for a candidate or a party
3) Poll calls

Also consider that many people have cell phones but no land line.  Although some pollsters say they are calling both land lines and cell phones, many cell phone numbers are not in any directory.  My cell phone has few calls and the two recent unknown calls may have been misdials or random spamming.  Besides, I generally have it off.

Which way will those who are not reached by a poll lean?  I can't really say.  Will too many younger voters stay away because they didn't think Obama didn't do enough?  Are those who don't answer more likely to lean toward Obama?  As I write this yet another call came in that stopped after three rings.

How likely are those who respond to actually vote?  One of the questions is if the respondent is a likely voter.  Many people say they are likely voters because they are embarrassed to admit that they don't plan on voting.

I think the election will be determined by the balance of unhappy people, which group will stay away in larger numbers - Tea Party types who don't think Romney is "conservative" enough or "liberals" who don't think Obama did enough.  My inclination is that the latter will be the larger group.

I hope you, dear reader, will not be a stay-away on election day.  Please remind your friends to vote.

Another inefficient corporation

When I bought my iPhone in September, I cancelled my Verizon Wireless account in favor of Virgin Mobile.  I was told at the time by the Best Buy representative that I would have a cancellation fee of around $80 from Verizon.

When Verizon notified me in early October that I had an online statement, I thought I would pay that cancellation fee.  Ha!  Even though the statement showed an outstanding balance of $89.46, in the "Pay Bill" section, the amount was $0!  The site wouldn't even let me pay the true balance online with my debit card.  The site did say I would get a paper statement.

The due date was October 23, and so I had plenty of time to get the paper bill and write a check. And the paper bill did not come, and it did not come.  Finally, about October 22, I looked up the phone number for "Contact Us".  The woman that responded said that I could pay at such and such URL.

Surprise, at that URL I could pay, and I could pay with a debit card.  I did and the payment has cleared my bank.

Yesterday, October 29, six days after the payment had been due, I received the paper bill.  The paper bill states that I owe $89.46!

From my posts about Netflix, you know the Postal Service can provide next day service.  If the sending post office is not within a day's drive of Duluth, Netflix states a DVD will be delivered within 3-5 days.  If memory serves me right, the actual delivery is 2-3 days.

The Verizon bill was dated September 28.  The only mail that takes over a week to arrive is mail that gets mis-delivered, stuck in a crevice somewhere, or is never sent promptly by the sender.  I will go with the last.  Is this a deceptive practice to hit me with a late payment fee or is this extreme inefficiency.  I think the latter.  Of course, if I were actually late with a regular payment, Verizon or many other vendors would promptly charge me with a late payment charge.

Thank you to Netflix, Best Buy, and many others for giving me counter-examples that show corporations can provide efficient customer service.  It just goes to show that the management/ownership form of any organization doesn't predict its efficiency or effectiveness; the real guide is the kind of people in the organization – from top to bottom!

Why I don't believe polls

I've long been suspicious of polls, especially political polls.  I also dislike polls because they turn elections into horse races rather than thoughtful consideration of candidates and because they reinforce the myth of "the two-party system".

The first question is who is asking what questions of who.

Who are the pollsters?  Are they completely neutral or are they hired by a party or a candidate?

What are the questions and what order were they made?  Were the questions framed to get a desired response?  Were questions asked in an order to set up the responder for a desired answer?

Who responded to the poll?  Was it only people who happened to be at home?  Was it only people who always answer the phone and politely enter into a dialog?  How many people screen their calls and won't respond to pollsters or other solicitation calls?  How many people who did answer hung up right away?  What about people who only have cell phones?  Even if cell phones are called by pollsters, do the phone owners screen their calls and don't respond to unknown callers?

For some of these difficulties facing pollsters, see "Pollsters struggle to find the right sample of voters", John Harwood, Star Tribune, 2012-08-06.

Polls also can be very far off.  One iconic picture is Harry Truman holding up a newspaper in November 1948, "Dewey Wins".  Harry Truman didn't even stay up for the results, but the polls were way off.  It was one of the first telephone polls, but nobody seemed to think that many Democratic voters didn't have telephones.

More recently, the 1998 Minnesota gubernatorial polls predicted Hubert Humphrey III (DFL), Norm Coleman (Rep), and Jesse Ventura (Reform Party) in that order.  The result was just the opposite with Ventura winning with 36.99 percent of the votes.  The turnout was 60 percent, and so Ventura came in second to none of the above.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_gubernatorial_election,_1998.

I wonder if anyone bothered taking a poll of the 40 percent who didn't show up.  What fraction were Democrats who didn't feel Humphrey would do "enough", what fraction were ex-Republicans who didn't like the direction the party was taking even then, and what fraction were people who just didn't give a damn about getting good governance?

Hang up and drive!

A few minutes ago my wife was driving on a through street when a car started across the intersection in front of us.  I gave a loud YEOW envisioning us broadsiding the other car.  My wife had applied the brakes and stopped before crossing the path of the other vehicle.  That driver had also seen us and had stopped before crossing our path.

Thump! thump! go our hearts still.

But think about some of the other scenarios.  Suppose the through-street driver had been on a cell phone.  Would that driver have reacted in time?  Suppose the cross-street driver had been on a cell phone.  Would that driver have reacted in time?  What if the through-street driver had been speeding?  That driver would not have reacted in time, especially if that driver had been on a cell phone.

This is a good example of how much attention is needed to drive safely.  A cell phone requires too much of that attention.  Hang up and drive!

Job creators or job dissimulators?

"Every day lately, we hear politicians intone the term "job creators" when in reality they are referring to the interests of financial hustlers, hedge-fund operators, credit-default-swappers, manipulators, polluters, unsafe employers, and all manner of characters who do not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as giants like Steve Jobs and Bob Galvin.

"Let us admire and treasure the real leaders in job creation among us and properly recognize them when they die.

"We need all the Bob Galvins and Steve Jobs we can possibly produce."

- "Business forum: Galvin, Jobs: Visionaries and job creators", Jim Buckman, Star Tribune, 2011-10-24

Buckman's piece was a tribute to Bob Galvin who led Motorola when it created the cell phone that in turn made it possible for Steve Jobs and Apple to create the iPhone. They died about a week apart.

Investment or tax

Clive Thompson argues that we should have more public transit to reduce the incidents of texting while driving: "Clive Thompson to Texters: Park the Car, Take the Bus". He decries the fact that in the U.S. we are so car-dependent that we increase the number of textures driving; in other countries young people don't even consider getting a car as soon as they are eligible because public transit is so convenient.

Can't you just hear the "no-taxers" screaming about the cost of better public transit? Of course, most of them drive on tax-supported roads. They never stop to think that more public transit might reduce their travel time. Of course, fewer cars on the road also means fewer accidents, which are a cost in themselves. Fewer texters on the road means even fewer accidents. And fewer accidents means fewer court cases, which means less taxes to pay for courts. And fewer accidents means more money in all of our pockets to spend elsewhere.

Many cities even find that it pays to have free bus service: Bozeman MT, Steamboat Springs CO, and Park City UT. Park City really wins the prize with every 10-minute service on its mainline from early in the morning until late at night. Park City parking is very limited; I wonder how much acreage and dollars would have been used if there had been no free bus service.

Hang up and drive!

Yesterday's Star Tribune had a couple of op-ed pieces on cell phone use and driving. Despite well-known statistics on the dangers of using a cell phone while driving, many people persist on using them, even after near misses.

A friend crossed over the yellow line on a curve while coming towards me, busily chatting away on her cell phone. When I chided her on it, my words went right over her head as if my warning was unimportant.

I've lost track of the near misses I've head with cell phone users.

What can be done about this threat to our own safety?

Many communities are passing laws to make cell phone use illegal while driving. But they've also had laws about speeding, running red lights, and driving while intoxicated. Too many people consider these laws impingements on their rights. Never mind the rights of their victims.

About the best that can be done is reduce the number of people acting unsafely.

Here are a couple of ideas that might help reduce cell phone use while driving.

Cell phone providers should change their manuals to stress not using cell phones while driving. Either let a passenger answer and make calls or wait until you can stop in a safe place. My cell phone manual has almost a page of advice about how to use a cell phone while driving. It should be changed to one word: Don't!

Insurance companies should amend their policies to automatically increase the deductible if the driver has an accident while impaired, either by substances or by use of a cell phone. Money does have a way of getting people's attention. This change probably would also require enabling legislation by states.

There are two personal things we can do to help reduce cell phone use by drivers.

The first is easy. I changed my cell phone voice mail message to:

Hi, this is Mel. Either my phone is off or I'm driving. If I'm driving I'll return you call as soon as I can stop safely.

The second is socially hard. If you believe a caller is driving, ask if he or she is driving. If so, ask them to call back when they have stopped safely. You might antagonize suppliers or friends, but...

Please feel free to pass this entry on to your cell phone provide or insurance company.