abqdan

The last week or two, after a long period of sluggishness related in part to a lingering cold/viral kind of thing, I have a burst of new energy. Right now, I'm riding the wave. I'm not sure how long it will last...

I made it back to the gym three times this week, and increased overall the weights I used for upper body exercises - Mr Atlas, here I come! I've made it a habit (for a whole week now :-) ) to get out first thing in the morning and power walk about 1.25 miles, to get my day started right.

Palm Springs Pride weekend put me very much back into enjoying 2-step and line dancing, so I've given myself a project of learning the most popular line dances from the DiGS country western bar in Cathedral City. I've practiced almost every day this week.

Yesterday, I went for a short hike - about 3-4 miles - in the foothills of the Sandias. For a decade I've promised myself I'd get back into the habit I had in California of short hikes once a week; maybe I can keep this up.

In addition, Bill and I are hopefully going to keep to a routine of a walk together on Sunday mornings.

Overall, I've definitely increased my activity and exercise; but a week doesn't mean any permanent change has been made. I know I have an endless number of triggers that will put me back into a lethargic state. What I really need is a gym and power walking buddy to ensure I keep this up.

In other changes, I've started to cut down on the growing list of 'must watch' TV. This is a big issue for me. It's extremely easy for me to slip back into a sedentary lifestyle of TV watching or Internet surfing. Both are things I enjoy and won't eliminate; the trick is going to be to keep the two things in perspective compared to my other activities.

I have also made a decision (I think) to stop teaching at the massage school. I actually enjoy being a TA, helping students improve their technique and understanding; and I'm good at it. But... it is starting to feel like a job, and I have to commit to a 12 week schedule for each class. I want to have the flexibility to go off and hike or do whatever else comes to mind without worrying about that. My massage practice is much easier to manage in that respect, so I don't plant to change that.

And then there's overall lifestyle changes that need to be made. Cholesterol and glucose numbers have been creeping up, and my Doctor's reaction is the standard one - more pills. I don't plan to go that route until I've tried other things. The first is a sustained habit of exercise; the second is controlling my diet. So I'm planning to eliminate the "C" food group - Chocolate, candy, chips, cake, cookies... Now THAT is going to be an immense challenge for me!

The web was once a textual place, its origins in SGML and academia. Then they invented programming toys, and along came the script kiddies.

Over the last 20 years, we've received a plethora of new languages and scripting tools. Some, like PHP and MySQL, allowed us to start building useful applications that added to the availability of information - the main purpose of web pages being the transfer of information.

But sadly, then came the graphic artists, and the marketing people. Together they pushed for more 'content rich' (AKA "pretty") sites. What we didn't get was an equal amount of talent and time dedicated to the man-machine interface.

Back in the 90's, when web pages were still relatively new for most large corporations, I sat through endless 'user interaction' lab tests, where we brought in members of the public to check that they could find the content they needed, without the need to call our support line. We studied things like whether a particular link should be on the left or right; whether a particular font made the content more or less readable; whether the color scheme worked for the large percentage of color-blind men, and many other factors. Underlying it all, was the need to have a simple, clear interface to the information - the reason the page was there.

Fast forward to today. We have AJAX, Javascript, jQuery, LightBox and whole bunch of other presentation-layer tools that programmers love. But what about the resulting web page? Here's an example from yesterday.

We use Comcast cable for internet (we don't have cable TV). I don't like the company, but it's the only high speed (now close to 50Mbps) service in the area. From time to time, I like to check on what DSL is doing. I'm not expecting that speed, but 20Mbps would be far more than we need. So I went to the centurylink web page to check on DSL pricing.

First off I get the usual explosion of advertising graphics, minus any real content. This is a national company, so much of their main page content does not relate to Albuquerque (though they surely know from my IP what market I'm in). But it's pretty. I find a link to get Internet pricing. Click the link, and a cute popup demands my full address, which i supply. It's going to give me 'customized pricing for my area'. I hit the submit button, then a blank screen. I wait. After about a minute I get this:

There is no Action mapped for namespace /freeRange/shop and action name

Now I know this isn't the pricing information for Albuquerque. This is a single line of plain text - an error message. The problem for me is that a customer should NEVER see such a message; this error should have been trapped, and the customer should see a nicely formatted "I'm sorry" page.

I try again - same response. Switch from Chrome to Firefox, fill in my full name and address (again)and voila! The page populates; so my original error message seems to be browser based. And now in Firefox a second, completely different form requires me to fill in my full address AGAIN so that the system can display my options. I persevere, and fill out my information again.

I wait. A new page comes up with some different packages I can select. The first is already selected and the price is displayed. I select a different one; no need to hit submit - by magic the pricing is going to change as I select different options, without me having to refresh the screen. And the pricing blinks, then comes back with the same figure. Yes, it turns out I can select three different levels of service, but they all cost the same. Someone's crazy here; either the page isn't displaying the correct price based on my selection, or they have customers willing to pay the same for 3Mbps, 7Mbps, and 12Mbps service...

I mark this as yet another FAIL in website design.

What they COULD have done, but didn't, is determine my geographic location by my IP, and on the first page displayed a simple list of pricing for all available packages. I would have found the information I wanted in just a couple of clicks, and could have compared the packages and pricing side-by-side on a single screen. But then what would all the graphics, marketing and script kiddies do all day?

As I plow through the daily email exchanges with realtors, finance guys, escrow officers, and sundry others, I keep thinking "It shouldn't be this difficult".

I haven't bought a property in a while, and it seems to me that the paperwork is now even worse than it was before 2007. It seems a lot of completely meaningless paperwork has been added to give the semblance that everyone is paying 'due diligence' to the process, when actually it just duplicates work and generates useless disclosures and information. Case in point: we had a home inspection done, which any sane person does before buying any property. The inspection wasn't too bad - it called out some minor repairs. The inspection also included a zillion exclusions as to what the inspector hadn't done or couldn't do. Hot on the heals of that report, we receive an "Agent's Visual Inspection Disclosure" where our realtor has to walk through the property, essentially noting the same things the inspector did, minus any technical content - which of course is excluded.

The whole title issue is duplicative too - a preliminary report sent via our realtor, and a second copy (with different attachments, oddly enough) sent through our escrow person. And yet both reports originate from the same title company - so how do they end up with different attachments? And aside from reading through the quasi-legalistic gobbledy-gook, the report tells us nothing - because the same company is going to issue the title guarantee, and they wouldn't do that if there was a problem with the title.

Back in England, they had a smart idea - the national Land Registry. All titles recorded in a central database, and you just get a copy of the title with a real estate transaction. No-one needs to research or guarantee it - it's a national database with laws prohibiting false information. This could not be adopted in the US of course - it would kill a huge industry. In fact, I'm convinced the huge mountain of pointless paperwork is a conspiracy between the real estate industry and state governments to keep those jobs going.

Financing is just as bad; we received two disclosures yesterday that are 'mandated'. A Truth In Lending and an Itemization of Amount Financed. These documents, in trying to give you as much information as possible about how the transaction works, end up being completely confusing. So much so, that they come with a thick set of notes explaining why what the document says isn't what is going to happen. For example, the TIL shows a box labeled "Amount Financed" which is considerably less than "Loan Amount". Here's the explanation in the attached notes:

Q: Does this mean I will get a smaller loan than I applied for?
A: No. If your loan is approved in the amount requested, you will receive credit toward your home purchase or refinance for the full amount for which you applied. In the example above, you would therefore receive a $50,000, not a $48,000 loan.

Why do they show "Amount Financed" as less than the "Loan Amount"? Who knows?

The government may think they've added a layer of protection after the sub-prime disaster; in actuality, they've simply added a layer of meaningless paperwork.

Without much fanfare, I launched the latest version of the IAGSDC website last Monday. I took over as webmaster in 2004 after the Remake The Heatwave convention in Phoenix. Prior to that, the website was a set of static HTML pages that was rarely updated.

Since then, I developed a data-driven site where most pages are generated dynamically from a database. Functions include a profile system, allowing dancers to stay in touch (before everyone moved to Facebook), a club directory giving details of the locations and dance nights around the country, an event registry and calendar that can be updated by members, and a complete suite of registration applications that allow regional events and national conventions to track registrations, and accept payments by PayPal. Under the hood are other functions that assist the officers of the club in running the organization.

The site has been used to register attendees for seven national conventions, as well as over 90 other events. In total, the system has handled close to 10,000 registrations.

Overall, I'm pleased with the work I've done on this, though as with most website work, the site is regarded simply as a tool that 'exists' by a lot of people; they are unaware of the thousands of hours that go into design, programming and maintenance of it.

Well, I came to the realization this week that it is no longer 'fun' - it's become just an 'obligation'. So it's time to move on. I've let the chair of the organization know that we need to locate a replacement for me.

That may not be easy - in some ways, I've created a monster. The site is extensive, and there are still many requests for additional functions queued up. Looking after this requires someone who can work at a technical level with domain registrars and the ISP; is comfortable with PHP and MySQL (even if they just want to convert the site to something else) and above all, can work with a very diverse (and sometimes very rude and unpleasant) set of people. Fingers crossed that someone will step forward. I've already put out some inquiries with likely suspects.

I may over time miss the role; but for the moment, I feel more relieved than sad that this particular chapter of my life is closing. I am sure I will seek out some new challenge in the near future; it's not like me to just sit and rest for long!

You may already have followed the dramas we've had with trying to buy a condo in Palm Springs. It may be that we should just take a rest at this point and do nothing. But we have one last opportunity to buy right now. Here's the salient points:

Pros:

• The market is improving, so now would be a good time to buy (a year ago would have been better, admittedly)


• I am mostly retired, so I could make use of the property when I want; Bill has the flexibility with his job for us both to go stay there for a week or two each year.


• Renting during 'the season' would cover part of the annual costs for the next three years; after which Bill would be retired and we'd use the condo to 'over-winter' in California.


• We've found a condo we both REALLY like

Cons:

• The owner of the condo we like wants to sell for $10,000 over currently appraised value - no negotiation will be accepted


• The same owner wants us to let her daughter stay there for three months after escrow closes (which isn't a huge issue, since we wouldn't need it particularly in that period).


• No matter how I work the figures, taking into account what we'd make on our deposit if it stays in other investments, the costs associated with running/maintaining a condo, and potential increase in equity over time, I can't make this look like a good investment on paper.

So here's the problem; I have an emotional reaction that we should agree to the terms of the seller, just because I really like the complex, and the unit. But in pure business terms, we come out a little worse off after 5 or 6 years owning the condo, than if we just did nothing.

One big issue with 'what-if' modeling is that there is very little on which to base a prediction of how well our other investments might grow, or how fast the CA property market might rise in the next five years; so a lot of this is guesswork.

The difference between our last offer and full asking price is just 2.57%; though in reality, the price they want is about 5.7% higher than a fair market value for the property. So we'd effectively be starting out with a 5.7% loss...

Bill and I will have to sit down and talk this through tonight - do we go with a good solid investment decision, or an emotional decision (plus the 'joy' and benefits of ownership of the property long-term).

But I can't imagine what it is.

We watch a lot of streamed content from Hulu and Netflix. Over the past year, both services have changed their streaming systems so that when one program finishes, another immediately starts streaming ('autoplay' on Hulu, 'post-play' on Netflix). On Netflix, it's the next program in a series; on Hulu, the next one in your queue.

I suspect someone told them they needed to be more like cable, where one show automatically follows another; but as far as I'm concerned, one of the benefits of streaming is that you just see what you want to watch right now. It is a benefit (to me at least) to be able to pick and choose the shows I want to watch, without additional episodes or programs automatically starting to play. To cancel this 'post-play' feature you get 15 seconds at the end of a show to cancel the next episode. Particularly annoying when you fall asleep in your chair or bed, and wake up to find you are a couple of episodes further along than you expected!

Thankfully, the engineers at Hulu at least had the sense to bury an on/off switch in the user preferences; Netflix didn't, and according to the support person I just spoke with, have no plans to do so.

Another piece of UI engineering where need and operation were never discussed with customers!

Somehow, the art has won out over information on so many products these days. It crept up on me, so I didn't really figure it out until recently. I think it started with Apple's artsy 'carousel' approach to displaying albums on music devices. But it has spread to just about everything now - mostly because app writers want the apps to look cool.

My problem is that the art - album covers, artist pictures, DVD illustrations - all take up a huge amount of real estate on a screen. Our big screen Sony TV is a case in point. It has apps for Hulu and Netflix built in. But there is no way to open a simple LIST of the programs we have queued up. Instead, a maximum of 20 icons of the shows is displayed. As a result, you get to endlessly scroll through long lists of content - especially on Netflix, where my current 'instant' list has some 200 titles in it.

Now on the matching websites, Netflix and Hulu both offer a combination of icons and lists for shows. This works well; but on hand held devices, on boxes like Roku, Tivo or our TV, you only get the icons.

I'm afraid the entertainment industry has failed to find out how people use information before designing the access to it. Probably, an app designer for Netflix has 20 titles in queue, and figures scrolling six at a time is no problem, and looks pretty. But in the real world, all kinds of users use information differently. I don't mind them having this 'tile' option for those that want it; but it really would not be at all difficult to also provide a simple list display for those of us that just don't care about the cover art.

At the general elections, I work the polls for Bernalillo County. In the past that has been a pretty simple job, because I was assigned to a local site, and we only dealt with our local precinct. This year however, Bernalillo has purchased a computer system that allows anyone to vote at any voting center. The result is that instead of having thousands of pre-printed ballots, they are printed on demand when you turn up to vote. That alone should save many trees.

That's not the main aim of course - the idea is to make it more convenient to vote. You don't have to know where to go - you can pick any location from a list of 69, county wide. The system feeds real-time data to an app that shows the polling locations, and the approximate wait-time at each one. All the clerk's workstations are linked by a VPN to allow real-time updates of who has voted, and this is sent every couple of hours to all political parties, so that they can get out their voters (or not). All of this simplifies the process.

Some things though become much more complex. Now, instead of having to deal with ballots for a single precinct, poll workers have to deal with all the various types of ballot for (potentially) hundreds of precincts. While a lot of the vote tallying is dealt with by a mark-sense reader (we have paper ballots, with bubbles you have to fill in), incorrectly marked ballots (where they've marked both Romney and Obama for example), and ballots with write-in candidates selected, must be tallied by hand at the end of the day. All this information has to be entered into several Excel spreadsheets by the poll workers, and then transferred to a secure flash drive.

Many poll workers have worked the polls for 20, 30, and sometimes more years. The older folks are used to precinct ballots, where there is no technology and a slow trickle of voters. In the past, they could sit and chat, do crossword puzzles, read a boo and have a pot luck. Not any more. This year, they're all going to be working computers, and they will be working flat out for most of the day, since there are far fewer voting locations than previously. Where a single precinct might see 200 votes, a convenience center will have between 1000 and 2000 voters on election day. (These are estimates by the county, based on early voting patterns). The county has hired 800 temporary workers to staff the voting centers.

This year, I'll be a Presiding Judge for a voting center. This means I have to manage all the equipment, poll workers, and the observers, poll watchers and poll challengers. I have to ensure everything is done as prescribed by NM law, and I have to make sure no-one and nothing disrupts the polling process. Along with a second judge (the Exceptions Judge) I have to handle any exceptions - people needing provisional ballots, those who have requested but not received absentee ballots, etc.

One of my main concerns is that the challengers appointed by either party behave themselves. We've been warned that there may be attempts to act illegally, trying to challenge registered voters, question voters waiting in line, see information they're not entitled to, etc. so I plan to have a chat with them before the polls open to make sure we are all on the same page about what they can and can't do.

Closing the polls used to be quite straight-forward; you ran the paper tally from the voting tabulator, corrected for write-ins, documented provisional votes etc, then packed everything up and shipped it back to the voting collection point. This year though, it promises to be a long and involved process. Although we'll still be working on a final tally late in the evening, the provisional (and accurate within a few votes) results will be out very quickly after the polls close, because the provisional results are released when the electronic totals are submitted to the voting warehouse. We were warned that in all probability, the result of the Presidential election will have been called before we even finish our final totals, unless the race is very close and New Mexico's electoral votes become a deciding factor (not likely either way).

I'm expecting to be working from 5am to midnight. It's going to be a long, long day.

Found out today about the 'we the people' White House initiative. Obviously, the White House receives thousands of letters, emails and calls every day, and they presumably distill those down to a report that shows what is trending. However, the "we the people" initiative is a little different. It allows you to create a petition, which you advertise. If you get 25,000 signatures in a month, the White House will take some kind of action - though it may still turn out to be a form-letter type response from a government department.

To use it, you have to sign up for a 'whitehouse.gov account' - which is another way of saying that they are collecting names and email addresses; doubtless that factors in to their reasons for providing the site. But since they already know my details, creating an account didn't bother me.

I decided to try this out, starting with a constitutional amendment! It's been bothering me that the various amendments being suggested to 'fix' the Citizens United issue are too specific. They mostly seem to want to re-establish Congress' right to control election financing. Which is fine, but the Supreme Court should not really have the power to redefine the term "person" at all. I'm pretty sure the founders did not have corporations (in legalese, 'fictitious persons') in mind when the wrote 'person' and 'persons' over and over again in the constitution. They meant individuals. So defining the term as 'humans' in the constitution should be an easy fix.

In any case, it can't hurt to repeat this and similar demands to the White House and Congress. So I created my first petition here:

http://wh.gov/TAtb

As you'll see, I'm a little shy of the 25,000 votes necessary to get it into the main White House queue! LOL

I'm all for more channels to the top. Take a look at the site: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov and see what others are talking about. And sign my petition if you are so inclined.

I guess we both watch too much TV. That said, I spend a lot of time getting ready to watch, rather than actually watching. The problem is that while there are many decent services out there, there is no convergence.

The core of our watching experience is broadcast TV, which we can record using TiVo. We also have the Netflix and HuluPlus apps for the TiVo. Unfortunately, this hasn't been the panacea I had hoped for.

First, the TiVo apps are rather buggy and poorly designed. They are graphic intensive, and rather than providing a simple list of content, they use large graphic tiles, making browsing for content difficult. The TiVo search feature frequently returns results that are not consistent with the actual content available through the two apps - it will often identify content that is not actually available for streaming. And the apps are limited on what can be shown on the TiVo - some Hulu programming for example is not available through the TiVo, though it is through a standard PC browser. Netflix's claim that they have thousands of TV shows to stream is disingenuous at best - relatively few new shows are available, and content from premium serivces like Showtime is non-existent. (Their DVD option has more content, but we don't want to go back to DVD ordering/shipping).

The result is that we have to remember what is and what isn't available through the TiVo, and then switch to a PC with HDMI connection to the TV to watch other shows. Then there are the many channels ( A&E, CBS to name but two) that don't have their content available through Hulu at all - so for those we have to use the PC browser.

The promise of convergence is there, where we'd be able to watch any content through one device, but we seem to be years away from all the companies - content providers and service providers - getting together to make this seamless. The problem seems to be the profit issue - how do they all make money from convergence? I guess once that is resolved, we'll see more technologically mature solutions.