Dear Mayor Menino,
A small, vocal group of parents with children at the Mission Hill School have been waging a campaign to derail the BPS administration’s plan to relocate the school to Jamaica Plain.
I am writing in opposition to their campaign and in support of the relocation plan as proposed by Dr. Johnson.
My Windows 7 laptop’s hard drive recently died, and after replacing it (with an SSD! yeah!), reinstalling all of my software including iTunes, and restoring my iTunes library, iTunes refused to play any music through my Logitech USB headset. The speakers plugged into my audio port worked just fine, but when I tried to play a song with the headset configured as my default playback device, the playback diamond would sit at 0:00 and no sound would come out. Furthermore, if I switched my playback device from the speakers to the headset in the middle of a song, iTunes would immediately stop playing.
I searched all over the web for a fix and tried lots of different things. Here’s what finally worked: Read the rest of this entry »
The solar photovoltaic (PV) electrical generation system on our house, i.e., our solar panels, “went live” on December 29, 2011. We are now happily generating solar electricity. This is great for the environment now, and in a few years when the system breaks even, it’ll be great for our finances as well. Our electric bill last month was $1.27. Our system has generated 117% of the electricity we’ve consumed so far in April and 76% of our usage for all of 2012.
The savings on our electricity bill is significant, but just as important to our finances is the Massachusetts Solar Renewal Energy Credit (SREC) market. State law requires electric utilities to produce a certain percentage of their power from renewable energy. If they don’t produce enough renewable energy, they have to pay the state what is essentially a fine, proportional to their renewable energy shortfall.
I’m on a community mailing list which, by and large, maintains an even keel, carries useful announcements about going-on, and sometimes even has useful discussions.
Occasionally, however, the nutcases crawl out of the woodwork. Most recently, one PJ Szufnarowski sent an email message to the list warning us all that “Boston is being sprayed with a myriad of substances, on a regular basis, from the air.”
I ordered something from Gadgets and Gizmos early on the morning of March 27. By late the next night, two full business days later, I’d received no shipping notification. I sent them the following email. I’ll let it and the subsequent exchange I had with them speak for itself:
To: support@shopgadgetsandgizmos.com
My order was placed two full business days ago.
This is the first time I’ve purchased something from you.
You are not exactly a major Internet retailer.
I’ve received no shipping notification.
Your order tracking page (http://www.shopgadgetsandgizmos.com/track.php) can’t find my order.
Your order tracking page has a typo in the header (“Tack” instead of “Track”), a pretty reliable sign of a fly-by-night operation.
I’m beginning to be a little nervous about you.
What’s the scoop?
Thank you,
Jonathan Kamens
I’ve recently stumbled upon The Legal Satyricon, the blog of lawyer and first-amendment defender Marc Randazza, and I heartily recommend it to anyone looking to be schooled in what it means to defend the first amendment, interspersed with videos of Finnish street bands performing “Bohemian Rhapsody” while sitting in an old Volkswagen.
Randazza is quite an interesting character. He’s made a successful career out of fighting SLAPP lawsuits, stopping many of them before they get off the ground, and successfully defending his clients against others. He adamantly defends the free-speech of people whose speech he finds personally repugnant. His defenses are not only scholarly and successful, but also eminently entertaining. In short, he’s a Good Guy, and you should go read his blog.
I was handed this flyer today in front of Boston City Hall:
(click for larger image)
It’s a spoof mocking the Mayor’s demand for teachers to work a longer school day.
Hey, BPS teachers… The teachers at my children’s private school work longer hours than you, with worse benefits than you, for less money than you. They do a wonderful job of educating every single student, unlike the BPS, which deprives many (most?) of its students of a quality education. You’re being paid a salary, which means you’re supposed to work the job, not the hours. So do me a favor: STFU and do the job you’re being paid to do. Thank you.
Apparently, enough people have linked to my complaint about the abuse my family received at the hands of US Airways that it is now the first match that comes up when someone googles for “CEO of USAir”.
Many people are doing that because they want to complaint to US Airways themselves but don’t know how to do it. A reader of my blog suggested that I post the details to make it easier for others to send complaints to the airline. That seems like a good idea, so here you go…
The specific steps needed to find out this information vary slightly from corporation to corporation, but overall they are the same. The basic idea is to use the company’s own web site to find out who is senior officers are, and then to use its SEC filings to find out the address to which you should send letters to those officers.
For example, for US Airways, which is fairly typical, here is what you would do:
| Doug Parker Chairman and Chief Executive Officer |
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Scott Kirby President |
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Elise Eberwein Executive Vice President, People, Communications and Public Affairs |
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Robert Isom Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer |
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Steve Johnson Executive Vice President, Corporate and Government Affairs |
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Derek Kerr Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer |
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Suzanne Boda Senior Vice President, Airport Customer Service, International and Cargo |
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Ed Bular Senior Vice President, Flight Operations/Inflight |
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Keith Bush Senior Vice President – Finance |
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Kerry Hester Senior Vice President, Operations Planning and Support |
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Brad Jensen Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer |
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Andrew Nocella Senior Vice President, Marketing and Planning |
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David Seymour Senior Vice President, Technical Operations |
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Hector Adler Vice President, InFlight Services |
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Kevin Brickner Vice President, Technical Services |
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Mike Carreon Vice President, Controller |
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Tom Chapman Vice President, Government Affairs |
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Todd Christy Vice President, Business Technology |
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Robert Ciminelli Vice President, Philadelphia Operations |
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David Endicott Vice President, IT Infrastructure |
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Dion Flannery Vice President/President, Express Operations |
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Paul Galleberg Vice President, Legal Affairs |
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Madeleine Gray Vice President, Business Technology Delivery |
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Al Hemenway Vice President, Labor Relations |
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Lyle Hogg Vice President – Flight Operations |
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Paul Jones Vice President, Legal Affairs |
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Howard Kass Vice President, Legal Affairs |
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Tim Lindeman Vice President, Reservations |
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Bob Maloney Vice President, Operations Control Center and Air Traffic Control |
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John McDonald Vice President, Corporate Communications |
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Mike Minerva Vice President, Corporate Real Estate |
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Paul Morell Vice President, Safety and Regulatory Compliance |
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Donna Paladini Vice President, Customer Service and Operations Support |
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Terri Pope Vice President, Charlotte Operations |
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Ryan Price Vice President, Human Resources |
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Tom Trenga Vice President, Revenue Management |
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Tom Weir Vice President, Treasurer |
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Stephen R. Farrow President and CEO, Piedmont Airlines, Inc. |
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Keith D. Houk President and CEO, PSA Airlines, Inc. |
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Caroline Ray Corporate Secretary |
I can’t speak to the quality of the custom tailoring work at Gregory’s Fine Tailoring, located at Boston’s downtown crossing. What I can do is report the facts of what Gregory did to me, and then you can decide for yourself whether to patronize his business.
Executive summary: Work on my jacket, which I was told would be finished in two weeks, was not done over three months later, and in fact was never fully done. I was never called about the status of the work. I was lied to several times about when the work would be finished. I demanded the return of my jacket twice in person and was refused each time. In the end, I was able to get my jacket back only by threatening to sue for triple damages, at which point Gregory finally returned my jacket; to his credit, he refunded my deposit in full and actually did some of the requested work, albeit with mediocre quality.
My employer uses Oracle Financials to manage its books.
The user experience of Oracle Financials is truly awful. We’re in the process of upgrading to a new version of the application, after using the old version for several years. One would think in the interim Oracle would have hired a decent UX designer and some UX developers, but I’m afraid not. Although a few things are slightly improved in the new version, other things are worse, and there has clearly been no overarching effort to overhaul the UX, which absolutely, positively, needs to be thrown away and redesigned from scratch.
Today’s example of bad UX, taken from the new version of Oracle Financials to which we’re in the process of upgrading, comes from the very first screen you encounter, i.e., the login screen:
How is this bad UX? Let me count the ways: Read the rest of this entry »
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