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.

Opposition to the move boils down to concern that it will be detrimental to some families who currently have children at the school. While true, that one factor should not outweigh all others in the decision-making process.

When all factors are taken into consideration, it is clear that repurposing some BPS school buildings is necessary and serves the long-term best interests of the city and its students. Given that some relocations are necessary and inevitable, if it’s not the Mission Hill families who are forced to deal with that, it will just be some other school’s families instead.

Dr. Johnson and the BPS administration obviously want to do the right thing; they have no incentive to move schools without good reason or spend money that does not need to be spent. Furthermore, they have access to more and better information than BPS parents. Finally, while BPS parents understandably and reasonably focus on what is best for their own children, Dr. Johnson is in a position to see with more clarity what is best for all BPS children.

Until recently, I was hoping to sit on the sidelines of this debate, because I did not want to stand in opposition to other well-meaning BPS parents. However, their campaign has gotten louder and louder, and in my opinion more and more disingenuous, and I feel that I can no longer remain silent.

Please do not allow the narrow interests of a small group of people to block a plan which will benefit the city greatly.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens

I also sent the above letter to Mark Ciommo (my city councillor) and the at-large city councillors, as well as to the school committee, and a slightly edited variant of it to Superintendent Johnson herself.

For background information, see the Boston Public Schools web page about the 2012 facilities plan. It’s about a heck of a lot more than just moving the Fenway High School and Mission Hill School.

I searched all over the web for a fix and tried lots of different things. Here’s what finally worked:

1. Exit from iTunes.
2. Use Task Manager to confirm that itunes.exe really isn’t running.
3. Right click on the sound icon in your system tray and select “Playback devices”.
4. Right click on your headset and select “Configure speakers”.
5. Even if the configuration is correct, change it to something else (e.g., from Stereo to Mono or vice versa) and apply the changes.
6. Repeat steps 4-5 again, this time changing the settings to what you want them to be.
7. Restart iTunes, and with any luck, your music will play!

Unfortunately, I find that I have to repeat this process whenever I unplug my headset and plug it back in, which I do often since it’s plugged into my docking station, from which I frequently undock the laptop.

Hope this helps someone else avoid having to spend a lot of time trying to figure out this problem.

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.

However, instead of paying that fine, they can buy credits for renewable energy produced by others who are not under the same obligation. This is similar to the “cap and trade” system proposed to limit carbon emissions. Residential solar PV systems generate SRECs, and their owners are under no obligation to do so, so we can sell our SRECs to the utilities. These sales happen in auctions every three months, and the auction prices tend to end up quite close to the per-credit fines the utilities would otherwise have to pay, because there is a lot of demand for SRECs. The utilities have a significant shortfall in their renewable energy production, and while the supply of SRECs from residential PV systems is growing, it still isn’t nearly enough to make up that shortfall. In the January 2012 auction, the last on record before I wrote this blog posting, the closing price at SRECtrade.com was $540 per SREC, i.e., per MWh of solar PV production.

Like any other government bureaucracy, the process of becoming eligible to generate and sell SRECs is twisty and time-consuming. However, once all the initial setup is done, it’s straightforward to sell your SRECs.

Small SREC producers like me have to go through a site like SRECtrade to sell our SRECs — there’s no way an electric utility is going to bother dealing directly with someone who produces only a few SRECs per year! SRECtrade has two fee structures for selling SRECs through them:

• If you sign up for their “EasyREC” program, they’ll do all the work for you to make you eligible to generate and sell SRECs and also handle most of the ongoing work related to reporting your energy production and selling your SRECs. For this, they charge 7% of your SREC sales on an ongoing basis.
• Alternatively, you can do all the work yourself and pay a fee of only 2% of your SREC sales.

The difference between 7% and 2% may not seem like much, but it is significant in the long run. For example, I expect to generate at least six SRECs per year, and I’ll be generating SRECs for at least the next ten years (that’s how log the SREC program is guaranteed to continue, though it may last for even longer than that). That means that if I do the work myself instead of signing up for EasyREC, I’ll make over $900 more after taxes!

It is hard to understand why SRECtrade has structured their EasyREC program as an ongoing fee rather than an one-time charge, since the ongoing work required to sell SRECs is minimal. If SRECtrade has said, “Pay us $150 and we’ll do all the initial paperwork for you, and then charge you a 2% fee,” I would have jumped at the chance to avoid dealing with the numerous government bureaucracies. But I wasn’t about to pay a 5% premium forever for work that only needs to happen once. I therefore decided to go with the self-serve option.

However, I did not find the necessary steps for doing that documented anywhere, so I had to figure them out myself. Another residential solar PV system owner who decided to do the same thing helped with some of the details. Here, for the benefit of anyone else who would rather pay 2% than 7%, is what you need to do to be a self-serve SREC seller.

1. Go to www.nepoolgis.com and apply for an account:
1. Check “Generator” as the account type and uncheck “NEPOOL Member”.
2. Click the submit button at the bottom of the registration page. This will prompt a box asking you to print out and send in a Non-NEPOOL agreement form.
3. Send it to Alex Kuznecow at the ISO-NE, either akuznecow@iso-ne.com or fax it to 413-540-4226
4. Alex will sign off on the agreement and send the counter-signed agreement back to you and the NEPOOL administrator, James Webb. At that point he will approve your account, which will give you access to register your generation asset.
5. Go back to the same place where you hit the submit button to get the Non-NEPOOL agreement form. Fill out what you can but NOT the Unit ID, you don’t have it yet. It will allow you to get in now and set up the account.
6. Once logged in to your account, click the “Register Non-NEPOOL Generator” link located towards the upper half of your account screen.
7. Fill out the 2 page generator form, only filling in the required fields
8. Skip the entire second page, and click the submit button at the bottom of the second page. The second page denotes RPS eligibilities, and James Webb will update that field once the state regulator approves your generator as RPS eligible.
9. When you return to your home page, you will see your newly registered generator, with a corresponding Unit ID number. It will begin with “NON” followed by a series of numbers. This is the NEPOOL GIS number that other forms you need to fill out, e.g., the SQA Application described below, will ask for.
10. Don’t lose your username and password, for this or any of the other web sites!
2. Email pts@masscec.com and ask them to set you up with an account at www.masscec-pts.com. They’ll respond with further instructions. about getting the account fully set up. Include in your email your NEPOOL Unit ID number and, if you’ve started your SQA, its application ID number.
3. Go to rps-aps.ene.state.ma.us, select “RPS Class I” in the drop-down, and click “Start New SQA”. Then fill out the application. You may also want to check out http://www.mass.gov/eea/energy-utilities-clean-tech/renewable-energy/solar/rps-solar-carve-out/statement-of-qualification-application.html, which contains a larger overview of the SQA process. There are some short-cuts you can take with the “Project Detail Form” if you applied and got a Solar II rebate. Several of the documents from the SQA process need to be printed out and signed in front of a notary public. The site recommends sending in the documents by registered mail, presumably to ensure that they aren’t lost. I personally went the the DOER office and turned in the forms in person since I work downtown, but that was a bit of a hassle (getting past security into the building, finding someone in the building who would take the forms from me since that office isn’t used to dealing with members of the public), so it’s probably easier just to mail them.
4. Go to www.srectrade.com and register for an account. Select “Self Serve” on the registration page. Don’t forget to enter your payment preferences so that SRECtrade can pay you later when you sell SRECs.
5. Wait for several months for NEPOOL GIS, MassCEC, and the DOER to finish all of the paperwork. Supposedly, all of the bureaucracies talk to each other, so everything should eventually work out on its own, but there’s no harm in keeping track of who the current bottleneck is and contacting them occasionally to ask about status. The long pole seems to be the SQA process run by the DOER, for which the contact you’d need to deal with is michael.judge@state.ma.us (617-626-7368). LCH: Note that the various agencies do their work in batches and are particularly busy near the end of each quarter to ensure that production from that quarter can generate SRECS, so go easy on them.
6. While waiting, report your production each month at www.masscec-pts.com (they’ll send you reminder emails). As long as you report your production, you’ll eventually get all of your SRECs, even if you generate your first MWh before all the paperwork is finished. Deadlines for reporting are important. Your first reporting can include everything since the authorization to interconnect was granted. There are specific monthly deadlines for reporting production to MassCEC. Those guys then report it to NEPOOL and they mint the SRECS on a QUARTERLY basis. For example, I generated 707 kwh in March but I will not be auctioning any SRECS when the Q1 2012 auction happens at the end of Q2, since I didn’t get to 1000 kwh in Q1. Q1 production data and systems must be approved by May 1 to qualify for Q1 SRECS. There are different deadlines for different quarters.
7. Once you are notified that SRECS have been minted for you and they show up in your NEPOOL GIS account, you put them up for auction at SRECtrade. This is as simple as logging into your SRECtrade account, clicking the “Place orders in the Auction now” button, clicking the “Sell” button, and filling out the form. You have to select an offer price, i.e., the minimum price you’re willing to accept for your SRECs. I’m not sure how best to do that except perhaps to look at the price history (make sure you have Flash Player installed to be able to view the interactive price history graph at the bottom of the page) and the Solar Alternative Compliance Payment (SACP), which is the fee per MWh the uitilities are required to pay to the state if they don’t have enough SRECs. and use them as your guide.
8. If you sell your SRECs in the auction, i.e., if your offer price was low enough to be above the auction closing price, then you need to transfer your SRECs to SRECtrade within a few days of the auction close, as per the instructions at https://www.srectrade.com/transfer_srecs.php.
9. Once you’ve transferred your SRECs to SRECtrade, they will pay you the auction closing price, less their 2% fee, via either direct deposit or a mailed check.

Once you’ve completed all the steps in this process, all you need to do on an ongoing basis is the last four steps above, which are easy.

NOTE: If you go through this process and discover any corrections or additions that need to be made, either because the process has changed over time or because I missed something, please email me and let me know so I can update the page for the benefit of others.

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.”

Now, let me fill you in, in case you’re not familiar with this particular loony-toon conspiracy theory.

Airplane exhaust is sometimes visible in the sky as contrails. Over the years, a number of crazies have concluded that rather than these being water vapor, they are actually chemicals being sprayed into the air for secret, nefarious purposes (controlling the weather, drugging the population, etc.). This chemtrail conspiracy theory has been debunked over and over again, and of course the people who espouse this theory do not have any evidence that withstands any sort of scrutiny. Nevertheless, the theory continues to be promulgated by people who are either extremely gullible, or incapable of understanding basic science, or both. Needless to say, to them, anyone who denies the existence of chemtrails is either in denial or part of the conspiracy.

When Ms. Szufnarowski sent her message to the AB2006 list, there were two responses: one from a man who identified himself as an air force meteorologist from 1958-1962 who sent a link to the Wikipedia article about contrails, and one from me saying, “I think we can do without absurd conspiracy theories on this mailing list. Thanks,” and including a link to the Wikipedia article about the conspiracy theory.

Ms. Szufnarowski responded to me:

Johnathan [sic] it is not a conspiracy, just look up and you will see it.  Your own eyes are your best witness.  Today again same thing, Boston skies were blue at  8 a.m. and I have watched them be sprayed all morning.  Now (12:30 p.m.) the sun is shinning through a completely white translucent cover.

She is apparently unfamiliar with the concept that being able to see something with your eyes is not the same as being able to identify its chemical composition or understand its cause.

She is also apparently unfamiliar with the concept of “clouds.”

And then there’s the whole “I’m too stupid to spell your name correctly even though I’ve got it right here in front of me” thing. *sigh*

My message back to her was short and to the point: “You are a nutcase. Do not email me again. Thank you.”

Needless to say, she did email me again, and managed, in her five-word response, to illustrate that her grasp of English grammar is about as firm as her grasp on science: “You are in seriously [sic] denial.”

I suppose gullibility and an inability to distinguish truth from fiction might actually be beneficial for an artist like Ms. Szufnarowski.

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

From: support@shopgadgetsandgizmos.com

Sorry to disappoint you. Our Fly By Night Operation does quite well Thank you. We have 4 Stores in Major Mall in the Long Island Area as well as 2 internet sites that do quite well. Thanks for your concern. Anyway your order was placed on 3/27/12 at 7:00am and shipped to you on 3/27/12 at 12:20pm via www.usps.com with delivery confirmation # [elided] . You were notified of this by email. Maybe it went into your spam folder?

Sincerely
Sam

To: support@shopgadgetsandgizmos.com

Sorry to disappoint you. Our Fly By Night Operation does quite well Thank you. We have 4 Stores in Major Mall in the Long Island Area as well as 2 internet sites that do quite well. Thanks for your concern.

In case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of crooks and liars running sham businesses on the internet. It is reasonable for a customer to be suspicious when there are red flags. It is not reasonable for a merchant to be rude in response.

I’m glad to hear that you “do quite well.” Now you’ll be doing it with one less potential future customer because of the rude way you’ve treated me.

Anyway your order was placed on 3/27/12 at 7:00am and shipped to you on 3/27/12 at 12:20pm via www.usps.com with delivery confirmation # [elided] .

Thank you for the information.

You were notified of this by email. Maybe it went into your spam folder?

Or maybe you never sent that email.

The difference between me and most of the customers you choose to treat flippantly is that I run my own mail server, which means I have full visibility into the mail server logs which show exactly which messages came into my server, regardless of whether they ended up in my spam folder. I checked my spam folder, and there’s no shipping notification from you or the USPS there. I checked the mail server logs, and there’s also no evidence there that one was ever sent.

So either you’re simply not telling me the truth about sending a shipment notification, or you entered my email address by hand at www.usps.com and typed it wrong.

Which you could have just acknowledged and apologized for, even if it was I who was actually wrong, and kept me as a customer, instead of pissing me off and driving me elsewhere in the future.

Just some food for thought.

Jonathan Kamens

From: support@shopgadgetsandgizmos.com

Thanks for you imput [sic]. It is so much appreciated. Hope you Thoroughly [sic] enjoy your [purchase]

Sincerely
Sam

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.

(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.

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:

1. Go to www.usairways.com.
2. Click on “Company info” at the bottom of the page.
3. Click on “Investor relations”.
4. Click on “Corporate governance”.
5. Click on “Management”. This will bring you to a page which lists the following officers of the corporation (as of March 14, 2012; you may want to check to see if they have changed), from whom you can choose to whom to send your complaint:
   Doug Parker, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
   Scott Kirby, President
   Elise Eberwein, Executive Vice President, People, Communications and Public Affairs
   Robert Isom, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer
   Steve Johnson, Executive Vice President, Corporate and Government Affairs
   Derek Kerr, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
   Suzanne Boda, Senior Vice President, Airport Customer Service, International and Cargo
   Ed Bular, Senior Vice President, Flight Operations/Inflight
   Keith Bush, Senior Vice President – Finance
   Kerry Hester, Senior Vice President, Operations Planning and Support
   Brad Jensen, Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer
   Andrew Nocella, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Planning
   David Seymour, Senior Vice President, Technical Operations
   Hector Adler, Vice President, InFlight Services
   Kevin Brickner, Vice President, Technical Services
   Mike Carreon, Vice President, Controller
   Tom Chapman, Vice President, Government Affairs
   Todd Christy, Vice President, Business Technology
   Robert Ciminelli, Vice President, Philadelphia Operations
   David Endicott, Vice President, IT Infrastructure
   Dion Flannery, Vice President/President, Express Operations
   Paul Galleberg, Vice President, Legal Affairs
   Madeleine Gray, Vice President, Business Technology Delivery
   Al Hemenway, Vice President, Labor Relations
   Lyle Hogg, Vice President – Flight Operations
   Paul Jones, Vice President, Legal Affairs
   Howard Kass, Vice President, Legal Affairs
   Tim Lindeman, Vice President, Reservations
   Bob Maloney, Vice President, Operations Control Center and Air Traffic Control
   John McDonald, Vice President, Corporate Communications
   Mike Minerva, Vice President, Corporate Real Estate
   Paul Morell, Vice President, Safety and Regulatory Compliance
   Donna Paladini, Vice President, Customer Service and Operations Support
   Terri Pope, Vice President, Charlotte Operations
   Ryan Price, Vice President, Human Resources
   Tom Trenga, Vice President, Revenue Management
   Tom Weir, Vice President, Treasurer
   Stephen R. Farrow, President and CEO, Piedmont Airlines, Inc.
   Keith D. Houk, President and CEO, PSA Airlines, Inc.
   Caroline Ray, Corporate Secretary
6. Go back to the “Investor relations” page and click on “SEC filings”.
7. View the most recent “10-K” form.
8. You will find the corporation’s current “official” address on the first page of the form. As of March 14, 2012, it’s “1111 West Rio Salado Parkway, Tempe, Arizona 85281“. You can write to all of the corporate officers at that address; your letter will be forwarded if they don’t actually work in that office.

Doug Parker Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
	Scott  Kirby President
	Elise Eberwein Executive Vice President, People, Communications and Public Affairs
	Robert Isom Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer
	Steve Johnson Executive Vice President, Corporate and Government Affairs
	Derek  Kerr Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
	Suzanne Boda Senior Vice President, Airport Customer Service, International and Cargo
	Ed  Bular Senior Vice President, Flight Operations/Inflight
	Keith Bush Senior Vice President – Finance
	Kerry Hester Senior Vice President, Operations Planning and Support
	Brad Jensen Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer
	Andrew  Nocella Senior Vice President, Marketing and Planning
	David  Seymour Senior Vice President, Technical Operations
	Hector Adler Vice President, InFlight Services
	Kevin Brickner Vice President, Technical Services
	Mike  Carreon Vice President, Controller
	Tom  Chapman Vice President, Government Affairs
	Todd Christy Vice President, Business Technology
	Robert Ciminelli Vice President, Philadelphia Operations
	David Endicott Vice President, IT Infrastructure
	Dion  Flannery Vice President/President, Express Operations
	Paul Galleberg Vice President, Legal Affairs
	Madeleine Gray Vice President, Business Technology Delivery
	Al  Hemenway Vice President, Labor Relations
	Lyle Hogg Vice President – Flight Operations
	Paul Jones Vice President, Legal Affairs
	Howard Kass Vice President, Legal Affairs
	Tim Lindeman Vice President, Reservations
	Bob Maloney Vice President, Operations Control Center and Air Traffic Control
	John  McDonald Vice President, Corporate Communications
	Mike Minerva Vice President, Corporate Real Estate
	Paul  Morell Vice President, Safety and Regulatory Compliance
	Donna  Paladini Vice President, Customer Service and Operations Support
	Terri Pope Vice President, Charlotte Operations
	Ryan Price Vice President, Human Resources
	Tom Trenga Vice President, Revenue Management
	Tom  Weir Vice President, Treasurer
	Stephen R.  Farrow President and CEO, Piedmont Airlines, Inc.
	Keith D. Houk President and CEO, PSA Airlines, Inc.
	Caroline Ray Corporate Secretary

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.

On October 24, 2011, I brought my leather jacket, which needed some repairs, to Gregory’s, after he was recommended to me for leather work by another downtown Boston tailor. Gregory recommended also cleaning and dying it and treating it with water repellant, for which he would use an outside service. He said the total cost would be about $250 (not unreasonable for a nice leather jacket) and it would be done in a couple of weeks. He also said he’d call me when my jacket was ready to be picked up.

The timing of the work was important, because I wanted to wear the jacket this winter.

I paid a $100 deposit and left the jacket with Gregory. Here’s my claim check (with my phone number distorted to protect my privacy):

(click on image for larger version)

Over a month later, he hadn’t called, so I called him to find out what was going on. He claimed that the service he had tried to use to clean, dye and treat my jacket had “gone bankrupt,” but that he had found another service and my jacket would be finished in another couple of weeks.

Another month later, Gregory once again hadn’t called, so I visited his shop in person on January 4, 2012 to get back my jacket, finished or not, and my deposit. He said he could not return my jacket because it was supposedly out of his shop being cleaned, dyed and treated. He swore to me that the work would be finished “without fail” by Friday, January 6, and took down my phone number again so he could call to let me know when it was finished. To be clear, I informed Gregory clearly and explicitly during this visit that if the jacket was not going to be ready on January 6, I wanted it and my deposit back immediately, and he emphatically insisted that it would be finished on that date.

Once again, he never called. I visited his store again in person on January 20 and demanded the return of my jacket. He once again refused to return it. The same day, I sent the shop the following letter via certified mail:

According to the postal service, Gregory received my letter on January 24. I received the following response on February 11. I have obscured Gregory’s name in this letter because he does not choose to associate it directly with his business in any way I’ve seen, and I see no need to “out” him.

Letter from Gregory's Lawyer

(click for larger image)

(click for larger image)

I have to admire Mr. Kenney for his impressive “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit” posture. His claim that it was unclear from my letter exactly what Chapter 93a violations I was alleging was particularly amusing. Oh, I don’t know, how about lying repeatedly to a customer and refusing to return the customer’s property when asked to do so?

Gregory insisted emphatically on January 4 that my jacket would be finished on January 6. He did, in fact, guarantee that completion date. If this ever went to trial, he would have to perjure himself on the stand to claim otherwise, and let me tell you, if it’s my word against his, there’s nothing here that makes him look particularly trustworthy and much that does the opposite.

Aside from that, Gregory told me on two different occasions that he could not return my jacket to me because it was out being cleaned, dyed and treated, and yet when the jacket was finally returned to me, none of those things had been done to it. What explanation would Gregory offer in court for why he did not return my jacket to me when I demanded it?

In short, there is little doubt that I would have prevailed had the case gone to court. Having said that, I had no desire to waste my time and energy dealing with a small-claims lawsuit, so I sent Mr. Kenney the following response via email:

Negotiation of the details ensued, and my jacket was delivered to me at my work address today, February 15, almost four months after I handed it to Gregory. It has not been cleaned, dyed or treated, and the work that Gregory did on it was of mediocre quality and not what we had discussed. In particular, although I specifically asked him to replace the worn-out elastic loops, he instead re-stitched the worn-out loops in place.

In summary, Gregory of Gregory’s Fine Tailoring does mediocre work (at least some of the time), has no compunctions about lying to customers when it suits him, and can’t be relied upon to complete promised work in anything like a reasonable amount of time.

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:

1. Do you really need to use asterisks to show that the “User Name” and “Password” fields on a login form are required? Of course not. It’s patently obvious that they’re required. Anyone who doesn’t understand that the username and password on a web application login screen are required fields is a neanderthal who shouldn’t allowed anywhere near the application. Marking them required is entirely unnecessary UX clutter.
2. It is almost as useless to provide an “example” value for the User Name field, especially when the example given might look nothing like actual usernames. In our installation, for example, we use first initial plus last name as usernames, e.g., “jkamens”, so the example given is not only useless, it’s actively misleading.
3. But the pièce de résistance is truly the “example” value for the Password field. An example for a password? Really? It’s almost surreal.