easier said.

Seth Godin recently wrote about the importance of being on time. He used special emphasis when he wrote:

Boy that’s simple. Apparently, it’s incredibly difficult.

I’ve been paying more attention to this attitude lately, this assertion of what is easy. Recently on the Shoes mailing list somebody wrote the following(details omitted for clarity of the point here):

I was wondering if shoes could [do this cool thing]. [The system]
natively supports [this other cool thing that would be helpful for the aforementioned, desired but as yet unrealised cool thing], so it couldn’t be very hard…

Godin asserts that being on time and respecting the time of others is easy. This fellow on the Shoes list asserts that adding some desired behavior to his programs couldn’t be very hard. If the former were true, Godin wouldn’t have much of a blog post. If the latter were true, the fellow probably would have fixed his problems instead of going to the group at large for support.

Honoring others at all times is not easy. Programming is not easy. Many things in life are not easy. Sure, people make things harder than they have to be sometimes, but I think most love an easy win, too. Perhaps there just aren’t as many out there as we’d sometimes like to think.

Ender’s game: price overrides OR how I got the iPhone 3G for $199 despite The Man trying to screw me.

So, I went to the Apple store the other day to get the iPhone 3G in honor of my landing a new job and, yeknow, ’cause it’s faster and shit. As the baby blue t-shirt clad chap helped me complete my purchase, he informed me that I wasn’t eligible for the “upgrade price” because my current AT&T contract is less than a year old. Instead of the widely advertised $199 price I would have to pay $399. I had never heard of such a thing, and my quick appraisal of the notion only cemented my initial reaction of “WTF?” Why would they penalize people who had contracts less than a year old? I called up AT&T and they confirmed this bizarre rule. Pissed off and confused, I left that day without a new iPhone.

Yesterday, I went back, resigned to my overcharged fate. I just couldn’t bear the thought of the EDGE network and no GPS until next April. Another baby blue t-shirt clad chap helped me and also pointed out the ridiculous AT&T pricing rule. I explained how I knew and what I knew. “Weird,” he said. “I know,” I replied. “Let me see what I can do on my end,” he said and walked off to god knows where. Probably a room full of baby blue t-shirt clad hipsters.

Eventually, he returned and informed me that he was able to hook me up with a “price override” and that I would be getting my new phone for the upgrade price of $199 plus tax and some shady changes in my phone plan required by AT&T when upgrading to the new phone. Whatever.

The big take away here is that, should you find yourself presented with the same bullshit $399 deal, don’t quit there! Ask about “price overrides” or come back later and look for a nerdy lookin’ fellow named Ender (Thanks, broseph!). Just know that victory can be yours, oh yes.. it can be yours.

on Rand and The Fountainhead

I always think of The Fountainhead like a great comic book redone as a novel. Or something like that. The characters are so extremist, the style and passion attractive.. it’s got epic intensity. I guess if you really dig into Rand’s ideas about reality it gets nutty or whatever, but I don’t give a fuck about that. Nor do I have to. So, fuck off with your knee-jerk judgement because I read a goddamn book.

Anyway, I tried reading Atlast Shrugged later, and I felt like it was the exact same book. Only about trains. And longer somehow. So, I got bored and stopped reading. I think I gave up while riding a train, actually..

modern reason.

it took me forever to figure out
how to write something on that stupid event wall
didn't see the tiny link

and then i was wandering around in
yet another unfocused internet journey
that started with my bitching about that interface
on twitter until i eventually came back to gmail

and thought
i'd just fucking email you

be offended. be very offended.

I left the following as a comment on a recent failure, and I was just pleased enough with its coherence that I thought I would post it here:

Taking personal offense to something is a subjective experience. Everyone has the right to that experience, but what I don’t think they have the right to is asking somebody to take back something like this. Where do you draw the line? “OK, this is offensive, but that is not.” Great. What about me? What about that guy? What about the guy who hasn’t even entered the situation yet?

Be offended if you must, but leave it at that and move on.

they say it’s your birthday.. so what?

This was originally written in the beginning of September, 2007.

Last Saturday I was up late and hungry, so I went up the street a couple blocks to a diner. I got there about ten minutes before they locked the door for the night, and as I waited for my French dip to go, I noticed that some people had gathered behind me on the other side of the glass.

At first I thought they were with some people on the inside, but after some time it became apparent that they were just hoping to get in. Eventually, a patron left, and the two girls waiting outside the door immediately began pleading for entry. They were politely reminded that the diner was closing. One of the girls pointed out that it was the other girl’s birthday. They were politely reminded once again that the diner was closing.

This was unacceptable to the non-birthday girl. She forced her way in and addressed the rest of the diner. “Who thinks my friend should get some food on her fucking birthday?” Her last, best hope for munchies faded away with her quietly asking, “Anybody?”

It was a glorious moment for civilization as we know it.