In the years I have known her, my wife has never had a purse. It’s just not her way. Nor, really, does she tend to carry her wallet around with her. Her wallet is huge and bulky, and she spends a lot of time in scrub pants that are ill-equipped to carry them. Me? I feel naked without my wallet, even when it’s so overstuffed to be uncomfortable to sit down.

So she ends up carrying cash and credit cards along in her pocket. She also changes her pants a lot (she doesn’t like to wear her slacks any longer than she has to and she has to change in and out of jeans and scrubs… meanwhile I wear only one pair of pants a day, sometimes for more than one day, and sometimes to bed). She has a little bit of trouble keeping track of her credit cards. And one by one, because of this and discontinued accounts, they’ve been disappearing. Until it reached the point that the last one went missing and I had to give her mine for her flight back from Delosa. And that one did not make it all the way to Arapaho.

—-

I have a total of four cards from Bank of the Northern Hemisphere (BNH). One is a credit card and three are debit cards linked to different accounts. The problem with BNH debit cards is that they all look the same. When we opened the second account (the joint account from Estacado), I made sure that it was only a Gold account rather than a Platinum so that the card would look different. This until we got to Arapaho and opened another account. We got the Platinum card. The main way I could really tell the difference between my personal account and the Arapaho account was the due date.

One of them expired last month. I got a new one and lo and behold, they changed the design. This was awesome! Except for the fact that Clancy had lost my other card and I had to get that replaced. Meaning I now had the same design on two cards. Not only that, but the same expiration date. So now I have to start memorizing numbers. At least until I order a specialty card or something.

Meanwhile, I fished up all of the replacement cards that BNH had been sending her. I even found one that matched a separate letter with a PIN number on it. So she has her own card. And another card without a PIN. And the BNH credit card that may or may not be activated. I activated my replacement card, which may have activated hers because it won’t let me activate hers without speaking to a representative, and I don’t do a good Clancy impersonation.

—-

Because of the credit/debit card turnover, one by one our monthly subscriptions have been notifying me of a possible discontinuation/disconnect if I don’t put in a new credit card. Satellite. Rhapsody. CBS All-Access.

I’ve never been good at keeping track of my usernames and passwords. So every day has been a matter of checking all of my email boxes to make sure I don’t get a pending disconnect notice.

An interesting look at the intersection between automobiles, Justin Bieber, IP law, and comic books:

Last year, DC Comics, a subsidiary of Warner Bros., sued Mark Towles, who operated a business called “Gotham Garage,” which sold imitation batmobiles. DC, represented by attorney Andy Coombs, accused Towles of violating its copyright and trademark and confusing the public into thinking that his cars were authorized products.

Trademark is one thing, but can an automobile design really be copyrighted?

According to U.S. District Judge Ronald Lew, it can if it’s really special.

Towles moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the Copyright Act affords no protection to “useful articles.”

But Judge Lew begs to differ, ruling that Towles “ignores the exception to the ‘useful article’ rule, which grants copyright protection to nonfunctional, artistic elements of an automobile design that can be physically or conceptually separated from the automobile.”

In other words, the judge looked at the Batmobile and found there could be elements there that served no real purpose except it was pictorially unique. The judge will likely begin a fact-finding examination, such as whether the car really needs to be bat-shaped for it to be a crazy, cool ride.

ED Kain asksOn a side note, wouldn’t you think the occasional custom Batmobile would be just about the best sort of free advertising DC Comics could hope for?

It is! Right up until it’s being drunk driven, or involved in some sort of accident.

On The Drew Carey Show, Drew won a Batmobile in some contest. He lost it when he was caught having sex in it because apparently the car came with a “morals clause.”

In all seriousness, the benefits of advertising are probably outweighed by potential hazards and potential lose revenue if they ever decide to work with a carmaker on a limited-release or something-or-other. And, more to the point, copyrights that are not defended are lost. So, in a weird way – that makes some sense after deep thought – Warner Bros is compelled to actually defend this.

And, as far as the free advertising goes: Batman, as an entity, doesn’t really need the advertising. It already has brand recognition.

Behind all of this is the bigger stink: is that DC (or anybody) still owns the rights to Batman at all. Of course, that would not likely have any bearing on the physical likeness of the Batmobile, which is more recent (and would, of course, cover a lot of different designs).

Doc Searles writes:

There are dozens of wi-fi hot spots showing up on our lists, but all of them are closed. If this were eight years ago, at least half of them would be open, but the popular default in the world is now for closed hot spots, so those are also not options.

I’m sure in the long run The Market will fix this, but meanwhile “The Cloud’s” promise and reality are way out of sync. Since most of The Market outside our homes is comprised of pay services over wi-fi and cellular data systems are sure to suffer traffic jams as more of our lives require tethering to data banks and services in clouds, I’m not holding my breath for ease in the short run.

Remember “the information superhighway”? Would be nice to have that now.

I’ve written here and there about why I am skeptical of cloud computing. Namely, for cloud computing to really work, we have to be able to reliably access the Internet, and have a solid connection, wherever we go. And it needs to be free or a part of a ubiquitous subscription service. As long as we have to ask ourselves whether it’s worth it to get a solid and stable Internet connection in some place or another, cloud computing won’t work. Because the alternative is installed software. And you know what? That’s on my computer wherever I go. A file locker that can be accessed anywhere would be helpful, but even then it’s going to have to be a synchonization thing rather than a working on it from wherever thing. I open it and download it to the laptop, and as soon as I’m done with it, or the first time I am connected to the Internet again after it’s done, it uploads to the central server in North Carolina or wherever.

I am the first person that should be using cloud computing. I have an obscene number of computers and laptops. It’s a real pain to know that a file exists somewhere and then have to figure out which of the four likely places it is. But I will take that, every time, over being able to work on something only until the Internet connection slows to a crawl or stops.

This isn’t an appeal for some large government program that will assure Internet access anywhere and everywhere. Rather, it’s saying that unless we have such a program (whether supplied by the market or the government), it’s going to make more sense to work on files locally rather than remotely.

-{via Dustbury}-

I haven’t made the complete transition to Windows 7 yet. All of my secondary computers are still on XP (or, in two cases, Vista). When you do a search on XP, there’s a little dog that appears in the lower left-hand corner. You can make it to tricks. The problem with this digital dog is that it makes noise (some scratching sound). I don’t mind the dog, but the noise is irritating. But to get rid of the noise, you have to get rid of the dog. Right-click and tell it to take a hike and it trots away.

I feel the slightest bit bad about telling a digital dog to take a hike.

I feel ridiculously dumb for that sentiment.

—

Many years ago – maybe it’s till around – there was an application you could buy to raise a digital dog on your computer. My then-girlfriend Julianne had some. If you didn’t play with it often enough, it’d get droopy and sad. Sometimes it’d leave a dump on your screen. Julie bought me the program. I played with it a little bit, but it got old and only served to remind me that I didn’t have a real dog (mine had died not too long before). And I hated the notion that a digital dog required my attention or it would get pouty.

This is, of course, Zynga’s business model. Making you feel bad for letting pointless digital things languish. I guess, despite the stupid little feel-bad for telling the searchdog to leave, I am relatively immune.

My real dog would say that I am too immune to letting her languish.

—

Once upon a time, it was part of my job description to keep the office’s network up and running. It was an irritating part of my job. Not the least of which because I was having to look after the computing habits of a bunch of post-middle aged women who didn’t know the first thing about computers. One of them would say “Hey, Will. You need to see this!” so that she could show me something cute that the Office Help paperclip did. That was the second most annoying of all.

(The most annoying was conflating “I can’t find the database” (which I accidentally deleted the shortcut to) to “The database has been deleted.”)

Thanks to ED Kain, I learned that the Superbowl was streamed over the Internet. So I can watch it while doing various computer stuff at my console instead of on my laptop while sort of watching it on TV. I am only sort of watching it because there is little that interests me less than a game from a team from New York (that doesn’t play in New York) and a team from Boston (that doesn’t play in Boston, but doesn’t call itself Boston, either) playing for a championship. Even the fact that it’s a rematch to the game that proved what a travesty the NFL playoff system is.

Really, the streaming of sporting events is still relatively unexplored terrain.

There is no reason why any game in which there are cameras should not be available somewhere. Kain mentions less popular sports, but I would add to that less popular teams and leagues.

Among the various subscriptions/services I have having to change credit cards on includes CBS All-Access. CBSAA simply plugs in to the jumbotron of the home team and hooks up audio from the radio announcers. No one is going to confuse it with a televised event. For instance, you see a “GO WILDCATS! ROAR!” in between plays, because they’re trying to get the Wildcat fans riled up. Also, in football, there are no replays because they don’t like fans looking at the jumbotron and seeing what a moronic call the refs just made.

I was able to watch 8 of the Southern Tech Packers 12 games last season on bonafide television (excluding post-season), with an additional two on ESPN3.com (which is a traditional broadcast feed), and the last two on CBSAA. Comparatively few teams allow you to watch all 12 games. And almost none where you can watch all of the basketball games. It’s great to use streaming to plug in those gaps. And, if you’re willing to go the jumbotron route, it’s comparatively cheap to do so. I’d also like to see them add college baseball to the mix.

The only non-traditional sport I like to watch is rugby. Every now and again I see them on BBCA. I sometimes watch because the sport is interesting, but I never have any context. Given the chance, I might follow a rugby team of some sort. Or maybe I would get into lacrosse and watch the NLL.

The sports networks are always trying to find something to get us to watch. Particularly during football season, when they are throwing money low-bar conference teams (MAC, WAC) to get them to play a game on a Wednesday night. They’ve thrown their weight behind women’s basketball, soccer, and college hockey. I don’t know whether it’s stranger that they show people playing cards on cable, or that it was more successful than all of the others. The problem with trying to add new sports, at least from my perspective, is that coverage is so scattershot I can never get into it (or figure out the rules, in some cases). If I stumble across a lacrosse game between the Buffalo Bandits and the Rochester Knighthawks, I know the likelihood that I will ever see either of these teams again is slim. If I knew that I could follow a team, I might get into it.

The trick is to come up with a good advertising model (whether we’re talking about lacrosse or Big Sky Conference football). CBSAA is based on subscriptions and doesn’t bother to run ads (most of the time, sometimes you get the radio ads). ESPN3 is based on backroom deals between your ISP’s and ESPN. ESPN3 does run ads, but most of the time when it’s a commercial break, you’re looking at a black screen as they run a different set of ads (usually the same ad over and over again). Not only is it a place to add ads, but the ads would be *welcome*. Watching the Superbowl, the adspace is mostly taken up by Dwight Shrute asking you to click on ads and watch them.

Alameida writes:

Occasionally a well-meaning friend will look at my bedside table and say, “wow, you’re taking so much medicine! Maybe you’d feel better if you just stopped taking so much! I’d feel bad if I was taking all those pills.”

I’m going to talk slowly, but here’s the thing: people take medicine because they’re sick. Why on God’s green earth would you imagine I am so stupid as not to have tried not taking medicine? The “not taking medicine” state is the very state in which I ever came to the doctor about a given problem, as a little thinking would make clear. “Oh, but maybe that’s gone now and you should stop taking them again!” You know what? I tried that too! Again, not a complete moron over here.

I am myself somewhat medicine-resistant. Not in the biological sense (that I have a tolerance), but in the temperamental. I twisted my back something irksome, and though I vaguely know I would feel better if I took some Alieve, I still haven’t done so. I have the vague feeling that medication is something to be avoided except when you really need it. I don’t take a real position on our “over-medicated society” (except perhaps as it pertains to antibiotics), though a lot of people do.

There is, however, a difference between saying “There are too many people on ADHD meds” and suggesting, to someone you don’t know really well, that they shouldn’t be taking whatever meds. This isn’t an appeal on the basis of “don’t judge me if you haven’t walked in my shoes” but rather an appeal to not personal judgments on relatively limited information. I had a… friend named Sally on anti-depression medication. Sometimes she would go off them. I could tell when she had. She would become erratic. She would become paranoid. She would, all of the sudden, be really bitter. Even on her meds, there was always a Good Sally and a Bad Sally. Off the meds, Good Sally would go to hibernation. There are other people I have known really well who talk about going back on meds where I think “This is less an inflammation of your depression and more just being sad and/or bored.” Sometimes I’ve been right (the medication didn’t help) and sometimes I’ve been wrong (it did). In the event that I was right, comparatively little was lost, in my view. In the event that I was wrong, I would have (if I’d said anything) told them not to do something that genuinely helped. It’s easy for me to say that they should grin and bear it.

This all ties into my original Unsolicited Advice.

Moving from the general (too many people taking medication, too many people going to law school) to the specific and universal (someone taking medication should consider stopping, don’t ever go to law school except under the circumstances I outline) is not just offensive to some, but often counterproductive. The better part is listening. And, if not directing (and definitely not directing), informing (“a lot of people think that going to Southeast State Law School will get them a good career. Sometimes it might, but a lot of those people are going to be very disappointed.”) A degree of humility is warranted, when you’re making guesses at someone else’s life.

In a previous linky-post, I pointed to the odd confederate subculture in Sweden. Dr. Phi responded:

As much as it warms my heart to see Swedes waving the Stars and Bars, I sincerely doubt they have a full understanding of, let alone embrace, its full cultural context as understood in America by either its supporters or its detractors.

This is absolutely right.

There was an episode of Daria wherein Daria’s friend Jane started dating a guy who was into swing dress and mores. One doubts that this character really wanted to live in the swing era (despite some protestations that they “had class” and such). Though technically it was an American style of dress (Mostly? I think?), the past is a foreign country, as they say. The further away you are removed from something, the easier it is to take a more superficial look at something. You can talk about how, during the swing era, they had class, without talking about how various segments of the population was treated. It’s more easy to imagine a way that things are – or were – without being confronted with some of the uglier details.

We do this all the time with pirates. There have been various attempts to dignify who the pirates were and whatnot, but mostly we don’t really think about it. We think about the way that we would have them speak, maybe the freedom of life at the sea, and in essence invent our own context for it.

Being from the South, the use of Confederate symbology has a much more specific meaning and context. Now, this meaning varies from person to person. Phi says that the Swedes don’t have the full cultural context, but to be honest not even Americans agree. If the flag meant what its detractors say it means, very few people would want to be associated with it. If it meant what its supporters say it does, there’d be a lot less in the way of objections. But though it means different things to different people, southerners know – or ought to know – more precisely how it is going to be received. Swedes, really, have no reason to care. They are unlikely to ever be confronted with someone who believes in means slavery (or a proto-nation built on slavery), Jim Crow, and so on. Just as Internet geeks have no reason to be concerned about old-timey pirates (they’re not impersonating the Somali ones, after all).

I don’t actually know Swedish culture very well, so it may well be the case that these folks are what we would consider white supremacists. It could actually represent a sort of anti-Americanism (chosing the symbols of a subculture that was at war with Washington, literally and figuratively). It’s difficult to say. But, even to the extent that this is true, it’s all still rooted in abstract notions and vagueries. Picking the parts of the culture and deciding that exemplifies the culture.

By modern standards, the lifestyles of neither the Athenians or the Spartans is something we would be remotely comfortable with. But we pick sides anyway. We conceptualize what they are really about. It’s easy to do because it means less to us than America’s Civil Rights struggles mean to Swedes.

It’s been a while now since studies have started suggesting that Project Self-Esteem was doing more harm than good by appraising kids on who they are instead of what they’ve done. It looks like people are finally starting to take note. I remember when my grades started to skyrocket in middle school. How did I feel? Terrified. I felt it was some sort of fluke that would be exposed to my own humiliation. Read the article to see how that relates.

Energy costs to suppliers declines 50% as shale assists energy growth. My energy costs have not decreased by 50%.

Note to Microsoft: OSes should get better and not worse over time. I have a dedicated NAS, so I don’t use Windows Server, but I have been annoyed at how anemic Vista/7’s photo slideshow screen saver is compared to XP. No, it’s not a big deal (there are freeware alternatives), but features should get better and not worse. On the other hand, every version of Windows Search was worse than the previous until Vista came along. Good show!

Does Facebook demonstrate that the Web is not as polarized as we think? No, but it does suggest that we are not as segregated as we think. I know this because of all of the arguments I see about how Obama and/or the Republicans are destroying our country (Note: this is not an invitation to talk about how Obama and/or the Republicans are destroying our country.)

My wife and I were married for three years before I gave her my password. Kids today are dumb.

I am naturally attracted to the idea of employee-ownership. But it might be a bad idea.

Buffalo is paying its teachers to have plastic surgery. This is such an embarrassment that the teachers union itself is willing to drop it at the next round of negotiations. But they don’t want a new round of negotiations. In the current environment, that’s understandable.

Men want sons and women want daughters. I will have to read the whole report at some point, but society’s girl-preference would mean that either (a) women want daughters in larger numbers or (b) women are more insistent on their desire for daughters.

Cue the ominous music. Mitt Romney has sent millions to an organization believed by many to be anti-gay and with a spotty racial history. Namely, his church. It’s actually an interesting article (without the ominous music, for the most part). I wonder if this is how the Obama campaign might run against Romney’s Mormonism without being accused of religious bigotry. Assuming Romney wins the nomination, of course.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: If you think that smoking should not inconvenience you, you are a prohibitionist. You logistically can’t allow smoking to be a legal and not allow people a place to actually smoke. Smokers will simply ignore the rules. Just as they do now, but in larger numbers. If they’re breaking the rules by smoking at home, they might as well break them by smoking in a place you are more likely to have to breathe it.

The record labels have been forced to pay $45M for claiming music that isn’t theirs.