Turtles all the way down

Spring, 1999. I had to get to Sacramento ASAP to take over a project at a remote office we had near Tahoe. I had one day to sit down with the team, learn what they had done, and bring all of their expertise back with me to Chicago.

I can think of a lot of things I would have rather been doing.

I booked a last minute direct flight for over $2100. Since my booking was last minute, I got the privilege of a middle seat. Between two guys who were 6 feet tall and weighed over 200 pounds. I figure that I can deal with it because the flight is only supposed to be four hours long.

After we pull out of the gate and taxi for a while, I notice that we’re in a remote part of the airport and that the engines were spinning down. Bad news. The captain gets on the intercom and tells us that weather is coming in from the west and air traffic control needs some time to figure out what to do.

Obviously, getting our plane up in the air in time to miss the storm was not on their list.

Two hours go by. The flight attendants serve pretzels and soda, and I get to know more than I want to about the guys I’m wedged in between. One of them travels to Japan quite often, and gives me detailed pointers about the alleged proclivities of Japanese women. I thanked him while looking at my watch for the 437th time.

Finally, the captain tells us that air traffic control has released us. But there’s a catch. In the two hours it took them to make up their minds about how we could avoid the coming storm, the storm have gotten so close that we could no longer ascend west to avoid it. And, the plane had used too much fuel taxiing and sitting around on the runway to skirt the storm and still make it to Sacramento. So we were going to fly to Dallas, refuel, and then head to our final destination.

You probably don’t have to look at a map to know that if the shortest path between Chicago and Sacramento is a straight line, Dallas isn’t anywhere near it.

We eventually arrived in Sacramento. Five hours late. That didn’t put me in a great mood for a two hour drive into the mountains.

And a few weeks later the project got cancelled.

Feedburner doesn’t like this term, but I do.

I’ve got ads running on four blog sites. In all of them I’m using Google Adsense for web ads and Pheedo for RSS feed ads. Doing this, I don’t quite make enough to pay for the hosting and domain name expenses, but at least I don’t leave any money on the table.

However, I still can’t figure out how to optimize my ads. I suspect that is how these ad-serving companies prefer it.

Publishers like me are typically paid by the click or by the view. Which way you get paid depends on the specific ad. For some ads, you get paid a nice chunk of change (anywhere from several cents to a dollar or more) when someone clicks through it to the advertiser’s site. For others, you get the click-through payment and a micro-payment for each ad view. The micro-payment might be fractions of a cent, but multiplied by thousands of hits, your total can quickly add up to dollars.

I’ve been with Adsense web ads for a while. The payouts usually make sense. Most days I make money, but the amount varies a lot. Nice statistics are available on their management page. No major complaints.

Referral ads are web-based ads that only pay out when someone clicks throug hand signs up for a service. I’ve tried referral ads through Adsense and Commission Junction but the success rates on the referrals has been very low, and ultimately not worthwhile.

My experience with Pheedo for RSS ads began in February. The payouts…are sporadic. I’ll go a month making a relatively steady amount each day. Then I’ll make nothing for several weeks. Then I’ll make a large payout for a few days. Then nothing. I suspect that Pheedo is constantly experimenting with their payout model or the types of ads they serve. Statistically speaking, it is highly unlikely that I’d get moderate traffic for a month and then nothing for a month after that.

Not thrilled with Pheedo, I tried TextLinkAds. I couldn’t get them them to work. Probably my fault. Then I tried Yahoo RSS ads. They worked fine by I never made a red cent. Nothing. Nada. Lots of hits, though. I don’t know what Yahoo’s revenue model is, but it sucked for me. I would still like to try Feedburner RSS ads, but they haven’t accepted me into their program. Grrrrr… Hopefully that will change since they’re now owned by Google.

Here is what I’d like to see. More transparency in the process of turning web site activity into revenue. I’d like to know what kind of ads are being served and how many hits I’ve had of each type. Today, the ad-serving companies have very little accountability and we’re forced to just trust them. Good for them, bad for us the web publishers, and probably bad for the web advertisers as well.

One of my professors told this story about his recent airport experience. I’m writing this from memory so I may not get all of the details right, but you’ll get the general point without them…

The professor is a little late getting to the airport. He’s on the last flight from San Diego to Chicago on a Sunday night and needs to be doing something in Chicago early Monday morning. Missing the flight is not an option. He gets to security and there are at least 100 people in front of him in line. There are three scanners but only one is open. Two TSA people are working the open scanner and four more are standing around talking.

After 10 minutes, the line has not moved. The professor is getting impatient so he shouts to the TSA people at the scanners, “Hey, how about opening another scanner? There are four of you guys with nothing better to do!”

People in line with him begin applauding and thanking him.

After a couple of minutes, they open another scanner, and the line dissipates very quickly. When the professor goes through the scanner, a TSA agent pull him aside and tells him that he will be subject to a manual search. The professor asks the TSA agent, “Was I chosen for a search because I shouted earlier?”

“No, sir,” the TSA agent replies, “You were randomly chosen.”

The professor looks around. None of the 100 people ahead of him in line had been manually searched. No one behind him had been manually searched so far.

He turns to the TSA agent. “I’m an attorney and I know my rights. This search does not seem random to me. I’m the only one that has been searched so far. I think you’re searching me because I shouted and that is harassment.”

The TSA agents have a quick huddle and then they start stopping and searching other people going through security.

When he got home the professor filed a civil rights complaint against the TSA. You go, prof.

My family and I had booked a trip to Syracuse to visit my in-laws. My wife went first with the kids and I followed up a couple of days later. We were scheduled to come home together.

We were flying one of the two biggest US airlines. I won’t say which one but you’ve got a 50% chance of guessing right (and if you’re wrong, it’s the other one).

On the day of our flight back to Chicago, we check out of the hotel, say goodbye to the in-laws, had the car packed and were about to leave, when my wife wisely decided to check the online status of our flight. Originally scheduled to depart at 7pm, it was canceled.

She was pissed and justifiably so. The kids had school the next day. I had work the next day.

I called the frequently flier help line. I have status with the airline but apparently not enough to make a difference. After explaining what had happened to the agent, she gave me a different number to call. I was on hold for a while and then explained the situation again. This person apologized profusely but stated that there was nothing they could do except re-book us. She said they they could get me out at 6am the next day, but there was no room for my family until a flight four days later. My wife overhears part this part of the conversation and lets fly a string of four letter words at the agent.

I felt sorry for the agent…nah, no I didn’t.

I asked about switching our tickets to fly out of other cities in the region, such as Albany or Rochester. Nope. Nothing. I explained that we needed to travel together, so she booked all of us on the next day’s 7pm flight (my jaw is still on the floor as to why they thought we’d want to stay in town four more days). I then asked her what the airline was going to do about the inconvenience that they had just inflicted on us. She gave me yet another number to call…the complaint department.

On hold again, then I’m talking to some guy in India. At least I assumed that he was in India. He definitely had an Indian accent. I explained that we would have to pay for an extra night in a hotel, an extra day of car rental, laundry, an extra day of food, etc. Not to mention the fact that I would miss work, my kids would miss school, and the airline had really foobar’ed my day by canceling the flight out from under me. I told him I expected the airline to compensate me for all of the above.

Nope. He explained to me that it was against airline policy to do so. At this point, I wasn’t trying to hide the fact that I was highly pissed off. I explained how I was a frequent flier on the airline and had a choice not to be one in the future. How I would tell everyone I knew what horrendous service the airline gave to its best customers. How it was inconceivable that I would be expected to pay the hundreds of dollars associated with being in Syracuse an extra night without any fault on my part. And so on for over 15 minutes.

Then he offers me a $300 credit. So much for airline policy. I immediately shot back that it wasn’t good enough and went through my arguments again. He told me that $300 was the most he was authorized to credit me. I went on. He then offers me a $400 credit. So much for authorization. I accepted.

The next day I managed to work remotely from my in-laws’ house. We made the 7pm flight and it arrived in Chicago only a few minutes late.

We just used the credit to purchase another set of tickets to Syracuse. I may have more to write soon…

It’s no secret that I have a particular weakness for Starbucks coffee. It just tastes better than most other brands. In fact, I like it so much that I began to suspect that they’re lacing it with some highly addictive drug. So, a few years back I bought up a bunch of their stock.

Anyway, I just don’t get the point of having a Starbucks card. You know, the little gift card thingies they sell in the stores. Whether you use cash, credit, or the Starbucks card, the coffee costs the same. It’s no more convenient to carry around the Starbucks card than it is to carry a major credit card (in fact it’s less convenient since the Starbucks card is one more thing in your wallet).

The main advantages of the Starbucks card benefit Starbucks. By putting a large chunk of money, say $40 on the card, they only incur at most one credit card transaction fee rather than 15-20. This saves them a lot of money. Additionally, if you happen to lose your unregistered Starbucks card, you’re SOL, while they are either up your remaining balance, or at least no worse off if someone else finds an uses it. Having you carry around their cards is also great marketing for Starbucks. And you’re paying for that privilege.

There is one benefit to you…Starbucks cards make nice gifts. Oh, and there is a collectors market for rare cards. That’s it.

Disclaimer: I own Starbucks stock. I told you that above. But I don’t own enough to make a difference to anything or anybody, so don’t sweat it.

One of my professors asked for the class’s thoughts about the government’s right or ability to eavesdrop or seek out personal information for the overall purpose of national security, versus an individual’s right to put out all kinds of information themselves on Facebook or Myspace. In particular, do others have rights to seek out and use such information?

My emailed response is below.

I’m at least 10 years older (but not necessarily any wiser) than most students in the class but I’ll take a shot at it.

Anything I post about myself in a public forum on the Internet, I expect to be available forever to anyone who looks for it. Therefore I consciously choose to not post certain types of information (like my social security #, kids names, how much I drank last weekend…)

Anything I post in a private forum on the Internet I expect to probably remain private but with the possibility that it will not. So again, I censor myself, but not as much as in a public forum. In a designated private forum I expect a degree of privacy though I also suspect that others may not honor it. I may post anonymously, but knowing that even anonymous posts can sometimes be traced accurately.

I do not believe that the govt should be able to eavesdrop on communications that I undertake with an assumption of privacy, unless they have cause to suspect that I’m a threat to national security. How high to set the bar for this suspicion is a whole topic of its own.

If I really got paranoid I would use programs that encrypt my email, my laptop hard drive, and erase unused parts of my hard drive. So called military grade tools are readily available. Maybe the NSA can hack them anyway…I don’t know.

You’re right, this is more appealing than Torts.

Hopefully the latter wise-ass comment won’t get me in too much trouble. Perhaps I should have posted it anonymously…

It was only 30% of my grade.

Yesterday I handed in the final draft of my first legal writing memo. It was an analysis of a limited amount of Illinois case law surrounding intentional infliction of emotional distress, and an application of this analysis to a given scenario.

Over the last few days I got into the habit of asking fellow students, “How’s your emotional distress?” Of course, I was leaving open whether I was asking about their memos or their emotional distress over their memos.

It wasn’t bad. I had my draft in good shape the weekend before last, and put in a few minor edits this past weekend. I know that I’m not a good last minute writer. My typing is terrible and I can’t proof my own work very well within 24-48 hours of writing anything. So I plan to get writing assignments substantially complete a week ahead of time.

Of course, by getting ahead in one class, this means that I didn’t do something else. Last week was the first week I didn’t get a chance to fully prepare for class. I had just run out of time and couldn’t read a couple of cases for Torts. Not a disaster, but a let down as I’d been on top of things until now.

For the rest of the month my focus will be on my next writing assignment, which requires us to do our own statutory and case law research, then write a memo based on it. And I need to get serious about my outlining…

There probably has always been an escalating war between those who create spam and those who block it. Most typically, your email address gets onto one of the many spam lists floating around and it becomes the target of fake stock deals and Viagra pill scams.

Even more insidious for me at this moment is Wordpress blog comment spam. It hasn’t happened on this blog yet, but on my other site, Avant Music News it is hitting me pretty hard each day. AMN is somewhat popular and has been around for almost five years, making it a particularly attractive target for spam.

Blog apps like Wordpress allow two types of comments to be posted: comments replying to your posts, as well as trackbacks, which are references to your posts from other sites. Scripts exist that allow spammers to scan your blog for posts, and create fake comments and trackbacks, most of which contain a link to some site that the spammer would like people to visit.

Wordpress comes with the wonderful Askimet spam filter, that does a great job catching the vast majority of spam. But it also generates a few false positives. For a while, each day I would sift through hundreds of comment and trackback spam for the very few that were legit comments erroneously marked as spam.

Then I installed the Did You Pass Math? plugin that requires a commenter to solve a simple arithmetic problem before their comment is registered. Overnight my comment spam went down to zero. The plugin did not help with trackback spam however but at that time I didn’t have a problem with the latter.

However the spammers have gone one up in the arms race by creating fake blogs that essentially copy posts from a legit blog, creating a trackback. One example is here. The fake posts can sometimes pass the natural language tests of Askimet. Spammers have also made their scripts smart enough to solve simple math problems, so I’m swamped with comment spam as well.

None, or at least very little of this spam is making it though the filters. The point is I have to check the filters periodically, which gets to be burdensome. I’m back to sorting through comments and trackbacks caught by Askimet for the small number of false positives. I’ve also banned the IP addresses of the worst spam offenders.

So, I sit waiting for the next innovation in spam protection. Aside from completely turning off comments, that is…

Being on evening student, I’m going to advocate a bonus point system for evening law students.

Add 0.3 GPA points for having a full time job.
Add 0.2 GPA points for being married.
Add 0.1 GPA points for each child five and over.
Add 0.2 GPA points for each child under five.

This way I can get a 4.0 by getting a 3.2. Thank you.