Solve for X

If you’re at all mathematically inclined—algebraic, even—you might find this amusing:

I do. So much that I'm not even waiting for Pi day to post it.

Old Outlook

As I’ve mentioned before, I am not enchanted by Windows 10, or its Office365 iteration. I disliked it when I first experienced it and it has not improved in the intervening months.

One of its more annoying proclivities is forcibly pushing you into “optimizing” your experience—for example, every time I go to save a file it defaults to Microsoft’s cloud storage site, OneDrive. And for all it attempts to appear to have the coolness of a web app, it never freaking learns that I’m never going to save to OneDrive.

There’s also the “because we’re Microsoft” approach to mandatory updates, along with the periodic reboot of your PC. I really do not like software that makes the user continually adapt to it instead of the other way around.

As for the updates, here’s their idea of something worth calling your attention to when the machine reboots and you reopen the software:

I’d so much prefer to have an interface that clearly distinguishes email threads than a calendar in Persian.

Round the block

Watching/using online properties is a fascinating experience. You’re a part of the struggle between Good and Evil on a daily basis, in so many ways. You don’t really need to pay $15 for a Star Wars franchise film (except for the Imax experience), because you get it whenever you hit a landing page.

Websites are becoming increasingly obnoxious about their ads—they literally explode in the middle of content, with (my biggest annoyance) loud videos just blazing into action and the close button nearly invisible.

Then there are the pop-up “sign up for our emails!” boxes that cover up the content about 12 seconds after you land. Very often you’re given only one option to make the obstruction disappear—enter an email address. (Although I’ve discovered that, even if they don’t provide a “Nope” choice, or a close-box button, if you just click outside the damned thing, it disappears. And if it doesn’t, I always decide that the content isn’t worth my time.)

Naturally, technologists saw the universal need in these scenarios, and thus were born any number of ad blockers, some native to the browser and some that you install as extensions. And as these products did their job, web publishers and advertisers upped their game to dodge, subvert and crush them.

Ergo the eternal war of Good and Evil.

For example, links to both Fortune and Forbes frequently are intercepted by a page that offers you a thought-for-the-day or some commercial message.

And I always wonder who it is, that one person out of their daily traffic of tens of thousands, who actually thinks, “Why, yes—I believe I’ll interrupt my quest for your pithy articles to watch some crappy commercial or ponder your faux-Zen management-lite truism.”

Recently I’ve noticed that Forbes is getting pushier about visitors to their site getting a free (at least an ad-free) ride.

I’m not the only one, as witnessed by this tweet that came across my feed:

But this is not the end of the story. Last week I was tracking down some information on events that Forbes puts on and I got into an endless loop of going-nowhere as the ad-blocker blocker refused to let me into the site, no matter how many times I clicked on the “continue to site” button. (I’d click and the page would refresh on itself.)

How did I solve the problem? I fired up Internet Explorer, used their crappy UX to get to the content page, and then closed it out again as soon as I got what I wanted.

I’m sure we’re due for more sophistication in ad blocking, to be followed by bigger hammers from the advertisers. I’m making more popcorn and settling in for the next chapter. It’ll be epic.

Not much of a Yahoo

I’m on a couple of Meetups that use Yahoo Groups to communicate, so every few months I have to fish out my Yahoo account password and log in so I can download files that have been shared.

Every time I do I recall one of the many reasons why I long ago stopped using it. Including this collection of spam, which (whatever you might think about Google), I never see in my Gmail queue:

Seriously—what sort of sad, sad individual would even click on those things? I need to be hosed down with disinfectant just for looking at them.

PULEEZE check it out

Apparently I’m not done harping on the Santa Clara County Library District’s (SCCLD) notion of user interface for their online catalog. Because their product managers and UX designers just keep on giving me harp material.

My days of browsing in library stacks are largely over, for a number of reasons. My typical pattern is to hear about a book, or read a review, go to a library’s website, and (if they have it) put it on hold. When it becomes available, I borrow it. Sometimes I read reviews at the time of publication, and if I don’t reserve the book then, I’ll forget about it by the time it hits the SCCLD’s shelves. It’s just easier.

(Yeah, I could make a list. But then I’d have to keep track of it somewhere. Not happening.)

I’ve already told you about their kludgy interface—with the application just hanging like it can’t decide whether to grant your impertinent request or not. They’ve apparently fixed that, because it now completes the action and gives you an acknowledgement message.

Well, except that the other day this is what I got:

I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong, and that error message is not particularly informative.

So when I went to the Cupertino branch to pick up some materials on hold, I asked the guy at the circulation desk what gives. And it turns out that library patrons are limited to a maximum of 12 holds at a time. (You can check out boatloads of books, but only have 12 holds in the system.) Only when I either cancel a hold or check out something that’s become available can I put another item on hold.

Well, okay, fine.

But why could they not word their error message to tell me that? How hard is it to say, “You’ve reached the maximum number of holds allowed”? Why cite some mysterious “problem”, and tell me to “see a librarian”? A librarian can’t help, unless s/he can override their system.

And, in fact, a librarian is a highly-educated person who should be dealing with matters a lot more human than looking up my account to try to decipher something that sloppy technocrats slapped up there because they couldn’t be bothered to program in useful messaging.

IMHO.

"Your care is important to us"

Remember my monolithic healthcare practice? As with all businesses the size of General Motors, they try to get their customers (“patients”) to do as much of the work for them, with the least amount of human involvement on their part, as possible. They worship anything “online”.

Then they enhance the experience by making it as tedious and opaque as they can.

Remember those days of yesteryear, when the day before your appointment one of the practice people would call to remind you? Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) sends you an email:

Please take note of the fact that they give you no actual, you know, information. They make you log into their site and click through at least two screens to get that.

(Actually, the orthopedics department robocalls you. Seriously, it’s a computer, inexorable and implacable, that calls within two minutes of 1800, when all their office staff has left for the day. So if you do need to speak with a human, you’re SOL until the next business day. Man, nothing says “we care” like robocalls.)

They do the same thing with any appointment follow-up—lab results, or diagnosis from X-rays: an email advising you that they have important information about your health; so go log in if you’re at all interested, because it’s sure as hell not in the email.

(Yes, I know, they’re concerned about privacy. I’m concerned about dealing with an organization with enough employees to fill their own ZIP code, supposedly focused on providing healthcare, who go to great lengths to exhibit all the warmth of an ATM. Also, they have no problem with leaving those robomessages on voicemail or answering machines; there goes your privacy argument.)

The other day I wanted to do some follow-up of my own, so I used the site’s “talk with your care team” function. (Yes, that’s what they call it.) Here’s what they show you when you initiate the application:

Not only do they have the disclaimer that you have to listen to with any medical-related IVR system, but you cannot get to the message screen until you swear that you’re not a danger to yourself or others.

Does losing the will to live while trying to navigate their kludgy systems count?

Search-suggestion Bingo

Okay, since yesterday I had a go at Google’s auto-complete algorithm, I thought it only fair to do likewise with Bing. Interesting differences.

For What, Google first gave a techie suggestion—“what is my IP”. Bing cuts directly to the bottom line.

Evidently a lot of people on both search sites are feeling a little peaky, and for Why Bing must feel it’s especially important to suggest a search for those who are really too tired to complete their thought.

It’s interesting to me that When brings a whole thing about Father’s Day on both search engines. Are people seriously so vague about when this holiday hits (even though it’s the same third Sunday in June every year) that they’re asking this question year round?

I’m also a little concerned for those who are asking about Father’s Day 2014. Still.

How brings some of the most varied suggestions—perhaps because by the time you get around to asking about methodologies, you’re all set to go. I could spend a lot of time fleshing out the stories for the How queries. Madonna? Belly fat? Ebola? Dunno about Howard’s Appliances, though.

Where gets us to a more existential place, as you might expect. I wonder a little about Bing giving pride of place to not only suggesting a tax-related query, but straight out coughing up the URL to the IRS refund page. Lotta stories there, I’m betting.

I expect the confederate flag query is fairly recent. I’m afraid to seek out wheresgeorge.com in case it turns out to be a porn site. And I have no idea who the host of The Amazing Race is, so I don’t care where he was born.

I’m very disappointed that Bing doesn’t seem to care about who let the dogs out. But I can see how knowing who invented the toilet would be high on the let-us-help-with-your-query list.

P.S. The tallest trees in the world are just up the road from me, in Redwood National and State Parks. You’re welcome.

Gaming Google

Sometimes I just like to poke things. I refrained this morning from poking the bumble bee that was exploring squash flowers in someone’s garden, but I thought I’d have a go at Google.

Because it’s fun to see what those crazy algorithms come up with as you’re searching for things. I mean, I love auto-complete; it's the online version of getting so stuck on various words in the dictionary that you forget what it was you went there to look up.

Today I thought I’d try those stalwarts of journalistic inquiry, the six honest serving-men of Kipling (from one of my favorite stories, “The Elephant’s Child”).

I keep six honest serving-men

  (They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

  And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,

  I send them east and west;

But after they have worked for me,

  I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five,

  For I am busy then,

As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,

  For they are hungry men.

But different folk have different views.

  I know a person small-

She keeps ten million serving-men,

  Who get no rest at all!

She sends'em abroad on her own affairs,

  From the second she opens her eyes-

One million Hows, two million Wheres,

  And seven million Whys!

So here’s what Google auto-complete suggested for me, when I typed in just the word in each case:

What stories could we make up about these suggestions? For example, is the fox's poop green? Why or why not? Do you measure Madonna's age in human or dog years? What's all the concern about Father's Day, especially a month after the event? Where does hope grow, and do you have to fertilize it?

And, the ultimate question: who did let the dag-blamed dogs out?

Not even the Amighty escapes

If you haven’t worked in the arena of gathering requirements from customers—or, really, dealing with clients in any capacity—you may not find this as hysterical as I do. It’s “Client Feedback on the Creation of the Earth”, from a San Francisco-based humor site.

The language is so…”communications-y”. The sort of thing you’d get from focus group facilitators or anyone in any marketing department anywhere. Actually, from anyone with an MBA.

Viz. point 4: “Right now we’re only seeing two great lights in the sky… a greater one for day and a lesser one for night? Thinking that maybe we weren’t clear in the original briefing. Definitely need more than just two great lights. Need to make this a memorable, high-value experience for our users. Please revisit slides thirteen and fourteen in the deck. Shout with questions.”

And then there’s the “Please consider the environment before printing this email”.

Well—have a look (especially at slides 18 and 27; there may be showstoppers.

Thoughts?

When you're not the only one with Photoshop...

Oh, dear—Photoshop is getting quite the workout over the Unity march in Paris on Sunday.

You’ll recall that French president François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel led the procession, and that they were joined by ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, to the amusement of everyone in the world with an Adobe subscription.

Well, it turns out that a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) newspaper in Jerusalem thought it inappropriate that the actual participants in the demonstration be shown with men arm-in-arm with women not their actual, you know, wives or blood relations, so they excised Merkel, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo and Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt from the shot. (They also cropped out the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as well.)

I’m not going to comment on a Weltanshauung that is so terrified of very thought of images of actual women appearing in the representation of an historic event that they falsify photos. We saw it a few years ago when Hasidic newspapers in Brooklyn Photoshopped out Hillary Clinton and another woman from the iconic situation room photo during the takedown of Osama bin Laden, and I already didn’t comment on that. Much.

Instead, I’ll give you the response to HaMevaser from the Interwebs:

Sic semper anyone who thinks they can get away with dicking around with women on the web. That horse done left the barn.

Turning to the Dark Side

Yes. Through the generosity of a friend, I am finally in possession of an Apple product. Viz.: a 64Gb iPad Air 2. I decided that I needed to get my head around iOS so I don’t appear to be so last-century when I speak with with-it thought-leader Ninja-rockstar innovators here in the Valley They Call Silicon.

And—I was getting a bit uneasy that my friend Amy would refuse to speak to me if I didn’t cough up some Apple app-ness. :You might not think it to look at her, but you do not want to get on the wrong side of Amy’s expectations of tech cred.

I actually went looking into iPads in August, and they were fine and all. But when I asked about using Swype (I wouldn’t be able to do anything on a virtual keyboard without Swype capabilities), the Apple-boy told me that iOS 8 would have it, so I told my generous friend that I’d wait for that. And he replied that if I wanted to wait a little longer, the Air 2s would be out in October…

When I saw that those would have anti-glare screens and that totally cool fingerprint access, well…

Yes, I can be as shallow as the next guy.

Naturally, you get this beautifully designed package, containing only the tablet, a power cord and outlet connector. Nothing that in any way might resemble any sort of user manual, no—either you’re meant to pick this stuff up in the air or…I suppose there are YouTube videos.

(And, BTW, Apple—a unique connector for this device, which means I have to use this one specific cable and therefore have to take this one specific cable with me when I travel. To add to all the other connectors I need for MP3 player, cameras, laptop, etc. Thanks so much for non-interoperability; such a great design concept.)

And I got it set up (pretty much), although so far I’ve found their interface pushy and heavily geared towards upselling me on add-ons.

Here’s what I’ve done in the slightly more than 24 hours that I’ve had it:

Been forced to get an Apple ID. (After which they sent me an email congratulating me.)

Been forced to sign up for iCloud. (Email.)

Been forced to sign up for iTunes. (Email.)

Been unable to download Firefox. (Doesn’t support iOS.)

Downloaded Kindle app. (Email.)

Downloaded Twitter app. (Email.)

Downloaded Facebook app. (Email.)

They also heavy-handedly tried to get me to give them all sorts of PII, and credit card information, which activities ought to have a “get stuffed” option.

Okay, I'll confess that the fingerprint unlocking mechanism is really cool; especially the process you go through to set it up. I may have to go through it for all ten fingers, just to watch it populate all the ridges and whorls. Yes, I am easily amused.

I’m going to have to break down and go to one or more of their “how to use our incredibly cool and intuitive devices if you’re not cool and intuitive enough to pick it up through the air” classes.

I’m sure that at some point the device’s capabilities will outweigh the corporation’s capacity for pissing me off.

Meanwhile, I'm really enjoying the exploration process, and I'm massively grateful I have the opportunity to join the cool-kids table, even if it's kind of under false pretenses.

We talk, you listen

Carrying on with this week’s theme of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), here’s something else that emerged from last week’s Grace Hopper Celebration in Phoenix. You know, the site of Microsoft’s Satya Nadella’s verbal suicide attempt.

There was a session on Male Allies for women in tech, billed as an opportunity to discuss how tech companies are making the effort to welcome women into their halls, and the ways men and women can change the testosterone-fueled culture in those very companies.. The “plenary” panel consisted of Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer; Google's SVP of search Alan Eustace; Blake Irving, CEO of GoDaddy; and Tayloe Stansbury, CTO of Intuit.

There was already pushback at the inclusion of Irving, as GoDaddy’s got a history of in-your-face sexism both internally and in the way they present their service through their advertising. And then, after delivering some anodyne claptrap, the panel declined to engage in a Q&A session.

Because “engagement” was clearly not their intention.

But—kind of like Nadella’s advice on how women should approach getting pay increases and promotions—while the high-tech hierarchs might have thought they were really earning karmic credits by issuing statements on how they really dig the chicks and so no problem, really, what they were actually doing was demonstrating how wide-spread the problem is, and how far everyone has to go just to get their heads around it.

Because these men clearly consider themselves in the vanguard of doing-the-right-thing for diversity; and their idea of doing the right thing does not include discussion.

It did, however, include such advice as “excel, and…push through whatever boundaries you see in front of you. Just continue to push and be great,” etc. (Continue to be great—super excellent and practical advice!) And also a statement by Eustace denying that tech companies are actively entrenched around their toxic cultures.

Which he clearly though he’d get away with because of no Q&A.

Well, their audience had come prepared. A group called “The Union of Concerned Feminists” handed out “Ally Bingo” cards, so that audience members could tick off all the usual empty phrases you hear when a man is trying to convince you (or VCs or congressional committees) of the sincerity of his commitment to diversity and to supporting women in technology.

About midway through the panel, one woman called out, “Bingo!”

Okay—it turns out that Eustace is somewhat more aware than Nadella, because not too long after the plenary débâcle, he tweeted that he wanted to hold a second, informal, session, where the audience could talk and the execs would listen.

And blow me if Eustace, Irving and Schroepfer didn’t sit down in a room full of women and take notes when individuals shared their experiences (amongst a sea of nodding heads).

It occurs to me that there still wasn’t an actual exchange there, what you could call a discussion, but getting those in power to shut the hell up for a minute and actually listen is a major step forward to getting some clarity about the problem, so you can begin to work on solving it.

I do hope the execs weren’t just doodling on their notepads, and that whatever attention they were paying lasted at least until they got back to the office.

I also hope they took some of the Ally Bingo cards with them and work to ban those condescending, moronic phrases. That would also be a start.

Boys will be idiots, Part Duh

It’s interesting that, in span of a few days, when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a 17-year-old advocating for girls’ education, and just before Ada Lovelace day (the annual celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM), the CEO of one of the über-tech companies of all time opened his mouth at a conference all about women in STEM…

And Microsoft’s Satya Nadella told his audience at the Grace Hopper Celebration last Thursday that women who do not ask for raises are showing their traditional superpowers and building up karmic credits that will pay out through the HR systems of whatever organization they work for.

No, I am not making that up. Here’s what he said when asked for advice on how women who are uncomfortable about asking for salary increases should approach the process:

“It’s not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along. And that, I think, might be one of the additional superpowers that, quite frankly, women who don’t ask for raises have. Because that’s good karma. It’ll come back. Because somebody’s going to know: ‘That’s the kind of person that I want to trust. That’s the kind of person that I want to really give more responsibility to.’ And in the long-term efficiency, things catch up.”

It’s not enough that women in technology companies (and elsewhere, no doubt) are being told by their managers to be “less abrasive” and to “step back” and “let others shine” if they actually speak up to, you know, contribute to corporate success. (While men are given suggestions on what technical skills they might want to develop.) Or even that women who ask for raises are seen as “unpleasant”, while men doing the same are not viewed negatively.

But now the CEO of Microfreakingsoft flat out tells women: don’t ask for a raise, Babycakes, and the very act of not asking will ripple through the great, all-knowing halls of your corporation, and your superpower-strength forbearance will in the end pay off. Because “the system will give you the right raises as you go along.”

Just state your request—silently—to the universe, and your increase will drop from the branches of the cosmic salary tree.

Oh, please. It’s bullshit advice like this that has meant that women have to be twice as good as men at whatever technology we’re talking about to get half the respect and 78% of the pay. Not to mention grinning and bearing through the fratboy brogrammer cultures. Tech companies up and down the Valley They Call Silicon are reluctantly releasing demographic data (prodded by the Anita Borg Institute, which organizes the Grace Hopper Celebration) that reveals again and again that most of their techies are young males (primarily white and Asian).

(Moreover, if you look at what Nadella said, if you just smile and show how hard you work, “someone is going to notice”…and what you’ll get is more responsibility. He says nothing about more actual, you know, money. And that’s the system as we currently know it.)

And you have to ask: is this the advice Nadella gives to men in tech; just wait for your work to be rewarded? Hell no, it isn’t, because the entire industry is roaring with its males continually and loudly competing for more recognition and money. Because they all know that size matters, and you measure size by how far your ego gets you as well as by your salary, bonus, stock options and the rest of it.

That “I am a ninja” mentality is the “traditional superpower” of men in most businesses, but certainly in technology.

It was great that Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College (which is all about STEM, and which until about 35 years ago was male-only) shared the stage with Nadella. She stepped in and politely disagreed with that piece of advice, and shared a couple of experiences of her own, where she didn’t advocate effectively for herself. Which just goes to show you: if a woman as astute and respected as Klawe has problems with negotiating salaries, we all have a lot to learn.

Some time after Nadella left the stage in Phoenix someone must have pointed out the shitstorm that was erupting around the Internet, and he issued first a tweet saying he’d been “unclear” about the issue:

Then the PR folks got to him and he issued a statement saying he’d been “wrong” in his answer, and that—man or woman—“if you think you deserve a raise, just ask.”

Yeah—no, not so much. Because the whole point of the question he was asked is that women are much less comfortable about or inclined to ask for a pay raise than men, and studies show that when they do ask, they’re much more likely to not get it and to in fact have a black mark laid against them for doing so.

So, Nadella’s “just ask” is kind of like Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no” campaign: catchy to say but both ridiculous and meaningless in the execution.

Although it does sound marginally better than his original response.

In a way, I’m glad Nadella was such an idiot, making that statement at a conference on women in technology. It shows exactly how systemic that attitude is—the one that says, “Oh, we value women in our organizations…as long as they shut up, smile at our antics and work.” Because the CEO of Microsoft—which reported earlier this month that 29% of its global workforce is female (and in the tech arena, only 17% are women)—really thought that was a fine answer to a question about an issue fundamental to hiring and retaining talented people.

It also raises the question of how well the CEO of Microsoft grasps the technologies of today. Because it’s almost as though he didn’t know that Twitter exists.

Fiber of life

My, my, time does roll around, doesn’t it? Seems like only yesterday I was writing about Beatrice Shilling, the woman who solved one of the more important engineering problems for the Royal Air Force during World War II. But, here we are at Ada Lovelace Day again, and I’m spoilt for choice in terms of subject matter.

But since I’m a military historian, I’ll stay with my area of expertise (a couple of years ago I introduced you to Joan Strothers Curran, who developed “window” or “chaff”, which was successfully used to confuse German radar reception in aid of D-Day). I’m honoring Stephanie L. Kwolek, the chemist whose curiosity led to the synthetic fiber we now know as Kevlar.

Kwolek, who died in June at age 90, actually took the job with the textile chemistry division of the DuPont Company as a temporary measure between undergraduate study and medical school. (As a child, she loved sewing and working with fabrics, but her mother convinced her that she wouldn’t make a good fashion designer because she was such a perfectionist; so she gave that up for medicine.) But she found the research she was doing into polymers so interesting that she decided she was where she should be and dug in.

It was in the mid-1960s, while she was looking into the creation of fibers capable of performing in extreme conditions, that she came across something that didn’t emerge from the process as expected—instead of a clear, syrupy liquid, it was thin and opaque. Ordinarily this sort of disappointing output would have been thrown away (which is what her colleagues wanted to do), but Kwolek was curious. She persuaded one of them to run it through a spinning process to remove liquid solvent and reveal fibers.

What came out of the spinneret was an exceptionally stiff fiber that tested five times as strong as steel of equal weight. It was also fire resistant. The DuPont crowd latched onto its potential right away—Kevlar has been used by law enforcement officers and combat troops since the mid-70s. It’s integral to body armor and helmets that deflect handgun and rifle fire, as well as shrapnel (which is ugly, ugly stuff).

Additionally, the fiber is used in tires, sporting equipment, cables and cellular phones.

Here’s what I really like about Kwolek: she was curious. She saw possibilities where her colleagues saw useless goop. She was willing to push for further information, again and again. She saw connections and tested everything. She was a successful and respected professional in an industry that typically expects those qualities to come in a package containing the Y chromosome and advanced degrees. And she shared her experience, her expertise and her enthusiasm, inspiring generations of potential scientists.

A paper she co-wrote for the Journal of Chemical Education in 1959, “The Nylon Rope Trick”, describes how to demonstrate condensation polymerization in a beaker at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. Yeah, beyond me, too, but it’s commonly demonstrated in classrooms around the country.

It’s possible that someone would have come up with a Kevlar-like fiber eventually, but Stephanie L. Kwolek got there first, doing what she loved. Saving thousands of lives, doing what you love; it don’t get any better than that.

Looking for drink in all the wrong places

The software teams that develop search engines must be such a puckish lot. At least the ones that build out that whole autosuggest “were you looking for” element. You know, the part that implies that you could not possibly have been searching for what you told it you were searching for.

And it’s not just limited to Google or Bing.

I was looking through the catalogs of several library systems here in the Valley they call Silicon, trying to find a book called The Kentucky Mint Julep. None of the systems has it; here’s what I was given by way of hopeful suggestions:

San José Public Library suggested:

Yeah, I get that. At least we were still in the Commonwealth.

Sunnyvale Public Library went a little farther afield with:

Mmm, well, at least the right initial letters for each word.

But Mountain View Public Library just ran off the rails:

What the hell—I’ll just have a glass of Macallan.

UPDATE: Santa Clara County Library tweets that only 65 libraries in the US have this book, so I can try an inter-library loan request. Which I'll do. I also think I should find out what this Nantucket Diet is, and why it's murderous.

Hey there, lonely girl

As if dealing with recruiter-morons who drive you crazy with their gabbling ignorance and incompetency isn’t enough tsuris in the World o’ Tech, now I have Google passing judgment on my life. And finding it wanting.

I was trying rather lackadaisically to build out a Google+ profile for the account associated with this blog. (Oh, like you don’t have multiple Gmail accounts? I’ve got one for each one of my personalities. At least, all the ones I know about. So far.) Really, the only reason I was doing it was to see if I could then determine who gives a post a +1, because the blogging platform tells you someone has, but not who.

Well, to set up your Google+ frisnic, Google demands that you tell them about everyone you could possibly connect with electronically, so they can bombard them with invitations to join [person] on Google+! Which I ignored.

  

Then it insists on you plugging into a bunch of interests, so it can bombard you with “suggestions similar to left-handed quilters of copper pipe-warmers using only blue star-shaped patchwork” opportunities.

I ignored that, too.

Thereupon Google+ informed me that I must be lonely, because I wasn’t ratting out anyone to join the cult. No, seriously—they said, “You might be lonely”.

And you can see which way they want you to turn by which button looks greyed out and which is bright blue with bold type.

Look—subtlety obviously doesn’t pay off in this game.

Well, I clicked on the sad little lonely choice, whereupon they gave me one last chance to “be awesome”.

(Like, how are you supposed to be awesome after they've already branded you as lame?)

That was where I cancelled out of the operation.

And as for using the “L” word, Google: Harsh, dudes. Way harsh.