It’s interesting for me to recall my first significant appearance on the internet, but it was exactly five years ago this month, and it was in a very interesting situation. Webmacster87.info did not exist yet, my awareness of phpBB didn’t exist yet, I actually had not even touched IM services yet. However, the past way to share this would be to look at what was happening again.

The month was May 2003, and I was in sixth grade. The big story of the time was that some guy from the Bay Area named Stephen Joseph had sued Kraft/Nabisco because their Oreo cookies contained deadly trans fats, and that they were being marketed towards and sold to children, and furthermore, the public had no awareness of how bad trans fats were. Well, within a week, the suit was retracted, because it had garnered so much press that the claim of the public having no awareness of how bad trans fats are was no longer valid. Nevertheless, that suit did help to raise awareness of the dangers of partially hydrogenated oils, and helped Oreo, Crisco, McDonalds, and many others go trans-fat free, as well as convincing the FDA to add Trans Fat to the nutrition label in 2006.

But what did this have to do with me? Well, at the time that this made the news, in my English class (although at middle school, it was called “Language Arts & Reading”), we ended up being assigned a research paper based on it. We were instructed to do some research on the news and the issues and then write a short essay where we conveyed our opinion on the issue. Now, I personally went about this on the premise that what this Stephen Joseph guy was crazy by wanting to take Oreo cookies out of schools. But, as I went onto his website, Ban Trans Fats, and looked at other things about the case, my mind was changed for me and I found myself completely in favor of banning trans fats.

Not only did I complete my essay and turn it in, but for whatever reason that I do not recall, I had e-mailed Stephen Joseph and sent him a copy of what I wrote. He wrote back with high praise for it, to the point where he wanted to know if he (with my parents’ permission) could post it on his website. He gave it its own dedicated page, where it still is today. And so, when I had the opportunity to share what I wrote with the rest of my class that day five years ago, I had something to brag about.

Looking back, I obviously have somewhat higher standards of writing today than I did then, but that really represents my first free-style persuasive essay (as in the kind where I don’t have to follow “rules” and all that junk), and nowadays, I’m starting to receive awards for some of my written opinions. Plus, it represents my very first little slice of online fame–quite interesting to think about considering how much my life is dependent on the internet today.

Tags: 2003, English, essay, history, internet, memories, middle school, Oreos, Personal, Stephen Joseph, trans fats, Writing

As many of you know, I’ve been working with phpBB for a long time, and I’ve been an active user on phpBB.com for almost four years. Nine months of those four years were spent as a member of the MOD team. While their team members do a great job (particularly given that they’re all volunteers), I still find that I have a number of bones to pick with them, and my greatest bone to pick has to do with how they communicate with other members.

I’ve been reading a book that I got from Patrick O’Keefe (of phpBBHacks.com et al) about how to create and run successful community forums (which I’ll be reviewing in full on this blog in a week or so), and one of the biggest things that has been stressed in that book is your relationships with your users and staff. Quite frankly, it’s a book that I think the phpBB team members should read, because I think that they really need to improve their relationships with the users on phpBB.com. Although they’ve repeatedly claimed that they’re trying to work on improving this, they usually tend to carry some kind of “I’m better than you” or “I know more than you” connotation when they communicate with the members on phpBB.com.

A very clear example with this happened yesterday. A few days ago, I started a topic on phpBB.com in response to the phpBB2 Retirement, and the topic started off well. Some people were very glad about the change, others were reluctantly accepting of the change, and some others were disappointed about the change, but it was an intelligent, productive discussion. However, around about page 5 or 6, when some of the team members (who shall be unnamed in this blog post) began arguing with the points that were made by some of the users. This in turn resulted in those users arguing back, which began to cause the atmosphere of that topic to turn a bit sour. (I wasn’t posting through this time, just watching.)

It was on page 6 that a user who had just registered called big_board_owner started making some admittedly poor comments about phpBB’s support policy, as well as claiming that the development process only took like 20 minutes and that he was “offering” his services to do security fixes for phpBB2, even though he flat out refused to listen to the team members who were saying that it takes a WHOLE lot more time than that to produce updates.

Now, granted, that user was agitating the topic and not behaving appropriately. But by the time I got towards the bottom of page 8, I started noticing that the posts that the team members were writing seemed just as rude towards him as he had been to them. Eventually the whole topic turned into a big fist fight between the team members and other members who had ganged up with big_board_owner, to the point where derogatory language was being exchanged in a couple of posts. Eventually, one of the team leaders had to end the dispute by locking the topic on page 12.

I’m not going to deny that the user was being inappropriate, but I feel that the team members sank to that user’s level by arguing with him. The point of the topic was not to argue about who was right or to argue that phpBB2 shouldn’t be retired, it was to discuss the fact that phpBB2 was being retired and to share our opinions on it. Quite frankly, I’d blame the team members for being the first ones to blame others of having “invalid” opinions and for hurting the general atmosphere of the topic. We all have opinions, nothing is going to change that, and the team members shouldn’t consider it their duty to “convert” everyone to the “correct” way of thinking.

The team members need to understand that they are the ones who set the atmosphere on phpBB.com, and as such, they need to hold themselves up to a much higher standard than the other users. This is true for ANY community. Any community will end up with users who sign up simply to cause trouble, and it should be up to the administrators/moderators to deal with that user in the appropriate fashion, NOT to argue with those users. What does arguing do? It makes them angrier and gives them even more reason to misbehave, and this hurts the community at large. Because of the way that the team members mishandled this situation, that topic for discussing (not arguing) the retirement of phpBB2 is now closed and now no one has the opportunity to share their opinions on this very important topic. Having worked with the team members before, I know many of them tend to prefer arguing with these users for their own entertainment and enjoyment rather than thinking about the interests of the community at large. As team members, they should have dealt with that user privately and not permitted him to take the conversation in a bad direction, but they chose instead to argue with him and effectively helped him with his goal to take the conversation in a bad direction.

The way that that topic materialized should be embarrassing to the phpBB team members because it shows that they do not know how to deal with users who register simply to stir up trouble. I for one think that if any reasonable kind of friendly community discussion is to be able to persist on phpBB.com and not fall into the kind of wormhole that the phpBB2 Retirement topic fell into, then the team members really need to take a look at their actions and rectify them, or they are going to find that their rapport with the users will turn sour very quickly.

Tags: administrators, community, discussion, forums, members, phpBB2, shame, team members, topic, users

The short answer: Because I don’t refer people to things that I don’t think are worthwhile.

Yes, I have liked some of the things that MacHeist has done before, but this seems stupid. As if they didn’t have enough to play around with from their December 2006 and January 2008 bundles, they’ve now decided that they have to throw another bundle out the window once again. I mean, how many times do they expect us to throw $49 away? I know that these are large savings on totally random I-never-even-intended-to-purchase-this-otherwise selections of shareware, but it’s not like money grows on trees.

But now, apparently, they’ve decided to step up a notch and sell this as a retail package, but not before offering the same thing for sale online first. While I personally think that one defeats the purpose of the other, who am I to think things through logically?

But what’s crazy about this bundle is that NOTHING IS NEW. A few of the applications are from the original December 2006 bundle, but the majority of these are from the January 2008 bundle that was less than three months ago. I mean, who do they think they are kidding?

Well, they’re not entirely insane, in that they’re admitting this themselves. In an e-mail that they sent out to all of us longtime MacHeist members (I’ve been there since the beginning thanks to an invite that Larry sent me back in October 2006), they acknowledged this glaring fact:

“As an already registered member, we know you may own a lot of these apps, so in an effort to keep you interested, and involved in the world of Mac software, we’ve been hard at work putting together a truly awesome referral program. It’s time to call up those old friends… because this time around, we will be unveiling multiple tiers of software prizes, each crammed with several options.”

Well first of all, for the first part of that sentence, let’s correct “own a lot of these apps” by indicating that I own all of them courtesy of these geniuses. And so what they’ve decided to do is instead turn all of us into pawns in order to annoy our friends and family and website visitors to urge them to spend $50 on software that most of them don’t need, and on stuff that the majority of the concerned internet already has anyway. I seem to recall the January bundle having sold tens of thousands of copies, enough to raise $500,000 for charities in that go-around. So what makes this bundle worth it? No, they want to make us pawns to try to urge people not only to buy this software, but to use our referral links rather than someone else’s.

Well, I’m not going to play that game. I’m not going to try to refer people to something just for the sake of getting benefited for the referral, and I’m certainly not going to try to refer people to something that I think is completely pointless myself. That’s not the way I roll. I don’t know where MacHeist thinks they’re getting this idea from, but I don’t expect to see them getting anywhere close the the amount of participation that they’ve had in their last two bundles, because I think most people (except the people greedy for those referral apps) recognize that this is a pretty lame offering. Therefore, I’m not going to post a referral link for you to go get the bundle–consider this a “deferral” for the bundle. And if you decide that you still want to purchase it, go find someone else’s referral link and use theirs.

P.S.: I do think that MacHeist’s little “trailer” for the retail bundle is pretty cool though, kudos to them on that.

Tags: bundle, MacHeist, referral, retail, sale, shareware, Software, stupid

This past week, my own San Mateo County (along with a small portion of neighboring San Francisco) held a special election on April 8th to vote for a successor to the late Tom Lantos, who had been our representative in Congress. Well, despite a very low turnout for this very small and under-advertised election, Democrat Jackie Speier (whom I have met on a few occasions) was elected with 75% of the vote, thus eliminating the need for a runoff election in June and making her our Congresswoman for the rest of this term (until January 2009).

Below you can see her being sworn in yesterday. Her initial comments were wonderfully provocative, and I sure couldn’t imagine seeing Tom Lantos saying some of the things that she said.

Anyway, congratulations, Jackie! Hope to see some good things from you up there in Capitol Hill.

Tags: comments, Congress, election, Jackie Speier, special, swearing in, Tom Lantos, Video, YouTube

Easter is one of those weird holidays because it is one of the few holidays that doesn’t have a set-in-stone date. It’s not on a specific date, it’s not on a specific day of a certain month. The only hard-and-fast “rules” for Easter is that it always falls on a Sunday, on one of the thirty-four days within the range of March 22-April 25 (inclusive). As for how the date of Easter is calculated, it’s a very complicated and involved method that’s so complicated and involved that even Wikipedia doesn’t detail it. Furthermore, there has been controversy behind it many many times, including many attempts to “standardize” the date that Easter is celebrated, most of them to no effect.

Well, this year, Easter fell on March 23rd, the second-earliest possible date that Easter could fall on. Wow. However, today I was shown something that actually puts this date into some interesting context. The fact of the matter is that for everyone who went through Easter this year, they have gone through the earliest Easter that they will ever go through again in their lives. Wow! Here’s the facts:

Easter was on March 23rd this year, 2008. The last time that it fell on March 23rd was in 1913, meaning that no one under the age of 95 has lived through an Easter this early before. Furthermore, none of us will again, since the next March 23rd Easter will be in the year 2228 (220 years from now!). But what about the one possible earlier date for Easter, March 22nd? Well, the last time that happened was in the year 1818, and it will not happen again until the year 2285, 277 years from now! None of the over 6 billion people alive today have ever experienced a March 22nd Easter, and they never will.

Not that any of this has any practical importance, but it is interesting to think about.

Tags: dates, Easter, event, fact, holiday, interesting, landmark

Today is the ever-so-special February 29th–the “leap day”–that happens only once every four years. Folks who are born on this day have to suffer from premature aging and an expected lifespan that is far shorter than the national average, although the benefits are that they get to graduate when they’re only age 4 and can retire at age 16.

Personally, I appreciate February 29th because it represents another four years that we’ve gone without seeing the end of the world, and we can all hope and pray that we’ll make it to February 29, 2012 as well.

The technicalities of the leap year are interesting in that they represent how difficult it is to precisely equate the calendar with the true rotation of the earth. The scientists have figured out that a single orbit of the earth around the sun takes 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds. This is just shy of 365 days and 6 hours, aka 365.25 days. Thus, the leap year is really a means of correcting our slightly-flawed calendar system so that we can stay somewhat on tap with when the real winter solstice is by adding a day every four years, which is any year divisible by four.
However, it gets more confusing because of that pesky little fact that the rotation is slightly less than 365.25 days, and so that’s why there is not a leap year during any years divisible by 100, unless the year is divisible by 400. That’s why, in the year 2000, we had a leap year, but there wasn’t a leap year in the year 1900, and there won’t be a leap year in the year 2100.

It’s actually because of this moving around with leap years and stuff why solstices and equinoxes are never on the same day each year. The scientists have figured out that the winter solstice in 1903 was December 23rd, but in 2003 it was December 22nd, and in 2096 it will be December 20th–that particular winter solstice in the year 2096 will be the earliest winter solstice since the seventeenth century, and that 1903 winter solstice was the latest winter solstice since the sixteenth century (and there won’t be another winter solstice that late until the early 2300s).

Anyway, it’s quite mind-boggling, but nevertheless, February 29th is only something that happens once every four years. Plus, it’s the sixtieth day of 2008, meaning that we’re already about 16% through the year!

Since this is the first leap year that I’ve had to blog on (my blog did not exist in February 2004), I thought I’d take the opportunity to make mention of the leap year. If you want more info about this man-made phenomenon, I’d advise that you check out Wikipedia.

Tags: 2008, date, earth, February 29, leap year, rotation, solstice, Wikipedia

You don’t see me bragging very often about being a United States citizen, mostly because I’m not a big fan of many of the things that the United States is doing these days. But, man, I can’t stop bragging about being a Californian, because California is flat out awesome. (Yes, there are a number of things that California has problems with, but we’re much more awesome than the feds at this time.)

One of the ways that California has been awesome is that in California, it is illegal for merchants to set expiration dates on gift certificates/gift cards, or to charge fees on them. Now, granted, some merchants have found loopholes to get around that limitation slightly, but they still mean that when you give someone a gift card, it’s much more difficult for that merchant to count it as extra money for their pockets.

Well, for whatever unusual reason, I was watching our local news on TV tonight (something that I almost never do), and they had a special report on a new law that went to effect in California on January 1, 2008 dealing with the issue of low-balance gift cards.

Have you ever had a case where you didn’t fully utilize a gift card, and didn’t feel the urge to keep spending with it because of how little was left? Consumer Reports recently found that merchants last year made $8 billion from unused gift card value. Well, the new law states that any gift certificate/gift card with a cash value of less than $10 can be redeemed for cash equivalent to its cash value, and that merchants are required to give you cash back if you ask for it. Again, this is only a California law, but this is absolutely sweet.

However, there isn’t a lot of teeth on this law, and most merchants won’t offer it to you. The news station apparently went under cover to try to get cash back at a number of stores, and a number of these stores refused to give cash back. So if you’re a Californian, you have a right to get your cash back, but you should probably be sure to inform them that it is California state law. My news station made a special gift card with the law on it that you can keep with you.

What if that still doesn’t convince them? Well, I did some Google searching for some answers. Apparently, the recommendation is to try to call or e-mail the merchant’s corporate offices to inform them of the law and what happened. But, if that still doesn’t work, you can apparently contact the state Attorney General at the following address:

Attorney General’s Office
California Department of Justice
Attn: Public Inquiry Unit
P.O. Box 944255
Sacramento, CA 94244-2550

Or you can call (916) 322-3360, or the toll-free number (in California): (800) 952-5225.

Know your rights, and take advantage of them, so that you don’t let merchants take advantage of you! (And yes, be glad that you’re a Californian and have this right!)

Tags: Attorney General, California, cash back, gift cards, gift certificates, law, merchants, rights, stores

But not a rant on all quitters and losers. No, I’m talking about a rant on quitters and losers among the 2008 presidential candidates. I know that although I’m a person who has strong political opinions, I don’t usually talk politics very much on this blog. But I’m just fed up with what we’ve been seeing in the past four weeks–that’s right, it’s ONLY been four weeks since the ridiculously early Iowa Caucuses–that I want to get this out of my system.

Let’s go back to the very beginning of this year: January 1st. Not that long ago. The Democrats had eight people running for president (in alphabetical order): Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. But then, three days later (January 4th), after the Iowa Caucus, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd dropped out of the race. Bill Richardson dropped out on January 9th, after the New Hampshire Primary. I mean, only two primaries go by and already a third of the Democrats drop out? New Hampshire and Iowa combined only represent about 1.3% of the population of the United States–”cold white people” as Jon Stewart describes them.
But since then, Dennis Kucinich (last Friday) and now John Edwards (today) have both dropped out, leaving us with essentially three Democrats left, none of whom I particularly like very much.

The Republicans, too, have already seen some of them calling it quits (though most of them have had the backbone to keep going), such as Duncan Hunter on January 19th, Fred Thompson on January 22nd, and Rudy Giuliani today.

What’s dumb is why these people drop out so quickly. I mean, folks, Super Tuesday is February 5th, which is still about a week away, which decides 52% of the Democratic delegates and 41% of the Republican delegates. Things can change up VERY quickly with such wide margins. Not to mention that California, the state with the most delegates, is holding its election that day as well, but I’ve yet to see any of these candidates do any kind of meaningful campaign in California yet.

I mean, it just seems to go against all reasonable logic. Why would you put so much work during the year 2007 running for president (particularly given how ridiculously early all of the debates started happening), and then quit as soon as a small sliver of the country votes for someone else? What is the point? Doesn’t that really just alienate the choices that the rest of the country has available to them? Democracy can only really work when citizens have a true choice on the ballot; when these others drop out so early, it cuts this choice out of the equations. On the Democratic side, there were some Democrats that I liked, but because the early votes went to the so-called “front runners”, these other guys dropped out. Now all the Dems have left are Clinton, Gravel, and Obama, none of whom I like very darn much.

Back in the old days, before all this big media, it was not the primaries and the caucuses that determined the president; they did nothing more than determine which delegates were going to the party convention. The convention decided who the nominee would be, not the primaries. Now, we’re getting to the point where the nominee is decided even before all of the primaries are over, meaning that the last few states are down to having virtually no choices to make whatsoever, and practically making the whole point of “delegates” useless. This is where the whole thing about states wanting to move up their primaries so they can “be more important” then being rebuffed by the already-first-in-line states, and that’s why we ended up with half of the country having its primaries on February 5th, and Iowa and New Hampshire holding their primaries in the dead of winter in the beginning of January. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the beginning of the next batch of primaries being held in November or December of 2011. I would probably advocate for having a fixed date that all of the state primaries are held on–the general response to that is the claim that it’s not possible for candidates to campaign everywhere at once. However, my response would be that first of all, candidates for the November general election already have to campaign everywhere at once; second of all, things like planes and the internet and the like make it much easier to be in multiple places at once; third of all, twenty-four states are holding primaries or caucuses on February 5th, so we’re already halfway to having a single day for primaries already!

All I can say is, I think that it’s a very dumb system. In thirty-three days, from the January 3rd Iowa Caucus to the February 5th Super Tuesday, only a third of the Democratic runners are left in the running and just over half of the Republican runners are left in the running. It’s ridiculous and a very sad example of our very sad system. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Republican, or one of those third-parties that the media completely denies the existence of; it just feels like this whole 2008 election is a big joke.

Tags: 2008, article, caucus, Democrats, election, losers, nominees, president, primary, quitters, rant, Republicans, runners

Politically Correct Santa
by Harvey Ehrlich

‘Twas the night before Christmas and Santa’s a wreck…
How to live in a world that’s politically correct?
His workers no longer would answer to “Elves”,
“Vertically Challenged” they were calling themselves.

And labor conditions at the north pole
Were alleged by the union to stifle the soul.
Four reindeer had vanished, without much propriety,
Released to the wilds by the Humane Society.
And equal employment had made it quite clear
That Santa had better not use just reindeer.
So Dancer and Donner, Comet and Cupid,
Were replaced with 4 pigs, and you know that looked stupid!

The runners had been removed from his sleigh;
The ruts were termed dangerous by the E.P.A.
And people had started to call for the cops
When they heard sled noises on their roof-tops.
Second-hand smoke from his pipe had his workers quite frightened.
His fur trimmed red suit was called “Unenlightened.”

And to show you the strangeness of life’s ebbs and flows,
Rudolf was suing over unauthorized use of his nose
And had gone on Geraldo, in front of the nation,
Demanding millions in over-due compensation.

So, half of the reindeer were gone; and his wife,
Who suddenly said she’d enough of this life,
Joined a self-help group, packed, and left in a whiz,
Demanding from now on her title was Ms.

And as for the gifts, why, he’d ne’er had a notion
That making a choice could cause so much commotion.
Nothing of leather, nothing of fur,
Which meant nothing for him. And nothing for her.

Nothing that might be construed to pollute.
Nothing to aim. Nothing to shoot.
Nothing that clamored or made lots of noise.
Nothing for just girls. Or just for the boys.

Nothing that claimed to be gender specific.
Nothing that’s warlike or non-pacific.
No candy or sweets…they were bad for the tooth.
Nothing that seemed to embellish a truth.

And fairy tales, while not yet forbidden,
Were like Ken and Barbie, better off hidden.
For they raised the hackles of those psychological
Who claimed the only good gift was one ecological.

No baseball, no football…someone could get hurt;
Besides, playing sports exposed kids to dirt.
Dolls were said to be sexist, and should be passe;
And Nintendo would rot your entire brain away.

So Santa just stood there, disheveled, perplexed;
He just could not figure out what to do next.
He tried to be merry, tried to be gay,
But you’ve got to be careful with that word today.

His sack was quite empty, limp to the ground;
Nothing fully acceptable was to be found.
Something special was needed, a gift that he might
Give to all without angering the left or the right.

A gift that would satisfy, with no indecision,
Each group of people, every religion;
Every ethnicity, every hue,
Everyone, everywhere…even you.

So here is that gift, it’s price beyond worth…
“May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on earth.”

Despite all of the craziness that has grown to surround the holiday, may you have a very Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season.

Tags: Christmas, holiday, message, peace, poem, politically correct, quote, Santa

You want to know what a modern global empire is? Think Starbucks. According to Wikipedia, they have 13,168 stores worldwide and are opening 7 new stores on a daily basis. I think that’s absolutely ridiculous.

About two years ago, I made a just-for-fun post in the private phpBB Teams forum in which I asked team members to lookup and find out how many Starbucks stores were in their area. Here in the SF Bay Area, there’s at least one Starbucks in every city. In fact, there are five different Starbucks stores within only a 2 mile radius of my home. One of them is a block and a half up the street. Across the street from AT&T Park in San Francisco, there literally are two Starbucks stores within three buildings of each other, on the same block. (Albeit one of them is a store inside a Safeway store, but the Safeway store does have a Starbucks sign on the window which is three buildings away from the standalone Starbucks store.) When a class from my school visited Chinatown two weeks ago, there were two full-blown Starbucks stores literally a block apart from each other across the street from the Chinatown entrance. And both were full to capacity. That just flabbergasted me.

So the challenge is for you to find out how many Starbucks stores are in your area? To determine this, enter your address into the Starbucks Store Locator, and to make sure we’re all on the same page, choose a search radius of 20 miles. The total number of stores will be shown on the bottom of the list. Post your result in the Comments section of this post.

I bet that you probably can’t beat my number unless you live in New York City or something. There are currently 217 Starbucks Stores within 20 miles of my house. Yeah. THAT’S a lot of caffeine.

Can you beat my 217? (Other friends of mine who live in San Mateo don’t count!) Hie thee hence to the Store Locator, and then share your results in the Comments section!

Tags: challenge, craziness, empire, locator, Starbucks, stores