Let's here it for taxpayer supported rule of law.

My daughter's pocket was picked the other day. It turns out you can get your driver's license replaced for free if you file a police report. We asked if she was going to do that and she said "That depends on how much it costs."

Huh?

"Well, yeah. It depends on how much it costs to file a report with the police."

"What do you mean? It's free."

After a bit of back and forth, we realized that she spent some college summers in the Dominican Republic and Tanzania. There, it seems, the police serve only those who can afford them. If you want service, you pay directly.

We might have some issues with who the police serve in the USA, but I am happy to live in a country where the presumption is that anyone who is wronged has a chance at justice.

Performance Sheets

Last week, we purchased a Sleep Number mattress. It was grotesquely expensive, but I'm willing to try it so that my wife and I can have different softnesses on our respective sides. Marriage is a lifetime of compromises, but one person sacrificing sleep for the other is not a sustainable situation.

The sales person (unsuccessfully) tried to sell us their "Performance Sheets" -  at roughly $300 a set. I cut my losses there. Performance Sheets. Really? I've been sleeping every day of my life for years, but I'm not sure I have advanced beyond amateur status. I have had some critical acclaim in the non-sleeping arena, but still, performance sounds too theatrical. Miles Monroe said it best "Uh, uh, I don't think I'm up to a performance, but I'll rehearse with you, if you like."

For humanity's sake, let us stop using RFC 822 format dates for time stamps

Human readable dates have no place in internet protocols. Even more so when you have a date which is hard to parse and can have invalid values (e.g. A string which says "Thu" for a date which can not possibly be a Thursday). The only timestamp you need is seconds[.milliseconds] from an epoch (bikeshed about the epoch all you want) in GMT. Optionally, you might want to know the offset from GMT of the entity that caused the event.

What Humanity Aspires to - In One Frame

http://www.theimaginaryworld.com/comic062804.jpg

There is a man (well, a bread) who is totally at peace with himself. When all you can ask for is ice cream and a balloon you are experiencing life correctly.

How Not to Apply For a Job

I own a domain similar to that of a mid-size Canadian medical group.  I frequently receive to them that is misaddressed. This one caught my eye.

aaaaa mehtar
to hrtoronto@....medicalgroup.com

Hi Mr or Miss :

I enclose my resume and cover letter to apply for Medical Office Administrator with your company , if your requirement match my work experience and skills please feel free to contact me. I look froward to hear from u.

thank you

sincerely

aaaaa variava

Really?

• "to hear from u"?  I would throw this away without opening the attachments.
• Signature should match your email name.
• "requirement" is in a different font.
• Oh, that should be "requirements".

I could go on, but it would be more cruel than illustrative.

Why LinkedIn is now no better than spam.

LinkedIn used to be a great idea. In the efforts to monetize, it has been reduced to little more than a spam sender. Today I got a friendly but precise solicitation from a headhunter in London. But there are two show-stopper problems.

• At the bottom of it, there was a link to see his profile. The link does show a limited profile, but unless I upgrade to a paying service, I don't get to see any useful information, like the guy's full name. This asymmetry is unprofessional. When someone solicits me with an offer, I should be able to learn about them.
• If I click the "Not Interested" button, I get a page which offers me a choice or reasons why. That's all well and good, but there is a pre-selected check box which says "Accept the sender’s request and share my contact information". Really? The default is a unilateral "Put me in this guy's tickler list and don't tell me anything about them." I think not.

The whole balance has tipped towards headhunters trying to build a portfolio of people and away from people actually maintaining a high quality network of colleagues.

TSA PreCheck at SFO rocks!

I don't want to get into a debate about security theatre and my right to transport with or without ID. I just want to say that I had my best security check in ever today at SFO. It saved me 30 minutes in line and allowed me to catch an earlier flight than I had planned.