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Big Yellow Taxi

June 30, 2005 at 1:58 pm (Personal, Science/Technology)

I just learned that our computers are getting downgrades. This would never happen at a smaller company. Apparently, making all our computers speak the exact same language is going to create some benefit to the company. I could see the logic in that if I could only believe it. Surely if I can get my Mac and my PC to talk to each other, IT professionals at a multinational can get Windows XP to talk to Windows 2000.

Even though barely a year and a half ago I was doing fine without XP or Office 2002, and even though I complain constantly about Windows, I’m going to miss these things. Or, as Joni Mitchell sings, Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.

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Bank of America buys MBNA

June 30, 2005 at 10:38 am (Personal)

Bank of America is going to buy MBNA.

From a consumer standpoint, I think this is awful news. As much as I think the whole “building a credit history” sceme is utter bull, I got an MBNA credit card several years ago. After hearing someone say that you needed at least two lines of “revolving” credit, I got a Fleet card a little later. I use these cards to consolidate bills for other things I don’t need (cell phone, internet, etc.) so I pay them monthly. With both MBNA and Fleet, I paid the balance online. Setting this up was a relatively straightforward process–create a username and password, with standard rules for each. Afterward, besides viewing online statements, you could pay via debit card.

When BOA bought Fleet, they nuked Fleet’s site and forced cardholders to create a new login on their own site. You could still decide on your own login, but it could only include numbers. Because a string of numbers is so easy to remember. You could also create your own password. But it had to be less than 8 characters. WTF!!! Virtually every password I’ve created in the last eight years has been at least 10 characters. Many sites require passwords of longer than 8 characters. How secure is a site that puts that kind of limit on usernames and passwords?

I think the problem arises because BOA is geared toward the lower classes. It’s has its roots in banking for the common man. I think that’s great, but please don’t dumb down your internet site at the cost of security.

As ticked off as MBNA has made me in the years I’ve had their card, it’s nothing like compared to what BOA has done in a few months. And I already have a real problem trusting financial data in their hands. So I’m now faced with a dilemma. Cancel both my accounts with this company and lose the “continuous line of credit” streak on my credit history or let these guys try to manage even more of my personal data.

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HOA’s are bad, ‘mkay?

June 29, 2005 at 11:50 pm (Personal)

This is exactly the s— I shouldn’t be losing sleep over, but I am anyway.

I’m on the board of directors of my condo complex’s homeowners association. Agreeing to become involved with the HOA was a tough decision for me…HOA’s are best known for their inane meetings and sometimes ludicrous regulations (whether you can park on the street, whether you can have drought-resistant landscaping, etc.) I never fancied myself as part of the club that would regulate what people do with something they paid good money for.

But that was ok, I thought, because our HOA’s function was a little different (or so I thought). We would be in charge of selecting contractors to do certain jobs, making sure dues were paid…simple tasks, even when things are looking tough for your complex due to some bad years financially.

So, when the board had trouble filling two positions last July, I allowed myself to be nominated.

One of the existing board members at the time really had me excited. He had great ideas, good business experience and he was going to turn things around. And he suggested some good things, which seem to have helped increase due collection and given the board direction on how to save money more effectively in the future.

But this guy has one huge drawback. He cannot take constructive criticism of his ideas. As just one example, take the problem of parking. There are a handful of people who have vehicles that certain owners find unattractive. When these vehicles go a few days without moving, our manager is called, and the vehicle gets flagged. If it goes a few more days, it gets towed. The problem is, this rule isn’t enforced evenly. Not every car, when left unattended for 72 hours, gets flagged. State law, this member is quick to remind us, requires us to enforce the rules. But it forces us to enforce them evenly. In order to avoid the “I don’t like you so I’m going to get your car tagged if you leaved it parked over the weekend” phenomenon, several alternatives were suggested, such as only nabbing inoperable cars, or instating parking stickers. Our board member’s response was that new measures were not needed. When we suggested that anyone would be in danger of having their car towed if they left for a vacation or even a long weekend, he would argue that we weren’t trying to punish the people who didn’t “abuse” the rules–in other words, some people would be safe violating the rules and others wouldn’t–we wouldn’t enforce the rules evenly on purpose. Any suggestion to this end would be dismissed, and eventually he would begin to make personal comments.

The problem is, 10 meetings or so later, I see that this is how he approaches every issue. Any dissent, whether from the majority or the minority, is met with derision. Worse, he goes behind the backs of the rest of the board and the management company to seek bids and even to criticize people personally.

Although attendance at board meetings isn’t high, several owners in our complex became concerned that this one rogue member had become detrimental to the whole association. One of them made a motion to have him removed. But since he was not at the meeting, this election has to occur at a special meeting. This special meeting is going to happen next week.

And our favorite board member has created a campaign. He has enlisted the help of a number of owners (none of whom have attended more than one or two meetings in the past year) to lobby for him. Since his talk is good, they’re having some luck.

Although I don’t think serving another year with this guy would kill any of the rest of us, I do think his ideas, which have support from a vocal group of owners but which aren’t backed with good facts or analysis, could be very damaging. And I worry that when the rest of the board criticizes them, this vocal group may try to get the rest of us removed. And while I’d welcome the time not serving on the board would free, I really don’t want to give these guys a chance to spend my money.

Ah well.

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A little more on fusion

June 29, 2005 at 3:00 pm (Environment, Science/Technology)

Here are some interesting things I found while researching fusion.

First, I found a description of the mechanism as a refresher. The Deuterium-Tritium mechanism is pretty straightforward, and scientists have a basic idea where they will get the fuels and what will be emitted. It looks a lot cleaner than fission. The only problem is that the reaction requires a tremendous amount of energy to get started and it is difficult to maintain afterward. Minor details, and it will only take a few decades to solve these problems.

Apparently, a group of scientists has come up with another “cold fusion” experiment that is repeatable. It still requires too much energy at the start, though.

Even the Department of Energy is pointing out the downfalls of fission while promoting fusion research.

Finally (while searching for a source that could convince me that solar power simply wasn’t viable), I came across an article about a solar-powered ice-maker. Fascinating!

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A bigger, stronger, faster battery

June 28, 2005 at 9:58 pm (Environment, Social/Economic)

There shall be relevance (to my previous post). See this article on fusion (as opposed to fission) and this article on Senate passage of the energy bill.

I’m interested in the fusion thing especially…I may take a closer look and post more on it later.

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A better battery

June 27, 2005 at 3:33 pm (Environment, Science/Technology)

This isn’t related to anything in particular. Just a random rant on energy. You’ll have to excuse me…

The Bush administration is pushing for increasing nuclear energy in order to limit our dependence on foreign oil and to help clean our skies. I’m not convinced this is the best solution, and I’ve come up with an analogy that helps explain why.

Petroleum, as used an energy source, is acting like a battery. Energy is stored in the molecular formation. When we burn it, we release that energy which is then used to power our cars, generators and whatever else you might want to power with it. This is similar to using a battery to power something although obviously the internal mechanism is different.

When we’re done with a typical battery, we throw it out and go spend a few bucks for a new one. When we’re “done” with oil, we do something similar. It just happens that instead of putting it in a trash can, we release it into the air which, because of the poisons it contains after being burned, is clearly not optimal.

Now, take the example of a rechargeable battery. Instead of throwing it out, you can refill it and use it again. So there is ostensibly less waste and it appears that if there was an analog to declarable that could be used in place of fossil fuels and prevent us from needing to “toss” pollution into the air, well, that would be super cool.

But nuclear energy is a little misleading. If you were to use hydrogen fuel cells, you would refuel your car with hydrogen and it would look like you were throwing out water, which obviously is better than CO, CO2 and the various other pollutants that are more than likely escaping your car’s exhaust pipe today. Even if you were recharging your car’s batteries by plugging them in at night (similar to how you might use Ni-MH batteries now), it would still appear that you weren’t throwing anything out. Of course, that energy is coming from somewhere, but it’s being “released” upstream, so the mechanism is transparent to the end user. But with nuclear energy, we don’t throw the waste away into the air. Instead, we truck it off and bury it deep within the earth. Pro-nuke people including some environmentalists suggest that it’s better–there’s no air pollution!

But take a look at the first definition of pollution (from WordNet):

pollution n: undesirable state of the natural environment being contaminated with harmful substances as a consequence of human activities.

Ok, here is my two-pronged test. First, is the state of the environment created by burying nuclear waste desirable? Do we bury nuclear waste only because we have to? Yes. Second, is the nuclear waste being buried a harmful substance (Yes) created by human activity? (Yes again.) So despite the ostensible effect of cutting down on pollution, we are just trading one type of pollution for another. So nuclear power isn’t a rechargeable battery. We’re just throwing the old battery somewhere else.

The true rechargeable battery, in which we “hold” power in something that really is reusable instead of oil or uranium, isn’t available to us in a widely useful form yet so we have to choose between these two disposable ones. Do we throw it into the air, where greenhouse gasses threaten to throw the whole planet’s equilibrium off kilter or throw it into the ground where it will remain harmful for 10,000 years? That’s a tough question, but I still think nuclear energy is a dangerous alternative and that going that could easily lead to our complacently delaying funding for better solutions.

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