I say this with all the affection and love in my heart for you guys, but it sure is good to get away from this place for a while. I thought it would be Blog City over the weekend, and to be sure, we had all the necessary materials:
The aging folks catch up with one another while the Millennial considers analog space.
I count four laptops in that photo (one closed and hiding), plus an iPad. But it’s deceiving. John was working on getting our stupid printer on our wifi network, which is one reason we’re so glad they stop by a couple times a year.
The stupid printer now works. And we didn’t spend the entire weekend laptopping separately. We made several big meals, shopped at Eastern Market, toured the DIA, ate at Good Girls Go To Paris and got up off of our thangs, except when felled by wine. I got four DVDs from the library, in case we felt like a movie, and discovered “Bottle Shock” is worth your time, but “Synecdoche New York” is not. In fact, it’s self-indulgent nonsense, the result of what happens when a quirky, neurotic screenwriter produces several great, memorable scripts (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) and then says, “But what I’d really like to do is direct.”
I dunno, maybe you liked it. I didn’t. (Shrug.)
What I did like was this amazing story, which I read all the way through even with guests in the house, a cautionary tale for everyone who is convinced the internet always offers a better shopping experience. Short version: Shopper goes online in search of cheap eyeglass frames, wanders into Crazytown. Somewhat longer version: Bad internet actor finds way to game Google’s allegedly genius algorithm. As I read this more than 24 hours ago, I’m now mainly immersed in the reaction, which ranges from “well, it’s her fault for not Googling more deeply” to overly technical discussions under Google’s hood. Combined with this story today, about not a brain drain, but maybe a brain trickle away from the company, you could get the impression that Google has moved into the next phase of its existence, i.e. crusty old fart-ism. The 21st century, it is so full of wonders: A company goes from shining light of innovation to General Motors in 12 short years.
This pleases me, and has ever since I tried to reach Google with a problem a while back, and discovered it’s as easy as placing a person-to-person phone call to the moon. Everything’s automated, no one has a phone number or even an e-mail address, and if you have a problem with that, screw you and welcome to Dodge City.
And now it is Monday, and guess what? My next-door neighbor has a tree-trimming crew here today. The lead chainsawer is one of those guys who can’t just turn the goddamn thing on and cut a limb. He’s like one of those guys at a red light on a hot motorcycle, who has to go rev-rev-rev-REV and rev-rev-rev-REV every few seconds until you go insane. That’s what I’m hearing now, and so it’s either earplugs or get the hell out and start manic Monday.
Better do the latter. I had a great birthday, and thanks to all who wished me one.
brian stouder said on November 29, 2010 at 10:45 am
The 21st century, it is so full of wonders: A company goes from shining light of innovation to General Motors in 12 short years. This pleases me, and has ever since I tried to reach Google with a problem a while back, and discovered it’s as easy as placing a person-to-person phone call to the moon. Everything’s automated, no one has a phone number or even an e-mail address, and if you have a problem with that, screw you and welcome to Dodge City.
This comment resonates with me, as I was quite taken with the newest batch of GM commericials.
They are mostly imagery, with bad stuff happening in the first part, and recovery from the bad stuff at the climax.
What struck me, though, was the dated nature of the message. The protagonists having a bad day (at the beginning) included Popeye, Evil Knievel, and early days in the space program – all of which are from a half century ago or more.
The commerical made sense to me, but our 12 year old asked me who the guy on the motorcycle was…!
(so I guess, all things considered, the commerical is well-aimed!)
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brian stouder said on November 29, 2010 at 10:46 am
The 21st century, it is so full of wonders: A company goes from shining light of innovation to General Motors in 12 short years. This pleases me, and has ever since I tried to reach Google with a problem a while back, and discovered it’s as easy as placing a person-to-person phone call to the moon. Everything’s automated, no one has a phone number or even an e-mail address, and if you have a problem with that, screw you and welcome to Dodge City.
This comment resonates with me, as I was quite taken with the newest batch of GM commericials, over the holiday weekend.
They are mostly imagery, with bad stuff happening in the first part, and recovery from the bad stuff at the climax.
What struck me, though, was the dated nature of the message. The protagonists having a bad day (at the beginning) included Popeye, Evil Knievel, and early days in the space program – all of which are from a half century ago or more.
The commerical made sense to me, but our 12 year old asked me who the guy on the motorcycle was…!
(so I guess, all things considered, the commerical is well-aimed!)
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Dorothy said on November 29, 2010 at 10:49 am
That is an amazing story and I was rapt as I read it, despite the fact that I’m at work. (Boss is in a meeting and the phone hasn’t rung in an hour so that helped.) I hope Ms. Rodriquez gets all the satisfaction she deserves and then some.
We bought a wireless printer about 18 months ago that worked fine with our old laptop, but since we got the Mac in August Mike has been befuddled by getting it to recognize this printer. On Saturday after a trip to Microcenter and some good old fashioned stick-to-it-iveness he got the printer to work yesterday. Glory hallelujah. But I knew he would eventually – he always doubts himself but I see him as always coming through. We’ve always been a glass half full/half empty kinda couple.
happy (belated) birthday!
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Linda said on November 29, 2010 at 11:10 am
What impresses me in the NYT story is that not only is Google enabling the psycho eyeglass guy from hell, but also credit card companies, EBay and banks. He CAN act right, when he is dealing with Amazon, and also with clients who are connected enough to hurt him. In 2010, justice only exists for the connected, or when capitalists grow a pair and do the right thing. And that doesn’t happen often enough.
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John said on November 29, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Love the photo of Nancy, Jr.
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Rana said on November 29, 2010 at 12:07 pm
I find myself on Google’s side in this, in that the company’s main job is to provide a listing of things that most people found interesting – there’s nothing there that says they need to discriminate between websites most people are talking about because they found them useful and helpful, and websites most people are talking about because they are abusive and obnoxious. If Google takes sides in this case, they set a precedent in which a large amount of negative commentary alone is enough to remove a site from their listings – imagine if a group of folks like the Bristol Palin Tea Partiers decides to go after a well-known liberal site, for example.
Now, the failure of the law enforcement agencies and such to take the victim’s case seriously is another matter – in this day and age, they really need to get over the idea that things like email and internet harassment aren’t real in the way that things like letters and stalking are accepted to be.
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Julie Robinson said on November 29, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Our house looked like that over Thanksgiving too. It’s the new togetherness. Mom got internet at home for the first time a few months back and now spends many of her waking hours following news stories and cute kitty pictures. My sister was lamenting that she felt left out since she left her laptop at home.
Yikes that is a scary story about the new glasses. Did you notice that the bank only made it right after it knew the story was going public? Weasels.
She needs to change banks pronto.
What search engines do you-all use? I too have noticed a large number of bad results from Google so I’m tempted to seek another search engine love.
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nancy said on November 29, 2010 at 12:23 pm
As someone who searches news for a living, I can tell you Google is getting gamed by a lot more than crooked sociopathic internet merchants. I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to the percentage, but a huge, huge number of robo-aggregators are out there scraping just enough of others’ stories to fall short of a copyright violation, but with enough — and with links to one another’s sites — to push them high on the results page, where they’re fully loaded with craptastic ads.
It doesn’t help that I’m searching for the pharmaceuticals industry, either. Lately — as in the last month — I punch in “pharmaceuticals + drug,” a simple but very useful search term for scaring up news, and get up to five pages of gibberish results, pages loaded with nothing but drug names and, guess what, ads. It happened last night. They seem to go down pretty fast, but they’ll stay up for as long as a day or two and really chap my ass.
I’ve been pissed at the Big G for a while, even as I use them more or less constantly. There has to be a better way. I assume someone is working on it.
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Connie said on November 29, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Our house looked a little like that as well. Our daughter connected our WII to her Netflix account which has been kind of fun. Went to Ikea as well, after all those multi hour trips to Chicago area Ikea stores it is kind of amazing to have one 20 minutes down the freeway.
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kayak woman said on November 29, 2010 at 12:43 pm
We had Thanksgiving at my uncle’s house, where there is broadband but no wi-fi. But there is the 3G, so at least half of us were hanging out on our iPhones/iPads.
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Julie Robinson said on November 29, 2010 at 1:16 pm
We’ve been streaming Netflix through our son’s Wii for awhile and even better, the new glowing box can be plugged directly into a computer, which gives us access to Hulu, Comedy Central, and anything else we want online. Sarah even showed us her videos and pictures from Europe on the TV. (Remember when you had to unearth the slide projector and screen?) As much as I fought the purchase, I must admit it’s pretty darn kewl, as the kids say.
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Deborah said on November 29, 2010 at 1:17 pm
So nice to see all those Macs in the photo. Between us we’ve got 3 Mac laptops, an iTouch and 2 iPhones. Although Little Bird recently got a tiny netbook that’s a pc. Traitor.
At work I also use a Mac, there are only 4 or 5 in the office (of about 175 people). I also have a shitty phone for work that I hardly ever use, it’s a sprint smart phone piece of trash.
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Dave said on November 29, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Best reasons I know to never start an e-mail account with Google are stated above. First of all, Google already seems to know all about us, and know where we live. The others do, too, but Google is getting so big, it’s sort of scary. In spite of that, I’ve been told that G-mail works very well.
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Little Bird said on November 29, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Deborah bought the netbook. As a thankyou for being her slave for the first few weeks of her boot induced incarceration.
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prospero said on November 29, 2010 at 3:56 pm
If this lady is making up this inflatable bra story, flying over the Andes is an exquisite embellishmentl to support the fabrication.
Time for a Christmas song.
Common sense about the Wikileaks hysteria from Anne Applebaum. This Julian Assange is a self-promoting, self-congratulatory ahole.
Just another journo.
Need some Christmas cards? This used to be called Second Harvest, and it is exemplary. Sorry for boosterism, but this is worthwhile, and the cards are excellent.
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paddyo' said on November 29, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Aye, Prospero, the money quote for me is “. . . it seems that in the name of ‘free speech’ another blow has been struck against frank speech. Yet more ammunition has been given to those who favor greater circumspection, greater political correctness, and greater hypocrisy.”
As a just another ex-journo (but I CAN see the Rockies from my house . . . does that count, She-Who?) who continues to think like he still IS one, I detest official government secrecy. But this little affair is nothing but a form of idle ratfucking, to borrow from Watergate dirty-trickster Donald Segretti.
Little is to be gained here except to shut up the frank dialogue and discourse and erode the purpose for diplomacy. I know a number of commenters say the outcry is much ado, but Applebaum nails it. There ARE things you don’t say around the children — and both the leaksters and those who gobble up and barf out every last available detail of this stuff are behaving like sniggering brats.
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Kirk said on November 29, 2010 at 4:52 pm
As just another still-practicing journo, I am on the same page as paddyo’.
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prospero said on November 29, 2010 at 5:19 pm
What Wikileaks did in exposing the cables is not very far removed from Cheney, Rove and Scooter destroying Valerie Plame’s undercover status. Maybe the self-righteous assholes could publish the 22mil lost emails that undoubtedly contain details of that particularly filthy piece of Republican politics.
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brian stouder said on November 29, 2010 at 5:57 pm
Prospero – that was brilliant! It never occurred to me – but yes indeed; all that “missing” email would be just the thing for our wicki gossip hounds to go after.
This ain’t the Pentagon papers, but instead, as Paddyo so succinctly put it – this whole thing looks just like an exercise in gobbl(ing) up and barf(ing) out every last available detail of this stuff…like sniggering brats.
Who cares what this or that diplomat thinks about Sarkozy? (for example)
And of course, this whole fiasco will either be used as a justification for even more draconian secrecy, or less frank internal communication (ie – nascent stove-piping)…or more likely, both.
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Dexter said on November 29, 2010 at 8:48 pm
“Cut off the head of the snake.”
“We’ll continue to say these are our bombs”…details:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#40406366
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brian stouder said on November 29, 2010 at 9:41 pm
btw, I apologize for the double post at the outset. (At least I’ve been housebroken from peeing italics all over the damned comments, unlike some folks!)
Looking at the photo, let me just say I think the Nancy Nall coffee cup is very, very cool!
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Laura Lippman said on November 29, 2010 at 10:07 pm
I missed your birthday! This is the downside of Internet Sabbath. I hope it was wonderful.
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Dexter said on November 29, 2010 at 10:59 pm
I have looked for forty-five years at sidebar ads for odd items in The New Yorker, wondering if these businesses were real or post office boxes rented by a guy who would hammer a personal check and toss the paperwork away.
All the banner ads Google displays evoke the same mistrust from me. I do feel bad for the woman who had so much trouble with the eyeglass crook, as that was a good deal in appearance.
I order merchandise online, too. I have been lucky. I only patronize businesses that have satisfied people I know. I am very skeptical. That story was a real warning; now I will double my precautions.
My computer has been slow. A contact of my daughter’s had his email account hijacked and I had about 50 spams for Canadian Pharmacy jamming my inboxes. This damn message was jumping through all the accounts,chasing everyody it could. I spent a few hours with Norton Antivirus and Spyware Protection and they fixed my little problem.
My old buddy in Connecticut bought a Mac last week and sledgehammered his pc to death. I wonder why…
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 29, 2010 at 11:42 pm
You mean you can’t actually order a European beret from The New Yorker?
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Dexter said on November 30, 2010 at 1:40 am
JMMO…sure you can! Send me the $279 (cash) and I’ll order it for you.
Wow and double wow. I just watched the Scorsese production of the Fran Lebowitz “Public Speaking” documentary on HBO. It is fascinating. Don’t miss this one, if just for her comments on Manhattan.
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