albertmcwilliams's posterous

a bit iffy at times, but generally a good idea

Blame the Economy

This flyer was photographed at Pinkney State Recreation area near Hell, MI (yes, that is a real place) by Zach Curd and he calls it, 

 
"Feelin' safe, at Half Moon Lake"
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The complexity of awesome we have in this piece is astounding. The Michigan Department of Corrections is concerned enough about the loss of this tether, which is also missing, to risk posting these damning fliers... but only $50 concerned. They don't , however, seem terribly concerned with finding the escaped convict that was once associated with said electronic tether.
 
They do want that tether. The MDOC has even offered some suggestions to help you find it, should you really need that fifty bucks and are cool roaming about the woods with an unspecified felon on the loose. You may try looking by the side of a road, private drive, or alternatively, being used to tie your neck to the dashboard of a getaway car just before your hostage-ass gets capped.
 
The most striking part of this flier is its sincerity, and clear understanding of how to change text color in MSWord. It's quite possible that the associated convict has already been accounted for, and that's why they didn't think twice about posing the flier ... but you think they would have mentioned it. The posters mind didn't go there, so why would anyone else's?
 
As my dad would say, "Only in Michigan."

Fun With Telemarketers: Dunn & Bradstreet

D&B : "Hi, this is Mark [sic] with Dunn and Bradstreet."

Thisguy : "Hi Mark."

Mark: "I'm calling to let you know that we've had inquiries about your company and that your information in our system is not complete."

Thisguy : "oh  yeah?"

Mark: "yes sir. Now, Dunn & Bradstreet is the leading commercial credit agency, and potential customers, clients and vendors rely on our information to make business decisions every day ... (extended sales pitch and explanation of D&B"

Thisguy: "yes, I'm aware of D&B"

Mark: "So, you know how important it is to have your Company's information complete on D&B?"

Thisguy: "Yes, but I'm comfortable with having no information on there, that's on purpose.... what are you selling?"

Mark: "Well, we offer a monitoring service for $300/mo that allows you to make sure the information on you is accurate; otherwise, there could be negative information about you and you'd have no protection against that."

Thisguy: "so, what you're saying, Mark, is that you'd like me to pay D&B $300/mo or else you can't guarantee that something bad won't happen."

Mark: "no, no, no, I'm saying that potential clients or vendors might be getting inaccurate information about your company, and that it could be negative, and they might not want to work with you. For $300/mo you can control it, and protect against inaccurate, negative information."

Thisguy: "so, you're offering me protection."

Mark: "no,  no, this isn't Tony Sorprano stuff, this isn't extortion."

Thisguy: "are you sure?"

Mark: "we simply want to make sure that the information that's out there on your company is as accurate as possible."

Thisguy "so, you want me to pay you $300/mo to make your information on me better, which you then turn around and sell to others. You want me to pay to make your product better?"

Mark: "Well, we take your information and we process it using our special process to make D&B's special credit ratings."

Thisguy: "...ratings that you can't guarantee will be positive... unless I pay you $300/mo."

Why?: Software Updates

This is not another entry about how the word processor was perfected sometime in the early '90s. Text Edit never updates.

This is about when we update.

Why does software prompt us to update on startup instead of shutdown?

Guess what, I open software to do something. Whether it's to write a proposal, listen to some David Allan Coe, or google my name (again), opening a program is the absolute worst time to ask me if I want to update it. I don't, and no, I don't want you to ask me again because you're going to ask me at startup, which is literally the only time I am absolutely, by definition, guaranteed to have something better to do. That's why I opened the software.

Of course, the "don't ask me this again" box goes to the same place as Publisher's Clearing House entries. They'll ask me again, the very next time that I open the software. 

They could, of course, ask me when I'm closing the software, how novel. To make the idea even more logical, many updates require restarting the computer or software to take effect, so updating on shutdown would make that a natural process.

"Would you like FIrefox to update before automatically shutting down?"

Yes, yes I would like that. I would like that because I'm done using it right now. I'm shutting it down and by definition I have nothing else to do with it for the moment. Go ahead, download; fuss about all you like, I'm cooking meatballs in the kitchen.

What if when you got in your car to go to work a dude tapped on your window and offered to change the oil... RIGHT NOW. 

The interesting part is that this has been going on for decades now. Millions of people, actual real people, have been involved in the development of all this software that we use, and update. Some of those people must also use the software they develop right? Yet, here we are, updating on startup instead of shutdown.

Adidas Originals

Remember when Adidas made a commercial for it's "Originals" line about creativity, and being "original" that was a re-imagining of the single most re-imagined scene in the history of re-imagining scenes?

To contrast: Here's NIKE's World Cup offering... Gentleman, Start Your (Creative) Boners.