21st Century media via 19th Century communications technology

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While my mother-in-law was in hospice care, we watched closely for signs of pain. If we saw grimaces or if she cried out, the nurses could give her more morphine.
Sometimes, though, the prescribed amounts weren’t doing the job. The hospice team would quickly confer, in person or by phone, and recommend an increase in the regular and/or PRN dose and/or frequency. The nurse would then send the recommendation by to the doctor who, in turn, would send the prescription by fax to the pharmacy.
If the fax machine is out of paper or otherwise not working properly, the request or orders can be delayed. An hour’s delay for a normal prescription is no big deal. An hour’s delay for a terminal patient who is in pain is, well, do you want that for your mother?
The first patent for the process that would become a fax machine was issued in 1843. Based on those ideas, a commercial fax line connected Paris and Lyon in 1865.

The Pantelegraph in 1865, by Giovanni Caselli

The Pony Express had come and gone.We were still a couple of decades away from the telephone.
Physicist Michio Kaku observes that paperwork is, to descendants of hunters and gatherers, proof of the kill. Our caveman selves, instantiated as CYA bureaucrats in insurance companies and government offices, demand hard copy to prove that we’ve done something useful.

Advertisers have a new way to get into your head.

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It’s been a long day. You’re tired. You muscle your way onto the train and get a window seat so that you look out the window and start the process of not thinking. You rest your tired head against the window, hoping that the rhythmic rumble will shake out the weariness.
Advertising shows up inside your head.
Watch the video and then make plans for an aisle seat.

via Boing Boing

More on language, good times, and wishing the best for others

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When you have a good time at a gathering of family and/or friends, it’s not unusual to say, “I hope that you had as good as time as I did.”
Courtesy suggests that we wish for better things for others than we do for ourselves. Saying “I hope that you had a better time than I did,” however, doesn’t have quite the effect that we’re after.

One of an occasional series.
A bunch of years ago, I worked for a software company. It was hard work for long hours. At one point, senior management made the pronouncement that the development team needed to focus more on a particular aspect of the product. The QA manager and I agreed that we’d be Focused More-ons.

Putting things in more or less order

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A good vacation doesn’t fit in a box, tied up with ribbon, that you can open years from now to say, “Yes, that’s what it was.”
A good vacation has time enough to look over the handiwork of spiders who’ve woven their webs in the overnight and now those webs glisten in the morning dew.

A good vacation has unplanned visits, particularly with young ones who bring their own views of us and what’s important.

A good vacation marks transitions, from young to not-young, from before-adventure to after-adventure.

A good vacation lets us learn about the big world in our small corner.

Fisher Museum – Harvard Forest

A good vacation lets you sleep as much as you need to, work until it’s time to swim, swim until your toes are pruney, air-dry on the bench until the mosquitoes have had their fill, and talk for a long time because there’s always this one more thing to say.
A good vacation spills out of the box, onto the floor, and leaves tracks all around your house and yard and life.
It was a good vacation.

Doc rejoins Celtics, sort of

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With Rondo on his way to Dallas, Pierce and KG heading to Brooklyn, and Doc moving west, Celtics fans may despair that the once-great team is being shattered.
Rest assured. We’ve been to this movie before.
In 1978, the original Celtics franchise was sent to Buffalo in a baffling deal that brought the then-Braves to Boston. (There was as baseball team called the Boston Braves that played at what is now Nickerson Field at BU. That franchise is now in Atlanta.) Included in that shuffle was one talented and troubled player, Marvin Barnes, whose story is featured in the “What the Hell Happened To” blog.
That same year, GM Red Auerbach had brilliantly drafted Larry Bird as a junior, even though Bird would return to Indiana for his senior year. The great teams of the 1980s had their basis in the train wreck that was the Celtics ownership of the 70s.
Astute readers will note that current GM Danny Ainge was a good basketball and baseball player and a pretty good basketball executive. Red Auerbach, however, Ainge ain’t.
Meanwhile, the Buffalo team moved to California, first to San Diego and then Los Angeles. So Doc River is now coach of what had been the Celtics.

Categories AI

Ikea numbers

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  • The probability of placing an upside-down board in an Ikea project: 1.
  • The probability of two or more people, each assembling the same Ikea piece of furniture, making the same mistake: 1.
  • The step you will have to redo: 3.
  • The number of times that one’s grandfather, a cabinet maker, rolls in his grave: ∞.
  • The number of better ways to spend a vacation day with your wife: 0.

Mr. Hakkarainen goes to Helsinki

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In Massachusetts, we’ve just completed a special election, characterized by tepid candidates and low voter turnout. Politics used to be something special around here, but we’ve become as dull as Wonder Bread.
Meanwhile, across the pond and to the north, Tuevo Hakkarainen has released a karaoke recording that will be featured at the Gold Cucumber competition in October. (You have to slog through a few translation services to figure out what’s going on. Even then, if the resulting phrases are Gold Cucumber, karaoke, and evil foreboding name, you know that you’re onto something.
In the case that you have doubts, here’s the man himself, singing at an outdoor festival.

And if that wasn’t enough, Hakkarainen missed the opening session of Parliament because of gastroenteritis. News reports referred to him as ” the Lost Teuvo Hakkarainen.”

This post is one of a series about Teuvo Hakkarainen, the True Finns Party MP from Viitasaari. For the record, my grandfather was born in Viitasaari.

Comcast uses Catch-22 as a system design manual

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While reviewing my credit card bill, I noticed that the bill for our Comcast service at the camp was higher than expected. I went to the Comcast website, logged in to my account, and clicked the b to see the details on the bill. I learned that I needed a PIN to access the bill.

For security reasons, Voice management and billing information on your account will be limited until you enter the Security PIN we sent to your home address or email. Enter your Security PIN now, or have it re-sent to you.

Fine. I clicked the link to have it sent to my email. Quick as you please, I was brought to a page where I learned that the PIN will be sent to our camp address in five business days.
Less fine. We don’t receive mail at the camp address.
I looked around around to find another way to find out my PIN. I found none. I initiated a chat session with customer support. After I provided my account info and exchanged niceties, we went to the matter of the PIN.
I learned the following from a nice customer service representative.

  • Even though the message says that they can send the PIN to my email address, they can’t.
  • They can only send the PIN in two ways: by USPS to our camp address, where we don’t receive mail or to our Comcast phone number as a voice message. We don’t have a phone to plug into the phone jack on the router to access the voice service that we didn’t order.
  • They can’t send a text message with the PIN to my cell phone, which the phone number by which the CSR located the account.
  • When I said that I would have to buy a phone to be able to access my Comcast voice mail, she said that wasn’t necessary, that I could borrow a working phone from a neighbor.
    The CSR was very sad for me (her words) when I told her that I don’t have a neighbor from whom I can borrow a phone. 
  • I would have to go to the Comcast office 20 miles away to get real help.
When I got to the Comcast office 20 miles away, the nice customer service rep looked up my account information (based on my cellphone number) and then told me that the system could only send my PIN to the service address (the camp), not to the billing address. I quietly tapped my forehead against the glass that separates customers from service reps. She resolved to fix the problem. Twenty minutes later, she was able get the PIN sent to my home address (“in six to eight business days”).
That was two weeks ago.
Update:
In the process of testing the links for this blog post, I clicked the Send me a PIN links. I just received the following email:

I logged in, entered the PIN, and can now view my bill. Thank you, Comcast, I think.