:: Ray's Periodic Rantings ::

:: Friday, June 23, 2006 ::

Leave us alone!

Dear Mr. Cheney,

Every once in a while, you or your nephew in the White House get the urge to come to the Windy City. For a few hours, your entourage inconveniences literally tens of thousands of people as the Kennedy Expressway and whatever other roads you take, not to mention the Chicago River, are closed to traffic to make way for your motorcade. You make a brief "official" appearance downtown, spitting untruth after untruth through that grimace of yours in front of the cameras at some economic club, so you can write the trip off to taxpayer expense, then you inconvenience more of us as you proceed uptown or out to the suburbs for the real reason you are here, which is to gladhand some rich windbags and prostitute some cash for yourselves or your congressional shills.

Today, Mr. Cheney, you inconvenienced me one time too many when I was informed that the riverbus I was about to ride to work would shut down for an hour because of your imminent presence. Mr. Cheney, we are a blue state. Most of us think that you and your cronies are running the country in the ground and laughing all the way to the hedge fund office. So next time, instead of coming here and bollixing things up for those of us who actually work for a living, please just stay in whatever cave in Arizona or Texas that you call home, and leave us to go about our lives. We are busy here, trying to clean up the continuous excrement that you have been dumping on us for the past five years! If you want to make yourself useful, then wipe that smirk off your face and start attending the military funerals that you caused.
:: Ray 11:09 AM [+] ::
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The perils of touch-screen interfaces

I had a little adventure at the bank a couple of days ago. My bank's ATMs offer the option to set preferences, such as language and whether you want a receipt or not, which are then remembered at every machine. I happened to be in a branch location when I decided to set my preferences, because I always want a receipt and I am tired of being asked each time.

I touched the "Set Preferences" button, and instead of being offered a menu of options, was instead taken through a sequence of each of them that could be set. One option was language. I touched "English," only to watch a different button on the opposite side of the screen, with a Chinese character on it, highlight. On the next screen I was asked, am I sure I want to change my language preferences to (Chinese character)? I touched "Cancel" and watched helplessly as the "Yes" button, again on the opposite side of the screen, highlighted. And then the next screen was complete gibberish to me, along with the vast majority of the population of the United States.

Not wanting to do anything stupid because I couldn't read the menus, I immediately hit the hardware "Cancel" button to get my card back, and was handed a receipt that said, among other things, "LANGUAGE PREFERENCE: CHINESE." No problem, I thought...I am in the bank. I will simply go upstairs and have them reset the account to the default preferences. Silly me.

In a bank as large as mine, not only did most of the customer service people not even know what I was talking about ("Try a different machine," they offered), but they had no idea how to fix it, they had no idea who to call to fix it, and the people they did call had no idea who to call to fix it. In the end, they decided it would be simplest to cancel the entire account and issue me a completely new ATM card!

There can be a point when an institution grows too large for its own good. My bank reached that point one or two mergers ago. In combination with their usurious credit card interest rates and terms, I am now reconsidering my relationship with the bank that has held my accounts since 1989.

ADDENDUM: More importantly than my personal banking preferences, do you think that official votes should recorded by half-baked technology like this? Complaints of just such behavior by voting machines were lodged in the 2004 election. Forgetting the allegations of intentional fraud for just a moment, what percentage of those touch screen votes worked the same way my Chinese language selection did? It makes the venerable punch cards look startlingly accurate, by comparison.
:: Ray 4:46 PM [+] ::
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