Starcraft 2!

I was such a Starcraft junkie back in the day - the folks at QAD were a bit Half-Life obsessed for a while, but we always came back to SC. Ah, the epic battles that were waged! I must have burned through a cumulative few months of time devoted just to playing Starcraft, and now finally after almost 10 years, Starcraft 2 is coming! Behold the developer demo and feel the first pangs of anticipation! I am so ready for this, I'm even thinking about dusting off my old SC CDs and installing it for my trip to CA, just to get back into the mood.

Subway stuff

My allergies have been killing me lately (honestly I had almost forgotten I had them, since it had been so long since I had weather-realted allergies), so I'm in a bit of a fog. Also, my commuting subway lines (the L and the 6) have been having random problems lately, which has caused me to take some routes I normally wouldn't take. Two things I've seen in the subway in the last 24 hours that struck me:
Yesterday afternoon I got sick of waiting for the L train at Union Square, so I figured I'd walk home from there. On my way out I saw this dude singing Ombra mai fu in the original range! I swear to God that guy sounded like a castrato - I've heard plenty of counter-tenors in my life, but that was something entirely different. I was absolutely blown away and disturbed - I wish that I had stayed longer (in my allergy-muddled mind I had the idea in my head that I had somewhere important to go). At least I should have recorded some of it on my phone, because it was absolutely ridiculous (and I mean that in the "awe-inspiring beyond conveyance" sense).

This morning, I walked down to the 14th St subway entrance (which I do if the weather's OK, it beats walking underground), then as soon as I walked in I completely got turned around and started walking back up underground. I walked past four police officers looking at a backpack that had been left on the ground. The backpack looked nice (i.e. almost new, not abused), it was pretty large and obviously full of something, and it was sitting in an area that, honestly, didn't look like a spot where someone would accidentally lose a backpack - it was just sort of in a random spot on the floor of the middle level (between the ground and the rails) of the subway station. So, if I were a cop, all of those things would be red flags for me. If it was, for example, a purse sitting on the bench at the actual subway level where people wait for the train, I wouldn't be as concerned. If it was a beat-to-hell backpack, I might have thought that someone just got tired of their backpack and threw it right there on the floor (and yes, New York is the kind of town where people just randomly decide "I don't want this anymore" and throw it on the ground, as if to commemorate the spot where they made the decision to finally get rid of the thing). However, if we're supposedly at a level of alertness where we randomly search people entering the subway (and yes, this is still going on, although not as often as before), then I would think that a like-new backpack in a random location in the subway would be considered a pretty significant threat. So, what did the police do? The same thing they would have done before all this terror business began - they cautiously opened it up and took a look inside. I noticed, however, that the cop was careful to put on his gloves before he opened the backpack.
I can't say I watched this for a long time, because 1) I didn't want to be noticed by the cops - if I were one of them, I would have been pretty on-edge at that point, and 2) I hate to admit this, but if there was a nasty surprise in the backpack, I didn't want to be too close to it. However, when I reached the end of the station, I realized that I had been going the wrong way and I had to go back. When I passed by the location again, two of the cops had wandered off, and the other two were walking to the exit with the backpack, so I guess there was nothing scary in it.

I find myself wondering if the NYPD's reaction is a good thing or a bad thing - in fact, I've been thinking about it all morning. What does this mean? I can only think of a few possibities:

1. These cops were just dumb and didn't realize that "new backpack, obviously relatively full, in a place where it's unlikely it was just misplaced there" should be some kind of red flag.
   
2. Some precautions were already taken before I happened by the scene - perhaps a dog had been brought in to sniff it, or something like that, although I doubt it (since whatever or whoever had checked it before would probably still be around when they decided to open it).
3. This one scares me - maybe the higher-ups in NYC law enforcement realize that this whole subway thing is no more than security theater, but it keeps people feeling that essential combination of scared and protected that's been so beneficial for everyone. Plus, I'm guessing that the NYPD is really using the subway searches to look for illegal immigrants and folks who just look "suspicious" in general, so maybe it's working for them, as opposed to actually checking for terrorists. Of course, I haven't seen any news or stats about the fruits of the subway searches, so maybe it's not really working out for them.

I dunno - all I know is that it seemed really weird.
Back to the first thing (the guy singing yesterday afternoon) - I'm going to start filming the really cool subway buskers, maybe I'll catch that guy again and get some footage.

Bruce Schneier is my hero

This guy is so cool - I've always been interested in cryptography and security, and he's one of the biggest guys in the field. Check out his essays and op-eds here - anything you click on will be absolutely worth reading. He recently did an interview on Sirius with RU Sirius and he's just awesome. You can listen here (click on the mp3 link - Bruce's interview starts at about 10 minutes in) or read the transcript here. The guy's just frigging awesome - I feel about him like a neocon feels about Bill or Rush - everything he says is gospel, and if what he says is wrong, I don't wanna be right.
And if you want to know what to get me for my next occasion, consider this T-shirt.

Mama visit and service organizations

My mom came and visited us last weekend, it was great to see her again (I saw her a couple of weeks ago for a few hours, but before that it had been quite a while). She and Larry stayed over the weekend and we went and did lots of stuff, mostly walking around and checking out various institutions. Clau tried to get us to go to a gospel service on Sunday morning, but unfortunately I was a big buzzkill and didn't want to leave the apartment so early.
We ended up checking out the Tribeca film festival - we watched a documentary short collection called "Family Legacy" (you can find it here), which was really good. That night we watched Planet B-Boy at the "Tribeca Drive-in", which was also very, very cool. I probably would have rated both of them 4 stars out of 5 on Netflix. We also tried to get into the comedy panel, but since that was about the hottest ticket in the festival, we didn't really stand a chance. But, we tried.
Mama and I talked about part of her work, which is improving service processes. Of course, one thing I'm constantly lamenting about (although not in this particular venue) is how the standard of customer service in the U.S. has gone completely downhill in the name of efficiency and the bottom line. My mother is trying to educate companies on ways that they can improve this and still make money - theoretically, they could actually increase their bottom line, although I'm sure it's a tough sell. Let me just outline a few anecdotes about customer service.

1) Whenever you have a forum or other thread regarding the customer service hell for Dell / HP / whatever, you invariably have an Apple fanboy pop up about how great Apple's service is. I haven't tested this myself (since I haven't had any problems with my Macbook, which is perhaps the best testimony of all), but apparently you can call for support with either a hardware or OS X problem, and the phone is actually answered within 5 minutes by a native English speaker. If you don't live near an Apple store (by virtue of living in Manhattan I happen to live near a 24-hour Apple store, with another on the way in my own neighborhood), they will send you a postage-paid box to send them the item for repair. What's a little sad is that this makes Apple absolutely head-and-shoulders above the rest; IMHO, this ought to be the norm (or at least not quite so far ahead of the norm).

2) About 8 years or so ago, I had a problem with a bill that I had paid online. If memory serves, the receiving party had inadvertently moved the decimal point, so that a $20 payment was registered as a $2 payment. IIRC the payee was AT&T, but don't quote me on that. I checked my bank records and the payee had indeed received $20 from my bank account. So, the first thing I did was call AT&T to see if they had discovered the mistake and corrected it. I must have spent 45 minutes in voicemail, on hold, talking to the AT&T CSR, on hold some more, finally talking to a supervisor, with the end result being that they would look into it after receiving by certified mail a copy of the canceled check. I explained that it was an electronic payment and there likely was no physical check, and they basically told me I was SOL. Worst of all, they made it very clear that they had no intention of investigating the matter further until I came up with some proof. I hung up in disgust, took some deep breaths, and prepared to go through the same thing with Wells Fargo. I talked to the rep, explained what had happened, and gave him the confirmation number for the electronic payment. He immediately responded with "Well, it looks like you paid them $20, so AT&T probably made a mistake." My heart sank for a moment, and then he said "we'll take care of it". He gave me a case number and told me to call back if it wasn't resolved in 5 days. The whole thing took less than 5 minutes. The best part? They actually took care of it - I never had to call them again about the case. And, I'll tell you, even though I don't live anywhere near a Wells Fargo bank anymore, that's still my primary bank account, all because of that one incident. Of course, usually when I tell this story to people, I add the footnote "You know, it's sad that the Wells Fargo story is so exceptional - this sort of experience ought to be the norm."

3) My wife works for a large food company who has outsourced their IT department, and she is constantly lamenting the poor service. The contractor company routinely pulls really, really nasty tricks, most notably closing tickets without actually solving the problem, then opening a fresh ticket when the customer complains. For those of you who can't understand why they do this, the reason is twofold:

• Companies typically have SLA (Service Level Agreements) with the customer, such as "we will fix 90% of your issues within 3 business days and 95% within 10 business days". Since most calls are of the "I forgot my password" variety, this is actually a pretty easy metric to meet. However, if you realize you've screwed up, you can always cheat by closing the ticket prematurely, then opening a new ticket, thus reseting the clock.
• Service companies are paid based on the number of incidents you're logging. It's usually on a "we expect X incidents per month - if that number goes up or down, then we'll adjust the accounting next month", but it could even be on a "you will pay $x per incident" basis. Obviously, having two tickets is better than only having one.

There are many ways to avoid these problems, the most obvious of which is a "pending customer approval" feature in closing the ticket: after the tech closes the ticket, the clock stops pending an approval / rejection from the customer. If the customer rejects the ticket closure, the clock starts up again. This is far from revolutionary; most modern ticketing systems have this feature. At the very least, you should have a customer feedback option for a ticket - this allows the customer to both praise and complain. This is at least an opportunity for the customer to say "you shouldn't have closed this ticket, since you didn't actually do the thing you were supposed to do." It's also an opportunity for excellent CSRs and techies to get their due praise. When I worked for QAD, they had a pretty simple system where three positive comments (or perhaps just one particularly gushing comment) would earn you a "blue dot", complete with a cheesy certificate. Three "blue dot" certificates could be cashed in for a day off, anytime, no questions asked. Most of us actually ended up saving our blue dots and decorating our walls with them, or stacking them somewhere. I think that, deep down, everyone was really proud of their blue dot collection, even if we all acted like they were stupid.
Anyway, to get back to my wife's outsourced IT contractor, they don't even have a way for the customer to enter feedback. So, they basically have license to create their own metrics. And the best part is that whoever signed these jokers up is probably being praised for trimming the cost of IT so efficiently. In the meantime, my wife's issues (most of which are of the "I need this piece of software installed on person X's workstation" or "I need person X added to domain group Y" variety) are usually completed after more than a week, and far too often involve multiple tickets.

Just like everyone else, I can probably rattle at least 3 or 4 hellish customer service experiences that I've had in the last few years. Since I'm pretty handy with most tech things, I'm guessing that I'm on the low end of the spectrum. I can only imagine what life is like for folks who don't know computers / software / whatever very well - it would probably turn me off of ever learning how to use a computer in the first place. Unless, of course, I bought an Apple.