Municipal Free Wireless Fails

On NPR, I heard a story about the failure of advertising based free WiFi in the Silicon Valley.

I'm gonna guess that folks who either can not afford or do not value hi speed internet at more than $1.50 per day are not an attractive demographic to advertisers.

I am ready to receive my MacArthur Fellowship now, thank you.

Web Master!

I am making a web site for the world wide web. I'm going global, baby!

The following comic illustrates my approach:

Science Says: Gaydar is Real

Don't blame me. It's only science.

TV Punditry

Neoliberal maxipad Slate has an article titled: Don't Worry About Conan: He's Going to be Great as the Tonight Show Host.

ATTENTION YOU BUTTMUNCHING ASSCLOWNS: CONAN HAS BEEN ON TV FOR OVER 10 FUCKING YEARS AS A LATE NIGHT HOST. HE HAS DONE THOUSANDS OF SHOWS. THERE IS MORE THAN ENOUGH DATA TO DETERMINE HOW HE WILL PERFROM.

JESUS CHRIST BEN MATHIS-LILLY, BUY A FUCKING CLUE!

TRIP REPORT: 8th Floor

Per this post, I am back with results.

And they are: Meh.

Media Bias: Sexist Math Edition

The wise men of our press corp reported this story recently:

The AP originally reported that Figge swam from the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa to Trinidad (2,100 miles) in 25 days while escorted by a boat. She was said to have rested every night and hopped back in the water in the morning.

Figge woke most days around 7 a.m., eating pasta and baked potatoes while she and the crew assessed the weather. Her longest stint in the water was about eight hours, and her shortest was 21 minutes.

I hate math too; it's the pseudo-science foisted by the regnant patriarchy. But let's deconstruct what this so-called "math" would have us believe.

Figge swam 25 days at 8 hours maximum per day. 25 x 8 = 200 so she swam for a total time of 200 hours. During those 200 hours she covered a distance of 2,100 miles. Also, some sexist pig named Newton (who names they're kid after a cookie anyway?) "claimes" that velocity = distance/time; or v = d/t. Well, if that's true then Figge's velocity is 2,100 miles/200 hours.

Or 10.5 miles per hour. That's a 5:42 per mile; about as fast as a world class marathon runner. We know that the fastest a man can swim is about 5 mph.

So, the choice is yours. What are you going to believe?

That a beautiful, unreconstructed and unashamed feminist women swam the Atlantic at a pace double that any man can swim or the mysoginist sports press that so often seeks to denigrate and destroy women who achieve (and hence, threaten) in their little world?

Yeah, me too. I can't wait for Figge to swim around the entire world! With a little training, it should only take her about 2 months. Womyns 4-evah!

Walmart

Where a kid can be a kid. Or an aging journalist can report.

And so we came to the Wal-Mart Pledge. Solemnly, each of us raised one hand and intoned: "If a customer comes within 10 feet of me, I'm going to look him in the eye, smile and greet him." Having pledged ourselves, we encountered the aspect of Wal-Mart employment that impressed me most: The Telxon, pronounced "Telzon," a hand-held bar-code scanner with a wireless connection to the store's computer. When pointed at any product, the Telxon would reveal astonishing amounts of information: the quantity that should be on the shelf, the availability from the nearest warehouse, the retail price, and (most amazing of all) the markup.

All of us were given access to this information, because - in theory, at least - anyone in the store could order a couple extra pallets of anything, and could discount it heavily as a Volume Producing Item (known as a VPI), competing with other departments to rack up the most profitable sales each month. Floor clerks even had portable equipment to print their own price stickers. This was how Wal-Mart detected demand and responded to it: by distributing decision-making power to grass-roots level. It was as simple yet as radical as that.

We received an inspirational talk on this subject, from an employee who reacted after the store test-marketed tents that could protect cars for people who didn't have enough garage space. They sold out quickly, and several customers came in asking for more. Clearly this was a singular, exceptional case of word-of-mouth, so he ordered literally a truckload of tent-garages, "Which I shouldn't have done really without asking someone," he said with a shrug, "because I hadn't been working at the store for long." But the item was a huge success. His VPI was the biggest in store history - and that kind of thing doesn't go unnoticed in Arkansas.

He was invited to corporate HQ as a guest at a management conference. "It was totally different from what I expected," he told us. "I thought it would be these fatcats talking about money, but no one even mentioned money. All they cared about was finding new ways to satisfy customers. I met everyone including the chairman of the company."

These are obvious lies; their only purpose is to perpetuate the false consciousness that we as a country are in the collective grip of.

Today's that day

I'm gonna use that 8th floor RR. See for myself what the fuss is all about.

The day is long

A colleague suggests I venture up to the 8th floor.

Restrooms

I use the restrooms on the sixth floor sometimes. I figure since the tenants are so fabulously wealth and sophisticated, maybe some of their financial genius would rub off on me.

That's why I never use the toilet seat cover ("provided by the management for your protection.") when I'm up there.

One company, Assent Capital, or something has a strange thing going on. Their admin is a kinda oafy looking guy instead of a young attractive female. I don't understand how they can allow this. Based on this data point alone, I would never trust my wealth to this company.

As I left the sixth floor, I checked again to make sure he wasn't the IT guy fixing the computer. Nope. Same dude.

Your word of the day: de rigeur
"Having an attractive female admin at the front is de rigeur in the world of finance."

What Assent has done is committed a faux pas, but more on that tomorrow.

Everybody's Talking About the Weekend

BTW, I'll just tell you about this weekend. I went to west Oakland to shop some foreclosure rental props (3/1 duplex is ~$140k, rents ~$1200 each). This is my first venture into becoming a slumlord exploiter of the poor. I couch-surfed on my fellow slumlord's couch. But since he's poor too (over leveraged) he's had to take in a hippy roommate. And this is how I got to witness the hippy courtship ritual.

Man, these young hippy chicks are smoking hot.

Must be all the organic stir fry w amino acids ("it's like soy sauce, w/o the bad stuff!"). Anyway, the roommate gives her some rolling papers and stir-fry and later that night... stoned hippy lovemaking.

whee.

I tried to shove my stroopwaffles (google it) down her throat, but like a good courtee she declined.