Peterson's Second Law

Low probabilities tend towards non-indendence, often just enough to get you into deep trouble.

Stated differently: Variables generally tend towards non-independence.  This means that outliers in one variable tend to be outliers in others.  Likewise, with means.

As a result, the assignment of causality favors the variable estimated with the greatest positive bias.

We see what we want to see, through science or not.

Amazon has bugs too

When I started using Amazon, over 20 years ago, it was like a breath of fresh air.  Finally it seemed I had access to any book title I could think of and could conveniently have it delivered.

Since then, according to many reports, the back end of Amazon has gotten ugly, with fatigued and underpaid workers, cutthroat delivery competition, and community subsidies.

This is not what I wanted.  I wanted endless selection.  I've never really cared about "low prices."  In fact, I don't believe there is such a thing as "low prices."  Low prices are always a come-on that you end up paying for in other ways regardless.  When you pay the "low price" at the retailer, you likely have to pay the healthcare cost of their stressed out employees through taxes, higher insurance cost caused by traffic jams and accidents around the premises, etc.

(On the other hand, there IS such a thing as a "free lunch."  Better goals, methods, and organizations can yield endless free lunches.  Human organization could be far better than it is today.  We already have the technical capacities to build free lunch for everyone all the time, but we choose to build a heavily armed and paranoid hierarchical slum instead.)

Generally the Amazon online shopping experience has been first rate.  On other sites, I've had about a 75% chance of the shopping thing working OK, but it had been close to 100% at Amazon until the last few years, and assisted greatly by Amazon's formerly peerless customer reviews.

No delivery experience has been 100%, and sometimes I've had even worse delivery experiences from Amazon competitors, such as Powell's Books, who you'd think would be better since they do in fact generally charge more.  In my most recent order from Powell's, my book was packed in a thin bag instead of a box and not surprisingly arrived damaged after having been crammed into my mailbox.  IMO, anything larger than a few screws should be packed in an actual box, not a thin bag.  Powell's effortlessly processed the return but gave me no human reply that indicating they could make it better next time.  So--I re-ordered from Amazon, and at least a box was used (without wrapping the book or stuffing padding into it) so it didn't get crushed, just the usual scratches.

Generally, Amazon's delivery has been well below average in quality packaging and getting the goods to me undamaged.  About 75% of the high value books I've ordered from Amazon ended up with a minor scratch or wrinkle because of cheap and fast packing.  I usually try to order off-Amazon when it is fairly easy to do so primarily for this reason (and also because I hate employee crushing monopolies).  For example, my experience in getting well packaged electronics items from Newegg has generally been better than Amazon.  Also better at Music Direct and Audio Advisor.  Since my recent disappointment with Powells, I do not at this time know of a decent online bookseller.  I generally try to order direct from publishing houses when I can, and this usually provides quality delivery, at the highest full retail price too.

But things have been devolving at Amazon and elsewhere, another example of the movie Brazil in real life, in terms of showing advancing technology failing more and more.  With the underlying complexity of recent computer programming methods and systems, it's a wonder anything works at all anymore at all.  Meanwhile, we're told breathless stories about how computing will getting more and more wonderful in the future: impossibly fast, take care of everything, etc.  We'll hardly need to think, or maybe the computers need us at all.  But history tends to repeats itself: they stopped making decent can openers during the Apollo program, and then they cancelled the Apollo program.  I'll start considering celestial predictions when I start seeing pedestrian results continue for more than one step.  But in fact, over time, computerized systems have been getting less and less pedestrian, as complexity exceeds both human and machine grasp, and as goals broaden to include more and more ways of ripping people off.  The essential problem of scaling up parallel processing is that the cost of exchanging information begins to exceed the cost of benefit.  There is a similar problem, even more dramatic, in scaling up complexity, where things can break down entirely.

My most recent experience with Amazon has been especially discouraging, and might lead me to avoid Amazon whenever possible, even if other shopping methods are far less convenient.

I've been trying to Twin XL sheets for my new guest bedroom adjustable bed.  I had figured they might be hard to find in stores and with a limited selection.  (Actually, there were several good choices at Bed Bath & Beyond so I now strongly recommend that brick and mortar store I hope to see a lot more in the future.   I was able to buy just what I wanted at BB&B for $49.99, cheaper than the $69.99 Amazon on the only suitable item I could find there, though the Amazon product had an additional touted benefit.  Recently there had been talk about BB&B folding.  I hope they stay around, especially since Anna's Linens is gone.  I will try to go to BB&B more often now.)

And now that I'm not working outside the home, it's more of a hassle to get shaved and dressed and go out to buy something.  I'd say that adds at least $40 of "personal cost" onto every outside shopping trip.  I'm with those who say the long run impetus is toward electronic purchasing of most everything, everything except those things which require a personal touch such as clothing and produce.  Given ever increasing populations and therefore high desireable population densities, "main streets" generally don't make sense anymore, the transportation cost is much cheaper simply to deliver everything to the customer.  But HOW this major social transformation is worked out is not unimportant.  The Amazon monopoly model is not the best solution for all stakeholders.  And, in addition to that market failure, we have to find more pro-social ways of employing people people displaced from retail into other sectors, such as building green energy systems.

If you know what you are looking for on Amazon, you can often find it, but otherwise not.  If you just start looking for something generic, Amazon will apparently steer you to a certain set of items, and no matter how you navigate from there, you will not get beyond a particular limited horizon and into the famous brands you may only be able to find with a direct search for that brand.  So, the shopping experience is getting dumbed down, just like going into a supermarket where store-brands are continually crowding and often forcing out the brand name items, even if, as on Amazon, the brand name items are actually there, you just cannot find them unless you know the brand name.

I found a few low cost Twin XL sheets, but it took a few hours effort to find something a bit nicer, with claimed US made organic cotton, for example.  I was ultimately able to find something that looked quite nice for $69 and I ordered it.

When the package arrived, it was only Twin, not Twin XL.  I studied the package carefully, and double checked my order.  My order clearly said "Twin XL" but what I received was not.  So I returned the item, using the "wrong item was delivered" option.  (Amazon now has a long preset list of reasons to return an item, each having their own unique "policy.")

However, when the replacement item arrived, once again, it was only Twin, and not Twin XL.

Once again, I took a look at my previous order, now clicking back to the Item page and looking at the dimensions.

Curiously, when I first clicked back to the Item page, it showed the same Dimensions as on my Twin sheets, but it identified it as "Twin XL."  If I then clicked on Twin, and then back on Twin XL, the Dimensions show were the Twin XL dimensions.

So, it looked like the dimensions of your "Twin XL" would depend on the order that you have gone through the size options.  In some cases, those dimensions would be indentical to Twin, and then you would just get Twin like me.

Now I have returned the item under a different policy, "Website Error."  I was hoping that would mean I'd just get a refund.  But it seems to be "processing" my order now.

I may end up having to consider this order a total loss, and that Amazon is not going to send me a Twin XL or give me a cash refund.

It's already cost me more than it was worth in time and agony.

And then there's the bug where reviews for multiple versions of the same Item are all jumbled together, and don't really all apply to the item you may be looking at.

Aphorisms

"Critically Acclaimed" means hated by customers.

Architectural award means totally unusable.

The Cost of CYA

The Cost of Unnecessary CYA is Borne by the Least Powerful (i.e., you and me).

So, when authoritative voices boom that this or that must be done, for your own good, they really mean: largely at your own cost, and possibly for your own good, but less and less likely to be so over time, as more and more unnecessary CYA is ordered by the more powerful who don't actually bear the cost of it.

This is essentially the recent history and present of Modern Medicine.  More and more tests and treatments are devised, so the medical professional can be sure there are no missed positives on their watch (despite the actual lack of being able to tell very well which is which) with the result that the endless testing and treatment of false positives and things that would otherwise not kill us first is probably killing us about as much as anything.  But that's not their problem, that's our problem, the problem of the least powerful, the patients.

In addition to rare disorders that sometimes affect people so endlessly over-tested-and-treated, there are other costs.  Ruining one's finances tops the list, both to pay the exhorbitant costs, and the loss of time and ability to work.  It may ruin one's marriage, one's social life, one's education, and so on, which could then also lead to things like the loss of employment and good finances.  One loses freedom, say, to work at other than a job with full benefits like health insurance, or not work at all, and lives in constant fear of being laid off and losing that insurance.  One is subject to increased likelihood of traffic accidents, which could be totally or partially disabling.  And so on.  But those are our costs, so they are ignored in Medical Progress.  Also, while the portion of the public with good health insurance will be tested and treated to the maximum the providers can conceivably collect from insurance--and often a bit more, people without good health insurance won't be even looked at, ever, no matter how much they actually need it, until they are dying in the emergency room--and that's another cost borne by the powerless.

One famous area where CYA has costs is the lack-of-speed whereby freeways, highways, and byways can be cleared after the least major of accidents.  If police are involved, they want to be sure they have the whole story, signed in quadruplicate, before any cars are moved.  It seems to require an act of Congress.  So we must wait and wait. Additional accidents may occur as a result.  That's our cost.

Another area which has become bigger and bigger CYA is underground locating services.  My back yard does not seem to be near any new development, but nevertheless underground locators are continually requiring access to my back yard to check out for the umpteenth-umpteenth time where the utilities run.  I think these things must be ordered at a high level where they must check everything in some grid box or path.  Of course, so nothing can go wrong.

Curiously, as far as I can tell, the layout is NOT as specified in my plat.  My plat shows a utility easement on one side of the house...but electrical and signal wires actually run on the other side.  There is no gas at all, and water and sewer are all in the front.

This combination of easements and actual lines has blocked off large parts of my yard for permanent structures, and often makes it hard to even plant plants or lay temporary structures.  I must honor the easements in spite of the fact there is nothing there for miles as far as I can tell.

I've come to hate underground utilities because of both losing ground to development and the endless underground locating.  Those are my costs, so they don't count.

iTunes Compilations

The way that iTunes (sadly soon to be RIP, as it looks like what's next is far worse) stores albums with more than one artist in a special folder called Compilations is extremely annoying, but also typical of the way that modern fascist systems operate.  Fascist systems store your data in such a way as to only be useful to THEM, not you (the human user) or any other program.

iTunes is not completely like this in many ways, it's somewhat open actually (which is why I have stuck with it so far), generally intuitively organizing files into hierarchical folders based on Artist, then Album, and also apparently has ways of "sharing" metadata with other programs (such as Sonos and Roon).

But this Compilations things is the minor annoying exception, a not-quite black box in which some albums are pre-ordained (by whoever wrote the metadata, which you can "select" from a list created by others and hope for the best) to be stashed, not easily visible from scanning your iTunes folder.  Somehow iTunes knows to look there, whatever the Artist seems to be specified as.

I end up copying my CD's to hard drive multiple times, because I miss details like this "Compilations" folder which often messes me up, along with other similar details.  You'd think it takes very little time to copy a CD, but if you are particular about making your collection human-mangeable, not joined at the hip to some fascist program, it takes some time.

Now it would be nice I suppose to separate the "true metadata" (which would list ALL the artists, dates, etc) from the "sorting metadata."  But this is no where to be found.  So if you want decent sorting, that is if you want your collection to be somewhat human readable and manageable, you need to edit whatever metadata is selected from wherever to something that simplifies the artist, etc, as best works for sorting purposes.

For sorting purposes, I use a few simplifications like this:

For classical works, "Artist" is often the Composer.  (In recent years I have given up on this, unless the Artist is very little known--in which case it's essential.)

If the Artist is a key figure, such as Bach, I don't bother with "Johann Sebastian Bach", or "Bach, JS", or any one of the many ways his name can be specified with greater or lesser precision.  Bach is just Bach.  Now, there are other Bach's, but all the lesser known Bach's get their name spelled out, as commonly pronounced, with no commas.  Such as "CPE Bach."

Now, other programs, typically photo programs, dump their data into one big file, so you have to use the program itself, or one of it's brothers, to "export" the data into a standard file format.  That's getting much closer to fascist.  I suppose if a program is fully facist there would not even be a way to export the data.

Unix, the great seminal operating system, was also one of the least fascist.

Features that you don't want

Any feature that you don't want will be constantly getting in your way.

One of the best examples of this is the Safari Sidebar.  I don't know anyone who likes this, but Apple keeps trying to make it the default, and in your face, as much as possible.

In my case, I use a relatively narrow monitor on my kitchen table because there isn't much horizontal space available.  I use large typefaces because my eyes have floaters and somewhat imperfect focus at the monitor distance.  This means the safari sidebar renders the rest of my browser window very narrow.  It's terrible.

So I wonder, does Apple keep trying to stick this in my face because...they want to sell a newer bigger Apple monitor???  Usually these endless features have some purpose like that; they're either part of planned obsolescence of some kind (a new monitor every 3 years as we add needlessly add more pixels) or part of some other kind of sale (your personal media viewing and listening habits, or a lifelong relationship where you can keep on being gouged long into the future with additional offers for additional relationships).

So I remember many many times turning off the Safari sidebar.  Often I just dive into the Safari preferences.  Curiously, there isn't any control for the sidebar there, though it obviously seems like something which might be considered a preference.  I seem to recall there was a preference for it many years ago, and then that preference item went away.  I might be mistaken about that, and confusing it with similar features, but it seems to me at some point Apple removed that preference item and thereby invalidated innumerable pages found by Google telling you how to turn off the sidebar--that kind of invalidation is happening all the time for all such troublesome features for sure--and any given Google search for any such features is likely to first unearth 10 useless descriptions of how it was/is done in some earlier/later version of the software/OS involved.

So now that turning the sidebar off disappeared from Safari preferences, it did sorta often seem like it remembered the way I liked Safari (without the Sidebar).  But then, sometimes possibly after Safari updates, or OS updates, the sidebar comes back on, persistently, and I have to struggle to find useful information on how it can now be turned off in permanently or at least semi-permanently in future windows, not just the one I'm looking at now.

Then there are the features like the innumerable different modes the iPhone camera app lets you do photography.  Most of the time, nearly all the time, all I want to do is take a simple snap shot.  Not a video, not a panorama, etc, etc.  But often I'm trying to take this photo holding the phone at a distance where it's not easy to see what part of the screen I'm contacting or how.  So I end up twirling through the various photo options that are always there, always reminding me of how clever Apple is, cleverly providing features that are constantly getting in my way of just trying to do simple things.

The first two laws of delivery

1.  A waited-for package never arrives.  Alternatively, when you want early delivery, they want later.

This almost goes without saying.  It's happened to me many times, in many scenarios, now corrollaries.

a) If you see the delivery truck pulling into your street, it's not for you.

aa) If you see the delivery truck pulling into your neighborhood, it will be for the street just past your street, unless (a).

b) If you come home early to wait for a package, it will be delayed to the next day.

c) If you come home mid-day to wait for a package, it will be delayed longer than you can possibly wait before going back to work.

d) If you are waiting for an early delivery before going to work, it will be delayed longer than you can possibly wait before going to work.


2.  When you want late delivery, they want early delivery.

Especially with freight shipments, where you want to be back from work, or back from lunch, or have the assistance of friends and neighbors to help move the freighted item into your house, so you want late delivery, THEY want early delivery, which makes all of these less possible.

In some cases, they don't just want early delivery, they force it on you by just showing up and unloading the item.  Those situations are, in theory, refuseable.  Even if they have unloaded the item from the truck and are standing in your doorway with the sign out sheet, you can refuse, insist they load the item back on the truck and come back during the scheduled delivery window.

Or at least so I've been told, after I accepted such an early delivery (it was even on an earlier day!).  It messed up my personal schedule and I lost points at work.  I was angry, but the delivery company just said I could have refused.

But the first step will be to initially suggest an early delivery window.  "We can deliver that 8-10 am on Monday morning.  Is that OK?"

Confronted with that, you ask for their latest delivery window, etc.

Then you can look forward to at least one phone call, perhaps on the day before the scheduled delivery, or on the scheduled day but very early in the morning, such as 7:30 am, with an offer, often with some claimed urgency, to make an early delivery.  You must calmly remind them of the scheduled delivery window.

Presumably they want early delivery because it saves them time and money somehow, or they can reserve the later slots for people who are paying for the extra services (in home assembly), etc.  But still, if late delivery works better for you, and they ultimately agree to it, you can expect them to be constantly trying to weasel out of it.

The Destination Already Has a File Named ...

Dialogs which force you to make a decision like this are very unhelpful.

When a destination folder already has a file with the same name, the copy command should check the files for identical contents.  If they have identical contents, no question need be asked, the copy is as good as done already.  If they don't have identical contents, then the question needs asking, but the dialog should at least include some other information, such as:

1) The sizes of the files.
2) The creation and modification dates of the files.

If you're worried about the speed for file comparision, you should not be.  At least on Linux systems I've used, giant files and even whole directories of giant files can be compared in a few seconds and sometimes even under a second.  Meanwhile, antiquated (and actually newer in conception) file comparison tools on Windows are unbelievably slow.  I believe a good Windows program could do it as fast as on Linux, but atomic file operations have never been a priority a priority for them (or Apple).

If you're still worried about the speed of file comparisons, it would at least be a step forward for dialogs to include the sizes and dates so you could make a sensible judgement without having to open more windows for file examinations yourself.

Random Slideshows and Creating Playlists

I have a lot of experience with random slideshows, and music playback, both in use, and frustratingly trying to make them better by programming them, using well regarded random number generators seemingly suitable to the task at hand (I believe I used 48bit repeat--and not the current standard Mersenne Prime generators).

Somehow it always seems that random isn't really random.  Or if you just leave something running, and keep coming back to it at irregular (but perhaps not quite random themselves) intervals, it seems you mostly see or hear about 10% of the entire list contents, and there's at least 30% you never ever see or hear not in years.

No matter how large the list, when randomly selected it never appears to take long to start seeing duplicates, and those duplicates are the ones that seem to occur over and over.

I'm not sure of the validity or mathematics of this, I'm just reporting my experience.  Many years ago I even gave up with random song playback on my Sonos system for the reasons described, and just started playing through my music library sequentially.  I ultimately gave up on that also, and for now, I have no satisfying "automatic" playback of my music library, nor any particularly good playlists.  With all my vast collection of purchased and available music...I find myself mostly listening to FM radio so my choices are simplified (which of 3 or so tolerable stations).  I've liked Pandora automatic selection, but even it can get tiring before long, and it's not uncompressed audio.  I haven't much tried the auto selection of Roon with my own library and Tidal HD.

For video, I devised and incredible picture viewing system, actually a hodge podge of programs running on my Amiga, which permitted me to create playlists on the fly, and add to them, and navigate within them, all from just a few pushbuttons on a standard Sony remote control.  THAT was the best system I ever had, but it required exhausting picture format conversions that couldn't be completely automated because the PC to Amiga transfer wasn't reliable enough.  I finally just abandoned the system when my old video connections to the computer room were withdrawn temporarily...I could set it up again now with the new professionally wired video connections but I haven't bothered, in part because the computer room is already and still such a mess.  So, the best program ever, is lost to ruin.  I hestitate to program such things on more "modern" computers.

One thing you may find true, playing random songs is somehow going to skip lots of songs, you'll hear the same couple songs from every album and never the others, so it seems the best thing is to select Albums randomly, not just songs.  That way at least you hear all the songs on an album, if you listen long enough.

In my program, there was a history so even a random slideshow could be paused and gone back through.  The history of the current process (since when the Amiga was rebooted) was channel "0", which could be reselected at any time after going to another channel/playlist which was specified by a number with as many digits as desired.  Once a playlist was selected more could be added to it.  Also individual pictures could be saved, on the fly, to any number with a leading 0.

Creating playlists is something that needs to be able to be done on-they-fly, as you are otherwise listening or viewing things.  Otherwise, there's never enough time.

*****

Perhaps the apparent non-randomness at least party stems from real duplicates, and near duplicates.  I also think that leaving a stream running, and then sampling it at the same times each day, stresses the randomness properties of oldfashioned random number generators.  And maybe other things I haven't figured out yet.

One way of dealing with it is daily pruning, removing things that have gotten stale, and adding new things.  Seemingly just adding one thing is enough to change the mold and get you a new subset of the main set.

Buffet Interrogations

I've pretty much eaten at cafeterias and buffets all my life after going away from home for college.

I like them because you can fill in all the things you need in the amounts needed, including fruit.  Fruit is one thing not often served by restaurants, except those with salad bars, which are kind of like small buffets.  Marie Calendar used to have a pretty good Salad Bar and Buffet about 25 years ago, but it went into such decline at the local outlet that I began to fear going there.  Buffets and salad bars have been in disappearance and decline it seems, since about forever, especially from their peak about 22 years ago, but I've frequented a pretty good steak bar and buffet for decades.

I've always liked to have my buffet dinner during working house (mid-day is best for the greatest meal) and do my reading, usually a magazine or nowadays often my phone.

Buffets don't require much personal service.  But they want to make a show of personal service if for no other reason that their table servers be paid a lower rate as "tipped staff."  OK, I'm fine with tipping for minimal service, or even none.  (When I was younger, this pissed me off.  I'd rather get my own drinks than have people constantly ask me if I'd like a refill.  But now I have more sympathy for the employees, and frankly I don't get asked as much anymore anyway, as I drink less.

I'm fine with tipping these people--they need the money...and I'm partly saving the service cost in the direct payment.  But sometimes these people amp up the show to either assure contribution, assure retetention for following the the rules, or some such.  Before too long I feel like they're not really serving me, they're "Serving" me to someone else.

Often servers make ask over removing plates after they are done.  I generally wouldn't care much if they didn't take anything, OR just took it without asking.   Actually, at expensive restaurants, they generally grab the plates at the earliest moment unless you stop them immediately.  However, once you stop them, they then make permanent adjustments.   But at buffets they often ask if you want you're plate removed, when you've started on another, and it's an interruption.

Much interaction nowadays is for the drink refill service, and I suppose one can't complain about that, as long as one is not asked too repetitively if you want your drink refill, which was typical in some places I used to go.

And then there's the seemingly mandatory "Is everything OK" or sometimes "Are You OK?"  I guess once per visit would be OK, but frankly I'd prefer not being repetitively asked such questions, or even once, when I'm obviously very busy eating and reading something.  If something is not OK, I usually try to find some staff immediately, or stare at any staff I see, not look busy reading something.

If I merely nod or mumble OK, that usually works for most servers, but some seem to be a bit hard of hearing, in which case I might get further asked the "Are you OK?" a second or third time with greater emphasis.  And then have this entire ritual played out 2 or 3 times in one visit to the buffet. It gets very tiring.

Decades ago, I started complaining about being asked such questions, actually in regards to the minute by minute "Would you like your drink filled.:  One time I determined that I had been asked if I would like my drink filled 8 times during a 30 minute dinner.  I refused every time.  No matter how many times I asked, to the same service people, that I didn't want to be asked such questions anymore and ever again, the same people resumed asking at the next visit.

Ultimately, hoping I'd get less attention, I tried reducing my tip.  That didn't get the intended result either, but convinced one server I was a starving student, so now I now got fake sympathy on top of everything else.

The very worst of all, is being asked what I've brought to read, as is most often done at entry.  It's as if I was bringing the anarchist cookbook or something, and they were screening people for such things.  They always try to make it seem friendly, I find it intimidating.  I haven't brought The Nation to buffet in years, I hesitate to admit, for this reason.  I was thinking of hiding it in something else, and I did that a few times.  It's bad enough to take Scientific American, which is one of my standards.  In fact that might be worse, more than once a person commented that they knew of something better, or they stumbled for a moment, which in both cases I suspected was for politico-religious reasons.

Upgrade to Mojave Quicksand

Software makers are endlessly putting quicksand in my way.

The latest is the endless reminder to "Upgrade to Mojave" which has no obvious way to turn it off, EXCEPT to upgrade to Mojave.

Actually, I do not want to "upgrade" to Mojave, because it will break all my 32 bit applications.

As I have said before, "upgrades" are really a kind of corporate fascism (realizing that is redundant).

Fortunately, there appears to be a way to turn it off.  This time Google was a better friend than Apple.

Speaking of upgrades, I talked to my computer geek friend last weekend.  He generally uses Mac, but when he uses Windows (for games) he uses Windows 7.  He says when Microsoft expires Windows 7, he's going to switch to linux.

I'm beginning to feel that way about High Sierra.