"Critically Acclaimed" means hated by customers.
Architectural award means totally unusable.
Architectural award means totally unusable.
Thursday, June 27, 2019
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
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.
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.
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.
Monday, June 17, 2019
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.
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.
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.
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