When I got home from work yesterday, one of my bazillion neighbors' bazillion dogs was barking its head off.  For no reason.  Nonstop.  To be fair, I'm not a dog person, so a barking dog is about as appealing to me as a severed foot.  Ok to be honest, I wish all dogs were de-barked as part of a nationwide crackdown on noise pollution.  People would say, "I got my dog de-barked," and I would reply, "Oh, that's a shame; dogs are animals, simply expressing their dog-ness," but in my head I would be cheering because I hate more than anything else in all the world a stupid barking dog, except for those teenagers that used to live next door and throw keggers every Tuesday. 

Well that got out of hand.  My point is that barking dogs are a problem.  But dogs bark; that's what they do.  So really the problem is on my end.  Which is why I think it would be cool to take something that's a perceived problem and turn it into a potential gain.  For example, I'd like to invent a device that would capture the sound waves created by a barking dog, filter them through some sort of piston/compressor assembly, and generate electricity.  Electricity is a good thing.  A barking dog is a bad thing.  But getting electricity from a barking dog is a great thing. #technology

I was trying to log in to a stupid insurance website, and it kept giving me an error message that said to call an 800 number for help.  I hate talking on the phone, especially with "technical support" people ("Is your computer on?"  Yes.  "Try restarting."), so I waited until the next day and tried again.  Time heals all wounds, right?  Not in this case.  So I ended up calling the number and navigating the phone maze before eventually talking to a human being.  So far so good.  I told her my problem, and she told me the solution:  I had to register in order to log in, which is weird because I already have a username and password.  Long story long, I re-registered and was able to log in.  Hooray! 

While I was on the phone with this human, I asked her why the website didn't simply tell me what the problem was, instead of making me call an 800 number and waste a company's money by talking to one of their humans.  Instead of just telling me there's an error, why not tell me what to do about it?  It's like telling me not to make a U-turn.  Where the hell am I supposed to make a U-turn? 

Her response to my technical inquiry was the following, and I quote:  "The system doesn't know whether you're registered or not until after you register.  So if you're not registered, it doesn't know that.  You have to register first so it'll know you're registered." 

This is obviously false.  If I need to be registered in order for the system to check whether I'm registered, then that step is meaningless.  I'm not a genius, but I understand how technology works, and I even know how to program websites.  If I know one thing, it's that that's a stupid answer.  I was about to get all technical with this woman and either (a) try to correct her misinformation or (b) fix her website, when it occurred to me:  It's just not worth it.  This issue isn't worth my time, my effort, my stress.  And it's not like I have better things to do with my time, or don't have the energy to fix other people's problems.  I would like nothing better than to fix a mega-corporation's stupid website, saving them time and money so they can continue taking more from my pocket.  But honestly, I just couldn't care less.  And this idea has been coming up again and again in my life lately, when the wheels in my brain start spinning in response to some error or problem.  It's just not worth it. 

So I politely said, "Oh.  Ok.  Thanks for your help," and hung up. #technology

Leo Laporte on having some of his social media settings messed up and subsequently ignored: 

It makes me feel like everything I've posted over the past four years on Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Plurk, Pownce, and, yes, Google Buzz, has been an immense waste of time. I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves.

That's what most big websites with comments feel like.  I lose brain cells every time I read a comment on YouTube. #technology

So there I was a few nights ago, sitting in my hotel room, watching TV, when all of a sudden I got a call on the room phone.  I couldn't imagine who it would be since anyone who could possibly want to contact me would call my cell phone.  So I answered, and a lady on the other end asks, "Is this the front desk?"  Slightly annoyed at her incompetence but somewhat understanding because of the fact that I was staying in room 123 and thinking maybe she just picked up the phone and started pressing numbers, I answer with a hint of anger, "Nope."  As I hang up I notice the international standard set of important numbers printed on the phone itself, with the front desk being at the top of the list and having the very-easy-to-guess number of "0."  About 30 seconds later, the phone rings again, and sure enough it's the same lady asking for the front desk.  Masking my incoherent rage at her blinding stupidity, I politely say, "You might want to try dialing 0."  I didn't hear from her again, and she should be thankful for that. #technology

One of the ways DVR has ruined my life is that I expect to be able to pause, rewind, and replay everything.  I was at a wedding the other day and something happened at the exact moment I looked away, and I thought, "Oh, I'll just rewind life and watch it again."  Sadly, this didn't work.  I've been at a few live sporting events and wished I could've watched the instant replay or simply created my own, but again, this isn't how real life happens. #technology

This applies to people who publish content on the internet: 

1. Underlined text.  Underlines are the international identifier of links.  So unless your text is linked, it shouldn't be underlined.  Otherwise people will try to click on it and then wind up hating you when it doesn't link to anything.  If you need to emphasize something, use bold, italics, or quotes.
2. Spaces in links.  (I wrote about this a while ago.)  Or I should say "spaces at the beginning or end of links."  Many web publishing tools allow you to create links by double-clicking on your text and clicking the "Insert Link" button.  But when you double-click on a word, it automatically selects the space immediately after the word or string of words.  And links like this or this look stupid.

In other news, I'm a perfectionist, and not in a good way. #technology

I don't have an iPhone.  I'm not opposed to owning one in the future, but I refuse to switch cell phone providers just to get a cool phone.  Many billions of people apparently feel differently and are more than happy to fork over their $120/month to use a great phone on a crappy network.  Anyway, as an iPhone outsider, I have a few complaints about this silly little device: 

1. Apps.  I understand what an iPhone App is, and I realize there are a lot of other people who also understand this, and there's some sort of exchange of money involved, which has a positive impact on our nation's economy.  That's great and all, but there are like eleventy jillion people who, like me, don't own an iPhone, so all this talk of Apps and App Stores and whatnot is simply meaningless.  It's one thing to have a mobile version of your website so non-iPhoners can play along.  But as soon as you create an App, you've just alienated approximately eleventy jillion people.
2. SMS character limit.  Apparently the iPhone lets you send text messages that are longer than the industry standard 160 characters, which is fine and all because the messages are simply broken up into 160-character chunks, but which is pretty stupid for the countless (I've heard it's around eleventy jillion) people without iPhones, where these chunked text messages show up as separate (and often numerous) chunks, sent by some stupid iPhone user who doesn't understand how text messages work.  But this isn't a user issue; it's a software issue.  One simple workaround would be to show the user when their message is going to be split up, which would hopefully encourage them to be more concise.
3. "Sent from my iPhone."  First of all, I don't care where your email comes from.  That goes for you too, Blackberry weirdos.  But I'll concede that there's occasionally value in knowing why an email doesn't contain complete sentences and sounds like you're mad at me.  But at least Blackberries are used by working folk.  Yes, iPhones can work with corporate email too, but honestly, who on earth has a work iPhone?  Like four people in Silicon Valley.  The rest of you are simply flaunting the fact that you own a coveted piece of technology.  Yes, I'm jealous.

Eleventy jillion and shrinking. #technology

There's been some political discussion about the possibility of making very fast broadband internet access available to the entire country, which is generally a good thing in my opinion.  But the arguments people use in support of it, and specifically in comparing the situation in the US to that of other countries, is ridiculous.  It goes something like this:  "[Some country] has had [high number] Mbps broadband access for [low price] per month since the year [long ago]."  My main objection to this argument is that the countries people reference are places like Japan, South Korea, and France, which if you'll simply look at a map are ridiculously small compared to the US.  South Korea is about the size of Indiana, or about four times the size of New Jersey, and the fact that this tiny country has national broadband access really isn't that impressive. #technology

NASA has been producing movie-themed posters of some of their recent missions.  Awesome.  (via Neatorama) #technology

There exists a software company called Microsoft.  Perhaps you've heard of it.  It makes, among other things, two major pieces of software:  The operating system Windows, and the productivity suite Office.  Both Windows and Office are updated every few years, and instead of using some sort of intelligent auto-incrementing versioning system, Microsoft decided to go with whatever felt good at the moment:  3.1, XP, 2003, Vista, 7, etc.  For this, Microsoft is deservedly criticized.  However, being the nerd that I am, I'm baffled by the fact that people can't understand the difference between Microsoft, Windows, and Office.  I've heard many a computer-user say, "I think I have Microsoft 2007," or "I'm using Office Vista."  To set the record straight, here's the deal:  Either you're using

Windows [3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7]
... or ...
Office [95, 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007].

That's it.  I know the version numbers are hard to remember, but since both pieces of software are used by something like 90% of computer users on earth, let's all become nerds and try to remember these things.  Thank you, and have a nice day. #technology