Practicalmadness

One or two of you fine readers may be curious to know how my Global War on David is going. And the rest of you are probably all like, “global what on who, now?” Well, to recap:

• On August 6, I bought a bathroom scale and discovered that in my fear of studying my body and love of fast-food breakfasts, I had bloated to an unsexy 295 pounds (133 kg). Which, given my height and big, linebacker-esque build, while not ideal is actually not as overweight as you might think. And some of those pounds are the muscular legs of someone who rides a bike daily. Still, as some jackass once said, less is more.

• On August 7, I came to the sudden realization that one can lose weight by working out(!!!) and acquired a gym membership as well as the services of a personal trainer.

• By September 2, I had felt that burn and pumped that area, and had gotten myself down to just over 289 lbs. Which, for four weeks of work, was not bad.

But a couple of weeks ago, my Global War on my own body suffered a mild setback, as my trainer was offered a job that didn’t involve helping sweaty nerds get back into their skinny jeans, leaving me trainerless and alone for about two weeks. During that time I fell into a deep hole, and decided the only way out of that hole was to eat more stuff. Though magically, the damage from enjoying hot dogs for lunch instead of salad on certain days was offset by the fact that my body is now used to actually using its food energy from time to time.

Last Friday I started with a new trainer, we took a bunch of new measurements and metrics, and I am pleased to say the weight had stayed at an entirely reasonable 280 lbs (127 kg).

I mention all of that to say this: yesterday my new trainer suggested that whenever I come in to do cardio, I should also use the adductor and abductor machines in order to strengthen my gimpy legs and gimpier knees. “Some guys are like, ‘aw, but those are girlie machines!’” he said. “An’ I tell ‘em, ‘just do it.’”

Coincidentally, I am also in the process of writing/designing a couple of talk proposals for next year’s RailsConf, and New Trainer mentioning that some men have trouble overcoming their masculine identity in order to work those thighs reminded me of this slide from one of my Keynote slideshows:

To my mind, no one kicks more ass than Bruce Lee, and if he says (or rather, if we assume he’s saying) not to be weighed down by orthodoxy, habit or male ego in the pursuit of the best solutions, then dammit, that’s what we’re gonna do.

So I have no problem using the girlie machines to fix my gimpy legs, and what’s more, I have no problem using various other proverbial girlie machines in other aspects of my life and work.

You say real men use Windows or Linux? I say my Mac and its candy-ass eye candy help me do my job better.

You say my iPhone isn’t a real smartphone? I say you’re an idiot, then excuse myself to reply to an e-mail using my “fake” smartphone.

You say my double soy latté is a girlie drink? Dude, I ordered it for the protein.

There’s no shame in sticking to what you know, but there’s no virtue in it either if it puts you in a position where you’re wasting time and effort just because you totally ought to be able to do this one awesome thing with a fresh-baked Ruby library instead of a PHP function.

Of course, I’m not saying you should always sprint past your comfort zone in pursuit of the best, fastest tool for the job, or else I’d have some explaining to do next time someone catches me using GarageBand to add a crossfade to an MP3 file. Just be open to the idea that if the tools you’ve got on you aren’t working, maybe a better tool can be found somewhere outside your hidey-hole.

In their many television, print and outdoor advertisements, the hard-working, brown-shirted men and women of the company ostensibly known as United Parcel Service — better known to most of us simply as UPS — ask the eternal question, “What Can Brown Do For You?”

And today, the noted multi-hyphenate James Duncan Davidson has offered up an answer:

Could you please, pretty please, with sugar on top, get rid of the damn checkbox that you have to click in order to track a package? Each and every time you want to track a package? Even if you just clicked it thirty seconds before while tracking a different number? You know, the checkbox right under the tracking number field. This one:

What I am curious about is the certainly long, tedious process — involving not only UPS stakeholders and various user experience “experts,” but also lawyers, grammarians and more lawyers — that resulted in this massive global corporation concluding that simply telling people there were certain terms and conditions for using their package-tracking web application was not sufficient legal cover against whatever-the-fuck liability they’re worried about.

Really, what would be so wrong with something like this?

I call it the “Yes, Asshole, There Was A Sign Posted” theory of liability. Just because you didn’t have to sign a waiver acknowledging that you can’t drink beer at the public pool doesn’t mean you are therefore allowed to drink beer at the public pool.

In addition to being agreeably simple, it leverages the fact that users are already being asked to perform an action, and simply makes agreement with these very important Terms and also-important Conditions part and parcel with the act of asking where your goddamned package is. Even if the relevant suits at UPS don’t understand usability, surely they could get behind an argument that involves “leveraging” something. But no, someone insisted on this cumbersome poka-yoke contraption.

The only possible justification I can think of is that they’re storing and tracking this information to cover their own asses in the event someone figures out a way to use this tracking information for evil.

Of course, they’re not requiring any personally identifying information, nor do they really provide any beyond the cities of origin and destination. But it’s not hard to imagine there’s a massive Oracle or SQL Server database (or five) somewhere, full of all the IP addresses and package numbers ever input into this box, along with a little “1” to indicate that yes, this person agreed to the terms and conditions. Just in case they ever need to refer back to those logs in order to demonstrate that whoever it was that asked after that porn you ordered that never arrived did, in fact, check that box.

Then again, compared with the local UPS office’s bizarre requirement that you bring two forms of current ID with you to pick up a package they couldn’t deliver because they totally thought you’d be home at 8 PM on a Friday night, this almost seems friendly of them.

So I guess we should all just be thankful we don’t have to check that box in triplicate or anything.

To: Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP)
From: David Nemesis
Subject: The WGA Strike

Dear AMPTP,

I understand from several of the voices in my head who follow this sort of thing that you are having a disagreement with the two branches of the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA), the union representing America’s film and television-but-not-animated-or-reality-television writers. And as a consequence, the talented members of this organization have taken to standing outside your various sprawling production complexes holding up signs, instead of developing the charming, pithy stories we love so well.

To wit, here is a photograph of the lovely and talented Ms. Tina Fey, shown here picketing, and pointedly not masterminding the further adventures of Liz Lemon, Jack Donaghy and that crazy Tracy Jordan for her series 30 Rock:

Now, I know you are aware of the various points over which you and these writers of film and non-reality television are not in agreement. But just to recap them briefly:

• The writers feel that rather than receiving a residual fee of four cents per unit on the sale of those popular “DVD” discs the kids are into nowadays, they should receive an amount greater than four cents. You believe they should be receiving an amount less than four cents, because apparently it costs money to produce these DVD discs, and you were somehow unaware of this fact when you agreed to pay the writers that amount two decades ago.

• The writers also feel that they should receive a greater amount from the sale of internet downloads than for DVDs, because while DVDs cost money to produce and deliver to our fine American retailers, a download from Apple’s popular iTunes Store can be piped into a consumer’s home much more profitably. Of course, almost none of you have agreed to sell your wares via Apple’s service, but the same principle holds true for your preferred distribution partners, Amazon.com, Microsoft and Ridiculously Locked-Down Digital Crap Shack Inc. Which leads me to the next point…

• It is your position that while you have begun offering high-definition streaming videos of your television programming on various web sites, and have been profitably selling advertising to subsidize this service, these streaming videos are themselves merely “promotional devices” for the regular TV broadcasts of these shows. The writers feel that this is bullshit, as many viewers who don’t care to pay for cable or a TiVo have begun watching the webcasts instead of the broadcasts, and even if they weren’t, what the fuck, dudes? When you sell advertising on something like it’s a real product and then insist that it’s actually itself an advertisement, it seems almost like you’re trying to screw people over. And when one is as talented at screwing people over as you are, my Hollywood friends, it should never look like you’re having to work at it.

• The writers — whose Guild’s agreement with you for certain minimum compensation extends only to those professionals working on scripted television series, not reality shows or animated programs — also feel that it’s time for reality TV/animation writers to enjoy the same four-cent residual and massive patina of self-loathing that are just two of the many privileges of WGA membership. Obviously, you guys disagree, and would like to continue pretending that shit that happens on The Hills is totally not staged at all.

I, your humble correspondent, respect your views on these matters as you are both richer and (usually) better dressed than I am. However, this situation has resulted in an unacceptable scenario in which production has been halted on television series which I not only enjoy, but around whose new episodes I schedule my very life.

If not for the flutters of anticipation in the hours leading up to a first-run episode of 30 Rock, how the hell am I to know that it’s Thursday? Should I start keeping a sheet of paper on my wall with labels and grid lines to indicate the days of the week? Or should I perhaps start keeping an electronic device in my pocket with a button that, when pressed, tells me the date and time? Are we living in the dark ages or something?

I also beg you to consider the chilling effect this may have on people like myself, who would totally be working on screenplays and spec pilots right now if only they (a) were not wary of trying to break into a profession where thinking up new and different ways to screw up Heroes may not enough to put food on their family table, and (b) weren’t busier still improving their World of Warcraft game. My idea for a sci-fi series in which a crotchety yet brilliant forensics robot solves mysteries with the aid of a team of young replicants who do nothing but spout one-liners and have sex with each other could be the future of your industry. But now you may never see it.

But seriously though, folks — we are hurtling with speed toward a dangerous cataclysm. And I’m not talking about a future where NBC becomes a non-stop, 24-hour Deal or No Deal marathon, or the bleak prospect of never finding out why the hell some robots in deep space are hallucinating a Bob Dylan song on Battlestar Galactica.

No, my friends: we are facing the clear and present danger of a world in which I do not get my 30 Rock fix. And as I, David Nemesis, am the third evilest man on the internet, you cannot comprehend the horrors that will be unleashed upon the world if this comes to pass.

These horrors may include, but are not limited to:

• Making microscopic dings on the doors of your Bentleys, Maybachs, Lexuses, BMWs and Priuses

• Opening a McDonalds franchise in the middle of Beverly Hills to depress property values

• Moving to California so I can vote there, building a mixed-use development containing luxury condominiums, a seven-star hotel and a restaurant so exclusive only Jeffrey Katzenberg, the cast of 30 Rock and the ghost of Stanley Kubrick can get in, then voting in favor of a ballot proposition to raise your property taxes and give drivers licenses to illegal Mexican immigrants whose names begin with an odd-numbered letter

• Taking out a full page ad in USA Today explaining that John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer (“Jim” and “Pam” on the popular British retread The Office) are actually cousins

• Going to crowded eateries at lunchtime and paying with cash instead of Debit MasterCard

• Buying six or seven more video iPods from Apple, out of spite

• Reading more of them things with the words printed on the paper…you know, books

You have, in short, been warned. I therefore demand an immediate resumption of negotiations, leading to a new contract in which the writers get a fair deal, and in which Tina Fey gets several million (more) dollars in return for agreeing never to give Jack a quirky cookie jar hobby again.

I eagerly await your next move.

Your friend,

David Nemesis