The Burgermeister Meisterburger is an Environmentalist Wacko!

There's been a lot of news lately for those of us wondering what we can do to save the planet from global warming.

According to Climate chief Lord Stern, “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.” He assures us that eventually it'll be quite normal for us to inquire about the carbon content of our food. Perhaps they can put that information on the nutrition panel.

And Robert Vale of New Zealand tells us in his book "Time to Eat the Dog" that pets are not eco friendly, and that we apparently need to swap Fido out for something a little more palatable. Apparently, a fish causes the same amount of carnage to our planet as two mobile phones. I had two mobile phones, and I have three fish. I wonder whether I should flush the phones or the fish.

So we need to give up meat, and pets. Got it.

I've been thinking about the impact toys have on the environment. Think about it: all the carbon emitted to produce them, the plastic, the batteries they consume, the lead in their paint--really, they are basically boiling cauldrons of toxic carcinogenic polluting choke hazards. We really ought to ban them. Really.

Which got me thinking about the Burgermeister Meisterburger, the grouchy villain of the children's classic "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town." He fell and hurt himself, blamed the toy over which he tripped, and banned them all. He was not going to be happy until everybody was miserable. Much like Vale, Stern, and others. The Burgermeister must be an Environmentalist!

Enjoying a Starbucks Via

I really enjoy coffee. I don't however consider myself a coffee snob: I'm not one who'll say "oh, I never drink so-and-so, it's total garbage." But times have to be pretty tough for me to opt for the instant coffee. I'll take one of those "coffee single" dunk-the-bag-in-boiling-water contraptions if I'm going to be without easy access to my favorite caffeinated beverage: camping, company travel, the end of the world, etc. But powdered instant coffee? Blech. Only if I'm really desperate.

A few weeks ago Starbucks introduced their Via instant coffee. They said I would not be able to tell the difference. Yeah sure, I thought, and at a buck a cup, I'm not going to bother to find out.

I found myself at my neighborhood Starbucks, and was buying a drink on a gift card someone had given me, and because I had some room left over on the card, I decided to buy the three-pack.

At the house, I decided to give it a try. I dumped the packet out into my mug, and the first two things I noted were that it is ground almost as fine as flour, and that it smelled really good. I then heated up some water and poured it in, and gave it a good stir. I tasted it, and really was surprised at how good it is, and that I really would not have guessed it was instant. So, if you like Starbucks coffee in general, you're probably going to like Via.

I still have a touch of sticker shock, though. At a dollar a cup, it's wildly more expensive than most any kind of homebrew, let alone powdered instant. You get to make the cost/benefit decision. For me, I envision myself with a couple of packs the next time I go camping, or perhaps find myself going somewhere where good coffee isn't nearby.

Y2K and C4C

Can you believe it's been ten years since Y2K? Do you remember the flurry of activity getting ready for it? Ten years ago I was busy making sure clients' windows boxes and servers had the latest OS patches in anticipation of the big day; I was helping clients make sure their software systems were ready for a smooth transition. There was a bunch of IT spending, on hardware upgrades, software upgrades, reprogramming systems (COBOL For Dummies?!). Then Y2K came and went. And the flurry of activity came to a halt. It's as if everybody was now (temporarily, at least) on the same sales cycle. So very few people were interested upgrading anything through 2000 and on. IT spending slowed down, and so on.

People buy automobiles at different rates: some turn them in every two years, some run them until the wheels fall off. There are different sales cycles. The government wanted to encourage consumers to start purchasing new automobiles, so they devised the so-called "Cash For Clunkers" program. The program has proved wildly (perhaps unexpectedly) popular, and now politicians are trying to figure out how to meet demand. One of the things the program is doing, I think, is upsetting the normal automotive sales cycle. If someone was halfway through running the wheels off their car, they might go ahead and buy one now, instead of in three or four years, when they were "scheduled" to.

The concern is what happens when the program ends. Everybody who was going to be in the market for a new vehicle now already has one. I'll not be surprised to see the flurry of activity to come to a screeching halt. How much do you think that bailout is going to cost?

The Fraud Alert In Action

So have you gotten yourself a fraud alert yet?

We placed a fraud alert on our credit reports, and promptly forgot about it. A month or so after we did this, we found ourselves at our local AT&T store, signing up for a new service package. We filled out a bunch of paperwork, and part of this involved giving them our credit card number. Now we don't have credit cards; we use debit cards, and we gave them our debit card number.

As an aside, we've used a debit card for years. We've used them to buy plane tickets, rent cars, hotel rooms, etc. We've never been unable to do something on account of not having a credit card. We did once try to rent a car through an agency whose policy was credit cards only. In that case, we found another agency which would let us rent a car with a debit card.

As the AT&T rep was running our paperwork, he said he'd they needed some additional information. At first I thought it was because we were using a debit card instead of the credit card, but in fact it was the fraud alert kicking in. While at the store, we had to get on the phone with the authorizer, who then asked us some pretty pointed questions (stuff that only we should know) in order to verify our identity. Once we got that ball rolling again, we were chatting with the store associate about the fraud alert, and he remarked that if we weren't who we said we were, we'd be having a chat with the sheriff's deputy right about now. We got all the paperwork finished and went our way.

At first I thought "What a pain to have to do this." But then I realized that if someone was trying to impersonate me, he'd have to go through the pain too, and he'd wind up being driven off in a squad car. So I'm willing to go through the extra bother for the extra peace of mind.

I like Balsamiq Mockups

There are few tools more flexible than a pencil and pad of paper. Great boot time, decent UI. When I'm having to sketch a diagram of any sort, the diagram almost always starts out as a sketch on paper, and then transposed to whatever media it needs to be delivered in. It's a pain to transpose a pencil mockup to something like Visio, but I've done it.

I'm skeptical of things that purport to allow me to toss the pencil/paper step. The demo pitch goes something like "just click, click, drag, presto, you're done." I wish it were that easy.

My boss sent me a link to Balsamiq Mockups (www.balsamiq.com), a UI design and mockup tool. Sure enough, their demo video goes something like "click, click, drag, presto" while they draw a mockup of an existing application that you probably know very well. I rolled my eyes and thought "here we go again," but I played with the online version for a few minutes, and it seemed straightforward enough.

I'm working on a particular project and need to start sketching some ideas for it, and I instinctively reach for my pencil. I decide that to be fair to the product, I should at least try it (without using the pencil/paper), and we have an eval version of Mockups wired into Confluence. So I click the "Add UI Mockup" link on the wiki page, which takes me to the mockup editor. I want a dialog box. So I drag one off the bar on the top, on to my workspace. Now I want a list. How a button here. No that's not right; there that's better. Click, click, drag, presto, and I had something I liked. They even let me export it to PNG if I want (although embedding directly into the Wiki page was much quicker).

I like the Sticky Notes, and all the icons. I like how the properties boxes are handled. I like that it's extensible. I like how easy it is to add data to UI elements like list boxes. In short, I like Balsamiq Mockups.

Children's Ministry

"Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 19:14 (ESV)

The Lord Jesus Christ loves children. In this passage we see Christ rebuking the disciples for trying to keep the kids away. "Let them come... do not hinder them..."

It's easy to hinder children. We do it all the time. For example, when in church you hear that the children's ministries programs could use help, what do you ordinarily think to yourself?

I can't do that: I've never done it before.
I can't do that: the "Sunday school people" take care of them.
I can't do that: I don't relate to kids.
I can't do that: kids annoy me.
I can't do that: I'm involved in more important things.

I love Psalm 1: "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked...He is like a tree..." So how do trees get there? Someone planted seeds.

Go find the children's leader at your church, and ask him how you can help. You'll be glad you did. I promise.

Get Yourself A Fraud Alert

Several months ago, a very rude person called our house and spoke with my wife. He represented a collection agency, looking for Brian Smith. Knowing that we have no debt, my wife told him that I was not the particular Brian Smith he was looking for. He demanded that my wife tell him my social security number, and when she refused, he threatened to "turn it over to the attorney." My wife, upset about all this, calls me at the office, and I told her I'd call the moron and fix it. So I called the guy, who was as rude to me as he was to her, demanding my social, etc. I told him I'm not going to give that to him, I'm not the Brian he's looking for, etc., and he accuses me of "wanting to play games." So I ask him to whom should I send the cease and desist letter, and proceed to do that.

(After reading up on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, my opinion is that he committed at least two violations: his phrases "relaying it to the attorney," and "wanting to play games" can both be interpreted as threats. Incidentally, the FDCPA makes for some interesting reading, and it's good to know what collectors are allowed and not allowed to do.)

We pulled a credit report on ourselves, and nothing untoward showed on them. Knowing that "Brian Smith" is a pretty regular name, we decide to place a Fraud Alert on our reports. It is fall-off-the-log easy:

1. Call a toll-free number of one of the credit reporting agencies (Transunion, Experian, or Equifax).
2. Using your touch-tone phone, follow the prompts which will ask you your SSN, house number, and a few other things.
3. If you're married, call them again, and put an alert on your spouse's report as well.
4. For continuing protection, set your favorite reminding mechanism to prompt you to renew the alerts in three months.

This takes less than five minutes.

You only have to call one of the credit reporting agencies; they will notify the other two, and you will receive in the mail an acknowledgement that you have a fraud alert placed on yourself. A fraud alert does not prevent you from continuing to use open credit accounts. A fraud alert does not prevent you from opening new credit accounts. What it will do, if you are going to open a new account, is force the creditor to take several extra steps to verify that it really is you who is trying to open the account. (We got to see this in action, and it was very cool; perhaps I'll describe that in a future post.) A fraud alert lasts for 90 days, after which you're free to place the alert again.

The FTC estimates that 9 million people have their identities stolen each year. It's a huge pain for victims, who spend tremendous effort to clean up the mess the criminals cause. So get yourself a fraud alert. It's quick, easy, and free.