Moving tragedy

Sit down all ye people and hear my tale of woe and tragedy.  Prepare for a tale of bureaucratic incompetence, terribly written code, and complaining to customer service.

As many of these tales do, my story involves uhaul.

The Flautist was moving from Waterloo to Toronto, roughly a 1.5 hour drive away.  She had recruited me to be the driver of her rented uhaul truck and we had a plan:  I would arrive in Waterloo on Thursday at suppertime, spend the evening helping her to pack, sleep, then get the truck Friday morning in Waterloo.  Simple enough, and since I had already moved someone earlier in the week in just 2 hours, I was sure this would be a piece of cake!

On Thursday The Flautist messaged me to say that uhaul had made mistakes.  Instead of collecting the truck in Waterloo, I would have to get it in London instead, which is a further 1.5 hour drive from me in Toronto.  I couldn't possibly get there before closing time so I arranged to catch a train to London and called uhaul to arrange a pickup after the uhaul store in London would close.  No problem, right?  Just get to London, arrive at the store, use their convenient app, and grab my vehicle.  Easy as anything.

First off the train was two hours late.  The train company was apologetic, but there was no way around it so I just waited.  Instead of arriving at uhaul at 8:30 I got there at 10:30 instead.  This meant I would get to The Flautist at 12:30, which is late but totally workable.

Upon arrival at uhaul, I booted up the app and it informed me that I could not have a truck.  Helpfully it told me I could wait until the store opened at 7AM!  Thanks app!

No problem.  Customer service can certainly fix this sort of issue, I had no doubt about this. (Lies.  I had many, many doubts.)

After 10 minutes on hold, the first customer service rep insisted that they could fix the issue and put me on hold again.  I waited, pacing the parking lot.  Uhaul's hold tape helpfully informed me that if I had a problem I could go online and tell them about it so later customers wouldn't have to deal with this problem.  They told me this every 30 seconds for 20 minutes straight.  Finally, a customer service rep picked up the line.  A new customer service rep, who had no idea about the previous person.  This one tried to help me, but could not manage to get me a truck.  They passed me over to another rep who apparently had actual abilities, who managed to take my call after merely a 5 minute hold.  This new person was eager to help, perhaps assisted by my extremely grumpy and terse description about my plight so far.

They told me I could have a truck.  However, I couldn't have a truck that could be dropped off in Toronto, no no.  I could have a smaller truck that wouldn't hold all of The Flautist's possessions or I could have a truck that I had to drop back in London at the end of the move on Friday.  No matter that this wasn't what The Flautist booked, no matter that the trip back to London it would cost me $100 and take 8 hours - take it or leave it.

I called The Flautist to have a fast, unpleasant conversation about our options, and she said we should just get the proper size truck and deal with the fallout the next day.  I told the customer service rep that we would take it.

Unfortunately, I *said* I would take it, but that is a far cry from actually taking it.  I spent 20 minutes trying to get the app to work. It had the amazing design choice of not registering clicks - if you clicked, it might be doing something in the background, but there was no indication whatsoever that a click had registered.  No way to tell the difference between 'working please wait' and 'you didn't click'.  Combine that with clicks sometimes taking 5 minutes to do anything, and you have a great time.  Finally it completely failed, and the rep on the phone told me the app didn't work, and I should try to just do it on a browser instead.  Lovely that their policy and website both desperately tried to get me to use an app that simply did not work.  I tried the browser, and happily it got me a truck!  It sent me to a lockbox on site to get my keys.

The lockbox was empty.

The rep sent me fresh passwords for every single lockbox on site, trying to get keys.  Every single lockbox was empty.

The rep sent me to my truck, which was unlocked, hoping that if I searched it I would find keys somewhere.

No keys.

Out of options, the rep put me on hold for 10 more minutes.  Then he came back and told me if I got to another uhaul that was about an hour's walk away I could try to get a truck there - if they happened to have keys in a lockbox.  I would *still* have to return to the wrong city after the move.

As it was already 12:30 I gave up, and asked what would happen if I just sat in the parking lot until 7AM and waited for the store to open.  The rep informed me that they had lots of trucks available, and I could definitely get what was originally promised if I did that.  I told them I would just sleep in the truck, and they offered me a whole $50 off to make up for the hassle.

Which had already cost me $50 just in train and taxi costs.  And also left me with $20 in long distance bills from calling customer service.  And left me sleeping on the front seat of a uhaul van all night.

I brushed my teeth, refrained from spitting the toothpaste all over uhaul property, and tried to sleep.  I am a large person, and the seats in a uhaul truck are ... not great, even if you aren't big.  It turns out that seatbelt buckles aren't the best sleep surface.  In late August the weather is kinda warm, but sleeping in an unheated place eventually gets cold.  The first half of the night wasn't so bad, but by the end I was trying to use my spare shirt as a blanket; sadly a tshirt doesn't provide much in the way of coverage or warmth.

After a few fitful hours of sleep, I got up at 7AM and wandered to the store.  There were already people ahead of me, so I had to sit and watch them get their stuff while I seethed.  Finally the manager was free to see me.  I laid out my sordid tale, and she read the email from the customer service person attempting to help me the previous night.  She informed me that she would only charge me $50 for the entire rental and got me my truck.

Just before I left, she had one other thing to say. 

"You know, I was here until 2AM last night doing paperwork.  If the customer service rep had just called me I could have gotten you your truck right away, no problem!"

I blearily stared at her, not at all sure what to say about this revelation.

What do you do?

You sigh, think thoughts of murder and mayhem, and drive your damn truck 1.5 hours to the place you were supposed to get it from in the first place.  Then you spend all day carrying heavy things and driving in hideous long weekend traffic.  Then you faceplant and sleep a lot.

At least, that is what *I* did.

The science of dungeons

I am currently filling out a survey about a game I play - Dungeons and Dragons.  Many of the questions on the survey were reasonable to my mind, as they asked about things like how well I fit with the group, what sort of player I am, etc.  I think the creator of the survey will be able to get interesting data out of it.

But some of the questions are badly written at best.  For example, there is a question asking about how often I get certain feelings.  Do I feel like 'humans are basically good' once / week, 2-3 times per week, or every day?  What?  I don't suddenly get struck with a 'humans are good!' feeling and note that down.  I certainly can't give you a rate per week of such things.  But the survey doesn't have a 'this doesn't apply to me' answer, so I have to click a rate in order to move on.

It also had a really silly question about how long it takes me to feel like I belong in a gaming group.  Is it 1-2 sessions?  3-4?  5-6?

How in the world are you getting any kind of real data out of this?  I don't join a new group every month and then count how many sessions is it until I get a 'belonging' feeling.  When I joined my last group I got along with the people fine.  We have had lots of sessions, but I certainly never got a 'I belong' feeling.  When joining my previous group I knew most of the players for a decade or more so clearly I wasn't going to suddenly feel like I belong after 4 sessions - that sense of being comfortable with those people was already there.  Really, do we actually expect that people who click 7-8 sessions are in any way different from those who click 5-6 sessions?  This is a complete guess, with people clicking randomly.  The players and the game style matter in this way, the number of sessions does not.

What I actually want is an answer that says '1 or infinity, depending on if the group is people I like or not'. 

It feels like answering a question 'Do you like jobs?' without any context.  Sure, you will get answers, but the information given is so vague that the answers will be totally random and worthless for digging out useful data.  I like some jobs, but I hate others, just like nearly everybody.

The design of scientific experiments and surveys is critical.  When you build surveys foolishly, or design experiments badly, you end up falling prey to Garbage In, Garbage Out.  All the fancy statistics in the world won't fix your conclusions when your data is rubbish at the outset.

I think this is something we need to train people on more effectively.  It isn't easy though, because you often have to look at things from somebody else's point of view, and you don't even know what somebody that might be.  There might well be people who feel 'humans are good' intensely 3 times per week, and that question works perfectly for them.  However, there are going to be a lot of people who just click randomly because the question is meaningless to them, and if you don't have a 'this doesn't apply' answer your data will be corrupted.  You also need to account for cultural differences and language proficiency when you write your questions.

Writing good questions and setting proper controls to make your experiment give you the information you actually want is hard, but it is critical if we don't want our knowledge corrupted and diluted by all kinds of studies that don't actually show what they claim to show.  We already have enough of that, thanks.

Not made of steel, apparently

10 days ago I was working out in the gym and I damaged myself.  Weight lifting is a pretty safe exercise regimen, assuming you don't do anything really foolish, but I managed to injure my body anyway.  The exercise that got me?  Leg raises.

I have done thousands of leg raises at this machine, but 10 days ago I got distracted or something and brought my feet up wrong, catching the left one on the little metal peg you see in the picture.  It hurt pretty bad at the time but I kept on with my routine and finished everything just fine.  That night I was moving around on crutches, it was swollen 3 cm above usual size, and I was in agony.  But over the next couple of days it seemed to get better so I figured on just waiting till it healed.  I could stand on the balls of my feet easily enough, so I was confident it was only a terrible bruise, not a bone break.

That discolouration you see is all bruising, no dirt or bad lighting.  This photo was taken a week after the damage, and I was still limping around really bad and feeling a lot of pain.  It was bad enough that I even skipped out on helping Naked Man move furniture - and it takes quite a bit of damage to keep me from honouring a commitment to move a heavy object.

I was on course to just ignore it but Wendy and The Flautist were not on board with that.  They both kept fussing at me to go to the doctor, and while I wasn't into that plan, eventually I succumbed to the pressure and went in.  I got an xray, and lo and behold I was right and it is purely meat damage.  The only cure is to take it easy and wait.

So now I am sitting around home all day waiting for my stupid foot to fix itself.  I have managed, so far at least, to avoid saying "I told you so!" directly to either Wendy or the Flautist, but I did decide to crow about it on the internet.

I have spent many years imagining what getting doubled teamed by my wife and my girlfriend on my birthday would be like.  Those dreams didn't include quite so much "Book a doctor's appointment you doorknob, you aren't actually made of steel." or "Sit down and let somebody else do that, or you are never going to get better."  and instead had .... other characteristics.  This, I think, is a great example of polyamory as it actually is, instead of how people think it is.  Outsiders mostly seem to think it is about nonstop orgies, when mostly it is just about coping with the random junk life throws in your way, just like it is for everybody else.

Trouble in paradise

My brother gave me the book Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman.  He asked me not to return it, but instead to pass it on.  It is the sort of book that will divide readers by political affiliation, and as I am a hardcore lefty I liked it.

Bergman talks about three main things in the book - the 15 hour workweek, open borders, and universal basic income.  He posits that all of these things are easy to do, would have huge benefits for society across the economic spectrum, and would improve quality of life around the world.

I am inclined to agree with him, in large part.  UBI is a thing I have been yelling about for years now, and I am sure that it would make the world better.  Bergman talks about it as a big part of the solution to increased automation, and while I think that might hold true, automation itself doesn't worry me.  Economic inequality does though, and although there is some correlation there, I do think that resistance to automation is not just futile but also destructive.  We want mindless jobs to be automated... we just need a structure in place to make sure the resulting wealth is more evenly distributed.

Open borders is something I have thought less about but I ended up agreeing with the book after considering it.  People often talk about 'buy local' as a thing to do, and while buying locally can have benefits in reducing transportation costs and emissions, it is usually pitched as a way to help the local economy.  In rich nations I don't see how that is a benefit - shouldn't we be happy to help people in other places just as much?  Why is it a moral imperative to help people near me be richer?  If we all do this around the world that protectionism ends up making things worse for everyone.  Opening borders is a more extreme version of this, letting people cross borders as easily as goods do.  It involves sharing, and trust, and it ends up with the entire world improving tremendously.

The workweek section of the book is something I agree with less.  Bergman is right when he says that a huge percentage of jobs are bullshit.  There is pure evil like telemarketing scams and protection rackets, but there are so many jobs that are just pure waste.  If all the marketing people in the world quit their jobs and instead taught in school or worked in hospitals or built things we would be so much better off!  Marketing just competes with other marketing but we actually don't need any marketing at all for our society to work just fine.  Those customers will buy from *somebody* if you ad campaign doesn't go through!

If we got rid of all the evil or bullshit jobs from hedge fund managers to social media consultants and put all that brainpower and time to use doing something useful for society we could easily maintain our standard of living and have a 15 hour workweek.  There is no practical thing to stop us, aside from our desperation to compete.  And that competition is a HUGE problem.  People who work more and earn more will have more stuff, even in a world with UBI.  Other people will want that stuff.  Keep in mind, stuff isn't just huge TVs or fancy cars, it is things like a home located closer to city centres, or enough land to have a garden.  Even if we made working more unnecessary, people would put in that work just to get ahead of other people.

As an example, take CEOs who make a bajillion dollars a year.  They don't need the money.  They could just retire.  But they continue working hideous hours, hardly getting to use their many houses and toys.  This is how people mostly are, defining themselves by their peers, not by any outside standard.  Unless we decouple work from money entirely I don't see our workweeks shrinking down to 15 hours.

The general idea of reducing bullshit jobs and flattening the distribution of wealth I really like, but I am pessimistic about how effective it will be at reducing workweeks.  Governments can step in to help with this in a heavy handed way - forcing companies to pay overtime for all time worked over 30 hours, for example, would help.  Improving social safety nets so that companies are more incentivized to hire multiple part time employees instead of working single employees to death in order to save on benefits payments would also be a thing we could try.

In any case if you want to read a quick book that outlines a lot of good research and information about economics and work in these areas I recommend Utopia for Realists.  It isn't perfect, but it is the sort of book that would improve society greatly if everyone read and implemented its suggestions.

Functional vanity

Earlier this summer I was having a talk with a friend about our different exercise regimens.  I am all about weight lifting, while he focuses on activities more like running and swimming.  One of the things he said about his regimen is that he likes to focus on functional strength.  He pointed out that weight lifters do curls, which is a silly exercise because nobody actually curls in real life.  Practising that motion is a waste of time.

He is right, mostly.

Certainly curls are not a way to make your body perform day to day physical tasks more effectively.  I am trying to recall a single place in my life where I curled weight aside from the gym and I can't come up with one.  Rows and pushups come slightly closer to real tasks, I guess, but even those aren't that much use most of the time.

My friend's regimen of running and swimming was *useful*, as far as he was concerned, and weight lifting was not.

I rolled this around in my brain awhile, and came to the conclusion that I was right all along, and he is wrong.

Whew.  For a while there I was worried I was going to have to grow and change or something.

He was right that I am not going to suddenly be called upon to do curls in regular life.  It won't matter if I can curl 30 kilos or 50 kilos.  But in his life he isn't likely to be called upon to run fast or swim far for some serious purpose either!  In nearly all cases the specific things he is practising are going to only be used to practise more, same as me.  I can run if I have to, I can swim if needed, and being a little better just won't matter, in much the same way that curling a little more weight isn't important.  Some people might well realize real gains in life by doing exercises of one type or other, but neither me nor my friend really expect that, given our baseline level of athleticism and ability.

But there are reasons to curl... big arms!  That is an actual function that matters to me.  Sure, it is easy to dismiss as cosmetic or frivolous, but looking hot is actually far more important to me than swimming further or running faster.  I can, without any doubt, say that some really fun times in my recent past came about because of having big arms instead of skinny ones.  I can also say that if I were significantly better (or worse!) at swimming it wouldn't have any of those benefits at all.  For me, big arms are a lot more functional than running ability.

You could definitely argue that swimming would be likely to get me more cut, though not as big, which could easily have the same sorts of benefits.  That is true enough.  Actual swimming ability though?  Irrelevant.

Any type of exercise is going to have health benefits in terms of reducing stress, increasing longevity, etc.  The only real choice is what kind of exercise, and for me weight lifting actually gives me exactly the sort of functional changes I want.  Plus, the weights are right in my building.  I don't even have to go outside to use them!  Convenience is as good an argument as any, in my book.

A Trojan Horse

Dan Simmons is an author I have a history with.  He wrote the Hyperion novels, which are a crazy far future set of books that are chock full of wild and fascinating ideas.  I have read the four book series several times, despite each book being a doorstopper.

Wendy has had another duology by him, Ilium / Olympos, on our bookshelf for years, and I figured I should try this series out.

It is a mess.

Much like the Hyperion series it has all kinds of cool ideas.  It also has a bizarre fascination with old english poets and playwrights, for some reason.  Unfortunately Ilium lacks one of the things that I most liked about Hyperion - the tech.  In the Hyperion series the tech is far beyond anything we have, indeed often far beyond what we imagine is possible.  However, it all fits together.  In Ilium though Simmons just has any random tech he wants for the story and justifies it by using the words quantum or nano.  Quantum teleporting.  Quantum energy.  Quantum field.  I quantum the quantum quantums!  And if that isn't enough, just call it nano quantum, and you are good to go.  If you thought Ant Man and The Wasp had stupid amounts of quantum nonsense, prepare to see it dialled up to 11.

I don't mind wild tech, even tech that violates the laws of physics as we know them.  What I can't stand is mindless, foolish explanations that toss around buzzwords and pretend like that makes it all work.

I am cool with establishing new rules in a fictional world.  What I can't stand is the author obviously wanting a character to go to a place for a scene, so they have somebody yell about quantuming the quantum nano field to make it happen instead of actually, you know, writing well.

The Ilium duology really made me remember some of my Dungeons and Dragons experiences from my teenage years.  Inexperienced Game Masters would come up with a plot and wouldn't know how to get the characters into the story they had written, so they would have a massively powerful character show up and order the characters to do the thing.  No good explanation or reason would be given, it would just be 'All of you have to do this thing.  No, I won't tell you why or how.  Just follow me, or I will punch you out and carry you.'

This often resulted in the entire party being beaten up, tied to horses, and dragged along while the powerful character (who clearly didn't need any of *us* to win the day) lectured us on our flaws.

Ilium has a ton of this, and for the same reasons.  Simmons obviously had scenes in his mind he wanted to do and couldn't come up with good reasons for those scenes to occur, so he would just have some nearly omnipotent, omniscient character show up and order the regular people to do some damn fool thing.  The demigod would refuse to provide any reasons or context, and if the regular person resisted, they were unceremoniously smacked down.  Even after they finally gave in and did what the demigod wanted, it was usually unclear why doing that even mattered in the first place!

It might sound like I think Simmons is a hack and has nothing to say.  That isn't true - Ilium has no end of cool scenes and original ideas.  The problem is that the plot makes no sense, the characters are inconsistent and unpredictable, and he doesn't tell the reader what the hell is going on because he is so busy getting to the next cool thing.  It reminds me a bit of Too Like The Lightning, which I read awhile ago and did not like.  Other people lauded it for its ideas, which is fair, but failed to add that the plot and characterization were a hot mess.

Simmons really needed to sit down with his ideas, cross out about two thirds of them, and then write these books.  Either that, or maybe add another 4 books to the series so he could actually have the room to make it all make sense.  In any case it desperately needs an editor to tear it down and make better use of the gems that are there.  For example:  There are posthumans who have been given tech to make them into immortal 'gods' who live on Mars and are presiding over an alternate universe siege of Troy on an Earth from another dimension.  They have resurrected a human from the 21st century to record the event, and then he is tasked by one god to murder another.  Wow, what a wild premise!  You could write so much with that!  This is about 5% of the premise for the actual story.  It is just too much, and Simmons tries to juggle all the things he has created and the reader gets to watch the balls all fall down.

I am sure lots of people liked these books.  Unfortunately they hit my personal pet peeves of having weak villains, terrible tech, weak and nonsensical plot, and flat characters.  I find that many science fiction books that get all kinds of awards totally fail on these fronts, so clearly some people are good with that.

Me?  Not so much.

Rescue mission

Yesterday was a big family party at my parent's place.  I am up north with Pinkie Pie and while most of the visit is fairly low key there is usually one day with all the people and all the activities, and yesterday was it.

Pinkie Pie has a small cousin who absolutely adores her, and generally that works out well.  There is a six year gap between them so they aren't going to have a lot in common but Pinkie Pie likes the little guy and wants to be a good big cousin.

However, six year olds have an awful lot of energy and when they attach onto someone it can be completely overwhelming, especially when that someone has limited social energy in the first place.  They played together, running and screaming all about, for an hour or so and then I noticed that the two of them had been missing for a little while.  I went hunting and discovered them in a bedroom with Pinkie Pie lying on a bed with a look of overwhelmed exhaustion on her face, and the little cousin running about the room in a manic state, yelling instructions at her about the next game they were going to play.

I could see that Pinkie Pie desperately wanted to get away but couldn't figure out how to do that.  She felt like she couldn't be honest and tell him she needed him to go away, and she lacked the tricks or guile to be sneaky about it.  I don't lack for tricks and guile though so I created a shiny distraction and dragged the six year old away and left Pinkie Pie in her room alone.  She made a face of massive relief and mouthed 'thank you' at me as we left.

This was a pretty low stakes situation of course, but it was one that made me think about how I handle these sorts of things.  Ideally I would just let the kids run and play and do their thing - there is something amazing about being a parent when you don't have to provide constant entertainment or direction to kids and they take care of themselves.  On the other hand I know how draining it is to be solely responsible for an excited six year old, and it is far more challenging when you lack the authority, practice, and experience that adults can usually bring to bear.

It is odd to have to defend a twelve year old from a six year old.  I would ideally like them to be really close, and for their interactions to be comfortable, but I know that this sort of age gap is tough to cross effectively.  I also know that big family functions are a challenge for introverts like Pinkie Pie and when you toss in a six year old that basically clings to her leg yelling orders for hours on end it is way too much.

Folks hate trash

Earlier in July I went to my first music festival - the Hillside folk music festival near Guelph, Ontario, Canada.  I had heard stories from friends about the festival but they didn't give me a good sense of what it would be like because the stories all started with "Person X got SO HIGH" and then proceeded to detail the antics that followed.  Watching people who are way too high be ridiculous can be fun and all but I imagined that there must be more to the experience than that.

Other people really took the preparation thing way more seriously than I did.  They listened to all the bands ahead of time to figure out which ones they wanted to hear, made careful schedules with each act ranked in a priority system, and had playlists built of everything they would likely hear at the festival.

I just showed up figuring I would listen to stuff that sounded good and go find something else if it sounded bad.

My strategy worked fine!  I don't care that much about music so just wandering around listening to what seemed good to me was successful.  You might wonder why a person that doesn't much care about music would go to a music festival, and the answer is that I wanted to hang out with the people I went with and I wanted to try something new.  In the end my response was predictable - I thought the music was fine but no big deal, I quite enjoyed the company, and now I know what a music festival is like.

One thing that greatly surprised me was the amount of trash at the festival.  I worked a couple of rock concerts as cleanup crew when I was a teenager and the result of those concerts was disgusting.  I recall the floor of the concert hall being slick with goo composed of sweat, beer, piss, and who knows what else.  The entire place was filled with sharp, shattered bits of plastic stuck to the floor by that tacky goo and it was revolting, as well as hideously difficult to clean up properly.  That disaster was created in only a few hours so I expected a music festival that goes over three days to be much worse.  I had images in my head of wading through drifts of trash and dodging puddles of vomit.

It wasn't remotely like that.  Hillside is run by a bunch of people with serious environmentalist leanings so all the cutlery and plates were reusable and they had volunteers washing them.  Everyone got a mug to use to drink with, and no disposable cups were available.  At the end of the three day festival I looked under the tables as saw an average of one piece of trash per table, which is mind boggling coming from my experiences younger in life.  I was extremely impressed with the operation, and surprised at what they had accomplished.  It takes a lot of organization and will to make this sort of thing happen.

There certainly were people who were drunk and high but it wasn't a problem.  Going back to those rock concerts of my youth, I recall drunk men moshing and screaming and trashing everything.  It must have been terrifying for some people - I was big enough that it was bizarre but not frightening.  But Hillside people displayed their drunkenness by asking lots of questions about my tattoos and being overly friendly before wandering off... hardly a problem.

At one point the sky opened and the rain came thundering down, forcing all the people to huddle under tents to wait it out.

Well, not *all* the people.  I just walked out into the rain clad in just my kilt and stood there, arms outstretched, letting the fury of the storm slam into me.  I closed my eyes and just stood soaking up the rain, feeling it hammer onto my body.  When I opened my eyes I had acquired three disciples who were standing in a row with me matching my stance, enjoying the rain.  They told me that they were hiding from the rain and when they saw me revelling in it all they realized I had it right, everyone else had it wrong, and it was time to stand in the rain.

Glorious.

I went barefoot throughout most of the weekend and ended up with a splinter in my foot.  A quick trip to the first aid tent sorted that out, and I learned that the first aid tent was mostly a place for people with foot injuries to get help.  I guess there are a lot of barefoot hippies like me at this particular festival - no real surprise there.