2 years

Brightcape is two years old last week.  I know, missing birthdays is par for the course for me, ha ha.  Thankfully Google Calendar has been commanded to keep me informed about other people's birthdays from now on so those people who expect birthday wishes from me are likely to get them on time instead of a day late.  Note I said likely, Google can fix my information deficit but it can't fix lazy.

Early this year I changed my format to have gaming posts on Brightcape Gamer and non gaming posts here.  My goal in doing this was to let me geek out about games for an audience that wants that and not try to please everybody; I think I have been successful in that.  I have also cranked up the volume of posts pretty substantially from 3/week to 7/week over that time span and I am very much enjoying writing more and doing the homework required to say things of interest that often.

I am having a good time and I hope you are too.  The paucity of posts this week notwithstanding I have a grand time writing and debating with all of you.  I particularly want to thank those who drop comments on my posts to keep things interesting and keep me honest; if you don't generally read the comments or only read on a feed reader you may want to check them out.

clip art from:  http://webclipart.about.com/od/special/l/blbirth1.htm

The advantages to greed

Last night I had a heated discussion with some folks at my gaming group on the subject of commission sales.  The opinion there was pretty negative regarding both commissioned salespeople and the price flexibility they had and the folks were rather surprised that I would rather deal with a commissioned salesperson if given the opportunity.  By and large salespeople have a pretty bad rap and commissioned ones even more so; I expect that there aren't very many people who actually want to get a commissioned salesperson to help them.  I wouldn't argue that everyone should want the same as me but I would say that once you understand the industry from all angles you probably would agree with me.

Regardless of how they are paid there are plenty of really bad and really good salespeople.  One of the people debating with me was a salaried salesperson with a dim view of commission and given his passion for his product, years of experience and obvious pride in giving good service I expect he gives customers a great experience.  I feel like I did the same when I was selling.  However, the plural of anecdote is not data so we must consider the general experience.  In general I find that commissioned salespeople *can* be very good but tend towards being pushy and aggressive.  In general I find that salaried salespeople *can* be very good but tend towards being uninterested and uninformed.  It doesn't matter how they are paid if they are good at what they do and want the customer to be happy but if they aren't good then the experience is completely different.

Due to many years of selling I got pretty good at handling the situation of a salesperson who isn't wanted.  I am comfortable telling someone who is being overly forward to shove off and negotiating price isn't an issue.  What I can't stand is dealing with salespeople who don't know what they are talking about and who aren't concerned with finding me something that solves my problem.  I don't want them to back off and 'give me space' or any such nonsense, I am interested in them getting information from me to find the product I need but don't know about yet.  Once they do that I can grind them down on the price as necessary.  If a salesperson just isn't interested in the process there is really nothing I can do to fix that situation though and so salaried salespeople trend towards being useless to me.

I am sure that a lot of the objection comes from people buying into the myth of fair value.  There is no such thing though we spend much of our lives deluding ourselves into thinking that the listed price on an item somehow represents this illusory concept.  It is much simpler to just go by the store's listed price and not try to work at figuring out what their cost is and how much of a discount you really can expect to get and so of course most of us most of the time just pay the asking price.  This of course leads stores to abuse us with '50% off sale' and other such contrivances.

Simply put when dealing with salespeople you can get good or bad salespeople no matter what else is going on.  You have a choice in what sort of bad you can expect though and I find it much easier to deal with 'pushy' bad then 'nonexistent' bad.  I think in general the populace finds it the other way though which is why commissioned salespeople have such a bad reputation.

Blog subjects

When I was the a science fiction convention last month some of the panelists were talking about their blogs and how they use them to build an audience and flog their merchandise.  They all talked about the necessity of keeping parts of their personal lives off of their blogs and making sure that everyone in their personal lives got to opt in or out of 'blog public life' at will.  I asked them if they decided to keep information off their blogs for personal or business reasons and they seemed offended, telling me that they would never use the people in their personal lives to drive business to their blogs.  That wasn't what I intended, of course, as I don't presuppose that any good person *must* keep others out of their personal statements.  If you personally don't mind talking about the fight you had last night with your spouse on your blog but keep it off for professional reasons it doesn't bother me.

This is a tricky sort of thing.  Some people in my family have suggested in the past that I reveal too much and in particular that Elli should have veto power over what I say about her.  I don't see it that way.  I need to be able to talk about what I feel and what happens to me and when our lives intersect I need to have the freedom to speak about it.  While blogging about events leaves a permanent record I don't see it as so much different from people randomly talking about their kids and their lives with one another - as soon as you share something with random people it isn't a secret any more.  I find lots of little things in my life to talk about but generally I don't have much in the 'fights with my spouse' category that would interest people.  When Wendy and I disagree it is a matter of lying in bed talking things out for awhile until we settle on something we can agree on; very little worthy of recording there.

In this way I differ dramatically from Penelope Trunk.  Her fights with her husband often involve incredible screaming matches in public like "You never wanted a family! You should go live with your pigs! All you want is some woman who doesn’t talk to you and just gives you blow jobs!" and she records it on her blog for all to see.  She includes their make up sex, his physical violence toward her, their therapy to talk about her social problems and his spousal abuse and everything else you might imagine.  The crazy thing is that it seems like she really does just talk at random about these things and the fact that her life is completely bonkers keeps readership up even without doing this sort of thing deliberately.  She believes completely in not keeping secrets and having everything be open because of the awful things that were kept secret during her childhood.  This week she talked about hiring a random nanny / homemaker, flying her in for the week, finding out the nanny advocated child beating and 'the husband must sit at the place of honour at the dinner table' and then flying her out again right away at the cost of two grand.  


I just don't have stories like that to tell.  My life is weird, but it is weird in ways that just don't lend themselves to that sort of incredulous 'can this be real?' kind of writing.  I don't hide from the cops and the IRS because of unpaid taxes and simultaneously fly people I haven't met around the country to come in and manage my family and perhaps I should count myself fortunate in that regard, lost blogging opportunities and all.  

Communication in the Far Future

I have been reading Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder, a far future hard science fiction novel.  My impressions of the book are pretty normal for me and this sort of story:  I think the ideas and concepts are really fantastic and thought worthy but the story itself ends up being somewhat flat.

Many books in this genre end up presenting remarkable scenarios but not explaining them well enough for people to really understand what is going on.  Not explaining everything in a book is fine as the reader is very much expected to imagine much of the story themselves to fill in the gaps but when the world is so utterly alien and makes so little sense from a 2011 perspective it becomes infeasible to do so in any way that feels satisfying.  In this case the world is filled with many (nearly infinite?) numbers of different 'manifolds' which are essentially like versions of reality overlapping the same locations in space and time.  We are given a very basic primer on how these work but it is sketchy enough and violates all known physics enough that figuring out the bits of the story that aren't explicitly laid out is impossible.  Once hundreds of people can occupy the same space simultaneously without even being aware of one another it is hard to imagine exactly how the rest of the story might 'logically' fall out.

The best bit about this book though is the idea of animas.  This is the name given to a software construct designed to perfectly emulate a human.  The characters live in a society where everyone creates many animas of themselves so that their friends (or enemies!) can constantly have access to them regardless of what their physical bodies might be doing.  This is a really intriguing extension of the current trend toward having constant communication between people; cell phones and texting have meant that getting answers and social interaction have become quicker and easier and animas take it to the next level.  You want to know what Joe thinks of a topic?  Just ask the anima of him you keep on hand at all times!  The societal implications of these constructs are outlined a little bit in the book too and in the story they challenge others to duels, make dates and do other things that the original meat person is expected to answer for.  It is made clear that if you create an anima and use all of the tremendous functionality involved you are entirely responsible for what it does since it is in fact doing what you would do in that same situation.  If you don't want to accept that responsibility, don't make an anima... but everyone will find you intolerably rude since you won't be able to hold 10 conversations simultaneously like everyone else.

Obviously the technology to create software simulations of a person that are so accurate that no one can tell the difference is far beyond us today but it certainly isn't beyond the realm of possibility.  Human brains are deadly complicated but computers continue to improve in capacity exponentially and eventually we must be able to find a way to cram a brain sized amount of data into a computer.  Guessing about social constructs hundreds of years in the future is purely for fun of course since people of 1980 wouldn't have had any clue about online forum behaviour today and the rate of change is accelerating but I do think that Schroeder's version of future communication is far more realistic than most other science fiction I have read.  It feels much more like an extension of current trends to the nth degree than the usual '2011 man with a ray gun and FLT spaceships' science fiction.

A moment of panic, then amusement

Last night I was peeing and suddenly noticed that the toilet bowl had turned a nasty shade of red instead of the normal yellow colour.  This is not a good thing, thought I, and I immediately began to wonder if pissing blood was serious on the level of 'rush to the hospital' or the level of 'call the doctor on Monday'.  Then I noticed that the colour wasn't exactly that of blood, but in fact a little more like purple.  Now pissing red is bad news, but pissing purpleish red?  Then I recalled that I had eaten a really large amount of beets in the 24 hours prior to this and that beet juice is really quite notorious for staining absolutely anything.

To the internet!

It turns out that Google defaults 'beets red' to 'beets red urine', which in itself is quite a reassurance.  It turns out that not only is this a relatively widespread thing but the websites Google suggested tell me that it is linked to iron deficiency.  I can't tell you *why* iron deficient people are apparently susceptible to having their juices stained purple by beets but the internet claims it is true and we all know the internet is never wrong.  We all know for sure though that self diagnosis of medical problems via 'some guy said some stuff on a forum comment' is a path to hypochondria so I am going to haul my butt to the doctor to find out if this iron deficiency as revealed by beet consumption has any merit.

I don't have pictures to show you as I didn't have the presence of mind to take them at the time.  This is probably a relief for the great majority of you.

The Libertarian Viewpoint

I watched an interesting interview today with a US libertarian who was talking about wealth inequality being a good thing for everyone in the economy.  The interviewer was not remotely sympathetic to his position and tried to stick it to him (more politely than I would have) without strictly speaking calling him out on being bigoted against the poor.  There is a real difference between wanting to keep a privileged position, which pretty much anyone reading this on a computer is likely guilty of, and going out of your way to punish anyone below you on the ladder as a matter of principle.  The logic of the libertarian in question goes like this:

- Taxing the rich is bad because they lose incentive to innovate and work hard and since the ultrarich have obviously traded even greater benefit for the wealth they have received they are helping us all.

- The greater inequality is the more incentive there is for the poor to work hard to become rich, which increases economic performance.

- Estate taxes are wrong because the rich can invest in the human capital of their children and create highly innovative, productive people for the next generation.

None of which makes a damn bit of sense.  The interviewee straight up talks about Bill Gates and his 50 billion dollar + fortune and suggests that if Gates hadn't been compensated as much he simply wouldn't have bothered.  Somehow I find it a bit of a stretch to suggest that if Gates only had 40 billion dollars he would give up in disgust - why bother working for peanuts, right?  (Gates of course donates truly absurd sums to charity so handing him in particular a lot of money is actually not so bad)  The economic inequality that is truly staggering is not the entrepreneur who manages to put together a net worth of a few million before retirement by working really hard but rather the people with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars who cannot possibly receive any notable benefit from 90% of their income.  The average person wouldn't even be able to tell you what the lifestyle difference is between someone with 5 million dollars and someone with 50 million - probably a lot of the people with fortunes of that size can hardly tell.

The hilarious thing is that the argument goes that the rich work better when the government doesn't tax them but somehow the poor are the opposite.  What the rich need is boatloads of cash since that fuels their innovation and productivity but the poor need a swift kick in the ass to fuel theirs.  Convenient that all the poor people produce best under the opposite set of conditions as rich folks.  Should we not crush the rich with punitive taxes so that they see how much harder they must work to get above the commoners?

This attitude on estate taxes makes my head hurt.  The poor need to start from nothing with no help, that makes them more productive.  Rich kids on the other hand need to be handed obscene fortunes without having worked at all because that makes them work harder...?  It is very well established that those people who inherit massive fortunes do not nearly so well with them as those who build the fortune themselves.  Hell, punitive estate taxes don't even have any effect on the buying of education, introduction to social networks or business favours that rich kids get, it only matters when they are handed huge stacks of money in the middle years.

There are points I agree with sometimes when libertarians start pontificating whether it be north or south of the border but this stuff is ridiculous.  There isn't even any attempt made to disguise this as anything but bigotry against the poor.

Baking

I love bread.  In particular I love raisin bread, and I especially love raisin bread made with white flour and jam packed with high fructose corn syrup.  This leads me to a difficult conundrum because I desperately want to eat only healthy home baked things.  Thus I get myself involved in baking all whole wheat bread for a few months and then peter out on enthusiasm... eventually my love of whole wheat gives way and I stop making it.

At some point I start feeling guilty since I have the time and the means to bake bread so I should stop absently munching on crackers and bagels and make my own bread again.  I get in a cycle of being excited about making my own bread and having nothing to do with other wheat based foods and then getting worn down on the concept again.  This time I am trying to introduce a portion of white flour into the mix to try to get the bread to rise better and look more like the fancy pants breads you see at the store - my success has not been resounding in this regard.  I have a bizarre conviction that somehow I can achieve the look of store bought goods while keeping the healthy credibility I want and despite never ending failure I continue to have great expectations.

It is a strange cycle.  I convince myself that this time I will find a way to make the bread's appeal not fade with time and that I won't get sick of it again.  It seems to me that this must be much like yoyo dieting except of course "Man, homemade bread is great!" and "The hell with homemade bread, I am going to the bagel shop" are a lot less frustrating and serious.  Now of course I have to consider the idea that I shouldn't be making things out of wheat at all and that maybe all this slugging away at making whole wheat bread is pretty much equivalent to making cake over and over again.

But such delicious cake with melted butter... nomnomnom.

You see this same thing with people who have bread makers at home.  They initially get super excited and make bread like crazy and then the bread maker gets stuffed in a closet someplace and never comes out again.  Even though each time they are reminded of it they recall how great it is to have fresh bread finish just in time for breakfast it never lasts long.