AT&T: Too Big to Care

Kludge first, tidy up later.

We're not power Internet users, i.e., we don't need to stream high-definition video for hours on end. We've been contented subscribers to AT&T's ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) service, which since 2005 has been fairly reliable (except for an episode last month).

Two years ago AT&T's 2WIRE modem finally gave out, and we replaced it with a $150 Netgear DGND300 (pictured standing, right), which broadcasts Wi-Fi signals throughout the house under the 802.11g and the faster 802.11n standards. All was copacetic.

Last month AT&T announced that:

1) All ADSL users in the area would be switched to VDSL (very high-data-rate digital subscriber line), which can't be read by the Netgear modem;

2) ADSL service would be discontinued by the end of September or when the subscriber switched to VDSL, whichever was earlier;

3) VDSL users would receive a "free" AT&T modem.

Rather than try your patience, dear reader, with a long(er) whiny post I'll just say:

AT&T turned off the ADSL connection without warning, so we had to convert to VDSL immediately to continue Internet service.

The new 2WIRE 3600HGV modem broadcasts in slow 802.11g and slower 802.11b only;

The 2WIRE signal is so weak that a wireless device has to be within 10 feet of the modem/router.

Fortunately, it was a simple matter to connect the modems via an Ethernet cable and use the Netgear's stronger signal. All is copacetic again, but the shabby treatment by a too-big-to-care company will make us look harder at alternatives to AT&T. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Conventional Wisdom

Like many Americans, your humble observer pays some attention to politics--it's hard to avoid the subject because of news coverage and biennial political commercials--but hardly spends any time on explicit "political" activities. I vote regularly but only rarely attend City Council meetings or write letters to officials. Only once have I made a political contribution (and continue to pay for that lapse in judgment by fielding a daily tidal wave of phone calls and junk mail).

Make no mistake: I happen to believe that it will make a big difference who wins in November. But I already know whom I will vote for, and whether I spend four hours or none each day following the campaigns my ballot will look the same. Unlike school, there's no extra credit for showing the work.

For the national political conventions I only read the transcripts and watch snippets of the major speeches (just to check out how potential leaders sound and look). More time spent would not be personally efficacious. The conventions are a scripted show  where the outcome is known in advance. Little need to watch....it ain't Shakespeare.

That's why Clint Eastwood's speech and its reverberations are fascinating. The speech wasn't scripted in the sense that the Republican planners had no idea how it would fit into the final night's progression toward the Mitt Romney climax.

He indeed might have written and/or rehearsed it, but Clint Eastwood made his bit look like improv.  The very first thing he did was plunge expectations. Uh-oh, here's an 82-year-old man, voice quavering. Hope he can make it through without embarrassing himself. And then it got better. In the middle, as it looked like he was drifting off to an old-person's reverie, he recovered (or was the drifting part of the script?). A bad first impression, followed by an extended bit with an empty chair and one-liners ("we own this country" "we've got to let 'em go") that have legs that could last to November.

Here's the transcript. Here's the video.



[Update - 8/31: Bill Maher suspends his partisanship for a moment and comments as a practitioner of stand-up:

” he did a ten-minute bit with an empty chair and “killed.”.... 

Maher said that people normally complain about how scripted the conventions are, and wondered why everyone would be so upset over an unscripted, genuine moment. ]

© 2012 Stephen Yuen

Armed Robbery

Internet scams can steal thousands of dollars from victims who at least were in no direct physical danger....until crooks began luring unsuspecting car buyers through Craigslist [bold added]:

In Berkeley, police say, four victims hoping to buy cars off the popular Internet site have been robbed at gunpoint since June, possibly by the same two men. There have been several other such holdups in Oakland, and similar heists have been reported this month in Castro Valley and Fremont.

Authorities have pointed out warning signs:

"What we're seeing is the seller will change the location. That's part of the M.O.," said Officer Johnna Watson, an Oakland police spokeswoman. "The buyer should be in control and designate the meeting location."

Car buyers should also be wary if the car they plan to purchase shows up with no license plates or with only paper plates, police say.

I use and like Craigslist, through which I've posted community announcements and bought and sold merchandise locally. Craigslist is now a for-profit organization but still retains the original Internet-should-be-free ethos from the mid-1990's. The site isn't flashy and on most listings doesn't charge its users.

Its shoestring overhead (29 employees in 2009) of necessity minimizes Craigslist's supervisory capability. The "Adult Services" section exploded in popularity during the past decade until the prevalence of illegal activities forced Craigslist to shut it down under pressure from states' attorneys general.

Here's hoping that Craigslist users become smart enough to protect themselves. Otherwise Craigslist will have to make changes that will make it less special, perhaps leading to the long decline that has befallen other Internet pioneers. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Biennial Exam

Double doors' double entendres

We drove to Sacramento for the biennial neurological exam. Sam said that everything looked normal. Unless the patient displayed unusual headaches, lethargy, or any of the other signs of shunt failure, we could now stretch the time between appointments to three years.

We stopped at Joe's Crab Shack for a late lunch, donned a bib and attacked the crab legs. The Sacramento River flowed serenely under the hot afternoon sun. It was a beautiful day. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Plebeian Appetites

"Blues Brothers" at Universal Studios

During our brief trip south we spent a day at Universal Studios. We could have gone to the Getty Museum--and I will go some day--but this vacation was for entertainment, not education. Speaking of art, the homage to the Blues Brothers was well worth 20 minutes of standing (seats were sparse). Young fans who were obviously familiar with the tunes were dancing in the aisles. Belushi lives.

Plane crash set from War of the Worlds

Being able to spare only a few hours, we took in the studio tour, the new Transformers ride, and the trained animal ("Animal Actors") show. The Transformers flight-simulator experience was a little too much for this aging boomer. Being tossed and turned while watching giant 3-D figures rapidly moving across the screen was literally a dizzying experience. A tech marvel indeed, but I'll take a real roller coaster, please.

Pork chop with berry sauce

Chased indoors by the Los Angeles heat and smog, we had a leisurely dinner at the hotel restaurant. Familiar dishes were prepared with flair--no multi-continental fusion cuisine here--and portions were generous. Our summer-long battle to reduce sugar intake suffered another setback when the dessert platter came. BTW, it's only a myth that calories don't count when one is on holiday. Or perhaps there's another explanation why my pants have mysteriously shrunk.

Final score Friday night: Giants 5, Braves 3

I-5 was crowded with trucks, and the return trip was exhausting. But there was still time (and energy) to head up to AT&T Park that evening. The Giants came back to beat the Braves and keep the Dodgers at bay for another day. Now that the new Dodgers management is throwing money around like a drunken sailor, the Giants (and every other team in the National League West) will struggle for years to keep up with the big money boys down South. I didn't care much before, but now...Beat LA! © 2012 Stephen Yuen

One of the Good Guys

Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) - NASA photo

Too many of our heroes turn out to have feet of clay, but not Neil Armstrong, who died Saturday at the age of 82. Mr. Armstrong's feet, of course, went where no one's had gone before.

The first human being to walk on the moon shunned publicity:

After leaving the space program, Mr. Armstrong was careful to do nothing to tarnish that image or achievement. Though he traveled and gave speeches — as he did in October 2007, when he dedicated the new Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering at Purdue — he rarely gave interviews and avoided the spotlight.

In 1968, the year before Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, I saw Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, by consensus one of the best films of all time. The movie envisioned lunar cities and commercial space travel by 1999 and the scientific and economic wherewithal for a manned flight to Jupiter in 2001. And why not?

Only ten years earlier it had been deemed a monumental achievement to put a monkey in orbit. Now men were going to the moon and returning safely. 30 years hence, Stanley Kubrick's future (except for the black monolith) seemed very plausible.

The 1969 moon landing was a big deal, and I watched it on TV like millions of others. But we expected to see many more such big deals in the decades ahead. Neil Armstrong was going to be the first of many.

It turned out that only twelve men visited the moon, and no one has been back for nearly 40 years. The accomplishments of Neal Armstrong and the other Apollo astronauts grow more astonishing as their deeds fade in time, and sometimes I wonder what happened to the civilization that produced them. R.I.P.

Nine Good Persons and True

The Apple-Samsung verdict is in after surprisingly quick 22-hour deliberations [bold added]:

Nine jurors delivered a sweeping victory to Apple Inc. in a high-stakes court battle against Samsung Electronics Co., awarding the Silicon Valley company $1.05 billion in damages and providing ammunition for more legal attacks on its mobile-device rivals.

Jurors Friday found that Samsung infringed all but one of the seven patents at issue in the case—a patent covering the physical design of the iPad. They found all seven of Apple's patents valid—despite Samsung's attempts to have them thrown out. They also decided Apple didn't violate any of the five patents Samsung asserted in the case.

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that the result was a "hometown" verdict. Apple is one of the largest employers in the Valley and is its most admired and successful company.

That assumption, however, wouldn't do justice to the efforts of the nine-person panel. The Journal profiles some of them:

Manuel Illagan, marketer, circuit board company
Velvin Hogan, video-compression expert
Peter Catherwood, AT&T product manager
David Dunn, cycling shop worker
Aarti Mathur, payroll administrator, IT startups

Just the organization of the task was impressive. How would you fare, dear reader, if you had been called? The WSJ graphic below (click to enlarge) lists the items that had to be decided:

Your humble observer is an Apple shareholder who will experience a pop to his investment because of the verdict. But it's not the monetary benefit--which is likely to be ephemeral--but the process that is cause for rejoicing. In an era of specialized knowledge, twelve good men nine good persons and true showed not only that they were relevant but why they are the backbone of the American system of justice. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

The Open Road

Single-lane traffic moved at 55 mph on the road south.

One advantage that the Mainland has over my home state of Hawaii is that it's easy to assuage a feeling of restlessness. We filled up the tank and pointed the van south to Los Angeles.

There were five-mile stretches of I-5 that slowed to a single lane due to road construction. The passengers didn't mind. They were occupied with playing games and answering text messages on their iPhones and iPads....activities that they might be engaging in anyway had they stayed home.

Sometimes the passengers even set aside their electronic devices and engaged in conversation. They chatted more during one day on the road than they would have during a week at home.

Going away to find oneself has been a staple of literature going all the way back to the Greeks. In the 21st century we go away to find each other.

Touched by Human Hands

I stopped off at the local Safeway to buy supplies for a short car trip and to pick up a coupon for the Foster City "touchless"carwash. At an undiscounted $22.95 the carwash is somewhat pricey, but the $10 coupon makes the service a value proposition.

(I don't know exactly what "touchless" means because at least three different attendants go over each car, once to wipe the exterior after it's run through the machine, and two to clean the windows and vacuum the interior. Oh, I see, the website explains:

Our car wash accommodates vehicles up to 7’6” high and tires up to 13” wide. Because we do not have large dangling carpet strips, big roller brushes and plastic wands that touch your vehicle, damage is eliminated.)

The human touch is okay, just not carpet strips, brushes, and wands.

Note: the etymology of "manufacture" dates back centuries to "something made by hand" but has come to mean "the making of articles on a large scale using machinery (Google's definition)." Large-scale manufacturing, despite its quality, speed, and cost benefits, has a negative meaning in progressive circles because of environmental externalities and working conditions.

With its emphasis on the human touch, the customization of services, small business pedigree, and reasonable prices, the Foster City carwash is a poster child for desirable 21st century business. Just don't let them get too big and successful, though....

Suspended Colon

Oakland Athletics pitcher Bartolo Colon has received a 50-game suspension for using synthetic testosterone. The 39-year-old pitcher was in the midst of a successful comeback season with the A's:

The 39-year-old Colon is 10-9 with a 3.43 ERA in 24 starts this season, his first with the A's, and has a 171-122 record in 15 big league seasons. He was due to start Thursday in Tampa.

A two-time All-Star, he won the 2005 AL Cy Young Award after going 21-8 for the Los Angeles Angels.

Five players have been suspended so far this year:

Marlon Byrd, 34, free agent outfielder
Melky Cabrera, 28, Giants outfielder
Bartolo Colon, 39, Athletics pitcher
Freddie Galvis, 22, Phillies infielder
Guillermo Mota, 38, Giants pitcher

It's a five-member sample size, and we can't be definite about who uses performance-enhancing drugs and who doesn't. Nevertheless, the patterns are suspicious. Older athletes, especially those whose statistics have improved recently, are one group who should be scrutinized. And, yes, Bay Area teams, whom three out of the five miscreants play for, seem to be culpable. Coincidence...or are we just trying to escape the obvious?

[Update 8/23 - Bruce Jenkins:

In the wake of Bartolo Colon's 50-game suspension, identical to Cabrera's bust for excessive levels of testosterone, the Bay Area is now viewed as the epicenter for performance-enhancing drugs. Why would anyone doubt that at this point?]

Sell in May, Miss the Play

The old saying on Wall Street is that stocks decline when summer begins, i.e., sell in May and go away. Here's some supporting evidence:

Over the last 12 months, investors who held to this belief made out pretty well. From May 1-November 1, 2011, the Dow lost 6.7%. From November 2011 through April 27, 2012, it gained 10.7%...

If we open a historical window – specifically, The Stock Trader’s Almanac – back to 1926, we see the S&P 500 rising 4.3% on average during May-October and gaining an average of 7.1% from November-April.

Following that strategy robotically would have been a mistake if you were an investor in Apple, which yesterday became the most valuable public company in U.S. history.

After an early dip in May the indices have recovered since while Apple is up 15% to an all-time high.

Now that shares of Apple have already hit my target of $650 to $700 from last April, I'm going to take some off the table soon, but definitely before year-end. As another old saying goes, the bulls make money, the bears make money, but the pigs get slaughtered.

The City People Sing About

Scott McKenzie, who sang the ballad "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)," has died at the age of 73.


Mr. McKenzie's composition couldn't surpass in popularity either of the top two San Francisco songs, "I Left My Heart" or "San Francisco (Open Your Golden Gate)" but over the years has exhibited remarkable staying power. Derided for its fairy-tale simplicity when it was released in 1967, "San Francisco" evokes the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and ignores the darker aspects of the Sixties, for example, Indochina, ghetto riots, and assassinations.

The former, I suppose, are the memories that we aging Baby Boomers wish to hold on to. R.I.P.

[Update: another page to add to the San Francisco songbook is Otis Redding's Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. I hadn't realized until now that the lyric is "I left my home in Georgia, headed for the 'Frisco bay." I had always heard crystal bay. Today's word: mondegreen.]

The Milkman Goeth

The latest chapter in his 50-game suspension makes Melky Cabrera look especially bad. Per the NY Daily News: [bold added]

San Francisco Giants star Melky Cabrera created a fictitious website and a nonexistent product designed to prove he inadvertently took the banned substance that caused a positive test under Major League Baseball’s drug program.

But instead of exonerating Cabrera of steroid use, the Internet stunt trapped him in a web of lies. Amid the information-gathering phase of his doping case last month, his cover story unraveled quickly, and what might have been a simple suspension has attracted further attention from federal investigators and MLB.

As Mercury sportswriter Tim Kawakami said, "If the Giants had any thought of bringing him back either in the postseason or next season, this has to end it."

I know nothing about performance-enhancing drugs other than what's in the popular press, so treat the following comment accordingly: it seems to me that athletes, like embezzlers, get caught because they're greedy. If they're willing to take a little PED to enhance their performance modestly, they stand a much better chance of passing the test.

But if they pump it up to increase their batting average by nearly 100 points, as Melky Cabrera did from 2010 to 2012, they'll be caught for sure.

From MLB.com

Not As Exciting As We Thought

OK, maybe the Apple-Samsung patent trial of the century isn't as exciting as we originally thought:

As the arguments wind down, Apple and Samsung will be handing the case over to jurors who may have difficulty understanding the intricacies of the issues, and who at times have had trouble staying awake during more technical discussions [bold added].

Hey, been there.

Hangin' at the Food Court

The shopping center was built on the Tanforan Park racetrack.

I like hangin' at the Tanforan Food Court.

Lured by $5-7 lunch prices, young families line up at the food kiosks. The crowd is noisy, young, and working class, reflective of a suburban shopping center that has Sears, J.C. Penney, and Target as anchor stores.

It's a world away from the tony Peninsula country clubs that are just up the hill.

The Starbucks provides free Wi-Fi, and I can surf to my heart's content.

Since high school, I've acquired the ability to tune out ambient noise and focus on the book or video display in front of my nose.

Of course, one man's focus is another man's obliviousness. My wallet had fallen out of my pants pocket and was under a chair. The bus "boy"--actually a guy who was about 40--pointed it out to me, then hustled away to clean tables, empty garbage cans, and sweep the floors.

I glanced at him periodically over the next  hour. He was always rushing about, pouring his energy into a job that likely didn't deserve him. I thought about how much trouble he saved me because I had not lost my wallet stuffed with credit, debit, and membership cards, not to mention my driver's license.

I walked up to him and slipped him a twenty. Initially he wouldn't take it, but I insisted. It was a win-win for both of us, and I got the better end. © 2012 Stephen Yuen