Random Synapses

So I’ve been a truly working man for little over a month. I’m still trying to adjust, got so much to learn and catch up on. But after a month of work, I definitely discovered some equally interesting and somewhat useless facts.

I can drink far more coffee than I ever did, even when staying up at night studying for exams, and not get sick or feel any — ANY — effect. It’s not decaf, I checked. And I still get sleepy after lunch.

I am more efficient at work in the afternoon than in the morning. Some people move mountains before lunch, then relax during the afternoon. I only get into high gear after 3:30 in the afternoon. Then, before I know it, everyone gets ready to go home and it looks like I’m doing overtime, typing away in a frenzy. Don’t effin’ interfere with my productivity cycles.

Sitting all day in front of a computer, I’m starting to miss interacting with humans more often. Many times I won’t just go to a colleague two desks behind me to interrupt his/her work to ask a question, I’d send him or her an instant message. So impersonal, so annoying, so bare and stripped of non-verbal communication, such an easy path towards smiley abuse. :):)

Days are useful only for scheduling meetings. My time is counted in weeks, divided into “work” and “week-end.”

My beard has a mind of its own. It grows in irregular patches, has different growth speeds, some days it’s smooth and coarse in others. Shaving once a day is too often, once every other day is not frequent enough. It’s freaking annoying.

I’m good and fast at ironing shirts. No, I won’t do yours. I’m not interested in your money either. Get a girlfriend, she’ll make you iron your shirts, she’ll spend your money, and you’ll be really happy about the whole situation, too.

I’m not paying attention at the people around me on the subway. So many of them, why would I show any interest. And just when I don’t pay attention, someone I know taps on my shoulder and says, “hey, what’s on your mind, I’ve been standing next to you for 10 minutes and you didn’t notice.” Dude, I ain’t using the subway to socialize, I just need to get from point A to point B like the other million people doing it every day. Get over it.

Bah.

Sunday. I decide to spend a part of my first salary on some things I wanted for months. So I order these products from a company that I know and whose professionalism I appreciate for a few years. Products are in stock and my items are reserved, pending confirmation from the sales people. On their site, my account has my legal residence address from my home town, printed on my photo ID.

Monday morning. Nearly half an hour after business hours start, my order is processed. I get a PDF invoice by e-mail. Both the company and I have accounts at ING Bank, and Internet Banking is convenient, safe and instantaneous. My billing address at the bank is where I’m currently staying in the capital, not the one from my home town. I make the payment directly from my account and send them the PDF confirmation of the payment by e-mail. The seller’s location is less than 10 minutes of walking away from my current residence, but I can’t get there during business hours. So I ask for the package to be delivered across the city to my work address, where a courier can reach me during their delivery hours.

Monday evening. I find out that the schedule for Tuesday has changed and I will be at a conference away from the office until mid afternoon. I e-mail the seller to ask them to tell the courier to deliver the package after 3pm.

Tuesday morning. Again, shortly after business hours start, I get the reply that the package has already been sent out and that I could contact the courier company directly. I leave my ID and money for delivery costs at the front desk at work, in case the courier shows up while I’m gone.

Tuesday afternoon. No package has arrived, the delivery company has no record of such a package, so I call the seller to ask for the tracking number. Something has happened and the package was not sent out on Monday, but I am assured that it will be picked up by the courier in the afternoon and delivered in 24 hours.

Wednesday afternoon (today). Mom calls from my home town that there’s a delivery for me at my legal residence. It’s the order I placed on Sunday. I ask mom to send it back with the same courier that delivered it there. She pays for the shipping to there and then back to me. It’s not expensive, just inconvenient and time consuming.

Conclusions so far?

E-commerce works, or at least it’s on its right track. Serious sellers are quick, payments can be made in time, communication can work properly. But, the difference is in details, and something apparently unimportant can ruin a larger process. In this case, the poor design of the order processing system interfering with timely and flawlessly delivering orders. Some system analyst who designed the information workflow disregarded the fact that, in every order, there can be up to 3 people and 5 addresses:

• the person who places the order, with a legal residence, a current residence and a mailing address;
• the person who pays the order, with a billing address registered at the bank;
• the person who receives the package, with a delivery address.

For instance, my sister could be placing an online order, have me pay for it with my credit card, and request the product to be sent to my dad as a gift. Sis has a legal address registered with the authorities, at our family’s place where we grew up. But she lives somewhere else now, so she has a different current residence; it’s not her legal residence, because she only rents the place, doesn’t own it. And she has a different mailing address too — a large, safe post office box which she checks regularily, because the mailbox in the building is really small and mail gets lost more frequently than she’d like, especially pretty magazines she’s subscribed to. My billing address and dad’s address are also different. Why would anyone expect that, in the complex modern world, everyone has a single address for everything, completely ruling out the increasing number of exceptions to this false assumption?

Wednesday evening (one hour ago). I e-mail the seller to explain the mix-up and suggest improving their system. I really like this company and its people, and I know they will listen to my comments.

Wednesday evening, really late (11:30pm, minutes ago). They’re still at work, apparently; just got a reply from them, apologizing for the mistake made by the department handling packaging, and promising free shipping for next order.

Lessons learned? You bet. I’m positive that the seller will make sure this glitch in the information systems will no longer affect their business. I know them long enough to be sure they’ll get it fixed. And, what do you know, my unfortunate case just became a small contribution to improving the e-commerce in my country. It probably makes an insignificant difference country-wide. But for the small company I’m dealing with, this is a great opportunity to get a competitive advantage by paying close attention to details and smoothing all those little causes that generate bigger problems.

How did you change the e-commerce world today?

There’s so much you can get on the Internet for free, particularily services. Web hosting, e-mail addresses, computer applications, e-zines… Few people seem to care how come all this stuff is free; as long as they don’t have to pay anything, it doesn’t matter. So, is this free stuff really free? Let’s go back in time and see how online services evolved.

Stage 1: Free services are scarce and limited, designed only to attract interested people — a marketing tool. Anything more than that, you’ve got to pay for it. As a paying customer, you get full access to all features. Example: AOL Internet access, you got 10 hours of Internet access but then you had to pay to even keep that AOL e-mail address.

Stage 2: Most services are only for paying customers, but a part of that revenue is directed to finance free access to other services. Many people use the company’s free services, and some of them become confident or want more and decide to pay for the extra benefits. Good business practice. Example: Juno e-mail and Internet access, free for basic service but subscription-based for extras.

Stage 3: Advertising-supported free services — you get something for free, but have to see some ads. Instead of you paying for the services, advertising companies are paying them to show you their commercial messages. You can pay to get rid of the ads. Example: HotPop e-mail service, or that “Free PC” initiative a few years ago.

This is where things start to go bad.

Stage 4: Advertising becomes more aggressive and is willing to pay more for better targeting potential customers. Service providers are either greedy, or just thinking they shouldn’t be stupid to refuse more money being offered for what seems to be innocent marketing techniques. Service users are being tracked to find out what they are using the Internet for, to better determine what kind of advertising topics would interest them. Some services are being invented just to have a reason to use these advertising tools and get money from advertisers — this is how adware and spyware works in many products. Example: Bonzi Buddy, the famous monkey who “helps” you find things interesting things online and keeps you entertained with jokes, but spies on your surfing habits to feed your preferences to advertisers, who in turn display their ads on your screen.

Is there a 5th stage? Sure there is. And if you thought spyware was bad, wait until you see this.

Stage 5: Collecting and using personal information for “marketing” purposes, at least. You get free access to some silly service, but you have to provide some sort of personal information such as your e-mail address or more, usually hidden under some form of registration. Sometimes there’s a Terms of Services page which tells you how that information will be used, other times no such thing exists. Even with the terms of service in place, you cannot be certain that the company will actually respect the limitations of that contractual relationship with you. Most of the time, your personal information is sold to marketers. Yes, your personal information is valuable and paid for; entire businesses are built over it. And you’re giving it away in order to get something “free” in exchange, sometimes good services but many times pure garbage. Who’s the sucker?

Think of the countless sites you have registered with, the hundreds of forms you have accurately filled in, and what you’ve got in return. Did you think spammers “accidentally” found your e-mail address? Or that you’re getting phone calls from companies you’ve never heard of, but who happened to be “partners” with some marketing company who, in turn, got your data from some site you registered with?

Please, don’t take my word for it. Do your own research, like Trent Lapinski researched the dirty stuff in the history of MySpace, the Net’s buzzword of the day. Also go through PCWorld’s “The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time” and see other famous free offers tied to advertising and spyware.

The next time someone offers you something “free,” remember that nothing in this world is free. Someone is still paying for whatever you’re getting and is probably trying to make a profit from it, too. What you give them in exchange — your personal data or the permission to index your e-mails or monitor your activity — is what generates their revenue. Don’t sell yourself cheap, and beware of what Stage 6 will turn out to be.

Oh, and by the way, some people consider my contents to be free stuff to display on their own sites and generate revenue from ads. So this is a big and loud SCREW YOU to all of them.

Find new place, sign a lease. Notify current place’s owner. Pay bills, figure out which are being delayed with one or two months and how much you owe that will be billed after you leave. Cancel subscriptions. Think of what you need to move and what you need to throw away. Imagine what kind of boxes would suit your stuff and where you’d find boxes and packaging material, beg salesmen to save boxes for you instead of throwing them away. Stock up with scotch tape, industrial saranwrap, staples, garbage bags, rubber bands, wrapping paper, packaging rope, old newspapers, paper towels. Group your things together, pack them up, arrange in boxes. Label everything. Come up with creative packaging for the things whose original packaging you threw away long ago. Figure out what you still need to use until the last minute and leave it for the last box. Pile up filled boxes so you still have room to move around. Find good transportation for your stuff and maybe temporary storage facilities. Clean up after yourself, make sure everything is in order with the owner. Carry boxes down the stairs into the van, drive van to the new place, carry boxes up the stairs again. Open boxes to find clean clothes and toiletry, improvise sleeping place between boxes. Rearrange existing furniture. Measure rooms and available space, find out what else you need. Shop around for new furniture, transport it, assemble it. Unpack your things and put them in order. Try to remember the new location for everything you just brought in. Scrub the previous inhabitant’s mess. Identify problems that need to be fixed – leaking plumbing, bad electrical wiring, chipped wallpaint. Make list of things to repair and improve, buy supplies and fix everything to your needs and standards. Settle in, announce building administrator, introduce yourself to the neighbours. Identify the garbage bins you can use. Sign contract for cable TV, Internet, phone, whatever. Walk around to see what’s available in close proximity, where do you need to go for whatever you need to buy, what sort of public transportation is available, what public services are nearby and so on. Try to learn your new mailing address, announce it to your bank, your magazine and newspaper subscriptions, your mobile phone carrier. Adjust to new problems such as dogs barking at night, lumps in the mattress, bugs crawling in, burning food on the new gas stove. Learn that the bathroom is in the other direction when waking up at night. Get used to the new climate, rude people, dirty city, taxi drivers who take advantage of your fallen-out-of-the-sky attitude, your family for constantly reminding you that you moved farther away instead of closer. Look back and see that you have just wasted one or two months and half a million neurons with this process. And it’s not even the last time you’ll be doing it; next time there’ll be even more junk to pack, carry and unpack.

Moving sucks.

In the past years, I have participated to quite a few discussion forums (message boards) using the same alias (nickname) instead of my real name. I was googling that nickname today and, among results pointing at my own messages on various forums, found that someone I knew was debating the use of nicknames instead of real names in online interactive communication. He gave my nickname and membership to two forums as an example, and then he concluded that people use nicknames online because anonymity is appealing only to those with (inferiority) complexes, that kids and teenagers want to be something/someone else, to have their own chosen names as some sort of rebellion against the names given by their parents. And, to top it all, this person was using a nickname as well! Man, this pissed me off.

I have the right to privacy and to not disclose any personal information unless I want to. There are way too many weirdos and idiots online to be stupid enough to publish my personal data for anyone to see and invite all these strangers and their obscure intentions into my private life. The first rule of properly using the Internet is to never disclose personal information to strangers. Never assume everyone has legitimate intentions and will use this information properly. Never ever. It’s for my own protection. I commonly use a nickname and only give private information to trusted parties. Don’t open the box of secrets because it will be surprisingly difficult to close it in a crisis situation and contain the damages.

Back in the days when my contributions were published in a printed monthly magazine, I was using my real name. My articles, published in print and online, are signed with my real name. But should I use my real name for silly discussions with strangers? Effin’ no! What if some moron gets pissed at something I wrote and decides to settle things in real life, finding out my home address or private phone number to harass me, or worse? For what, for an effin’ online discussion forum? That’s simply not worth taking any risks. Again: there are far too many idiots out there, do not publish any personal information if you don’t have to. I’m not cutting these morons any slack either, so there’s probably a few of them that would love to teach me a lesson if the opportunity arises.

At one point I was considering writing a detailed page about me on this blog. But that information could be used in harmful ways. Why would I want to freely distribute it to anyone with an Internet connection, without keeping some sort of control over it? Even as little as my specific education history could help someone identify me, since I was no ordinary student. My full first name is also extremely rare (I’d be surprised to find 2 other people in the 23 million of this country with that same first name), so using it would blow my anonymity completely.

Using a nickname is simply a prudent approach, a protection and control mechanism, not paranoia. My contributions to those discussion forums are still signed by me through that unique nickname. It was me posting them, not an alternate personality, and I take full responsibility for their content. However, I will not disclose my real name in public when there’s no need to and when I don’t know that this information will be properly used by people with access to it. I’m not a kid with inferiority complexes or personality disorders, nor a coward; I am just following the principles of using the Internet to my own advantage.

If you have no problem with getting some surprise encounters, by all means post your personal details as you please. But don’t judge me for playing safe. I make my own decisions for my own reasons.