Being in software, I see lots of poorly written error messages. Every company is an offender.

Here’s a recent one I personally saw:

“Your device is in MTP mode. It can only be updated in MSC mode. Please unplug your device and switch to MSC mode if you want to check for updates.”

What is MTP mode vs MSC mode? How does one switch to MSC mode?

Eventually I figured it out, but this was not particularly helpful.

Lately I’ve had a spite of junk calls on my cell phone. It looks like other people have been getting them too.

802-763-2141

Recording for auto warranty expiration–I’ve received similar calls from 4-5 different numbers, once per day, for the past 2-3 weeks.

617-479-8874

Seemed to be a recorded message with poor reception; referencing a warranty for my vehicle; offered options to press 1 for more info or 9 to terminate the call.  Pressed 9.

I actually take the time to report these to the FCC. Once, I got a letter from the FCC saying that they investigated my claim and found the person responsible. Neat!

Holy cow. I’ve been so busy lately that I forgot to note that yesterday was my 8th anniversary at Microsoft.

How time flies.

I was really surprised by the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos. It has a lot of truly unique aircraft that you simply can’t find elsewhere - including the mysterious Boeing Condor and the Boeing SST (aka the American version of Concorde). It’s no National Air and Space Museum, but in some ways it’s even better because it is so undiscovered. This was definitely one of the best $8 I’ve spent in a while.

For some reason, this caught my attention:

onomatopee

Pretty clever!

(Found via http://animalnewyork.com/)

Omar, as usual, posted some good thoughts about Apple. I share a lot of them, except that I don’t have the chutzpah to post them.

My favorite snippet is this one:

shahine.com/omar/
Then there is stuff like “look, this company wrote this crazy cool application in 2 minutes! Our dev tools are so easy, you can lean Objective C and crank out an iPhone app and port your application in a few days”. This reminds me of when Apple had Adobe on stage and convinced the world that recompiling PhotoShop for Mac OS X took them only 2 weeks. It took them 2 years I think to actually ship.

Actually, it took 3-4 years because Photoshop 7 didn’t ship until 2002. Here’s a snippet that (of all people!) Jorg Brown wrote for Macintouch:

But Carbon allows Mac developers to do all this without having to work as hard. As an example, a VP at Adobe demo’d a version of Photoshop that had been re-written to work with Carbon; in a week and half of part-time work while Photoshop 5.0 was being finalized, he had made the necessary changes to Photoshop. It’s a far cry from the years of effort it would have taken to move to Rhapsody. Also, apps re-written for Carbon will also run on Mac OS 8!

The whole time the Mac community yelled at Adobe for dragging its feet, not understanding that in reality, it was incredibly difficult due to the moving target.

I also liked Omar’s quip about pricing.

Some eye opening stats. I’m guessing that the $150 OAK-JFK tickets I bought in 2002 won’t be happening again.

The Middle Seat - WSJ.com

Airlines don’t release profitability data about specific routes, but they do have to report lots of operational information to the government. JetBlue, for example, said in its government reports that its A320s burn an average of 771 gallons of fuel an hour, so the total fuel bill for a JFK-Long Beach round-trip comes to more than $35,000 at $4 a gallon for jet fuel, the price when oil is at about $135 a barrel. Spread that over the average load of passengers for JetBlue, and the fuel cost for each passenger comes to $292 round-trip. A JetBlue spokesman confirms that those numbers are close to the airline’s current results.

That’s plenty steep when you consider JetBlue’s average fare in the fourth quarter was $376 round-trip on the JFK-Long Beach route, not counting taxes and government fees. Fares today are higher, but the fuel bill per passenger is about $140 higher round-trip than last year, and fares haven’t gone up that much.

In the future, some day we’ll be talking about “Remember those days when we could fly to London?”

On my drive in this morning, I was listening to a discussion about the 30th anniversary for Prop 13. For those of you who aren’t in California, Prop 13 was a ballot initiative passed in 1978 that fixed property taxes at 1% of assessment at purchase, with a maximum of 2% growth year over year.

In practical terms, that means that when you buy a house in California, you might be paying $8000 in property tax (.01 * $800,000 - a typical 3br/2ba), but your neighbor Jimbo, who is 22, lives alone, but whose grandparents paid $80,000 for an equivalent house before 1978 pays just $1449 year.

Fortunately, the increase is fixed at 2%, so in 2108, when the houses in your neighborhood are worth $105 million (5% year over year appreciation), your children will be paying just $57,957 in property tax, but the suckers next door will be paying $1,052,010 a year. Oh, your neighbor Jimbo’s children will be paying $10,498 a year in property taxes.

I wonder how we will pay for roads and teachers in 2108. 99% sales and income taxes?

Which brings me back to why I started writing this - the interview had this classic exchange (paraphrased):

Interviewer: “Some say that Prop 13 has led to the decline of schools, crumbling roads, and growth in box stores and automalls everywhere. What do you say to that?”

Prop 13 supporter: “We as we just heard, recent polling indicates that an overwhelming number of Californians (70%+) support it, so clearly they value it.”

Let’s switch out Prop 13 and its related terms, with “smoking” and its related terms:

Interviewer: “Some say that smoking has led to the decline of air quality, health in children, and growth in lung cancer incidences. What do you say to that?”

Prop 13 supporter: “We as we just heard, recent polling indicates that an overwhelming number of smokers (70%+) support it, so clearly they value it.”

Talk about dodging the issue.

Another great argument I heard went something like this:

Prop 13 supporter: Those who claim that Prop 13 have impacted our schools should note that per student spending has increased 30%, adjusted for inflation.

That sounds really impressive until you realize that:

1. It’s over 30 years
2. It comes out to be less than .9% year over year above officially published inflation.

Is it any wonder a documentary film about this topic was called “First to Worst“?

In the 1950’s and 60’s, California’s schools were the  national model. “There was a commitment to excellence,” author Peter Schrag  says in the film. “California was the land of new opportunity; there was wonderful  historical tradition in that.” Today, California’s schools rank near the bottom. Since tying with Mississippi and Guam in the mid 1990’s, state test scores have barely nudged upward. “We basically turned our back on schools,” John Mockler, an education policy expert, relates in the film.

FIRST TO WORST pays special attention to Proposition 13, the 1978 anti-tax law (still in effect) that froze property taxes on businesses and homes and, critics say, cut funding for public schools off at the knees. “We’re always on a survival level,” Harriet McLean, a principal in Contra Costa, explains in FIRST TO WORST. “We’re understaffed, we’re over-crowded, and our roof leaks.” McLean takes viewers on a tour of her school, which is typical of appalling conditions found in many schools throughout the state.