The upgrade affected the Windows Experience Index dramatically (it used to be 5.8, because the normal hard disk was so slow):

Now I can no longer use “my system is slow” as an excuse …

As expected the number of views stayed in the 2-3 digit count for the longest time. After all, how many people are really interested in seeing a random girl doing random things on a random day?

Then since the beginning of 2011 the following happened:

In 2011 there were around 90K views of the video. And judging from the end of the chart, views are going to be a lot more for 2012. At the same time, I also saw a lot of email notifications from YouTube where I was informed that somebody had just subscribed to my video feed. In the beginning I did not pay too much attention, but when I received more and more of those notifications I decided to investigate. I followed the links in the notification emails to find out who the subscribers were and what else they were interested in.

And this is where things get a little bit scary. YouTube provides (limited) demographics information for videos. Here’s what I can see this very moment:

The above video is most popular with males aged 35-64? Are they interested in Chinese Pork Buns? Gardening? Hardly so! It’s the fact that Pia’s underwear is visible in short segments during the video. I’m absolutely convinced about that. This is cemented by the fact that “Similar Videos” (showing on the right hand side of the YouTube interface) displays the same kind of content: young innocent girls doing innocent young girl things that could be seen with a sexual undertone if you are sick enough:

I’ve been blocking a lot of YouTube users lately and will continue to do so. I refuse to take down the video and make it private, because that would mean that I’m giving in. I hope that blocking users, reporting them will trigger actions on YouTube’s end that result in those user accounts being deleted. And it seems to have happened for some users already: accounts that I previously investigated are now inaccessible with a notice that the user violated certain YouTube Terms of Service rules.

And if you have any doubt about what most of the subscribers intentions are, here’s an excerpt from user svfly2‘s feed, who happens to be one of the subscribers to the video above (still up, but I’m going to shut him down):

Let’s use that to our advantage!

Come the first of the month, I receive a bill from New Mexico Gas informing me about last month’s new charges. They tell me how much natural gas I used last month and are even nice enough to compare to the usage of the month before and the same month’s usage the year before. Well, that’s great, but it does not give me any incentive to “compete”, because I’m only competing with myself. Yes, I can try to lower my usage based on the numbers I see in the invoice, but I would really like to compare my household to other households in the neighborhood and see how I’m doing compared to them.
No names have to be mentioned, I don’t need addresses and I don’t need details about the properties – all I want is a bill that says: compared to similar properties in your neighborhood, you are doing better or – god forgive – worse than them. Seeing a sad, little smiley face on my bill would make me reconsider my habits and may adjust my gas (energy) usage, but without comparison I consider myself the poster child of all NM Gas Co. customers.

There are few companies who ventured into this area and I need to name two of them: OPower provides services for utilities that generate reports along the lines I suggested above. Aquacue also established reports that address the same problem for water.

This is the future. As much as you hate seeing that red, sad face on your utilities bill when you used more than everybody around you, it will serve as a wake-up call and make you change some of your habits in your every day life to preserve this planet for future generations. Yeah, I’m serious.

I don’t know what rode us a few weeks ago, but we stopped for an early afternoon lunch at Jalapeno’s on Airport Road. Oakley ordered a Quesadilla (Chrome wants to correct this to “Queensland” – go figure!) and I ordered a “Torta Cubana”.
Torta Cubana happens to be the mother of all sandwiches. It’s a huge bun loaded with shredded pork, hot dog (!!!), avocado, tomatoes, cheese, jalapenos and loads of other goodies. You need to consult with your jaw-doctor before you are allowed to get one of those monsters close to your face.

The thing is not cheap (somewhere between $7-$10), but it is filling and should cover almost two meals on any day you decide to bombard your body with this Torta (mine was enough for a lunch and half a dinner).

But it is delicious. There are so many flavors going on and, still, you don’t feel like somebody just dumped all this stuff in a blender and served it as a drink (with stripy straw).

If you happen to have access to Anthony Bourdain‘s “No Reservations” (Netflix does have all the episodes), fast forward to 28 mins into the “San Francisco” episode where you can see him devouring a Torta (pictured above).

Today I looked inside the heater only to discover that a dead spider was trapped in the strainer at the top of the heater where the spout is. I had no idea how long it was in there, but I have to assume that the past few cups were mixed with spider juice. Bon appétit!

Back in Germany at the beginning of my computer career I did training classes. I taught elderly secretaries how to use the Windows environment. Most of them did word processing exclusively. Things like WordStar (who remembers that one?) and WordPerfect. The keyboard was their only weapon and they were masters at it. Very few of them had used a mouse before they attended my training class (yes, I’m aging myself here). Teaching somebody to use a new input device and especially one as complex as a mouse, is not as easy as it may appear now. During the first day we usually learned how to move the mouse around the screen and get to all places on the screen.

One exercise asked them to go to the top left of the screen to access a menu. An older woman grabs the mouse and slowly moves it to the left. It wanders across the screen, but gets stopped 3/4 across, because the keyboard is in the way. I watch her from a distance as she moves the mouse back to the right banging it with increasing intensity against the side of the keyboard in order to complete the task. After several unsuccessful attempts she looks at her fellow students in the class, trying to get a hint on how to proceed. And that’s when the magic happens: she moves the mouse to the right edge of the screen. With her left hand she lifts the keyboard at a 45 degree angle from the desk and slides the mouse under it, managing to access the menu she was supposed to access.

I don’t know for how long I laughed – I think (hope!) that she never realized I was laughing about her.

Going forward my training classes included a segment where I taught people how to lift the mouse and relocate it without affecting the pointer on the screen.

And in case you are wondering why I move: the recent GoDaddy controversy made me take a look at the amount of money I spend on domains and I realized that Yahoo is way more expensive than other registrars. On top of that NameCheap offers some services for free that Yahoo charges for.

In the mail was a letter informing me about my Credit Score results. Lenders are required to share that information with people who apply for a loan.

As expected, the Credit Score was close to what I expected it to be:

And further down in the letter it even says:

Nevertheless I just received a call from the mortgage company telling me that during the initial review my refinance-request was rejected. When I asked “Why?”, I was told that I don’t have enough revolving credit information. I asked the lady what that means and she tells me that I “only” have two accounts that show a balance – money I owe to somebody else (my first and second mortgage). Asked further how I can fix this and move forward with the refinance, she tells me that I need to be more in debt and show that I can handle the payments associated with the new debt.

I’m asked to take on more debt in order to become a more interesting and worthy customer. This is so fucked up that I can’t believe I have to write about this. Lenders should be like flies on shit on me, but they refuse it, because I’m not enough in the gutter. Twisted world we live in …

Anybody else see the same pattern? Is there a daily Stand-up meeting around that time? Puzzling …

I’m talking about my “investment” broker at Merrill Lynch. We signed up with him a long time ago while he was still at UBS Financial and gave him a nice chunk of money to work with. He came recommended by our ex-neighbour.

The first few years things went well and he managed to generate a nice return on the monies invested. We began to trust him. After the divorce, the account was split in half and in 2009 he moved from UBS to Merrill Lynch and the assets were moved with him.

Then in December 2011 I received a form letter from ML with information about the performance of the account in the last year. Here’s an excerpt from the letter (dollar totals redacted):

The important number here is the -34.26%. So in one year my “investment” account has dropped more than 1/3rd in value! At the same time all major stock indices are in positive territory lead by the Dow Jones at around 7%. Had I left the trading strategy to a monkey picking random stocks to buy/sell, I think I would have fared better. As far as the total amount in the account is concerned, I made a time warp back into 2007!

Once I saw the figures above I immediately pulled the plug and transferred all assets to E*Trade into one of their managed offerings. I emailed my broker several times and did not receive a single response from him, which only makes me believe that it was admission of guilt.

I heard from several other people who were also managed by him and they saw the same pattern over the last year. I reviewed trading activity for the last year and was astonished to see that he basically had not touched the assets at all during that period: no trades to liquidate one stock and purchase another one. That is very close to being negligent if you ask me.

On all my email communication I cc’ed the Administrative Manager for ML in New Mexico. Had I not done that, I think the whole story would have been brushed under the carpet. Now I’m almost happy to hear that the broker has lost his job with ML.

In hindsight I should have checked statements on a regular basis and should have moved the account sooner. It was my trust in him that made me think checking on him was not necessary. Lesson learned.