Category Archives: Editorials

Editorials

Police make us safer; vigilantes, not so much.

Perhaps you’ve seen this story about the woman who shot the man who ran into a movie theatre with a gun? According to this public Facebook post by Realtalk:

On Sunday December 17, 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It’s like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant!
Now aren’t you wondering why this isn’t a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting?
There was an off duty county deputy at the theater. SHE pulled out her gun and shot the man 4 times before he had a chance to kill anyone. So since this story makes the point that the best thing to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun, the media is treating it like it never happened.
Only the local media covered it. The city is giving her a medal next week.

There are a few inaccuracies in that story, according to this Snopes analysis. First, it was Sunday, December 16; there was no Sunday, December 17. Second, he didn’t shoot his ex-girlfriend. Third, it is offensive to say this is anything like the Aurora shooting because it was not premeditated and he did not go in with military grade weapons and ammunition to wipe out a whole theatre full of people. Fourth, there didn’t just happen to be an off duty county deputy at the theatre; on the contrary, the deputy sheriff was on duty as an armed guard employed by the theatre. She was doing her job, and she was thankful for the years of training she had received in using a firearm to disarm a perpetrator. This was not just a moviegoer with a gun.

The most important takeaway from this story, for me, is that the woman who shot the perpetrator was literally “on guard” and had years of training firing a gun. It seems the pro-gun people would like you to believe we would all be safer if everyone had a gun. It’s not that simple. See this video if you think all you need to do to protect yourself and others is to buy a gun and go to a shooting range once in a while:

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Editorials

GOP: Change or die

Personally, I don’t care if the Republican party dies, but if they want to live, they need to not just “reach out” to people of color; they have to abolish their policies that oppress people of color. They need to not just “speak better” about their policies that infuriate people; they need to abolish those policies. They have tried to “spin” their anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-middle-class, anti-intellectual platform. It didn’t work! They tried to be “the party of No” and make the President fail. It didn’t work! They tried to be the “pro-life” party, against women’s right to abortion even in the case of rape. It didn’t work! I think of the Republican party as anti-gay, pro-gun, anti-woman, pro-man, anti-color, pro-white, anti-worker, pro-millionaire… and that’s not just what I think they are. That’s what they are. If they want to be that, I hope the party dies. If not, I hope it reinvents itself from the platform up, not from the message down.

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Me singing @ Piano Zinc, Paris 1997
Editorials

Who cares what I have to say?

Me singing @ Piano Zinc, Paris 1997

Today it’s Facebook, Google+, Twitter. Yesterday it was rap groups, support groups, open mic. I don’t remember feeling like nobody cared what I had to say when I was speaking to people in person. Now that I’m writing for the Internet – for the past 17 years or so, and sharing on social media for the past six — I’m wondering if anyone cares what I have to say. I don’t think I’m alone in this. So many people are sharing so much, be it on blogs or social media, that it’s impossible for us all to take each other in. I guess some people on the Internet form communities like groups on Flickr or writers of similar blogs on WordPress. But I like the idea of sharing with the world, or should I say, being heard by people all over the world. I’d like to think that people care what I have to say, but the stats on my posts often don’t show that they do. And maybe they don’t. We can’t all care what we all have to say, can we? Maybe it’s okay to say it, though. Maybe it’s okay to journal publicly, and if someone gets something out of it, great. If not, we’ve simply made public something we would have written in a journal anyway, and there’s no reason to keep it a secret. Some say we live in a time of oversharing, and that might be true. I would like to think, though, that even if no one cares what I have to say until years from now, or even if I’m the only one who cares what I have to say, it’s worth it. I might look back on this years from now and be glad I wrote it. Someone reading this today or many days from now might take solace in it. I guess for now I’ll try not to care whether anyone cares what I have to say, and just keep saying what I have to say.

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P.S. Come to think of it, when I was talking to people in person, I was talking to groups, not the world. Maybe there is something to sharing on the Internet with groups after all. What do you think? Please leave a comment below. I do care what you have to say.

 
 
I originally posted Who cares what I have to say? on beingreene.danielgreene.com.
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Editorials

My thoughts on the opening ceremonies of the Olympics

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Editorials

Mac OS 10.8 Mountain Lion: Let’s do the time warp. Again.

Cougar / Puma / Mountain Lion / Panther (Puma ...

Cougar / Puma / Mountain Lion / Panther (Puma concolor) closeup. Philadelphia Zoo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was unpleasantly surprised when Apple took a step backward a few years ago with their skeuomorphic Address Book, Calendar, and Notes apps — the stitched leather bindings, the yellow ruled paper, the bits of paper in the cardboard binder where the pages were torn out, the handwriting fonts, etc. Now they’ve done it again with the same apps and with the new Reminders app. I understand that a GUI has to look like something, but I don’t think it should look like ancient artifacts. Why should OS X apps look more old-fashioned now than they did the first decade of OS X? Probably because they have to match iOS, and maybe Apple made iOS so skeuomorphic because they thought that’s what they had to do to sell iPhones and iPads.

Personally, I don’t use any of the OS X apps anymore anyway. I have all I need in the browser: Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Messages, etc. And they’re not so skeuomorphic. I’ll just enjoy the overall system enhancements of OS 10.8 and not do the time warp again.

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Editorials

Do you live in a Social Local Mobile world?

I don’t know about you, but I am not surrounded by friends walking around toting GPS-enabled smartphones on the same social networks looking to hook up for coffee or sushi. And I certainly I do not go out to dinner with a dozen friends who pay the same check with the same mobile app from the same bank. Who lives like that?

I have been a longtime believer in Social – Local – Mobile – SoLoMo — and have experienced it on rare occasion, but no critical mass of adopters have made it part of my world. I suppose it might catch on someday, but I’ve had too many techie dreams dashed by lack of adoption by anyone I knew. Do you remember having a Palm device with IR that could beam contact info to people you met? Did you ever actually do it? Did you ever have a Sidekick that could send contact info over Bluetooth? Did you ever find anyone who could actually use it? The few times I tried it, it took me longer to teach my contact how to do it than if I had tattooed their number on the back of my hand in my own blood.

After I got a G1 four years ago, I tried Google Latitude and got three, count ‘em, three contacts to sign up. Two of them lived out-of-state. Then there was Bump and now there’s Beam, but who uses it? I have a Galaxy Nexus, and I don’t even know anyone to Beam with. I guess that’s what I get for not having friends who wear black rimmed glasses and hang out in the Android store. So you see, I have been trying to go SoLoMo for over a decade now; my world just hasn’t embraced it.

Now there are all these SoLoMo startups with cute ads featuring people keeping in touch with their social-local-mobile apps — people living in a world where people actually spend time on anything but Facebook. My question is: Who are these people? Where are they? Are you one of them? Please, tell this Earthling what it’s like.

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Editorials

The complex, attractive, roles of dwarfs in Mirror, Mirror

(SPOILER ALERT: If you want to be surprised by everything in the movie, wait to read this until after you’ve seen it.)

As I said in a Tweet after I saw Mirror, Mirror,

But it wasn’t just the sight of the furry Sebastian Saraceno shirtless that impressed me about the dwarfs in Mirror, Mirror. What impressed was that their dwarfism (or should I say “dwarfness”?) was actually a subject deemed worth discussing in the film– both comically and dramatically. There is humor in the way they best their enemies by attacking them in stilts, making them think they are “giants” instead of dwarfs. There is melancholy in the story about how they were driven from their village when the powers-that-be banished anyone not “normal.” At the beginning of the movie, there is some manly sparring in which a tall man slings all manner of short jokes at the dwarfs, and one of my favorite lines in the movie is when one of the dwarfs retorts: “Really? After a minute that was the best you could come up with?” At the end of the film, there is a heartwarming apology in which the character who at first mocked them avows a new respect for them. It is the only Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story I’ve seen that ever tackled the issues of normalcy, disability, shortness, tallness, paternalism, and respect. Through it all, the dwarf characters in Mirror, Mirror (all played by dwarfs) maintain more humanity than one usually sees in dwarf stereotypes. They are, in turns, sad, scared, brave, hopeful, and sportsmanly. And the dwarf actors are good. I imagine it was a combination of screenwriting, directing, and the actors’ improvisation and character development that made the characters what they are. I, for one, thought it was a step forward in cinematic depiction of people who vary from the norm. And respect for diversity is something I feel strongly about.

In my view, the fact that I found one of the dwarf actors attractive — and I’m not a dwarf fetishist — means that he is portrayed as a handsome, virile man who happens to be very short. And, regardless of whether the other dwarfs are featured as sex symbols, they are portrayed as men. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is progress.

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Mark Povinelli: Mirror Mirror reflects frustrating times for dwarf actors

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Editorials

I want a Chromebook; in fact, I want a Chromephone. Easy on the OS, and hold the apps.

The coming of the Chromebook–the web-only netbook that boots in less than ten seconds–has me thinking how nice it would be if my Android phone booted up in 10 seconds instead of 60. But if it did, it wouldn’t be an Android phone, would it? It would be a Chromephone, and that’s all right with me.

If the telephony could be worked out, I don’t see why a phone couldn’t be made to run on a thin, browser-like OS that accesses almost all its content on the Cloud. As HTML5 is helping web content become more app-like, and as more of users’ content is stored online, there may soon be little need for onboard apps at all. We may be doing everything we need with Web apps. This may be the end of the OS as we know it. No more bloated platform-dependent apps. Microsoft never was a trailblazer, and Apple isn’t blazing trails anymore, either. Apple is announcing iCloud and OS X Lion tomorrow, and I’d say they’re just playing catch up. Microsoft say Windows 8 is going to have an HTML5 panel screen instead of a desktop, and by the time it comes out in a year or so, it will be as old news as Windows 95 = Mac 84.

As someone who embraced platform-independent Web development before it was popular, I am thrilled to see that HTML and CSS have now taken us to the point where just about any app can be a Web app. Pretty soon, there won’t be a need for five different Facebook apps; there will just be Facebook as a web app anyone can use the same way on any device. You won’t have to wait for your favorite Website to come out with an app for your device’s operating system, because web standards and powerful web functionality will make the question of device and OS moot.

I’m already doing just about everything online with the Chrome browser now except for editing photos and videos and opening Office documents on my iMac. The only thing I do on my laptop other that the Net is Microsoft Office if I have to, and I’m already using that less as I use Google Docs more. I’m ready to move away from bloated software and over to something simple, fast, and standard. Chrome is the OS of today.

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Editorials

Straight Talk for Customer Service Reps

Heads up, customer service representatives! The way you talk to me is bugging me. Here are some of the phrases I could do without:

“With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

You say ‘with’ at the beginning of the sentence or at the end, not both. Better yet, don’t say this prissy phrase at all. Just ask me what my name is, please.

“I will be more than happy to help you.”

‘Happy’ would be more than happy enough. Don’t tell me you’ll be happy to help me. Just help me.

“I know exactly how you feel.”

No, you don’t. Anyway, I’m not asking for your empathy. I’m asking for your help. You don’t need to say, “I know I would be really frustrated if I couldn’t get on the Internet, use my apps, or make phone calls and text.” What I really feel you are doing with these empathic paraphrases is subliminally reminding me how much I need my cell phone and your service. Thanks, but I don’t need to be reminded that you have me by the balls. ;-)


“Definitely / Absolutely / Fantastic / Perfect”

Few things in this world are definite, absolute, fantastic, or perfect. You are using empty superlatives. And it really bothers me when you use them in every sentence. “I can definitely help you with that. I can definitely understand your concern. I can definitely get you over to another representative who can help you with that.” You know what? That’s not communication. It’s interference.

“Just give me a moment…”

Believe it or not, I am relatively patient. Ask me to hold and I’ll hold. But ask me to bear with you every 15 seconds and you try my patience. Just put me on hold, do your thing, and get back to me. Every moment you ask me to give you another moment is a moment you could solve my problem while I chill out.

“My computer’s running slow today… I need to get to another screen…”

Really? A slow computer? That is so last century. Another screen? I don’t care how many screens you have to get to. That’s your business. I don’t need to know how you do your job. I just need you to do it.

And finally… “Is there anything else I can help you with before I transfer you?”

No! 99.9% of the time, no. Your question presumes that you helped me with anything in the first place. If you have to transfer me to a higher level of tech support, you obviously couldn’t help me. I know you tried to help me, but you didn’t help me. And if I asked for your help before but I didn’t get it from you, why would I make the same mistake twice? Just transfer me so I can get the help I need, thanks.

Here’s what you can do:

Here’s what you can do, reps: tell your bosses that your customers aren’t happy with the scripts. Yes, I know you have scripts. Everyone has scripts. Don’t tell me you don’t have scripts. Tell your higher-ups that those scripts are tired, old, and irritating (to the customers, that is; you don’t have to tell them you you really feel). Tell them your customers are asking for plain English, short scripts, and real help. And when you don’t have a script telling you what to say, don’t say so much.

Here’s what you can do, customers: tell your reps what I just told them to tell their bosses. Ask to speak with a supervisor and tell them how you feel. Share this on Facebook. Retweet it on Twitter. Print it and mail it to your granny; that is, if she isn’t on Facebook already.

Here’s what you can do, bosses: listen to your reps and your customers! If you are a process designer, systems engineer, customer satisfaction specialist, or what-have-you, then you are a highly-educated, well-intentioned person. So take note. Things were better when people talked plain before you taught them to talk pretty. Let your reps keep it short and sweet. Keep their scripts to a minimum. Teach them succinctness and simplicity.

Drop the nonsense. You could boost customer satisfaction and efficiency by talking less and doing more. You could serve more customers in less time. And you could seem smarter doing it.

Talk to me

What are your pet peeves? How do you want to be helped? Do you have any ideas on how to give good customer service without talking so much? Leave a comment, and if it’s not spam, I’ll allow it. :-)

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