#1 – Don’t inflate your shipping charges

If you gouge people on shipping, this is what you are.

Some people advocate jacking up your shipping charges in order to try and make a extra buck. While this may work for specific, expensive items, it tends to not be as effective with commodity products.

Jacking shipping rates also is seen as an act of subtle douchebaggery and you may be costing yourself sales by doing it. Sources that advise shipping price inflation tended to do so prior to eBay implementing the change in their interface which lets you sort on prices including shipping.

It can be argued that psychologically, when people see fair shipping charges on an item, they may be more inclined to bid higher if involved in a bidding war.

#2 -  Don’t lie

"Hurricanes don't never, ever hit here!"

There’s two kinds of lies- little white lies, and pure, utter bullshit. Little white lies are what gets your wife mad and puts you at risk of sleeping in the bathroom for a few nights, while pure, utter bullshit can earn you a nice, bloody divorce.

Both of these should be avoided like the plague when describing an item for sale. If there’s damage to something, be up front about it. I think that’s all I need to say about this sort of thing. Karma’s got a mean, wicked backhand. Don’t cry to me if she catches up to you. The only comfort which will be received is a nice, steady stream of public humiliation. Do the right thing.

#3 – If there is damage, take close-up shots of it

"Sir, we can have that out for you in a jiffy."

You may see a pattern here of not lying. Aside from the good karma you can rack up from not being a bullshit artist- it can be profitable too. So you may be trying to sell something, let’s say a fancy laptop computer- but it has a small gash in the LCD screen… instead of hiding that, describe the problem in detail and provide detailed pictures of it.

Your prospective buyer might actually not mind the damage and be looking for replacement parts from said laptop. Who knows. The world is a funny place, and for every few people who will gripe about the damage to the computer and move on, there might be a few who will overlook that as an issue and continue with the purchase- subconciously even motivated to bid higher due to the trust you as a seller convey by being honest.

#4 – Use a token

This is a sample token, next to a fancy gizmo thingy.

A token is merely something which identifies you that is put into the photo alongside your product. The token I use is merely an image that I drew, which was printed to a flat and paper stand format. A lower resolution image of the same image is also used as my eBay icon. This provides a level of consistency and trust.

Putting something into the photo looks a lot more convincing as proof that you actually own the object you are selling- especially if the item can be expensive. Compared to a watermark, which only is meant to protect an image from theft, a token is a sure-fire way to help identify you as the owner of the product. This can be helpful if you don’t have too many feedbacks when selling a specialized item.

#5 – State your terms clearly in the item description

Usually... having all the facts about a situation is a good thing.

The typical things you may want to state in your item description, particularly for higher value specialized products are the following:

• “This item sold AS IS” – This helps you prevent the inevitable encounter with some jackass who has bought something used and expects you to go out of your way to fix it as if it were brand new. “As is” sets the expectation that the product is being sold in its current condition, with whatever faults or caveats in its current condition being solely the responsibility of the buyer.
• State your refund policy clearly in the description. It may seem like something from the Department of Redundancy Department, but it couldn’t hurt. Just make sure that what you state in the auction is consistent with the eBay drop-down box during the auction listing phase.
• State EXACTLY what will come in your auction. Channel your latent anal-retentivity and list each and every item- part numbers if you really want. This way there can be no confusion about what is included and what isn’t.

#6 – Do ship to international customers

Printing packing slips... Shipping packages... You da man.

Something uniquely cultural to Americans seems to be the assumption that most international buyers are sleazebags from third-world hellholes looking to con you. If you truly believe this, you are really missing out on a lot of potential business. Shipping via USPS Priority Mail International is relatively painless and not that much more difficult than shipping domestically.

Understand that in many parts of the world, consumer goods are taxed much more. For example, with some camera manufacturers- the same exact digital SLR camera lens sold in the USA can be almost 50% more in the UK and Europe. By allowing worldwide shipment, you get the best of both worlds- you can sell certain used items at almost the cost you paid for them (or even more!)- and international buyers legitimately get a good deal from you.

#7 – Be savvy with the typical auction scams

Sometimes, to win is to not play.

Here’s a list of the typical scams that come around on eBay and be familiar with them.

• Shipping item as a gift: This is where the scammer tries to get you to send an item somewhere that is not a validated address. It almost always ends up being a different country which the buyer’s valid address is in. Do this, and you pretty much have pissed away your money.

• Paying for a friend overseas: This is a variation of the above scam.

• “Abort the auction, I’ll pay you right now”: This is where the buyer tries to get you to sell the item outside of the normal market confines of eBay. Don’t even think about trying this. Scammers typically use forms of payment which will initially allow transfer of funds- so it only LOOKS like the cheque or money order has cleared- but once found out, YOU will be the one left on the hook for the difference.

In short, the simple answer to deal with all of these is no, no, no. Repeat after me- No! No! No!

Still here? Excellent. You have survived my admittedly simple, but very painless “Don’t Be A Sucker School”.

#8 – Withdraw from your PayPal account quickly

Thank you for holding. Your call is very important to us.

Despite the ease and convenience that PayPal provides, they are NOT a bank (though they try to make their customers think they are), and therefore are not subject to the typical regulations that a financial institution would normally be held under.

For example, PayPal does not pay you interest for the duration in which they keep your money. They are simply not obligated to. In the past, they have occasionally performed shady transactions without any notice to the consumer- so it is important to regularly clear out your account without letting too much money accumulate.

Some of the usual things that PayPal tends to do are listed below:

• PayPal freezes an account over something they didn’t like in a credit report. It happened here- “Random Credit Check = $5000 Frozen”. Can you imagine a bank doing something like this?
• PayPal blocks personal transactions to and from the entire country of India. It’s true. I simply cannot make this sort of stuff up. PayPal had a grudge match with an entire country!
• PayPal makes interest on your money by blocking accounts under the pretext of security. Well, this happens often enough that it seems to be commonly accepted as ‘normal operating procedure’… which is pretty sad indeed.
• I could go on, but I’ll just stick with these three items. A search for ‘PayPal sucks’ yields some pretty interesting results.

#9 – Schedule your auctions intelligently

This result was brought to you by some poor scheduling.

This is just common sense. If your target market is the USA- time your auctions so that they don’t end early in the morning. At that point, people are just waking up and have other things to worry about other than keeping an eye on that auction.  If you target for later in the evening, then you might get more of the market you are looking for- as people are home and are more likely to keep tabs on items then. Consider the effect of time zones as well- that adds another variable into the mix.

Of course you can’t just assume that the evening is the sweet spot. If you’re selling certain basketball sports memorabilia, and the auctions are timed to end right around the time fourth quarter usually starts for tonight’s game… well, that will backfire to some degree.

Also try to experiment with the classic case of ending an auction early on a Friday when many people get their paychecks. Your mileage will vary of course. The moral of the story is to know your target market and try to set the auction time to your advantage.

#10 – Keep your cool if something goes wrong

Don't worry. We'll figure out a solution to this problem. Calm down.

If you do this enough, you WILL encounter something that goes wrong. Maybe the buyer never received the package, but as far as you knew- everything was done right. Maybe the buyer is a scam artist, maybe they have a legitimate problem. You never know. You never will get to the bottom of it unless you STAY CALM and KEEP YOUR COOL.

Think things over and try to be civil with the buyer- even if the buyer says something rude or is just flat out an asshole. No matter how hard it seems to control your anger- you MUST remain calm, cool, and collected.

I ran into this situation myself when I sold a used camera lens to someone- who seemed to be happy about it, but he never left me a feedback. Then lo and behold out of nowhere some time later, I get hit with a bad feedback.

When I tried to contact the buyer, he shrugged me off, and after repeated attempts I finally discover that he felt that leaving a bad feedback was “his buyer’s right” since I did not accept returns for the item. This seemed like a perfectly normal thing for him to do despite not even trying to contact me. The only thing he could say about the lens was some dust present in the glass, which was introduced there during the manufacturing process- and is not visible under normal, direct light.

I really wanted to strangle this guy, since from the trail of emails he seemed to be a penny pinching sort of schemer. He did not want to return the item, even when granted a return despite my policy not saying so. Luckily for me, he was local, so I arranged a meeting with him at a public location. As it turns out- he definitely was a scheming, sketchy character- but I realized that he was also autistic or had some serious developmental disability, and had zero personality or people skills.

By staying cool, despite my urge to strangle him getting stronger with each passing second, I negotiated a full refund and had him change the feedback right on the spot. I also got everything in writing, and everything was back to normal and amenable to both sides again.

The moral of this story- If you don’t stay cool, you will never have the possibility of reaching a good outcome.

#11 – Learn to take good photos

This is not a good photo. It is an example of what poor white balance can do for you.

This is probably the simplest, smartest tip to help maximize your sales. It’s not too hard to learn how to take good photos of your stuff. This tip combined with using a token (tip #4) really can help you get more for your money. If a buyer sees your product clearly, and it looks pretty, they will be more inclined to bid on it. It’s as simple as that.

You don’t need to use an expensive digital SLR camera, although that certainly helps.  Anyhow, here are some quick photo tips to help you out:

• Isolate your product, and get rid of annoying backgrounds. Even using two pieces of white canvas board will make a suitable backdrop for your wares.

• Learn to use the “white balance” feature of your digital camera. Consult your camera’s manual on how to do this. Understanding how white balance is set makes a world of difference on how professional your shots will look. In a nutshell, digital cameras tend not to know what ‘white’ is especially when the subject is under indoor lighting. By custom changing your white balance, you will avoid the ugly yellow or blue color casts on your photos, and this step will really do wonders to make things look right.

• Bathe your product in light. Even a couple of desk lamps are enough to do the job. Experiment by putting two or three lights on the left, center, and middle of your product. Do this to eliminate unnecessary shadows to make your product look shiny and new – even if it isn’t in the best of shape. Bright light is flattering. Bright light also helps narrow the gap between a simple point and shoot versus a digital SLR camera. Use this technique if when you use the on-board flash of your camera, too much glare shows up.

• Be patient, and look at catalog photos for inspiration. Of course, many of those are shot by professionals in a whitebox using diffused light, or a tilt-shift lens. But even without professional gear, you can really get very good results for very little money.

• Clean your product. Take the time beforehand to dust off and clean what you are trying to sell. This means wiping off fingerprint smudges on glass, cleaning with a damp cloth- whatever. Take the time to properly make your product look as if it were brand new.

• Take shots from multiple angles. Simply one photo won’t cut it. Try to get all of the major views of your product.

Not perfect, but white balance is more natural and color-accurate this time.

Conclusion

So there you have it. These are my quick tips to help you present and sell your items online. Of course, it’s targeted towards eBay, but applies to most other marketplace formats as well. I also don’t consider myself an expert by a long shot- as I only do this as a hobby… but I hope this has helped you in some way, and thanks for reading!

Perspective matters. Particularly when you're not terribly sure which way you are heading.

Around this time last year, I had been in up to my neck dealing with a messy repair job at work. Every day my team and I had to work with issues revolving  The Tickler, The Reacharound, and The Dumptruck. No, this isn’t some unsavory gay porno I’m talking about… these are real project names we have given to various software components of a fairly complex job. Specifically, these are the functional pieces of a physical access control system that we use at work which needed some significant tuning.

By now, if you’re still reading this you are probably involved in some capacity with the access control or security industry. Thanks for sticking around. I will try to make this whole rant of mine worth your time.

In hindsight, I really wish we had just taken the plunge to be rid of this particular system completely and started over from scratch. It really has been nothing more than a headache for us, but at least I’ve learned a quite a few things about access control and physical ID card production. So here I am sharing these valuable nuggets of information to you, at no cost whatsoever… except that if you find them useful, you owe me a beer (or two). I’m not a heavy drinker. I promise.

…access control functionality is a rather mature feature set, and everyone at this point is supposed to be doing it right… but you would be surprised because some vendors still get it horribly wrong.

I had though long and hard about making any comments about this sort of thing publicly. But after having been asked why I had locked myself in a cage for many months last year, it seemed like a good time to vent a little bit and share some of the mistakes we made so that others can’t make them. This is part of the coolness of working at a university. I wouldn’t dare discuss these sort of issues in the open otherwise, if this was corporate America.

So here goes. I broke these tips down in pieces for you:

Card Production

• Wear Your Overcoat. If you use ribbon printers (Fargo, MagiCard, Zebra, Evolis, etc), don’t cheap out and avoid using an overcoat. You will be left with ID cards which will wear the hell out and look like garbage within the space of a few months. Spend the extra dough and use a proper overcoat. In the words of the great Mister T… “I pity the fool who wants to be a cheap bastard”… or something like that.
• Tune Your Oven. When you use a printer that supports overcoats, you must properly tune it. This isn’t just some fire-and-forget solution… you need to find the proper temperature that the overcoat likes to be applied to the card. Too hot, and the card warps. Too cold, and the overcoat doesn’t bond properly. These printers can be like petulant little electric toasters rather than the grand pizza ovens that their vendors advertise them as. They require occasional inspection and maintenance in order to minimize errors during printing.
• Automating RFID Input Fail. Automated RFID/HID tag reading is one of those things that a good number of the smaller access control software vendors advertise – “It’s all automatic!”… and you will have to accept  that this process will most often not work properly at all. This is one feature which is bullshat around the most. Be prepared to enter these values in by hand. Someone’s going to have to do it.
• Strip Permissions Out. Proper delegation. You DO NOT want your card production staff to have the ability to change access control groups or to do ANY of that sort of thing. Why? It’s not about trust. It’s about accountability. Make it easier for everyone and don’t let them have that burden/responsibility. Make sure your production environment makes it impossible for them to do anything other than perhaps correcting typos of a person’s name, or editing data that they would only use, such as barcodes or magstripe data. They and everyone else will thank you in the long run for it.

Access Control Software/Hardware

• Core Access Control Functionality Is Easy-Peasy. For every big vendor like Lenel, AMAG, Software House, or S2, there are are a bunch of smaller companies who eke out a living building accordingly smaller software packages. There is nothing wrong with that. However access control functionality is a rather mature feature set, and everyone at this point is supposed to be doing it right… but you would be surprised because some vendors still get it horribly wrong. In other words what I am saying is that while it may not be as simple a procedure as boiling water- a vendor better not totally fuck shit up when it comes to making doors open when a proper card is presented to them. So if you are stuck with a system which requires you to constantly restart intelligent controllers or door modules… or has trouble updating cardholder state changes across the system… you had best kick them to the curb and find someone else who can do this sort of thing properly.
• Scalability Blah Blahblahblah. Unfortunately the refrain is similar to above. A lot of the smaller vendors simply don’t have this functionality done properly. What works well when you are a single building with less than a hundred card readers, and a fixed population will most likely turn into a vat of boiling vomit when you double or quadruple the cardholder population. There are some things which simply can’t be reproduced in a lab environment. When talking to a vendor, get their references and seriously grill them. Ask these references what sort of problems they encountered with scaling up, and home in on the usual suspect issues… such as server requirements, hardware costs, additional feature costs, and the reliability of each additional component when added to the system as a whole. Do your homework and do not be afraid to dig in.
• System Monitoring… Don’t Underestimate It. Make sure you have some way to monitor your smart controllers. Industry standard stuff like SNMP would be nice, but most of them don’t support it, so you are left with the only option of ping monitoring. This is complicated by a lot of the controllers having Ethernet/TCP/IP support as an afterthought, with their roots from RS-485 or similar serial connections, so the Ethernet module might fail, but the underlying controller will resume functionality.
• Go Heavy On Smart Controller RAM. There is a temptation to cheap out on the memory available for transactions or card data for your smart controllers- in particular the ones you will regard as being low-traffic. Don’t do it. You will be doing yourself a huge disservice. Think about what happens if access to a set of readers changes because of a department move, and suddenly many more people need access to a set of doorways. Understand that many vendors do not have truly drop-and-replace system boards… they will need to be reprogrammed and one of the side effects to that is system downtime. We all know how pissed of people can be if they can’t access their corporate computing resources. Now think of what happens if you deny them access to their bathroom doors.
• Proprietary Schmoprietary. Some of the intelligent controllers available on the market allow you to run any vendor’s software on them. Of course this is used as a selling point. Guess what though… just like any other technology, you can get royally screwed by this. The caveat usually falls in line with… “Oh, you can run our new software on these boards… but you would have to have the latest version of the board to do it”. Sound familiar? Sure! You can upgrade to Windows Version XXX but your motherboard and CPU are too slow, so you need to upgrade to something newer… The moral of this story is that it really doesn’t matter if a vendor’s hardware is proprietary or open- if you plan on switching vendors with an open system you are going to get screwed in some fashion. As for the war between choosing a proprietary or open system… so long as the damn thing works properly, these sort of issues really falls into oblivion.
• Think Like A Boulder. If rocks and dirt could actually talk… what would they say? Other than expressing displeasure at being buried without anything interesting to look at for hundreds of millions of years, only to be exposed to the elements, perhaps without a good view for hundreds of thousands of years… only to be covered over again by a mudslide or whatnot for another few million years… okay, the point is… you need to take a long term perspective on how long the hardware installation is going to last. Instead of just thinking on three year level, you need to really look further down the road and scale things to the lifetime of the building, or at the very least, the full length term of your lease. You will not be a happy camper if you are faced with the prospect of replacing hardware mounted in door jambs or walls on a frequent basis.
• Don’t Overlook The Installer Selection. Shady installers will underbid their initial installation contracts because they know once they have you locked in, they can charge $$$ for any service related work in the future. Chances are… you will have lots of service work. I think it goes without saying that you cannot simply assume that the installer vendor search is going to be straightforward. This is probably the most critical piece of the whole vendor search process.
• Beware of Mom & Pop Shop Disease. This is mainly applicable to the access control software vendor… but if they are too small of a company, or if the product is run by a single super-intelligent guru (who doubles as a single point of failure), then you need to be careful. Veeeery careful. This is your physical security we are talking about, right?

Well, as abruptly as I started ranting, I will end it. I guess I’ll quit when I’m ahead, right? As a disclaimer, the people at my job who I continue to work with on security related capacities are awesome people, and they know I’m not railing at any of them. If anything they’re probably wondering why I haven’t said anything about this sooner.

Anyhow, this is my attempt to distill my however short involvement with access control and security into some meaningful nuggets of knowledge. I hope they don’t appear like floating poop logs… but even lodged within the poop there are kernels of wisdom. Thanks again for reading.

Artistically... this is nothing special. But technically, it is not the sort of low-light image quality you normally expect from a point-and-shoot digital camera...

I’m out to prove something to myself… that even with an old point and shoot digital camera it is possible to take great pictures which rival those taken with higher end gear. Why the hell am I doing this? Motivation by seeing someone else’s sub-par work. Also, it doesn’t hurt when someone says that a piece of equipment is outdated junk.

Yes.. what triggered this was seeing someone else’s poor product (no, not shots that I took, for serious!), having to listen to someone else talk smack about low end camera gear for no particular reason other than brand fanboyism.

Okay, feeling motivated to produce superior work even while armed with a simple point-and-shoot camera kind of kicked this whole thing off too, because I shot my mouth off, ranting that way.

Luckily for me, the only person who heard me rant was my wife. Unluckily, she wanted me to back up what I said. Luckily, I was counting on her issuing the challenge like that. Don’t worry. We get along splendidly. She knows how to light a fire under my ass, and I mean that in the best of ways. Of course, I won’t post the offending work on here. That’s just not cool. After all, I’m not a paid pro, and this other person is.

For this little project I chose the Canon PowerShot S400 to try and prove my point. It’s the perfect little camera for the job.  Here are some of the reasons why:

• It’s ‘old enough’ in digital camera years, being of 2003 vintage. The timing of the camera’s age means many people are upgrading it in favor of newer gear. It’s super cheap on eBay right now.
• It is easily overlooked by most people these days because on paper, many of its specifications have been far surpassed by contemporary compact point-and-shoots.
• It’s compact, and has an excellent physical build.
• It has a relatively large 1/1.8″ CCD, the last PowerShot of it’s kind to use that sensor. Current cameras of its class use the smaller 1/2.7″ CCD form factor.
• It doesn’t have too many photosites crowding up that CCD. Four megapixels is just right. Not too many, not too few.
• Canon’s firmware is pretty good at extracting optimum dynamic range most of the time in all shots.
• It has no manual controls. This is actually good. This makes it more challenging for me to trick the camera into doing my bidding.
• This is Canon’s last PowerShot camera to use an all-glass lens, as opposed to polycarbonates/resins on current models.
• Although not really a ‘good’ thing, the camera has a dinky 1.5″ LCD screen, which will make composition and exposure evaluation a bit trickier- which in turn should make this whole crazy feat more impressive.
• The camera has an infinity focus mode, so the camera will still shoot anyway without having acquired focus lock on a nearby subject. Useful for low light  work.

Well, without further ado, here are the first wave of test shots, done at macro lengths.

Thanks for reading!

This topic comes up for me not necessarily as a rant, but as I was going through some old notes before tossing them away, and this issue came up. How much damage can an organization do to themselves by hiring discount, unqualified programming resources?

The answer: A hell of a lot.

If you own a small software development shop, do yourself a huge favor and keep reading.

Stupidity cost us about $250,000 over a 9 month period. Another $250,000 was lost for us in other means.

A previous company that I worked at had a habit of hiring low-cost coding staff to handle production quality servers- Not just any production machines… but the very hardware which was responsible for 100% of the revenue being generated for said company. This makes no sense as their client side programmers were generally top-notch, and among the more creative and competent that I have had the pleasure to work with.

Management also had a habit of protecting these junior staff members voraciously- for various reasons, but mainly economic. A single server-side programmer could cost two or three times more in salary to maintain. Also, some in the management felt that this staff member was a ‘worthy project’ that could become a superstar programmer someday. I mean, it worked for Darko Milicic during his stint with the Pistons, didn’t it?

I calculated that my previous employer definitely cost themselves $250,000 in lost cashmoney over a 9 month period for the mishaps they had in retaining ONE very junior server-side engineering resource. This was absolutely staggering to me. Another $250,000 could easily be accounted for in other means. I’ll get to that in a moment.

The other sources for my numbers are the assumptions that:

1. Yes, this programmer was causing problems nearly EVERY SINGLE DAY.
2. Five client/server development resources were utilized, at $20/hr in wage costs each time a bug needed to be fixed.
3. Eight QA staff were utilized, at $15/hr in wage costs to confirm said bug fix.
4. This underqualified developer introduced one bug per day, which took an average of six hours per bug to fix.
5. This individual worked for a period of 9 months, before finally being axed for causing a systemwide outage of all revenue generating products for a significant part of a business day.
6. Not entirely relevant, but said individual produced on average 15 lines of code per day, with the assumption of 21 working days per month. Vacation time is included in this count because this individual only really took one, and worked some weekends as well – so it all balances out.

The numbers I am leaving out are:

1. Costs to management salaries. The reason for this is twofold- one is that I don’t know how many staff members were involved in back-room decisionmaking each time we suffered downtime events. This ranges from one to four. Who knows…
2. Costs to my productivity. I was a systems admin, so it was my job to support the engineering staff. I had the unique experience of being able to read/understand code, but full well knew that I could not hold a candle to the proper engineers. In a nutshell, I could talk shop with them, and help diagnose problems. I was a bit faster than a plain old sysadmin at doing this. I was a good cheerleader at times. That’s about it.
3. Costs of contractors: During most of this 9 month period, we had consulting/contracting staff on board who had to shift gears to help fix problems on a near-regular basis. I simply did not accurately keep track of how often they had to drop whatever they were doing and scramble to help us.
4. The damage caused by spaghetti code. This is utterly incalculable. Each time new server-side programming staff were added they faced an absolute nightmare of a learning curve.
5. The amount of time lost by production server uptime – According to my notes we were down (and by that I mean not being able to process subscription material) for a period of nine total business days during that 9 month period. To this day I still don’t exactly know how many dollars per hour in transactions were being handled by those servers, so I can’t guess there. I won’t even bother to put a price tag on it, but it is the elephant in the room.

If I really do have to hazard a guess at the total cost of damage over 9 months, then I’ll say that stupidity cost us about USD $500,000 total. There is also the untold damage done to the reputation of the company, as subscribers probably grew tiresome of outages and took their business somewhere else.

How much damage can one incompetent programmer do to an organization? A hell of a lot.

In the end it isn’t my intention to throw anyone under the bus for the mistakes that were made. Guilty parties all know who they are, and to some degree or another, they all paid for it already, so there’s no need to flog that dead horse all over again.

The underqualified individual who boasted of general programming expertise which he did not have faced the prospect of never finding work in a proper engineering environment again. Management who felt they were saving money by having this resource around because of cost-effectiveness are facing the prospect of their entire company going down the tubes because the server-side codebase is nearly unmaintainable, among other things. Those of us who stuck around trying to fix the situation paid for it with a few sleepless nights, and the agony of ‘Heisenbug’ code which was nigh near unpossible to debug or maintain effectively.

I learned many things myself. I used to never document very well. Because of the insanity I was forced to deal with, I feel I have come a long way in that regard. I enjoy documenting now. It’s saved my ass a number of times since then.

Over a year after the staff member was let go, the server programmers were still fixing bugs.

Also, a young and promising programmer who was forced to help debug and manage the fix processes on a regular basis learned a hell of a lot from these failures, and it will serve him tremendously in his career as time goes on. This is the type of education you just can’t get in college. Over a year after the staff member was let go, he was still fixing bugs. The thing is, he’s already bailed on this company and isn’t looking back. If there was someone worth focusing on and making into your future team nucleus… this guy was the one.

What’s done is done, and hopefully dear reader, if you’re in management or if you own a small company, you won’t make the same mistakes that they did. I implore you to hire competent people. Don’t cheap out in that regard. It will cost you a whole lot more than you think.

The Sarawak Chamber is the largest known underground chamber of its kind in the world. It is part of the ‘Good Luck Cave’ system which is located in Gunung Mulu National Park, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

The chamber is not yet fully explored, and roughly measures about 700m (2,300 feet) long, 400m (1,300 feet) wide and at least 70m (230 feet) high. To get a sense of how much space this is, imagine the amount of land you would need to park ten Boeing 747-400 aircraft in line.  That’s a lot of space! The irregular shape of Sarawak Chamber would probably fit at least 30 more inside if the ground was flat, and the entrance was big enough… well, it’s safe to say that I would have to be making a good number of assumptions indeed. In any event- It’s BIG.

There are no good photos of the chamber because it’s rather difficult to get to, and lugging along a light source powerful enough to light up the entire chamber just to get a photograph is not a trek that would provide a very good bang for the buck.

The story of the initial discovery itself is quite interesting as well. Andy Eavis, Dave Checkley, and Tony White – all highly accomplished spelologists wandered into the chamber not quite realizing what they were in. At some point they realized from the air and how sound carried that they were inside a large chamber, but their lights were not powerful enough to see where the border walls were. Imagine the terror of not knowing where the walls are, and that you’re just in the dark somewhere underground, clambering about in a field littered with giant boulders.

One of the men had a panic attack (the other two won’t say who of course) and they spent some time just trying to find a wall so that they could make a bearing. The whole story is documented in greater detail in the book “Underground Worlds” by Donald Jackson.

There are few places left on Earth that inspire such wild imagination of the unknown.

Gary Hobostein, my new comic strip

Shameless plug alert!

This is something I’ve started as a bit of an odd side project.

It’s a rather mature and cheeky webcomic about a strange character named Gary Hobostein.

Those of you who know of my odd sense of humor may find these strips entertaining- or absolutely horrifying. It’s your call

I haven’t been posting much on here this month because of a trip to Paris, and a generally busy working schedule. Sorry about that. I did take a lot of pictures while traveling though.

Warning- this may not be really all that funny unless you are a database administrator or a geek with the right knowledge. This rather silly product I am working with stores its data in the backend via a Microsoft SQL Server database. There’s nothing wrong with that… but on further examination of the schema I found a pretty ridiculous jewel of a table setup. Click on the picture to see the bloody details.

For those not technically inclined- this is precisely NOT how you would utilize a relational database server. It’s poor design, and rather an extreme and laughable example.

Octomom. Patron saint of the Clown Car. Image by davidvogler@flickr

I’m beginning to wonder if something really unavoidably bad has happened to the core of American society. I used to think that the rise of religious zealotry was one of the biggest issues we face internally as a nation and as a (relatively) educated people, but now I realize that is only the tip of the tidal wave.

Yeehaw. This is where we are headed it seems.

For people like Nadya Suleman to actually make a living (and profit handsomely) out of being basically useless outside of being a vaginal clown car is a clear sign that something is wrong with us all. Her poor kids are innocent at this point, but they’re really going to be caught in the swirling whirlpool of feces as they get older. This is a woman who successfully sued her former employer for USD $160,000- and then spent $100k of it on in vitro fertilization so she could be a famous garden sow. Now she is going as far to try and trademark the term ‘Octomom’ and possibly build a franchise out of it all. Boy, I can’t wait to be able to buy a case of Octomom condoms, or some Octomom official sports drink… in “Sweaty Crotch Fruit” flavor.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Hotel.

Give it up for the guitar army. YEAAAAAH!

The rise of the idiocracy is at hand. It’s sobering how similar it is to the dark comedy “Idiocracy” by Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis & Butthead. There’s a man who knows something about mocking stupidity, and he crafted a distopia so frighteningly real (yet bonesnappingly funny) for what was a relatively low budget.

It’s really unfortunate how 20th Century Fox completely dumped the promotion of the movie, and tried their best to kill it. In any event that gave it the street cred that it needed to become a true cult classic. Watch the film- it will grab you by the neck in the first five minutes and you will be hooked- guaranteed. If in the beginning you were indifferent about people like Octomom, you’ll be pretty disgusted by the end.

Is this what we have to look forward to?

In conclusion however, the only thing that I can say that even I am guilty of helping perpetuate this idea that being ‘famous’ is the end that justifies the means. I’m sitting here writing about how stupid someone else is, and contributing to their legacy- even if that legacy is sheer idiocy. You as the reader are sitting here reading about my rant, and contributing because of an innate curiousity- whether you agree with me or not does not matter.

It doesn’t change the fact that someone like Octomom is famous and quote possibly can continue to hold the public eye’s attention. The type of attention doesn’t matter any more. Captivating, or repulsive- attention like this generates money.

We’re doomed!

Does this really need a freaking sign? Picture is non related to the iPhone.

Is your 1st edition or 3G iPhone home button stuck?

Does it take multiple presses to get back to the home screen?

Does it sometimes not respond at all to the touch, even though the clicker mechanism seems to be intact and not making any grinding noises?

Is your phone no longer under warranty so you fear those sales reps er… Genius Bar technicians are going to try to gouge you on repair costs?

Is your phone not going to be serviceable because it’s been jailbroken?

Well, I’m not saying I have all the answers, but consider this before you take matters into your own hands and begin dissecting your iPhone looking for a way to replace the switch.

This is my three-step guide on trying to fix the problem:

1. Buy or borrow a blower that you would use for camera gear. Not one of those rinky dink ones- but something like this Giottos Rocket Blower- which should set you back about $13 or so. Even if this process doesn’t fix the problem, you should own one of these things if you have ANY other electronic equipment.
2. Depress the home button, and then guide the nozzle into the thin gap where the button and body meet.
3. Squeeze the hell out of the blower a bunch of times (it took me about 20-30 shots) and vary your position around the button if you feel inclined to.

The whole point of this exercise is to try and lodge free any dust & debris which may have accumulated in the home switch itself. While it seems unlikely, this fix worked for me. So in my super-large sample set of one person, I have achieved a 100% success rate!

Again, your mileage may vary- but if i’ve saved you a trip into the iPhone innards by having to disassemble it, only to realize that access to the motherboard where the button (and it’s popple) are limited at best- then you’re welcome.

Otherwise, if it didn’t work, i apologize. But at the very least you are now in possession of a useful cleaning tool, and you have a legitimate reason to try and kick my ass if were to ever meet in person.

Thanks for reading!

Some workers at Alang, by carrieteicher@flickr

Alang is where ships of all sizes and nationalities go to die.
Located on the western coast of India, the great differences in shoreline between low and high tides allow ships to easily beach themselves where they are then disassembled on the spot. Dozens of ships are broken up here every year, and tens of thousands of workers flock here to earn a living in what could best be described as a free-for-all involving hand labor, blowtorches, and hammers.

It’s not easy work. Aside from the relatively low pay (by the civilized world’s standards), there are many hazards on the job. You could get crushed by falling steel components from other workers too hastily blowtorching beams above you. You could get cut up by exposed steel (metal versus flesh… metal usually wins). You could weld your way through what you thought was a bulkhead but actually was filled with fuel vapors (boom!). You could inhale too much asbestos (from older ships) and we all know what happens with that. I could go on, but frankly it’s pretty clear that there are all sorts of physical, chemical, and biological hazards from this sort of work. Health insurance for the workers? Fuggedaboudit! You’re lucky enough to have a place to sleep in the shantytown when your shift is done.

On the flip side of the gruesome human toll being inflicted from daily grind, the amount of recycled materials that are accumulated and resold by the breakers at Alang are truly staggering. Aside from the millions of tons of steel that are reclaimed every year, there is a vast amount of copper wire, brass, electronic components, wood, aluminum – basically all of the things that would be on a ship that was paid off to the shipyard. It also must be stated that the alternative of not having a job versus the chance to strike a better life for your family is part of the allure of working here.

Is it all worth it in the name of recycling? And who really profits from all of this? That’s for you to decide. For now, behold the spectacle that is Alang.

Picture taken by Gabuchan@Flickr

Recycling light bulbs, by SwiatoSlaw WojTkowiak@flickr

Stack of reclaimed windows, by toujjval@flickr

Part of the Alang Yards, by carrieteicher@flickr