What this will mean is that every time my kid says something funny, or my dog eats something of value, I will post it on my Google+ page instead.  Then I will watch the tumbleweeds flutter by while yearning for that little number to appear in parentheses at the top of my browser window.  It will be a study in solitary confinement, much like this blog is.  Hopefully I will not have to cut my own arm off to survive.

Farewell, my friends.  Hello, my circles.  See you next Wednesday, unless I get bored, in which case, see you tomorrow… or in a couple of hours.

eBay, in case you weren’t aware, is not just a place to buy taxidermied shrimp.  You can also buy other junk there, including a Motorola Rival for like 30 bucks.  I was all excited when it came in the mail yesterday, despite its craptitude, because it was new and shiny.

But I went to activate it and this happened:

Verizon Wireless Website told me,  ”Your account has been LOCKED!  You are obviously up to no good and deserve eternal punishment, so please call Verizon Customer Service at blah blah blah.”

What the…  grrr.  Okay, so I tell my husband (whom I will call Rob because that’s his name) that he needs to call to get his account unlocked.

He immediately broke into hives but he did as he was told.

Verizon Wireless Customer Service Bot:  “If you want Technical Support, press or say One.  If you want to talk about your bill, press or say Two.  If you want something else, just tell me and I will figure it out because I am cool like that.”

Rob:  ”Need to unlock account.”

Verizon Wireless Customer Service Robot:  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you just said.  Perhaps you should try enunciating better.  Or if you need Spanish, press or say Thirty-Six.”

Rob: “I need to unlock my account.”

Verizon Wireless Customer Service Robot: “Do you need to unlock your phone?  If so, press the unlock button.  Thank you and have a good day.”

Rob:  ”NO!  I need to unlock my account!”

Verizon Wireless Customer Service Robot:  “Just to be sure, please say your account password.”

Rob: “I don’t know my account password!”

Verizon Wireless Customer Service Robot: “Please say your account password!”

Rob:  ”If I knew my account password, I wouldn’t need to call you.”

Verizon Wireless Customer Service Robot: “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you just said.  Perhaps some elocution lessons will help you.”

Rob:  ”I NEED TO UNLOCK MY ACCOUNT!”

Verizon Wireless Customer Service Robot:  “Please stay on the line and someone will assist you in approximately 27 minutes. Hopefully you will hang up in frustration before that point.”

So then a human or more advanced android came on and talked Rob through resetting his account.  Sighing with relief, he handed the task over to me to activate the thing.

And of course, the activation failed.  (“What, did you buy that off the back of a truck?” -”No, I got it on eBay!” – “Same thing.”)

You know what this means – I had to call Verizon again.  I talked to a nice robot named Chad who lived in Utah and knew what the sun was.  Long story short, one hour and twelve minutes later I was told that I got a bad phone, I should return it, or did I want to use our upgrade to get something more snazzy?  No, I sighed, not today.  Defeated, I reactivated his old crappy flip phone, which he is perfectly fine with.

Then I went and ordered another one on eBay.

This is me fixing a computer.  What happens is that someone will say, “Hey, my computer is broken.  Fix it?”  So I will say, “Sure, no problem!  I can totally do that.”  Then it explodes, and I get shards of technology embedded in my skin.  To absolve myself from shame, I will tell  them that whatever they did gave the computer a terrible virus that rendered it useless, and they should be more careful in the future.

This is what I do for the rest of the time.

See?

So as part of my research, I wanted to do a small experiment on the birth of a word on the Internet. It’s not the best made-up word my kids have come up with, but I chose it for several reasons: 1) it’s innocuous, 2) it’s similar to an existing word- alleviation – which is in common use in the English language, 3) it’s easy to use in a sentence, and 4) it wasn’t found on the Urban Dictionary, which automatically disqualified several other words from the experiment.

I am not expecting the word to become commonplace or in widespread use. Rather, I am just measuring the changes in the Google search results over a period of a few weeks. To do this, I have asked people to simply post a link to the website defining the word aliveation. Besides seeing where the domain name ends up in the search, I am also looking to see if Google eventually stops trying to correct the spelling – ie, “Did you mean alleviation?”

If you could help me out by posting this link on Facebook or Twitter or your blog or your conspiracy theory forum, that would be great. As a reward there is a video of puppies on the landing page. That is unrelated to anything other than the fact that puppies are cute.

Thank you muchly.

Therein lies the problem – Facebook.  Much as Google enthusiasts (engoogliasts?) like to point out the superiority of the Google product, it just isn’t different enough to capture interest.

Let’s put it this way.  Say you have a friend named Herman.  He’s pretty cool, and every Saturday night he has a party with 125 of your closest friends.

Now let’s say Herman has a twin brother named Sherman, who only recently moved to town.  Sherman and Herman are those type of twins which aren’t quite identical but aren’t different enough to be fraternal.   As a result, Sherman needs corrective lenses and is slightly more nerdy.

Sherman and Herman are sort of on the outs, so Sherman wants to have his own party and not go to Herman’s.

So he invites you and everyone you know.  Most people politely accept his invitation, but when Saturday night rolls along and it’s time to go to Herman’s party, everyone kind of forgets about poor Sherman.  You and your lot go ahead to Herman’s, where he has a pinata, fruity drinks, and FarmVille.

Caught up in the moment, you suddenly remember Sherman and decide maybe you should check out his place.  But when you get there, it’s just a bunch of nerds sitting around talking about Android kernels and search engine algorithms.

You yawn, and politely repeat the same story that you told at Herman’s party, about your hilarious toaster experience.  They stare at you blankly and then all goes silent.  Feeling self-conscious, you slip out the bathroom window and back to Herman’s party, where you discover your neighbor harvested your corn crop for you while you were gone.  And all is well.

While there was nothing really wrong with Sherman’s party, all your friends were back at Herman’s, and by the time you got to Sherman’s your stories were as stale as your toast.  And since there were no pinatas there, you just feel more comfortable at the place where they are.

So that pretty much sums it up.  Google+ is doomed to play the role of Sherman, unless it does something super cool to differentiate itself, like get a hot tub or start a fight club.

1.  Be a Cat.

This is the most obvious way, a tried and true method of achieving fame.  It’s not even so much that people love cats, but that people love cats captured in various moments of shame.  There is something satisfying about witnessing such a self-important creature make a fool of himself.  The roots of this fascination date back to the early years of America’s Funniest Home Videos, where stupid cat videos won the grand prize a statistical total of 35% of the time*.

Back then, you had to lug around one of those gigantic shoulder-mounted behemoths hoping to catch kitty accidentally falling into the toilet or getting spooked by a baby.  It almost wasn’t worth the effort or the cost of physical therapy to transfer your video over to VHS, mail it to California, and hope that four years later you may get a glimpse of kitty being mocked by Bob Saget.

Today it is as easy as whipping out your phone at the exact moment of humiliation.  Better yet, supplementing that humiliation with cutely misspelled captions.

Unfortunately, if you are reading this you most likely are not a cat, so at best you only may personally know a cat who may or may not have achieved success.  Sadly, too, it is much more difficult for a dog to reach the heights of fame that a cat does.  Note the contrast between Maru, a cat who sacrifices his dignity simply by jumping into boxes and being fat, and Boo, the self-proclaimed world’s cutest dog.

vs.

This means that mathematically speaking, Maru is 24% more popular than Boo while being 47% as cute.  This doesn’t happen in nature, where packs of wild Pomeranians have been known to force fat jumping cats into extinction by the sheer power of their big heads and tiny sweaters.  As such, the Internet perverts the natural order of things.  Long story short, if you aren’t a cat, you can at least record your own cat doing something foolish and then capitalize on their shame.

2.  Be Cute.

We will just assume that you are not a cat for this one.  Cute in this context assumes human cuteness.  But there is a catch.  It is scientifically proven that no human can be cute beyond the age of 12.  If you are over 12, human and somewhat attractive in any way, the best approximation of cuteness you can possess is “moderately charming.”  True cuteness can only be achieved by a human in juvenile form.

Again, this poses a conundrum because if you are reading  this you most likely are not cute.  However, you may know someone who is, in which case you need to seize the opportunity to exploit their cuteness for your own personal gain.  The Internet is full of examples of this phenomenon.  (Note that Charlie and Harry are exponentially more powerful than Maru; however, they have the added benefit of having English accents, while Maru doesn’t even speak English, or anything for that matter.  But babies with accents are the undisputed rulers of internet viral videos.)

Now, because the competition is fierce in this category, because a full 64% of children are cute, you might not want to even put your horse in this race.  I happen to have cute children, but they have been unable to make the cut.  (If you watch the video you will see how clever my wordplay was there, although having to point it out somewhat negates any punch it may have had otherwise).

4.  Be a Douchebag

These days it seems that the douchier a person acts, the more attention they will get.  Douchebaggery can take many forms, from an unscripted meltdown to an all expense paid stay at the Crazytweet Hotel.  However, like being a cat, being a douchebag comes with a caveat – unless you are already well-known, as a previously established douchebag or as a normal person, nobody cares.  So you can probably cross this one off your list, because if you are reading this you are probably not famous, at least not famous enough to make your douchebaggery work for you.

5.  Be Talented.

Yeah, yeah, whatever.  Showoff.  Next!

6.  Be Awesome.

Perhaps the most worthy holders of the Internet Sensation idol are those that are just plain awesome.  This is difficult because there are plenty of people who are awesome, but only a very few come across in that very specific way which will pay the bills by utilizing that awesomeness to their advantage.  Again, no offense, but if you are reading this you are likely not awesome (in that way) because you would be off doing awesome things rather than reading a non-awesome blog that no awesome (in that way) person would read.  It is worth pointing out that the only two people likely to read here are my dad – hi Dad! – and myself, and while I do think my dad is awesome, he is awesome in a different way than would cause any sort of ripple in the fabric of the Internet.  Sorry, Dad.

7.  Be Funny.

This is another one, like douchiness and being a cat, that is either in you or it’s not.  If you are not funny you should surround yourself with people who are, write down all the funny things they say and bask in the glow of taking credit for being the one to write it down.  Not being funny myself, I do this all the time with the weird things my kids say.

So there you have it.  Wait, you are probably saying to yourself, “It says NINE ways, and that was only seven!”  The other two are either secret, or don’t exist, or I lost interest 7/9ths of the way through writing this.  It could be any of those reasons, or all of them, kind of like Schrodinger’s cat.  You’ll never know.

*Note: 78% of statistics are made up.

Sounds apocalyptic, doesn’t it? Overdramatic? Not really. SOPA will actually grant insane evil powers to big corporate media entities. Stay with me for a second: remember that agonizing writers’ strike of 2007-2008? It was months and months of nothing to watch on TV. Picture that, but on the Internet instead. And instead of a few months without Lost, you get FOREVER without EVERYTHING. The Internet – where you may do most of your shopping, socializing, and, ironically, TV and movie watching.

Other sources can probably do a better job than I can in explaining it, so I will direct you to this graphic. Basically, while the idea behind the bill is to stop piracy (to which there are no moral objections from me), the actuality of the bill threatens to turn the Internet into a vast wasteland, stopping innovation cold. Website owners, from the tiny inconsequential me to the mighty Facebook, will be under such restrictions that policing their content under the fear of lawsuits and blacklisting may become such a burdensome task that such websites could eventually fold altogether.

Take me, for example. I have a handful of small sites and blogs. Occasionally my sites get hacked or spammed with links to the questionable offshore sites that SOPA aims to shut down. Not my fault, right? But theoretically, I could be held accountable for whatever is on my site, and potentially be blacklisted, without trial, forever. Then there would be no this or this EVER AGAIN. And what would the Internet be without cute puppies and amusing mistranslations?

The beauty of the Internet is that it allows for the free flow of ideas and information. It is perhaps humanity’s greatest innovation of modern times, and that is not just hyperbole. It really does bring people together, occasionally make them smarter – sometimes just the opposite – and has changed the world. And yes, there are also videos of cats falling off things in a comical manner. Something for everyone.

So if you’re feeling so inclined, you may want to write your senator or send a strongly worded letter to one of the companies supporting the bill. And don’t be surprised if one day this month you wake up and find the Internet is switched off because Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and even Zynga go dark in protest. That is an actual, real possibility. Imagine no Farmville too. (apologies to Mr. Lennon)

Take, for example, my recent encounters with both Google and Microsoft’s [insert air quotes here] customer support.

I was having an issue with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. The details are not important, but what is important that after weeks of frustration, I caved and emailed customer support with the problem. Someone wrote back and asked me to attach the log files from Outlook. I followed their directions, but Google rejected my email saying my attachment was just too big.

So I replied, and I explained that Google rejected my attachment, blah blah blah, and explained that I was inserting a piece of the log file into my email instead. Google’s robot “representative” responded with the following:

Thanks for the additional information.

However, the email received only contains part of the log file. Could you please attach the full log file to your reply instead of copy/pasting in the body of the message?

This way, I will be able to run a proper diagnosis of the issue and provide you with a potential resolution.

Please keep me posted. In the meantime, if you have any other questions, do not hesitate to ask. I will happily assist.

Honestly, it’s like he didn’t hear a word I said. It’s like when I ask to put their shoes on because we’re going out and then they get in the car without shoes and I say, “Where are your shoes?” to which they reply, “You never told us to put our shoes on!” Maybe not exactly like that, but close.

So then I had to contact Microsoft for not accepting an XBox card. I explained the exact error message I got, which was: “An error has occurred during the transaction. Please try again later.” This was just shy of meeting my expectation for specificity, so I looked it up on Microsoft’s support site, where it was clarified to mean, “A temporary error has occurred. Please try to redeem the prepaid code later.” Ah, of course. But just in case, let me ask them again.

This was the response from the Microsoft robot:

Thank you for contacting online support for XBOX. I am Travis and I will be helping you today with this issue.

As I understand, you are having issues in redeeming the prepaid code. This issue may make you feel upset and we will work toward resolving this situation for you.

You can visit this link for the details prepaid code redemption errors : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/818928. You cannot use prepaid codes if your account is suspended or has a past due balance. These issues must be resolved before you can use a prepaid code.

You can also visit : http://forums.xbox.com/xbox_forums/xbox_support/f/28/t/153164.aspx for additional details about this issue.

Please verify as well that you are entering the code properly. Keep in mind that the code will contain no vowels and no zeroes. You can also try entering the code on https://xbox.com or by using a wired USB keyboard or chatpad on your console.

To enter a code on the console by following these steps:

1. Press the Guide button (big silver X button on the controller)
2. Tab over to Marketplace
3. Select “Redeem Code”
4. Input the code and accept.

Well, Travis, if your goal is to make me less frustrated, then you were somewhat less than successful. You were successful, however, in making me want to throw something. Luckily, Microsoft provided me with a handy graphic depicting such an action, although I am neither a man nor bald and I don’t usually wear suits. But it will do.

Photo Courtesy of Microsoft

]]> http://semitechiemom.com/2011/12/tech-support/feed/ 0 http://semitechiemom.com/2011/11/modes-of-time-travel/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=modes-of-time-travel http://semitechiemom.com/2011/11/modes-of-time-travel/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:18:43 +0000 semitechiemom http://blog.semitechiemom.com/?p=160 [...]]]> So I was reading 11/22/63: A Novel over the weekend and it had me contemplating Stephen King’s method of time travel compared to other literary modes of time travel.

In the book, the hero is shown a magical pantry to the past, which takes him to one specific moment in 1958. Whenever he goes back to 2011 and enters the pantry again, everything gets reset to that moment in 1958.  Maybe.  King’s type of temporal displacement is probably most akin to the Back to the Future mode, which has never been my favorite.

Here is why – Marty McFly goes back to 1955, messes things up with his parents meeting, almost gets erased, blah blah blah, then upon his return to 1985 he is freaked out by the way everything has changed.  However, what happened to the Marty in that alternate timeline who existed before Marty from Original!1985 returned back from 1955?  That Marty(2) would have had different experiences and likely have different personality traits, based on the fact that his dad was not a loser like George (1) was.  But THAT Marty (2) got erased, so while Marty (1) saved his own self, his alternate self ceased to exist.  Or maybe he got bumped to yet another timeline, who knows.  But do you see where I am going with this?  Paradoxes all over the place.

Similarly, Jake Epping in 11/22/63 returns to a time where he would have had different experiences, but he retains no knowledge of those.  While I thoroughly enjoyed the book (and BTTF, too, at least the first one), it is still an intellectually unsatisfying time travel methodology.

So let’s move on to the Lost method of time travel, affectionately known in Lost circles as the “Whatever Happened, Happened” mode.  In this situation, Desmond’s consciousness gets knocked about in time and he retains snippets of memories from his past future on the island.  If you never watched Lost then that probably makes no sense, but then again, it didn’t really make sense to people that watched Lost.  Just stay with me for a second.  Desmond is able to change minor things but nothing major because the universe will course correct itself to sort out any messes like those caused by Marty McFly.  And he’s cute and has a fun accent.  Anyway, this sort of course correction happens in King’s book too, and he was kind enough to teach me a new word, which is “obdurate.”

Still with me?  There is actually a Whatever Happened, Happened version 2, where some of the Losties get transported bodily (as opposed to consciously) to 1977, and then in 2007 their pictures from 1977 are still there because they were always there.  Whatever happened, happened, dude.  No changing it.

Which brings me to one of my favorite time transportation devices, The Time Traveler’s Wife mode.  This is a really badass version of Whatever Happened, Happened, in that Henry, the protagonist, unwilling flips about in time, bodily, and is able to interact with his own self, in more ways than one.  He is never able to change anything because it already happened.  So no matter how many times he is taken to the scene of an accident, none of his selves can stop it.  It’s really quite sad, actually, and probably has no basis in quantum physics, but until I read this book this concept had never occurred to me and the McFly Method was the standard.

Then there is the John Titor method, which I will include as a cultural sidenote if you consider the Internet a literary medium along with books and movies.  John Titor was a hoax but as a work of fiction he had some cool ideas.  If you don’t care enough to click on the Wikipedia link, here’s the short story – About ten years ago, this guy starts posting on forums claiming he is from the year 2036 and he went back in time to collect this really old computer that they don’t make anymore.  Oh and there is no more Best Buys anyway, because, you know, society has collapsed and 2036 is a dystopic, radiation-ridden puddle of ick.  He made some intelligent-sounding claims that a civil war was imminent, and that people in the future really like guns.  Then he disappeared, leaving everyone (okay, not everyone) wondering, in what was quaintly known as Netspeak, “WTF?”

Anyway, the important part of the story is that John Titor claimed that it is impossible to go back to one’s own timeline when one uses an automotive temporal displacement device, and that his timeline is slightly different than ours, in that different teams won the Super Bowl and whatnot.  So our future may not be as bleak as his, if we care enough to change it.

And in his timeline, indeed there probably was no Fringe.  Time travel here is secondary to the idea of a multi-verse, where there could be many versions of you doing slightly different things at different moments, but there is a Titor-esque consistency to that idea, that maybe there is a world where people still use beepers and take zeppelins to get where they want to be.  Our hero Peter Bishop has indeed traveled to the future, only to discover upon his return that he no longer exists.  Big huge bummer there, but he seems to be making the most of it.

In the Fringe world, there are fedora-wearing Observers who exist outside of time, and these fellas also seem to have some influence in 11/22/63, which makes sense, or not, depending on what universe you are in.  In any event, we have come full circle.

And yes, I know I am ignoring Dr. Who and Star Trek, but I don’t care.  Live long and prosper.

The thing you have to wonder about spammers is, what exactly are they trying to accomplish? Does anyone look at a message that reads, “Hey I like your boots, have tendons that eat pasta check mine link here” and say, “Gosh, I really need to see more of what that person has to say!”  No, any reasonable person would shun anyone who talked like that in real life, or, more appropriately, kick them in the shins.  So I think they actually exist just to annoy people. And if there is one thing that annoys me, it is being annoyed.

Anyway, since I last wrote some seven months ago, several things happened.  Disney World.  An iPad.  A new puppy!  (Dog technology is pretty advanced these days.  My dog is a cyborg.  He has a microchip and he eats crayons.)