Over the past few weeks it seemed like my internet connection was a lot slower than it should've been. I do a fair amount of roaming around using StumbleUpon, and frequently watch the videos that turn up. It was taking a lot longer than it used to for stuff to load. I tried some speed testing from Speedtest.net and the results were pretty bad.
I thought about it and recalled resetting some stuff to try and maximize downloading. I'd made changes in the download application and I was pretty sure I'd made some changes even in the registry, but I'd thought at the time everything was OK. Obviously I was wrong.
Yesterday I turned on one of my other machines, got online and went to Speedtest. Things were worse than I thought on the main machine. According to the results from the second machine, I was getting a little better than 10% of the download speed I should've been getting. In fact, download speeds on the second machine were about four times faster than I recall seeing on the main machine even before I'd messed around several weeks back.
There was no way I was going to recall what I'd done. I recall printing out some instructions, but since I didn't realize right away things weren't right, I didn't still have them. After some Googling around, I came across a site offering optimization. Of course, it was a site selling an optimization program, but it did offer a scan. I figured I'd do the scan and see if the results would give me some avenues to explore.
I came across one recommendation to reset the MTU, or Maximum Transmission Units. It required going into RegEdit and changing a value for MTU to 1500. And the complete path to the value was provided, except the last step led me to four registry folders way down deep. So I took a look at each of them, and only one had a key for MTU. And instead of 1500, the value was 189. A little mental math told me if my speed on the other machine came with an MTU value of 1500 (I'm assuming because I didn't check the registry in the other machine), then a value of 189 would give me the speeds I was seeing on the main machine. So I changed that one value from 189 to 1500, got out of RegEdit, and restarted the machine. And I crossed my fingers, although I didn't think that one change would do any serious damage, but with registry changes, there's always some risk.
When the machine came back up, the first thing that happened was the new program nagged me to buy it, so I'll be deleting that right away. Once I got Firefox opened, I went to Speedtest.net and ran the test. This time I got far better results, equivalent to the other machine's. Problem solved, I hope.
It'll be interesting to see if Flickr responds faster. On one of my lenses on Squidoo, I'd had about 15 photos linked from my three photosets on Flickr, and they were taking forever to load and getting in the way of editing that lens because changes wouldn't take while the photos were still loading.
[Edit] This one change also fixed another problem I was having - I couldn't access one of my credit card websites or a popular weird news site. Now I can. Also, Flickr loads faster on the lens.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Monday, January 7, 2008
Putting Customers First
For the past five years, I've worked in call centers, in what's usually called customer service, although much of that time I've been doing related things like welcome calls for new customers or receivables management. I really want to help the customers, but often the management seems very determined to get in the way with their methods and their mania for statistics. They don't seem to be about customer service; they seem to be about generating statistics and reports about customer service, or more to the point, statistics and reports about the way the people with the headsets do their jobs. Actual customer service comes in a distant second.
So I was interested in a topic in Delphi Forums' Personal Law, News & Consumer forum titled "Put Buyers First? What a Concept." Turns out it links to a story in The New York Times about Amazon. Being an Amazon Associate since I started Have Pun Will Travel, with extensive links to Amazon all over the site, I was pretty pleased with what I read.
According to the story, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, takes customer satisfaction very seriously, so seriously that sometimes the boys on Wall Street, ever focused on the short-term gain, haven't cared much for Amazon. And that hasn't changed Bezos' mind; he's still very focused on customer satisfaction. Needless to say, I think he has the right idea. And it seems to be paying off for Amazon, too.
I''ve been an Amazon customer a lot longer than I've been an associate, and I've always had good luck with them. Like many people, I've used Amazon for research, even if I have ended up buying elsewhere. I may change that now that I'm an associate, even if my own purchases don't earn me commission. Of course, I haven't been buying much of anything anywhere lately, and that may not change significantly anytime soon.
So I was interested in a topic in Delphi Forums' Personal Law, News & Consumer forum titled "Put Buyers First? What a Concept." Turns out it links to a story in The New York Times about Amazon. Being an Amazon Associate since I started Have Pun Will Travel, with extensive links to Amazon all over the site, I was pretty pleased with what I read.
According to the story, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, takes customer satisfaction very seriously, so seriously that sometimes the boys on Wall Street, ever focused on the short-term gain, haven't cared much for Amazon. And that hasn't changed Bezos' mind; he's still very focused on customer satisfaction. Needless to say, I think he has the right idea. And it seems to be paying off for Amazon, too.
I''ve been an Amazon customer a lot longer than I've been an associate, and I've always had good luck with them. Like many people, I've used Amazon for research, even if I have ended up buying elsewhere. I may change that now that I'm an associate, even if my own purchases don't earn me commission. Of course, I haven't been buying much of anything anywhere lately, and that may not change significantly anytime soon.
Biting the Bullet
It couldn't go on much longer.
When I suddenly found myself unemployed, thanks to one of the coldest, most heartless separations I've ever undergone, I was sort of in shock. I'd thought things were improving after a tough time, but it must've been too little, too late.
That was back in September, and once I took stock, I decided not to go looking right away, and after a while got busy with setting up more of a presence online, first with Squidoo and the lenses, then with Have Pun Will Travel. Like probably everyone else who's ever thought of using the Internet to make money, I was wildly overoptimistic. But it got me started, at least.
Regardless of whether jobs have been lousy paying, which has been all of them over the past five years or so, or even if I wasn't working for a while, I was at least always able to keep up with the credit cards with at least minimum payments. So that's what I've done lately, and used the cards to keep me from becoming homeless and hungry. Of course, that means I'm going to be owing on the cards for quite some time to come, but the break was worth it.
Today I went back to a former employer. Since all my jobs have been with call centers, I went back to the one closest to where I live. It took me nearly an hour to get to my previous job each day, and another hour to get back home again - two hours per day. The place I just applied to is less than ten minutes away, so I gain a good hour and a half each day. That's an hour and a half I can use to keep doing web pages, lenses, and whatever else I decide to do to try and get some extra money.
At least I know what to expect from the job, which, provided there's nothing that comes up to keep me from getting it, will start with five weeks of training next Monday. The good part is that means I don't have to take calls until mid-late February. Training is usually a breeze, although I'll be sure I learn what's necessary to do the job. Aside from being close to home, this place hires just about anyone, so age discrimination shouldn't be a factor, as it so subtly a factor at so many places.
There's a downside to them hiring just about anyone, of course, so I'll end up working with a lot of people who really don't give a rat's patoot about much of anything except themselves. They're the kind of people for whom actually working the 40 hours per week they were hired for gets treated as a goal to be met at some undetermined, but very distant time. They're the kind of people who can't wait to go on break so they can call up some family member or boy/girlfriend and spend the whole break yelling at them, either in the break room, or outside in the smoking area as they furiously puff away and yell simultaneously. I don't hang out with people from call centers after work, needless to say.
One thing I've already decided - if something they want me to do doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, I'll do it anyway. That was probably my downfall on the last job. They kept insisting I say stuff that does nothing to help the customer, stuff that if I didn't say it, the customer never would've noticed, and the call would go just a bit faster. By the time I started doing it their way, it was, apparently, too late.
The problem with many call centers is that instead of being focused on the customer, they focus on statistics, which means, in part, whether or not the person taking the calls says certain specific things in a specific manner, regardless of whether this helps the customer in any way or not. On the last job, it wasn't enough to efficiently and promptly answer a customer's question. First you had to assure the customer you could answer the question, and only then could you answer the question. It's like someone asks me what time it is. My initial efficient response (and probably yours too) would be "3:30" or whatever time it is. But according to the geniuses of marketing, this was wrong. The "correct" response is something like, "I'd be happy to tell you what time it is. It's 3:30." Just saying "3:30" doesn't mean I'm not happy to tell the person the time, it's just doing it their way takes longer and just isn't the way normal human beings in a normal conversation talk. "3:30" is understood to be an adequate answer, and the conversation moves on. In the real world outside call centers, anyway.
So I'll go back, and see how long I can stand it this time. And you may have noticed, aside from my obvious lack of enthusiasm, I haven't mentioned the name of the employer. I don't plan to, either now or later. It's safer that way.
When I suddenly found myself unemployed, thanks to one of the coldest, most heartless separations I've ever undergone, I was sort of in shock. I'd thought things were improving after a tough time, but it must've been too little, too late.
That was back in September, and once I took stock, I decided not to go looking right away, and after a while got busy with setting up more of a presence online, first with Squidoo and the lenses, then with Have Pun Will Travel. Like probably everyone else who's ever thought of using the Internet to make money, I was wildly overoptimistic. But it got me started, at least.
Regardless of whether jobs have been lousy paying, which has been all of them over the past five years or so, or even if I wasn't working for a while, I was at least always able to keep up with the credit cards with at least minimum payments. So that's what I've done lately, and used the cards to keep me from becoming homeless and hungry. Of course, that means I'm going to be owing on the cards for quite some time to come, but the break was worth it.
Today I went back to a former employer. Since all my jobs have been with call centers, I went back to the one closest to where I live. It took me nearly an hour to get to my previous job each day, and another hour to get back home again - two hours per day. The place I just applied to is less than ten minutes away, so I gain a good hour and a half each day. That's an hour and a half I can use to keep doing web pages, lenses, and whatever else I decide to do to try and get some extra money.
At least I know what to expect from the job, which, provided there's nothing that comes up to keep me from getting it, will start with five weeks of training next Monday. The good part is that means I don't have to take calls until mid-late February. Training is usually a breeze, although I'll be sure I learn what's necessary to do the job. Aside from being close to home, this place hires just about anyone, so age discrimination shouldn't be a factor, as it so subtly a factor at so many places.
There's a downside to them hiring just about anyone, of course, so I'll end up working with a lot of people who really don't give a rat's patoot about much of anything except themselves. They're the kind of people for whom actually working the 40 hours per week they were hired for gets treated as a goal to be met at some undetermined, but very distant time. They're the kind of people who can't wait to go on break so they can call up some family member or boy/girlfriend and spend the whole break yelling at them, either in the break room, or outside in the smoking area as they furiously puff away and yell simultaneously. I don't hang out with people from call centers after work, needless to say.
One thing I've already decided - if something they want me to do doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, I'll do it anyway. That was probably my downfall on the last job. They kept insisting I say stuff that does nothing to help the customer, stuff that if I didn't say it, the customer never would've noticed, and the call would go just a bit faster. By the time I started doing it their way, it was, apparently, too late.
The problem with many call centers is that instead of being focused on the customer, they focus on statistics, which means, in part, whether or not the person taking the calls says certain specific things in a specific manner, regardless of whether this helps the customer in any way or not. On the last job, it wasn't enough to efficiently and promptly answer a customer's question. First you had to assure the customer you could answer the question, and only then could you answer the question. It's like someone asks me what time it is. My initial efficient response (and probably yours too) would be "3:30" or whatever time it is. But according to the geniuses of marketing, this was wrong. The "correct" response is something like, "I'd be happy to tell you what time it is. It's 3:30." Just saying "3:30" doesn't mean I'm not happy to tell the person the time, it's just doing it their way takes longer and just isn't the way normal human beings in a normal conversation talk. "3:30" is understood to be an adequate answer, and the conversation moves on. In the real world outside call centers, anyway.
So I'll go back, and see how long I can stand it this time. And you may have noticed, aside from my obvious lack of enthusiasm, I haven't mentioned the name of the employer. I don't plan to, either now or later. It's safer that way.
Site Meter problem fixed?
I think I know why Site Meter kept showing all zeros. When I signed up, I left the final forward slash off the URL. So many times when I've created a link to Have Pun Will Travel, I've left it off and the links have worked when tested. I went to the Site Meter page, found where I could change the URL and changed it.
I was able to view stats directly from GoDaddy just a few minutes ago, and I think I've memorized the hoops I have to jump through to get to them, so it'll be interesting to compare them. It's good to know I'm getting a little traffic, at least.
I was able to view stats directly from GoDaddy just a few minutes ago, and I think I've memorized the hoops I have to jump through to get to them, so it'll be interesting to compare them. It's good to know I'm getting a little traffic, at least.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
John McPhee Lens and Page Done
Not long after I started doing lenses on Squidoo, I created one for the books written by John McPhee, a master writer of nonfiction who can make any subject he writes about interesting. I discovered him back around 1979 or 1980, when I was looking in the library in Fitchburg, MA for information about nuclear power. I got interested in his book Encounters with the Archdruid. It's not about nuclear power, but about David Brower, who had been the head of the Sierra Club and then went on to start Friends of the Earth and the Earth Island Institute. The book reports on Brower's trips to a wilderness area in the Cascades with a mining geologist, to an island on the coast of South Carolina with a developer, and to the Colorado River with the very pro-dam head of the Bureau of Reclamation.
I also read McPhee's The Curve of Binding Energy, in which nuclear physicist Ted Taylor expresses worries about nuclear material getting into the wrong hands. He explains to McPhee this may not be as hard as some people think, and he also tells, without revealing any classified information, how a nuclear bomb could be made by people without access to huge and expensive equipment. I read several of his books in the 1980s, and after not reading any for a while, rediscovered him in the 1990s and now have all of his books except the John McPhee readers which have excerpts from books I already own.
When I set up the lens, I made links to Amazon for each of McPhee's books. These links split the commission between me and Squidoo 50/50. But another lensmaster made a utility which gives people who are also Amazon Associates, like me, more of a cut, although one in five links give the revenue to the guy who made the utility. 80/20 in my favor seems like a better deal. So in December I began converting things to use the better links. I'd made seven modules with five books in each and got the first one done.
Then I got the idea for the Hugo Awards lenses and also expanded it to Nebula Awards. That kept me busy for a while. But over the past few days I got back to John McPhee's lens and completed revising it, and got it published yesterday.
Last night I started building a table in Dreamweaver to be imported to Have Pun Will Travel for a John McPhee page. I got all the book text plugged into the table, and copied the ISBN numbers into the space where the Amazon book links would go. That proved very handy as I used them for the Powell's Books links. Those are simple text links, and they are all identical except for the ISBN number, which was very easy to change. Once those links were set, I highlighted the first ISBN number, went to the Associates page on Amazon, got the HTML code for the graphic link, copied it, and pasted it in over the ISBN number, then highlighted the title and made it into a text link.
Then I repeated that copy, paste, copy, paste routine another 30 times. Needless to say, it took a while. While it's a fairly mindless task, it does require some attention to make sure all the cutting and pasting is done with the right elements in the right places. One thing I had to be careful of was picking up and copying something I'd used for the previous book. It was just a little tricky because covers for McPhee's books are very similar. More than once I had to correct some mistakes.
Eventually, that part was done, and I plugged in the introduction and photo, added the Amazon and Powell's search boxes, previewed the page, and got it published.
Several weeks ago, I'd signed up for something called Site Meter which was supposed to give me information about how many people were visiting Have Pun Will Travel. I really don't think it is working properly. According to reports I get, nobody has visited the site. But I know my friend Dick Ford has been to it, because he's looked at it while we were online chatting several weeks ago. And yesterday, when I talked with my sister Marilyn, she went to the site. I even guided her around a bit so I know she really was there. Yet today, when I accessed the Site Meter site, it still reported no activity. Also, somebody followed a link to Amazon and bought something, and I'm pretty sure it was from the site because it was for a Kindle accessory, and I don't think I have anything about the Kindle on Squidoo.
I don't expect tons of people visiting the site, at least not yet because it's new. But surely there has been some traffic. I am getting views of my Squidoo lenses, and they have links to the site, and I've mentioned it in forums on Delphi and the Delphi blog. Surely somebody's been visiting, but Site Meter doesn't seem to think so.
So I went looking to see if I could find stats on the GoDaddy site. They're so busy making sure they put offers in front of you that finding anything useful can be a real search. Eventually I found something to get stats and had to set it up. But when I tried to log in, it kept rejecting the user name and password. So I tried resetting them. When I first set things up, I'd established a user name, but for some reason, Website Tonight wouldn't allow it and I've been signing in there with my account number and a password. But when I looked on the page to change stuff for getting into the stats info, the name was there, so for that I have to remember to use a name, not an account number, and a password. They just don't make anything easy, it seems. And once I finally slogged through all that, I was informed it may take up to 24 hours before I can look at anything, and this was after thinking earlier tonight I'd be able to see stuff within 30 minutes, not knowing I hadn't jumped through all the hidden hoops yet.
I also read McPhee's The Curve of Binding Energy, in which nuclear physicist Ted Taylor expresses worries about nuclear material getting into the wrong hands. He explains to McPhee this may not be as hard as some people think, and he also tells, without revealing any classified information, how a nuclear bomb could be made by people without access to huge and expensive equipment. I read several of his books in the 1980s, and after not reading any for a while, rediscovered him in the 1990s and now have all of his books except the John McPhee readers which have excerpts from books I already own.
When I set up the lens, I made links to Amazon for each of McPhee's books. These links split the commission between me and Squidoo 50/50. But another lensmaster made a utility which gives people who are also Amazon Associates, like me, more of a cut, although one in five links give the revenue to the guy who made the utility. 80/20 in my favor seems like a better deal. So in December I began converting things to use the better links. I'd made seven modules with five books in each and got the first one done.
Then I got the idea for the Hugo Awards lenses and also expanded it to Nebula Awards. That kept me busy for a while. But over the past few days I got back to John McPhee's lens and completed revising it, and got it published yesterday.
Last night I started building a table in Dreamweaver to be imported to Have Pun Will Travel for a John McPhee page. I got all the book text plugged into the table, and copied the ISBN numbers into the space where the Amazon book links would go. That proved very handy as I used them for the Powell's Books links. Those are simple text links, and they are all identical except for the ISBN number, which was very easy to change. Once those links were set, I highlighted the first ISBN number, went to the Associates page on Amazon, got the HTML code for the graphic link, copied it, and pasted it in over the ISBN number, then highlighted the title and made it into a text link.
Then I repeated that copy, paste, copy, paste routine another 30 times. Needless to say, it took a while. While it's a fairly mindless task, it does require some attention to make sure all the cutting and pasting is done with the right elements in the right places. One thing I had to be careful of was picking up and copying something I'd used for the previous book. It was just a little tricky because covers for McPhee's books are very similar. More than once I had to correct some mistakes.
Eventually, that part was done, and I plugged in the introduction and photo, added the Amazon and Powell's search boxes, previewed the page, and got it published.
Several weeks ago, I'd signed up for something called Site Meter which was supposed to give me information about how many people were visiting Have Pun Will Travel. I really don't think it is working properly. According to reports I get, nobody has visited the site. But I know my friend Dick Ford has been to it, because he's looked at it while we were online chatting several weeks ago. And yesterday, when I talked with my sister Marilyn, she went to the site. I even guided her around a bit so I know she really was there. Yet today, when I accessed the Site Meter site, it still reported no activity. Also, somebody followed a link to Amazon and bought something, and I'm pretty sure it was from the site because it was for a Kindle accessory, and I don't think I have anything about the Kindle on Squidoo.
I don't expect tons of people visiting the site, at least not yet because it's new. But surely there has been some traffic. I am getting views of my Squidoo lenses, and they have links to the site, and I've mentioned it in forums on Delphi and the Delphi blog. Surely somebody's been visiting, but Site Meter doesn't seem to think so.
So I went looking to see if I could find stats on the GoDaddy site. They're so busy making sure they put offers in front of you that finding anything useful can be a real search. Eventually I found something to get stats and had to set it up. But when I tried to log in, it kept rejecting the user name and password. So I tried resetting them. When I first set things up, I'd established a user name, but for some reason, Website Tonight wouldn't allow it and I've been signing in there with my account number and a password. But when I looked on the page to change stuff for getting into the stats info, the name was there, so for that I have to remember to use a name, not an account number, and a password. They just don't make anything easy, it seems. And once I finally slogged through all that, I was informed it may take up to 24 hours before I can look at anything, and this was after thinking earlier tonight I'd be able to see stuff within 30 minutes, not knowing I hadn't jumped through all the hidden hoops yet.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Nebula Awards Lenses on Squidoo Published
I got the Nebula Awards lenses updated to where I felt I could publish them. So far I've only linked to the books that won, and just listed the nominees. It's a lot simpler than with the Hugos, but I've got the option to flesh things out over time. I realized I hadn't lensrolled them earlier today, so I did that just now. I also tried to add them to StumbleUpon, but got an error, so I'll try again tomorrow. I did get them added to del.icio.us, though.
I've also updated more of the John McPhee lens by writing some more capsule reviews for more books. I've still got a dozen left, and plan to do them over the next couple of days. I could finish it tomorrow if I get inspired. Also, I found a three part interview with McPhee from WPRB radio in Princeton, NJ, where McPhee's lived all his life, so I added links for that. I had started the updating of that lens and had gotten one group of five books done. It involves not only writing the reviews but also changing the format so each book has its own text module, and the link to Amazon gives me more of any revenue generated if anyone links and buys a book. I found it more practical to give each book its own module, otherwise a short review can lead to spacing problems. Text wraps around the Amazon link, but if there's not enough text, the next link is indented. It can get messy pretty quickly.
I've also updated more of the John McPhee lens by writing some more capsule reviews for more books. I've still got a dozen left, and plan to do them over the next couple of days. I could finish it tomorrow if I get inspired. Also, I found a three part interview with McPhee from WPRB radio in Princeton, NJ, where McPhee's lived all his life, so I added links for that. I had started the updating of that lens and had gotten one group of five books done. It involves not only writing the reviews but also changing the format so each book has its own text module, and the link to Amazon gives me more of any revenue generated if anyone links and buys a book. I found it more practical to give each book its own module, otherwise a short review can lead to spacing problems. Text wraps around the Amazon link, but if there's not enough text, the next link is indented. It can get messy pretty quickly.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Anna Graham Meets Lewis Carroll
I stumbled upon a site called Sternest Meanings. It's an anagram-bot. You enter text, it turns it into an anagram. I started out just typing in nonsense words. I'd just been to a site that showed a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin's test question was "Explain Newton's First Law of Motion in your own words." Calvin answered by writing down a bunch of nonsense words. Well, they were his own words, just not anybody else's.
Then I decided to enter Jabberwocky, one line at a time. After a lot of reformatting, this is what came out, with the anagram lines in red.
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
Joy! Wobbly, crab-like scrawler.
Twas brillig and the slithey toves
Stealthless virginity deathblow.
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
Blimey! Wide-ranging deathbed.
All mimsey were the borogroves
Best-ever heroes warm gloomily.
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Better smooth, mad harangue.
Beware the jabberwock, my son,
Now cheeky jabberer wombats.
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch.
Shhh! Jaw cheat battiest twattle. Catch.
Beware the jubjub bird and shun
Unjust whine, jabbered drab hub.
The frumious bandersnatch.
Subhuman, coarsened thrift.
He took his vorpal sword in hand
Lavish sharp or not hoodwinked.
Long time the manxome foe he sought.
Heigh-ho! Memo of exultant gemstone.
And rested he by the tumtum tree
Heathy, demented brute mutters.
And stood a while in thought
Stud and white-hot hooligan.
And while in uffish thought he stood
Heigh-ho! Unwashed, unfit filth. Stood.
The Jabberwock, with eyes aflame
Bath cheek-by-jowl, sweatier fame.
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood
Thoughtful, fetching whigmaleery. Wood.
And burbled as it came!
Dear! Stubbled maniac.
One, two! One two! And through and through
Now rant not tough woodenhead. Hog hurt.
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack.
Prevalent deathblow. Knickers scan.
He left it dead and with its head
In the daft, detailed death wish.
He went galumphing back.
Whacking, mean pleb thug.
And hast though slain the Jabberwock?
Hash ghoulish attendant. Jerk bow cab.
Oh, come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Yo-ho-ho! I'm best mercy mamma's boy.
O frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!
Joy! A cool rascal of laudably.
He chortled in his joy.
Enjoy or the childish.
Twas brillig and the slithey toves
Stealthless virginity deathblow.
Did gyre and gimbel in the wabe.
Blimey! Wide-ranging deathbed.
All mimsey were the borogroves
Best-ever heroes warm gloomily.
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Better smooth, mad harangue.
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