A while back, I tried Second Life and wrote about it.

Many months went by, and—after getting a new graphics card—I figured, hey, why not try Second Life again?

I actually remembered my old SL name though wasn’t sure of the password.  Guessed a couple of times, wasn’t able to log in, so I clicked on the Forgot Password link.  Ah ha… I knew the answer to that secret question, got a link to reset my password, and figured I was all good to go.

Except that I still couldn’t log in.  I waited a few hours and tried again, but still no-go.

This, indeed, was just the beginning of my ridiculous adventure.

I am an avid fan—and financial supporter—of KQED, the Bay Area’s public radio station.  And once again, I’ve been massively annoyed by the most recent (and seemingly monthly) pledge drive.

A few thoughts have sprung up into my head:

• Damn, this sucks.
• I already donated; why do I have to continue to listen to this?!
• Wouldn’t it be awesome if somehow those people who donated got to hear actual programming, not the pledge drives?
• I hope those regular listeners who can afford to donate but haven’t end up with a flock of bloated pigeons presenting a large splattery “gift” on their cars.  Daily.

As I continued to think about this situation—independent of the actual technical constraints associated with limiting the broadcast to only paying members—I felt a bit guilty… recognizing that not everyone could afford to be a member at even the basic $40-a-year level.

But what if…

Stupid disclaimers.  You know ‘em, and you probably either ignore them or laugh at them.  Slightly enhanced samples that are either spoken at 420 words a minute or that take up a bazillion lines of tiny tiny text on the back of ads in news magazines.

• “Warning: Stunt driver on stunt track in stunt car.  Do not drive like this [except in Rome]”
• “Warning: Medication may cause sniffling, itching, numbness in extremities, permanent paralysis, or death. [+ 31415928 more lines that no one bothers to read]
• “Remember, drink responsibly!  [Also, be nice to your mom.  Put up the toilet seat.  Don’t be prejudiced.  Love a geek today.]
• “Results not typical.  Your results may vary. [Let’s face it… 99.9999% of people on this diet don’t lose an ounce.  We just managed to find the one freak who had liposuction after taking our product.]

Completely useless, aren’t they?  Somehow I don’t think we’re gonna hear stuff like this from beer-bongin’ frat boys:
“Hey Sarah, I’m concerned about you!  I mean, Mr. Jose Cuervo insists that we drink responsibly, and I just don’t think you are!  Can I get you an orange juice instead?”
“Whoa, dude!  Didn’t you listen to that ad?  It said DON’T drive like this!  Come on, pull it back to 55 man!”

* * *

And then there’s the seemingly unrelated issue of corporate compensation.
Forbes magazine lists some of the worst (most unproductive) CEOs and notes their compensation, including:
- Richard M Kovacevich, Wells Fargo, $72.04 million
- Edward E Whitacre Jr , AT&T, $49.01 million
and, brace yourself:
- Barry Diller, IAC/InterActiveCorp, $295.14 million (over half a BILLION dollars in the last 5 years, and ranked as one of the 15 most unproductive CEOs in the entire survey)

Which raises some questions:

I’ve had it with tipping.  The more traveling I do—for business or pleasure—the more I despise the uncertainty, the uncomfortableness, the need to have petty cash on hand.  When will someone—an influential someone—say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH?!

Tip too little, and you risk imperiling the quality of service you receive in the future from that person… plus you may look like an idiot or a miser in front of friends and business acquaintances.

Tip too much, and you look like a chump… and your wallet is made thinner (sometimes much thinner).  And you feel like a moron for being taken advantage of.  Heck, in some countries, you risk really offending someone!

This is one of the many reasons why I love Europe: you typically round up to the nearest euro when you eat out, and that’s that.  Adding to the coolness… for takeout food and pretty much else, what you see on the billboard or pricetag is what you pay.  15EUR?  You pay 15EUR; taxes, fees, etc., all included.

Now, back to the insanity that we endure in the States… Here’s just a sampling of recommended tips from a recent AAA (Automobile Association of America) article:

Please forgive the unsexy title.  I know it would have been far more Diggable if I had titled it “Top 10 Reasons Why Your Opinion Blog Needs Comments.”

Anyway… I can sometimes enjoy link blogs ("101 uses for a paper mache African swallow.  No, European!") without comments.  Or info-blogs (new product released, site will be down next Tuesday, check out these new features).

But blogs in which the author is mostly discussing his or her opinions about stuff, or blogs that cover controversial stuff (news stories, culture, etc.)… damn, those better have comments enabled, or they won’t get my eyeballs for long.

For instance, I’m looking at you, BoingBoing.  Aside from the fact that I have (somewhat) of a life that precludes reading a bazillion entries a day that are talking at me, not with me… when it’s uber-oh-so-important-or-popular sites, I’ll be bound to find the same links in my friends’ blogs anyway.

Yes, I know, comment and trackback spammers are a bitch.  I hope their nether-regions suffer from this and/or they are forced to be locked in a closet with Vanna White night after night after night after night.  But with good software, good plugins (YAY, Akismet!), and a little elbow grease, these cretins are substantially less of a problem.

I have no idea if the rank and file in other companies—say, Yahoo and Microsoft—start their day by scheming how to beat, conquer, overtake, pummel, or even “kill” other companies.  At least at the engineering and product management levels, I both hope and expect not.  I prefer to think that—like the folks I work with at Google—most individuals at other companies are dedicated to just making damn good stuff, and not particularly caring how this affects the competition.

But appallingly often it seems that what happens after stuff gets filtered through marketing, execs, journalists… well, it ain’t pretty.

Apparently, engineers and product managers don’t give a whit about users.  They care about beating the other guy.  Stealing their market share.  Even putting them out of business.  And, though as I’ve noted I’m confident that’s not an accurate depiction of what’s going on in the frontlines, I still need to emphatically call it like I see it: That attitude is wrong, it’s shortsighted, it’s counterproductive, and—more concisely—it’s absolute bullshit.

Let me give a clue to these folks who continue to moronically view—or at least portray—the exciting and complex world of technology as cross between WWF and rollerball:  At the end of the day, only the users matter.

No, I really mean it.  Stockholders are fickle, particularly American stockholders.  Competitors sometimes come and go, sometimes lose focus, sometimes totally drop the ball.  Forming business plans around their actions—whether from opportunity or fear—is just plain stupid.

But users?  They are the ones that actually, well, use your products.  Pay you money.  Tell their friends.  Convince their Fortune 500 IT manager.  They have a *need* to be productive, to learn, to feel secure, to have fun.  And there are a LOT of users… not just in America, but all over the world.  If you have 50% market share for a product, you’re probably going to make a lot of money.  If you have 3% of an sufficiently large market, you’re probably still going to make a lot of money.

There is no need to kill anything or anyone, dammit!!! The pie is so large that a significant number of companies can have a slice (or a niche or whatever) and be perfectly happy, successful, and well-respected. 

Okay, BLADAM friends, apologies for two rants in a row (in a sadly otherwise dry AdamBloggingSeason), but… why does T-mobile—an international company—charge so much for international calling, roaming, and texting?

And Cingular—the only other American mobile phone company I know of that supports international roaming—has rates that are even worse, from what I gather.

Anyway, on T-Mobile, the rates for me to call from the U.S. overseas are more than triple what I’d pay via a discount calling card or even AT&T Callvantage.  Calling from overseas to *anywhere* ranges from about $1 to $4 a minute for incoming OR outgoing calls.

But what *really* gets my hide is T-Mobile’s charge for text messages sent to and from my friends in Europe.  15 cents each for me to send a handful of text characters, and 35 cents each to receive the same.  What the heck?!  I know, I know, this voluminous amount of data has to potentially pass through companies that aren’t T-Mobile, but still!  And no, T-Mobile’s varied texting-bundle plans do *not* include international SMSes.

I’ve played with various SMS options online, but haven’t found any to be reliable for either sending or receiving text messages internationally.  Oh lazyweb, anyone know of good options? (other than calling up T-Mobile and telling them they’re provincial jerks for their usurious rates, which, I admit, doesn’t exactly qualify as a good option)

On a recent business trip, I ended up staying at the Hilton London Islington Hotel, since it was next to the business centre hosting the conference I was attending.

Though by this point I shouldn’t have been shocked, I was nonetheless outraged that a colleague and I paid $57USD for one night of Internet access in our room and also we were expected to pay about $5.50 per minute to call another colleague on his London cellphone from our room phone.  Oh, and adding insult to injury:  we discovered that we had to pay separately for wireless Internet access downstairs; it wasn’t included in the $57 we had just paid.

So this got me to thinking:  Why do hotels charge so much for such ridiculously minimal (and actually low-cost) incidentals and—more critically—how do they get away with it in a free marketplace? And what other industries feature such utterly obnoxious gouging?

WARNING:  Mishmash ahead.
Haven’t yet packed, which means this is the perfect time to procrastinate with a blog entry.  Or something like that.

I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a two-week work-related trip.  See details of that trip, plus enjoy some of my phone, camera, T-Mobile, and other musings below.

As I’ve written in other entries, I’ve become buried in e-mail, and so my “unsubscribe trigger-finger” has become a bit more itchy.

Often times, I do the (unsubscribe) deed with little remorse.  Hasta la vista, baby!

Other times, though, it’s more of a frustrating decision.  Take Vistaprint, for instance.  They offer well-made products such as business cards and address labels at generally reasonable prices.  My customer service experiences have been pretty decent with them, too.  I’d like to get email updates from companies like this, within reason.

But when it comes to VistaPrint’s email list, they’re like that attractive but thoughtless jerk on the subway who talks your ear off about nothing important every five minutes. 

Okay, let me give some more specifics…