Who's Fooling Who?

This morning our San Francisco Chronicle didn't arrive by its appointed time, so I called the Chron's 800 number. I got the usual voicemail with voice recognition and started answering the prompts as instructed. After a few prompts I realized there was a subtle difference about the system. Instead of "dead air" while the system was processing my replies, there was the sound of someone typing on a computer keyboard.

I was vastly amused. Then (per my usual "look on the dark side" view of the world) I started wondering how many people actually believe they are talking to a human being. Or did the human interface guru or gurus determine that (even if customers knew that it was a machine) the sound made the interaction more pleasant? As I said, it made ME grin...

It is P. T. Barnum's "there's a sucker born every minute" or actual useful social engineering?

Yesterday's Minor Victory

A few years ago (31.Aug.2004, if GMail remembers rightly), I switched from AOL Mail to GMail. I still have my AOL account, as that is still the primary email for my wife. I also still monitor my AOL account to see where that email address has gotten to, either through my own actions or someone else’s. After the first few months of using GMail I had cleaned out almost all references to that address, but a couple eluded me. I kept getting email from Dartmouth College, where I got my undergraduate degree. I followed their unsubscribe instructions, only to get an automated response saying that the AOL email address was not in their list.

Yesterday I remembered an incident from a few years ago. I manage the email list (using Google Groups) for the United Parents of San Leandro, the PTA equivalent at our local high school. As an aside, I still do this, even though my kids are years gone from the institution. I do try to be a good citizen. At one point I got a list of email addresses from a former member of United Parents, supposedly of individuals who would like to get our emails. I added all those email addresses to the list. Within a few days I started getting emails from one individual threatening us with a lawsuit for spamming her. I went back and reviewed the list of addresses in the Google Group, but couldn’t find the address that this person was sending from. The threatening emails kept coming.

I then realized that this person could have set up a forwarding mechanism from some other email address. I went back to the list and searched for email addresses that were (in any way) similar to the return address on the threatening emails. I found one that looked somewhat close, and took it off the list.

The threatening emails stopped, and no one else complained about not getting their emails.

Coming back to the more recent past, I began wondering if I had put that AOL address as a secondary (e.g., forwarding) address for any other email address. I realized that Dartmouth did provide an email address for alumni, and went to check that. Voila. There was my old AOL address. I don’t know how long ago I put there, but I’ve used AOL since before 2001. I lost my emails previous to that year, so I don't know how far back they really go. I do, however, remember trying to get onto AOL with a 2400K Baud modem, and that must be further back than 2001. In any case, I put that AOL address into the Dartmouth system many years ago.

I changed the reference from that old AOL address to my (no longer new) GMail address. We’ll see what happens, but I’m assuming (and hoping!) that I will not get any more emails from Dartmouth to that AOL address.

Now the only reference to my AOL address is from Pacific Bell (oops, sorry, now AT&T), and I can't get to their page where I (supposedly) can remove my old address from their list. One of these days I'll debug that problem.

Six vs. Twenty-Four Jams: Too Many Choices

As much as I have fond remembrances of Perl, I'm glad languages like Python are around. As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the reasons I left Perl behind was TMTOWTDI. Note the reference in this Wikipedia article to the Python principle that espouses the opposite philosophy. I've now found more support for the idea that more is not more, and is sometimes less.

I've read a few articles that cited a study where consumers were presented with different numbers of choices for buying jam. Searching for those terms turned up this article. I found it interesting that more choices made more people stop and look, but more choices reduced the number of people that actually bought any jam. I, like many others, like to feel that I know enough to make an informed choice. I also realize, however, that I am just as happy to have someone (who I hope is more knowledgeable than me) winnow down those choices to a set to which I can actually give decent consideration. This also reduces the time required to make a choice.

I know that for Perl, once I figured out how to do something, I actively rejected trying to find other ways to do that same thing. I never felt the need. I also never had a case where performance was an issue (which would have forced me to look at other ways). I also, thankfully, never had a Perl prophet try to convert me to the "Many True Ways" of Perl.

This also makes me think of all the sales vice presidents that have touted their "pipeline," but weren't able to translate that into actual sales. It's the end result that matters (both the quality of that result and how long it took to get there), whether you're on the making, selling or buying side of things.