Doctor's waiting rooms have so much potential for some sort of product to be placed in there to occupy peoples time while they wait for sometimes hours at a time to see a doctor. I went to a dermatologist about 6 months ago that actually had 3 computers setup for people to use while you waited, but I don't see that working in a place where people are actually sick and spreading germs. This was one of those posh dermatologists who really just wants you to come in for some cosmetic work and not cause you have some strange mole on you that looks like its smiling at you. People are often left to sitting there watching a tv on mute, or reading scientific America's latest article on how the polar bears are causing the ice caps to melt (this may not have been the exact subject).
It seems like the Doctor's office is a prime place for some sort of marketing product to be placed, could be something that involves interacting with other patients waiting or just on an individual basis. I see people fidgeting with their blackberrys bored out of their mind and trying to text anyone who will respond.
I think for city environments Doctor offices should implement some sort of buzzer system like restaurants have to let you know that your table is ready. You sign in, get your buzzer, and you can walk around within a 5 block radius , if you aren't too ill, and not be cramped up in a small room reading about polar bears causing global warming. This would reduce the amount of people going up to the poor receptionist asking when they will be seen by the doctor and lead to less anxiety in the waiting room for patients.
Another enhancement that I think ALL Doctor's should get together and sort out are some universal fucking new patient forms. It's so mind numbing having to fill out the same shit anytime you goto a new Dr but often repeating that information multiple times on different forms (How many times do you need my insurance information and home address?) I should be able to go into any Dr office with my universal forms already filled out, hand them to the receptionist and maybe only fill out one form as to why I'm seeing the Dr there today (Not like ANY Dr ever reads this btw). The forms would include all my insurance information, my health history, any allergies, medications I'm on and any other revelant information that every Dr office in the world asks for but uses a different form.
Doctor Office ideas
Sound pollution
I must finally reveal to the world my secret for the solution to help curb NYC sound pollution and hope someone out there somehow finds a way to get this done. The solution... ::drumroll:: is to track taxi cab horn usage and impose fines based on excessive horn use. I know , I know I'm a genius , stop it, please. In my ignorant mind about cars, it seems simple enough to create a device that would activate anytime the horn is pushed, record the datetime, and record the duration of the honk. You can give the taxis some sort of quota for honk time, maybe even impose a point system based on the time of day?
Right now I'd say a majority of the time (just based on my own personal experience) that a taxi uses it's horn, its either excessive or just serves no purpose but to release anger. I know the horn is primarily a safety device to warn of impending danger and get another drivers attention but when I have to hear a taxi driver hold onto his horn for 20 seconds at a time outside my window, it makes me want to setup a sniper rifle and take them out one a time (joking ECHELON). NYC would benefit from some extra cash from all the crazy cabbies and neighborhoods will all be a little more quieter. So someone please do this and give me credit, thanks.
smokeping's whacky source
I'll first start off by saying I think smokeping is a great program and Tobi Oetiker is a great programmer whose contributions to the community have been great and in no way could I ever create MRTG or RRDTool. But.... After downloading the source to smokeping today and trying to configure it to run, I was completely shocked at how poorly it was put together. It's clear that Tobi did not bother with making his code easy to run on any other system but his own with constant absolute paths to his own home directories on his personal machine! His own documentation and install notes are vague at best and I can't figure out why he did not use relative paths at all in the source. While you do have to edit most files anyway to reflect where your RRD perl libraries are and your perl location, I just find it very odd that he left the paths in like that. Even his example configuration file is catered to his machine and his network making it confusing to delete out what is not needed.
BIND zone file management
Anyone out there have any recommendations for managing zone files in BIND? It seems the general consensus is that people just end up using home grown systems. A lot of the web based projects out there are either abadoned or use strictly a database backend which is nice but it adds another layer of complexity, and a failure point. I'd like to be able to switch back and forth between using the management system and being able to do an inline search and replace if need be , on my zone files.
Instruction booklets for furniture
Since moving into the city I've had to assemble a lot of furniture from ikea and other various places. Today while putting together snack tables from bed bath & beyond I believe I discovered my source of why I hate putting this crap together, the instructions.
You see in order to save money on printing costs places like Ikea use picture only instruction manuals so they don't need to translate every booklet into every language where they ship to. Ok, that's fine , and anyway you don't need much verbal explanation when it comes to fitting round pegs into round holes, you just need to know which is the proper hole to place said peg in.
Here is where Ikea, and all those other places fail , they lie to you in the number of steps it takes to assemble. "This drawer assembles in 3 easy steps!", fuck you, step 1 has me placing 10 screws in and involves 5 separate pieces , step 1 should only involve one smooth motion of me inserting one item into another, bam step 1 is over with, now lets take a look at step 2. Got 5 screws? 5 separate steps. Stop with these shortcuts. When you have 453 things happening in step 1 the picture becomes a massive scribble of fail. I have yet to completely assemble anything 100% correctly that involved picture steps , my ikea draw has a piece on backwards and one of my side tables is missing a few screws, but as long as they don't collapse on me without warning, I'll feel mildly content.
Guest Rant - Leaners
What's the deal with the leaner's on the subways? You know who I mean, the dude who can't be bothered to hold on the support poll, instead he has to lean against it. In order to hold on and keep yourself from falling all over the place, you have to wedge your fingers in between the poll and his sweaty back.
I understand sometimes we all don't want to stand on the subway. I also understand that those polls can be nasty and sticky and the last thing you want to do is touch them with you hand. But come on! I am 5'4" tall when lying down flat, I can't hold on to the ceiling or the horizontal support poles that are up high, which leaves the poll you, in all your laziness, are lounging against.
I choose to be as obnoxious as possible when dealing with the leaner. I shove my fingers into the fat of their back as I make a grab for the poll. Then I try to make my hand stick out as much as possible to make it clear that I am holding on here. When I get home, I go boil my hand.
Drug Stocks
What happened today with Schering-Plough (SGP) is exactly why I have never bought a pharmaceutical stock and don't plan to. I've always had this belief that every pharma company was one FDA study away from a 20% drop or worse and I had been meaning to write a blog post about this for a while. Of course on the flip side you could say with these stocks they always have a pop in them if they get approved for a new drug but the drug approval process creates so much volatility in these stocks as the FDA takes a very long time and creates many news stories causing lots of pops and drops on rumors of approval or FDA wanting more information.
I'd like to expand on this post with some more research to support my reasons but I'm moving to NYC tomorrow and I'm exhausted.
CVS, Walgreens, Duane Reade
You are kidnapped and dropped off in one of these stores with all name brands removed. Can you tell which one you are in?
I believe all of these stores are too similar and would never invest in any of them for that reason and also there are just wayyyyy to many of them. If I see a CVS next to a duane reede, my only incentive to goto one over the other is which one is physically closer to me at the given moment. These companies are expanding way to quickly, in the last 3 years within a 5 mile radius of my house there has been a CVS, Walgreens and Duane Reade opening and the CVS that opened there was one already 2 miles away from the next closet CVS.
Also I'd like to add how sick I am of seeing all these stores pop up when I see new retail space free up. They are the least exciting store to see come to your neighborhood, I'd rather watch a starbucks open up across the street from another starbucks than see another one of these cookie cutter "pharmacy" stores.
Jew on Easter
This is an actual conversation with a linksys tech support person I had today while trying to get a download link to upgrade my girlfriends wireless router. Yes yes I know I can put OpenWRT on it but I didn't want to bother....
Fritz S. (29829): Hi, my name is Fritz S. (29829). How may I help you?
justin: I cant get to your downloads paghe
justin: to upgrade my firmware
justin: It asks to pick a region and says url data is still loading and has me hit back
Fritz S. (29829): Can you please confirm the model number of your Linksys product?
justin: wrt54g
justin: ver 2.0
Fritz S. (29829): How about the version number?
justin: 2
Fritz S. (29829): Thank you.
Fritz S. (29829): I will send you instead the link on where you may download the firmware.
justin: ok thank you
Fritz S. (29829): You are very welcome, by the way, Happy Easter!
justin: i'm jewish
Fritz S. (29829): Oh, I am so sorry.
Fritz S. (29829): I am so sorry for the delay.
justin: its ok
Fritz S. (29829): Thanks.
/me goes and celebrates Purim now
subway ads
I think the reason they have ads on subways is it gives you something to stare at when there are crazy people talking to themselves on the train car or homeless people asking for change.
Gum Sucks
Why is it, that I'm left with a taste worst off than the one I started with, after I chew a piece of gum? After the mint flavor wears off, I'm left dehydrated with a crappy taste in my mouth. Am I the only one this happens to?
Should have done this a while ago...
Added to .bash_aliases the following
alias confgrep='egrep -v "^$|^#"'
I find myself too often going through massive config files and only wanting to see what is actually in the config, instead of weeding through a massive amount of whitespace and commented out documentation. I think squid.conf is probably the worst offender of this and the default snmpd.conf has a good amount of spew in it as well. Literally all of squids documentation is located in it's configuration file, while it is somewhat useful, it's usually just means a bigger PITA to find what you are looking for.
Inline Search and Replace
I was going through some old code tonight from college that had my student id(SS #) in it and I wanted to strip out my SS # from it. I run into this situation a lot where I need to do a mass inline search and replace. I hope this command is useful to anyone else
find . -type f -exec sed -i 's/MyIdentity//' {} \;
Optimal Configuration for 3 vs 3 seats: PART 1
THE PROBLEM
eg room to sit comfortably for an hour long train ride. Of course this only works in my favor if no one sits across from me. If they do, I gain nothing from this seat and in fact I'm no better off than I would have been sitting in a seat with my knees in the back of the seat in front of me. This fails in every situation a person sits across from me no matter how old they are. I've calculated the only way this could work out is if the person were to have no legs at all.I had a 5 year old (estimate) sit across from me last week on the train that his legs were too small to go over the edge of the seat and flex his knee, so I was left with him kicking my bony knees all the way to NYC. Petite women think they are special and can fit without a problem, but no matter how skinny you are, you are fat to me in this position. There's the occasional person who thinks "Oh I'll just spread my legs and they can put their legs in between mine or vice versa." First of all lady, I barely do that with my girlfriend and I just met you, and quite frankly you're ugly and you sir, I'm not homophobic but I'm not inviting you into my personal space with myself spread eagle, nor am I entering closer to your jean bulge(is it a penis or not? I'll never know) with my freakishly long legs just so we can have a "little leg room."
There are a couple of reasons I put myself through these risks everyday.
- 75% if the time I'd say everything works out optimally. No one sits across from me because I make it abundantly clear how my massive frame(more of a portrait than a landscape) is mostly made up in my legs(think pencils).
- When people do sit across from me, it usually doesn't occur till Jamaica station, which is only about 20 minutes into Penn, but this annoys me even more as I will explain shortly.
- If everyone follows unwritten commuter code for sitting in this seating arrangement, then 3 people can sit here optimally with maximum comfort level and thwart off all attempts at anymore people sitting. I will explain more in Part 2 when I discuss the optimal seating arrangements.
"Credit Woes"
...Most over used 2 words in newspapers this year. Searching google news for "credit woes" in the last day(Feb 29th 2008) produces 914 hits. Everyday the market is down I see the same couple of words in financial headlines over and over again.
When the market is down we have a mix of the following words.... Investors, Credit Concerns/Woes, Fear, Inflation, Worries, Economic, Fall, Drop, Housing, Outlook, Profit Taking, Dollar Weakening, Write-offs, Pullback. I'm pretty sure if you do some combinatorics, you can come up with every possible news headline for a financial news site when the market is down for the day. Am I the only one who thinks these headlines are beginning to get a bit bland?
New houses/buildings numbers
When you put up a new house or building in the middle of a street, how do you determine what the address is?
Insider Trading
If you trade a stock on insider knowledge and you lose money, do you get your money back when the SEC prosecutes you?
PENN Arbitrage Play
In June of last year, PENN National Gaming Inc. (PENN) agreed to be acquired by a group of investors led by Fortress Investment Group (FIG) for $67 in cash for each share of the stock. At the time of the buyout announcement this was a 31% premium over the previous days stock close at $51.14.
Right after the merger was announced the stock shortly dropped for 7 straight trading days. Normally after a buyout announcement stocks trade pretty close to their buyout price, say within 5% of the actual buyout offer. PENN was only at that range the first day the merger was announced. Now the date of the merger also has a play on how close the stock will actually trade to the buyout price. In the case of PENN the merger wasn't set to complete till 12 - 16 months after the announcement, a bit long for some people's tastes. The terms of the buyout agreement had a clause that said if the merger wasn't complete after 12 months the purchase price would increase by $0.0149 per day after June 15th 2008.
The closing price of PENN today was $47.13. The stock is currently trading below the price it was before the buyout offer with no news that the merger is not set to go through. Fears about the credit situation have obviously been in investors minds so I can understand some people wanting to dump their shares and take a profit. But for the stock to now be trading at a price 42% below the buyout offer is a bit fishy. Right up until 2008, the stock had been hovering around $59 a share for a while showing around a 13-14% discount from the buyout offer of $67 per share. Once the new year passed the stock dropped 9 straight trading days to $50.20 close on Jan 15th. The stock rose the following day on an upgrade from Jefferies & Co. Does someone know something I don't know? During this time period there was no announcement about any concerns for the financing of the merger. Since then the stock rose as high as $56.85 only to drop back down to a low of $45.53 a few trading days ago.
So what is going on with this stock? Are there that big of doubts about the current credit situation that this merger won't go through? FIG already announced on August 22nd that they had secured financing for the deal from Wachovia and Deutsche Bank. According to the agreement the merger could not go through if there was a "material adverse effect" or the financing backed out and paid a pretty fee of $200 million dollars. “ Material Adverse Effect on the Company ” means a material adverse event, change, effect, development, condition or occurrence on or with respect to the business, operations or financial condition of the Company and its Subsidiaries, taken as a whole; provided, however, except (other than in clauses (A), (B), (C), (D), (H), (I) and (J) below) to the extent such changes have a materially disproportionate effect on the Company and its Subsidiaries, taken as a whole, when compared to other companies operating in the same industries in which the Company or its Subsidiaries operate, that Material Adverse Effect on the Company shall not be deemed to include any event, change, effect, development, condition or occurrence to the extent resulting from any one or more of the following: (A) changes in general economic conditions, the securities or financial markets, the gaming industry generally or in any specific jurisdiction or regulatory, legislative or other political conditions or developments; (B) public disclosure of this Agreement or the transactions contemplated hereby, including the identity and/or structure of Parent and its Affiliates; (C) any taking of any action specifically required by this Agreement; (D) changes in Law (other than a change in Law enacted by the State of Illinois, the State of Indiana, the State of West Virginia or the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania prohibiting all gaming activities which are currently permitted therein) or GAAP, or the interpretation thereof; (E) any outbreak or escalation of hostilities or war or any act of terrorism; (F) any weather-related or other force majeure event; (G) any outbreak of illness or other public health-related event; (H) any divestiture or disposition of any assets or operations of the Company or any of its Subsidiaries which, as of the date hereof, the Company and its Subsidiaries have committed to make to satisfy any Gaming Authority or which is disclosed in the Company Disclosure Letter; (I) changes in the share price or trading volume of the Shares or the failure of the Company to meet projections or forecasts (unless due to a circumstance which would separately constitute a Material Adverse Effect on the Company); or (J) any litigation alleging breach of fiduciary duty or other violation of applicable Law relating to this Agreement or the transactions contemplated by this Agreement.
Regulators also could not approve the deal which could cause the buyout to not go through. Although I can't find much information about any news regarding regulatory approval or disapproval or if they are even in talks about it.
The cynic in me is hoping that some big bad institutional investors have been driving the price down so they can accumulate more shares and out of no where we will see this stock begin taking off. But what do I know...
Disclaimer: I own stock in PENN
Lindsay Lohan naked
"Naked Lohan Makes Us Think of Taxes", yes that's an actual title for an article I saw on a website. Seeing Lindsay Lohan's freckled breasts does not make me think of taxes, all it does is remind me of how hard "connect the dot" puzzles can really be...
Rush Hour Escalator Respect
Situation:
You have 5 minutes to make your train. You are about to enter Penn Station and you are presented with the stairs on one side and 2 escalators going down on the other. Which is faster?
Optimal solution:
The left hand side of the escalator , when sane people are riding it, is reserved for those who choose to maximize the escalator by walking down it. You fly down that sucker , lickity split, no shit. Blowing past people on the stairs, you scurry off and make your train.
Reality:
You make the decision to go down the escalator. See a great lane to walk down on the unofficial passing lane of the escalator. Actually it's more like official cause I'm pretty sure that woman's voice coming from the escalator has a little blurb about not being a douche and letting people walk by. Anyway, you hop on that bad boy and a jackass 3 people in front of you decides they are going to talk to their friend Margaret and sip on their frappachino on this enjoyable rush hour evening. Plans are crushed right than and there cause Billy the investment banker(person behind frap drinker) doesn't have the courage to just say "Excuse me" or maybe he just wants to enjoy the free ride. How can you possibly just sit there staring at a whole empty lane in front of you and not think to yourself, "maybe there is some people behind me who want to walk down." It's the equivalent of driving 40 mph,on a 2 way highway ,in the left lane, and not having the common sense to move the fuck over.
Yea escalators were made for "standing", fuck you this is NYC I say! People are pissed here when their Big Mac's don't arrive in 30 seconds and I start getting antsy when the waiter hasn't given me my check within 2 minutes of finishing my last bite.
Miss Business woman , skirt wearing , bike rider
Your vagina is staring at me and it's making me uncomfortable the way it's looking at me. Oh you ride so merrily down 7th avenue starring at all those you pass by on your 1970s retro bicycle. Oh! Sorry I didn't see you there with your vagina hanging out, are you offering an informal invite for coffee? Sorry I don't mean to be so formal with my fly zipped up, here lemme fix that *zipppp*. Now how about that coffee?
Dear Inner Ear Headphone Guy
....I can hear your music. It's really loud. Me and the 4 other people around you aren't staring at you cause we think your fake diamond earrings are kinda cool. Yea that new Timbaland song is kinda catchy but it's 7:45 in the morning and well I'm trying to read the WSJ and the woman to my right was sleeping until you came on the train. Man you are totally feeling the beat right now, huge adrenaline rush I bet. No none of us are going to approach you and tell you your headphones are too loud, we are all far too passive aggressive for that. You must take the hint from these awkwardly long stares we are giving you.
Here's a simple test to prevent you from being a douche bag with your headphones on too loud. Turn your iPod on before you slap those Swarovski crystal laced ear buds into your ears, and listen for how loud it is. Chances are if you can hear the song well from 3 feet from your face, then so can 10 other people around you. Asshole
Useless social networking links
Web 2.0 has brought upon perhaps the silliest design trend to date, that even big media companies are doing. That is the addition of social networking links attached to articles.
To the right is an example from nytimes.com. How many people honestly take the time out to bother clicking those links to 'Digg' the article or share it with their friends on facebook? Nytimes.com is atleast smart about it and saves on valuable screen space by making the list expandable, while some sit there giving you about 8 useless different ways for you to whore their article on your favorite social networking site.
AddThis makes this easier for companies to add this web 2.0 funness to your
blog posts, or news articles through a widget. A widget that offers 36 fucking different social bookmarks. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. You are going to spend more time reading through the choices to share the article than actually reading it. Definitely the first thing I want to do after reading a fine article on foreign policy is share it on mister-wong.com , whatever the fuck that is. I'm sure to show my friends on facebook how sophisticated I am through posting the link in my profile. Out of those 36 links on that widget, I can honestly say I've never heard of half of them, literally, and I'm a pretty big web browser.
I'd bet if you replaced the "Share This" space with an advertisement you'd probably end up earning more for your bang than hoping someone ends up launching your article to the front page of Digg.com
I just died on the inside a little bit when I saw an article on wsj.com with "Digg This" right next to the RSS feed link. WSJ just lost a few points of credibility right there from me. I can't really picture a Pulitzer prize winning article being on the front page, right above 1 Male Who is Feeling Anything but Enhanced. Yes, that article is currently on the front page of digg.