UNLIKE FACEBOOK

I am appalled that the free service that I am in no way obligated to use, keeps making changes that inconvenience me.

That statement is really kinda funny if you think about it, but that's what it's come to at these internet social meeting places these days. Facebook has made the guy who created it, Mark Zuckerberg, one of the richest guys in his 20's in this quadrant of the Milky Way. And he did it by just taking something that really already existed, a virtual place for people to gather. There's been chatrooms and message boards or forums for years where people could go and share whatever their heart's desired. Invite who you want to, talk about whatever you want to. There was even a social network similar to Facebook that already existed, MySpace. MySpace still exists, as do chatrooms and message boards, but Facebook came along and the masses just started flocking to it.

With over 800 million users, that's about 11.5% of the population of the planet, advertisers were foaming at the mouth with a way to reach a whole lot of potential customers like never before. And with mega-advertising reaching to a mega-audience, the money comes rolling in. And truthfully, there's nothing wrong with that. That's capitalism baby! With all the advertising putting all those gozillions of dollars into Zuckerberg's wallet, room has to be made to show that advertising.

I've been on Facebook about a year and a half, 2 years maybe, and in that short time, there have already been several changes made. And like most things in the world these days, change doesn't always mean for the better. In the short time I've been on, the more personalized page that I used to have has become much less personal in order to fit the advertising in.

The latest change though, the one that has users currently flooding "newsfeeds" of how they're upset with the change, is another example of if it's not broke, don't fix it. I think back to the first sentence in this blog entry, and though true, there's no gun to my head to use this service, I do believe that if you offer a service, get people buying into and liking it, so much so that you're an overnight billionaire, then you start making changes that take away from why people use that service and brought everyone there in the first place, then you might be starting your own downfall. Of course if you're a billionaire I don't know how much that really matters to you.

Facebook is a neat little idea. I've been a message board user talking about a local sports teams since the late '90's, and all Facebook really is the way I see it, is your own personal message board. And I've seen message boards make changes that the members didn't appreciate and abandoned those sites and moved elsewhere. With the way the world works these days, the next new thing is right around the corner (see Twitter), and if Facebook makes changes that their users don't like, or that make it difficult to navigate and keep up with, those users will drop off. And when that happens, the advertisement dollar starts to shrink.

So you see, Facebook, Mr. Zuckerberg, even though it's a free service to nearly a billion people that no one is forcing those nearly billion users to use, it's because of those nearly billion people that you have all those billions under your mattress.

So seriously, stop inconveniencing me by changing my free service that no one is making me use. I'm tired of all the status changes showing up in my newsfeed that I don't know how to navigate through any more.

CHANGIN' 1960

This is my 3rd enrty into the category entitled "New and Improved (Not)". This category exists mainly because people ignore the old adage 'if it's not broke, don't fix it'. People are so obsessed with change that it's mainly done now just for the sake of change instead of really trying to improve on something. For example, I had an old, old, really old cell phone that works better than the one I have now. Granted, the one I have now is pretty antiquated, but still. It just seems that in the rush to be the first to have the newest thing out that people get away from the things that worked really well to make people get it in the first place. Yeah, your phone may take a better, clearer picture now, but there's some other feature or features, that you really liked and used a lot, that have to be left off. Easy to see how that is with technology, but what about something like redoing a road?

One of the busiest and better known roads in the greater Houston area is Farm-to-Market road 1960. Better known as FM 1960 or simply 1960. Actually, since 1995 a portion of this road between Interstate 45 and U.S. 290 actually carries the designation of Urban Road 1960. But this is only recognized by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) as all of the signage along this road still carries the FM designation and I've never heard anyone refer to it as UR 1960. Sounds like a text message. UR 1960 CU L8R BFF

The busiest part of this road, though the folks in Atascocita may have something to say about it, is the aforementioned stretch between I-45 and 290. And even more so between I-45 and state highway 249. This is the section that has undergone some changes recently. Since the last major construction on this road, whenever that was, 1960 was made into a 7 lane road (3 lanes in each direction with a center left turn lane). What has been done recently is that the center left turn lane down this entire stretch of road has been replaced with a median. You can still turn left but only at designated areas.

I don't know what the thinking was behind this. Maybe there were too many accidents happening with people being able to cross the street anywhere. I don't know. What I do know is that when traffic is backed up and people need to turn left, they can get into this lane at any point and be out of the way of the flow of traffic on the main lanes. Guess what? Not any more. Now you have to go to where the median gives way to a left turn lane. And these lanes are nowhere near long enough to get all of the left turning traffic out of the main lanes. So now the left, inside lane of traffic is at a standstill with people waiting to get into the left turn lane and the backups and traffic has just been made worse.

When traffic isn't as bad it still has been made worse. Used to, you'd get into the left turn lane at any point to turn left into a business. You now have to find a designated left turn lane, which means you usually have to pass the business you're trying to get to because the median doesn't allow you to cross where you want, then basically make an illegal u-turn to come back to where you wanted to go. Plus these designated left turn lanes are usually at a stop light. So when there's absolutely no traffic coming, you have to sit there and sit there and wait for the light to turn green when you used to be able to zip on across when the coast was clear. Geez! Can they at least make the lights turn green where you yield on green so you can go when there's no one coming? No, you wait and wait and wait until it turns green, then you can go.

This whole idea, whoever came up with it, came straight from someone's head being planted firmly up their derriere. No doubt about it. And this is not the only change in store for this famous road. There are plans to change the name of it. No, they're not still going with the UR crap, in which tremendous public outcry back then is probably the reason they never went with UR. Now they're actually planning on changing the name of FM 1960 to Cypress Creek Parkway. Good luck with that.

AUTOMATION - WHO NEEDS PEOPLE?

With the way I dog people in this blog, this entry is going to be a little tricky for me. I mean, all people are not complete and utter morons, but like weeds, there's enough sprouting up these days to give people a bad name. So the thought of replacing a person with something not quite so human, to do the same job, seems like it would be right up my alley. Or is it?

I'm talking about automation. I'm not sure where it started but most of us likely got our first taste of it over the phone. And it may have started with the phone company itself. You would call the phone company with some problem you were having about your service, your bill, etc. and you would get this automated voice asking you to press 1 for this problem, 2 for that problem and so on. Today, I don't know if there's a service oriented company out there that doesn't have this automation set-up. Phone company, cable/satellite company, electric company, internet service provider, the local pizza joint, your bookie, everybody's using it.

Other than the fact that this probably takes a job away from somebody, the idea that I don't have to engage with some idiot that doesn't have a clue, and get my issue resolved, is an intriguing idea. I mean, it was probably some bozo doing the job that just didn't care that brought about this automation service to begin with. One problem though. After going through the whole automation sequence, pressing all the buttons to enter all the information, you still end up needing to talk to a live person after all.

Then when you get this live person, this live person proceeds asking you the same questions you just spent 15 minutes entering answers to with the automated piece of crap that was never able to help you in the first place. Then there's the fact that since the company you're dealing with no longer has a customer service department because they have automation now, if for some strange, wacko reason that automation doesn't solve your problem and you have to talk to someone live, they outsource that work because it's cheaper than carrying a customer service staff. And that would be fine if they didn't outsource this work to a country on the other side of the planet, so now you can't understand anything this live person is saying to you and you're not much better off.

When this person can't fix your problem, you get transferred to the "tech" department. Finally, someone who speaks English (CLEARLY). You tell this guy your problem and he says, "I don't handle that. Why did they transfer you to me?" I don't know, maybe something got lost in the freaking translation!!!!! Now, what I call the "transfer tag" game starts. This is where no one seems to be able to fix your problem, or no one seems to care about fixing it, and you get transferred from department to department. It's like they're playing a game of tag. NOT IT, NOT IT! And on to the next.

Automation continues to grow though. You don't even need a staff of people working at a video store any more if you want to rent a movie. Now you have these vending machines (like Redbox) that will rent you a movie without ever having to talk to a person. Never mind that these things have probably put places like Hollywood Video out of business along with all those lost jobs. Automation has even taken over at paid public parking lots where you used to pull into the lot, roll your window down, pay the guy waiving you in, he hands you a receipt you put on your dash, and you park and go attend your sporting event or concert or what have you. In downtown Houston, when going to an Astros baseball game at Minute Maid Park, this is the way it has always worked......until yesterday.

Because the Astros play this season has been less than stellar, I haven't been inclined to attend as many games as I usually do, so yesterday was the first I was exposed to this parking automation. There's still a guy with a flag waiving for people to come into his lot. A $5 lot. So I pull in, roll down my window to pay my way in, like I've done for the last 10 years. The guy comes to the window and tells me to park and then pay the machine in the center of the lot. Then take the receipt it gives you and put it on your dash. I say, "fine, whatever." I start to proceed, then stop and called him back to my car to ask him about exact change since I only had a ten spot. He said if I didn't have exact change, I could use my credit or debit card. Oh joy!

I was already in a hurry because I was meeting some people so I go ahead and pull in and head over to the machine. I insert my card and wait. Sure enough, machine says that it can not read my card. So I do it a second time, making double sure I'm doing everything right. Still can't read my card. So I call flag boy over, he takes my card and tries it, no deal. He gets on a phone to, I assume, call his supervisor, and I also assume he didn't get an automated service since he began talking right away. They came to the conclusion that I should walk about a block and a half over to the other machine and try that one. Luckily I found some people who had change for a ten.

Now, I want to know the purpose of this machine. It wasn't to replace the guy collecting money because there's still a guy there waiving a flag. I guess it's a good idea to not have a guy collecting all that money and having it on him in downtown Houston, but man, if the machines don't work, you're screwed. With a person, no matter how much of a dufus they might be, you can talk to them, tell them the problem and maybe find a solution. Not always, but most of the time you can. With a non-human, well, you can't state your case to a machine in the middle of a parking lot and expect to get anywhere with it. Plus people look at you funny if you do.

So in the battle of People vs. Automation, well, as the World Cup comes to a close, I guess I'll have to call it a draw......for now.

I DIG DITCHES

This has probably happened to you at least once. It's raining. You're driving along when all of a sudden....SWOOOSH!!!!.....you hit a big pool of water in your lane, water goes flying everywhere including all over your windshield. You can't see a thing as your car pulls hard to the right, your heartbeat is through the roof as the windshield wipers struggle to clear the massive amounts of water. You don't know if you're hydroplaning or about to spin out of control so you don't want to slam on the brakes. Then you realize you're driving a moving vehicle blind as a bat so you do tap the brakes. Finally the water clears away so you can see, you're through the lake in the middle of the road, your heart comes back down from out of your throat and all is good again......until you come up on the next pool of water.

I am here to tell you right now that what I just described would not have happened had you been on a street that had ditches. Some dweeb long ago convinced the powers that be that ditches are the devil, and ever since motorists have had hell driving when it rains. Somebody thought they had a genius idea to eliminate the ditch and replace it with the underground storm drain sewer system you see just about everywhere any more. And every where you see a street that has this set up, you will also see standing water on the road EVERY TIME it rains. Guaranteed!!

I suppose the thinking was that "they" wanted to eliminate cars going off the road and into a ditch, or that the ditch was just an eyesore still having water in it several days after a rain. OK, yeah, that's a nice idea but unfortunately that's where the thinking stopped. When they build these roads to put these storm sewers in place, the first thing they do is lower the road. Next, they block the road in with a curb that runs along the right side of the road in each direction where every 50 yards or so is a drain. When it rains, the water collects at this curb and runs along it until it reaches a drain where it goes into the sewer buried underground. The problem is, if there's a significant amount of rain, the water collects faster than it can travel along the curb to the drain, and you now have a stream of water covering a portion of the road. It doesn't take much from this point to have the entire lane covered by a pool of water.

Now you've got people slamming into this water on the road, losing control and having accidents, or trying to avoid it at the last second and causing an accident by swerving into another lane, or you have major traffic jams because everybody is forced to bottleneck into one lane or the entire road is covered with water and people are trying to inch their way through it, provided the water is not up to their hoods. Some morons will still try, but that's another story.

This does not happen on a road with ditches because on a road with ditches there is no curb keeping the water from clearing the road. The water doesn't collect, it rolls freely off the road into the ditch, no slowdowns, no standing water, no impassable streets, none of that silly nonsense.

Now I suppose if it rains hard enough and long enough, it will flood anywhere. Maybe, but I lived in a neighborhood for 17 years that had ditches and I do not recall the street I lived on ever having standing water on it. EVER! Rain for days, hurricanes, it didn't matter. The ditches would get full and our yards would sometimes fill up with water, but there was never any water on the street.

New neighborhoods these days are not only being built with the storm drain/curb disaster, but a lot have the added problem of sloped yards. So not only does the water roll to the curb off the street, but the water from the yard rolls down to the street as well and these drains just can't handle it fast enough. Now you can't get in nor out of your neighborhood without a Jetski because the streets are now rivers. The storm drain sewer replacing ditches idea was a complete fail. Obviously the brain child of some typical brain dead bureaucrat who had a financial stake in it somehow. That's the only reason I can think of as to why such a stupid plan would take over the world. And because of it, traffic is a nightmare any time it rains because roads are covered with water.

I have seen evidence however, of somebody putting just a little more thought into it. There's still not quite a ditch, certainly not a deep ditch, but there is a lower than the road portion of grass where a ditch would run. Underneath, the storm sewer has been put in place but there is no curb blocking the water and the drains are actually where the ditch would be. The water is allowed to roll off the road unobstructed, and into the grass on the side of the road, and into the drains which drop into the sewer below. No water collects on the road.

A great example of this if you're in the Houston area is Louetta road, west of I-45. I was driving down this road during a recent heavy rain event. This road, Louetta, has both types of drainage systems. At highway 249, Louetta has the curb/sewer set up, and water was all over the road and traffic was at a standstill trying to get through it. The further east you travel, towards I-45, it switches to the NO curb/drain in the ditch type set up and there was absolutely NO standing pools of water on the road from that point on and traffic moved along nicely considering it was pouring down rain. So somebody finally got some sense about this and at least made it where it does work.

Still though, the curbed storm sewers continue to be put in anywhere there's a new neighborhood being built or where a road is being redone, and the flooding continues to get worse, along with the traffic, and people can't understand why a completely brand new road floods every time it rains. Well, it's because somebody took away the ditch. That's where the water is supposed to be....with no ditch, the water is on the road. Genius!

Head, proctologist....you get the picture.