Yearly Archives: 2011

Proper Modulation

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Now it is time to write about Proper Modulation.

I adore the radio.

I do. I think radio is one of the most interesting things in the world. More interesting than television. I think if I were interested at this point in my life in doing something I loved for a living—a move which, I have found more often then not tends to make you HATE that thing and leaves a poopy taste on it for the rest of your life, so you may be better off anyway doing something for a living you can merely tolerate—one of the things on that short list would be to be in radio somehow.

Fortunately, thanks to the Internet, I get to pretend.

I’ve been a Live365 customer for a few years now. And it’s an okay way for a schmo like me to run a radio station. But it has so many limitations. You have to use their proprietary software to update. Listeners, I’ve found, find it frustrating because they need an account to listen. They recently changed their Web site, and the new version is awful. They have yet to update the iPhone app for multi-tasking. And they generally suck.

So the other day I’m looking for something else. And I find Loudcaster.

You can update using FTP. Anyone can listen just by browsing to the site. You can get listed in Shoutcast without lifting a finger. Which means on iPhone you can use Tunemark.

So. My station is called Proper Modulation, which is of course an homage to the King of All Media. G’w’on over and listen. I’m having a blast.

Life is a Series of Dogs Eating Squirrels

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I wonder how funny that must have looked.

I mean, if you had been driving by our house you would have seen me dump all the mail all over the driveway as I attempted to wrestle with the mail, the rolling trash bin, and the two recycling buckets to bring them in from the street and keep walking as if I still had everything completely under control, leaving a pile of envelopes scattered in the driveway like a boat’s wake, I think you probably would have laughed.

It’s not the most stupid thing I’ve ever done. And, by the way, I think that when a person types that sentence, he should be allowed to write “it’s not the mostest stupidest thing I ever done,” just for contextual impact. But. I thought, as I was walking back to the end of the driveway to retrieve the mail, I was trying to save time, and I ended up wasting more time.

How often is life like that? How often do shortcuts bite our asses?

I am better in this regard than I was when I was 20. Am better at a lot of stuff than I was when I was 20. Am better at waiting. Am better at living here and now. Am better at counting blessings (look…see…there goes one now…). Am seeing for real and true how much youth is wasted on the young. I know of some people in my high school class who apparently knew then what I know now. Not many of them though.

Meanwhile: We are on beast lockdown here at the farm.

We’re not sure if the dog attacked the squirrel and rendered him stunned or if the dog found him that way. We’re liking to think the latter. Probably was. From the way the dog set the squirrel down and sat to look at it, I reckon he probably just found the thing that way. Regardless, it was clear the mongrel didn’t know what to do with it. Now if the little one had gotten to said rodent, that would have been a different story. That’s how it tends to work. The big dumb one finds the wilderness toys, and the little one, he steals it from the big one and proceeds to do his part for entropy.

Actually, I’m told that’s probably not how it happened. I’m told that, indeed, what probably happened is that the little one caught the squirrel unawares and disabled him, and that the big one then played through. I will still continue to imagine that the poor thing had some sort of diving accident and that the beasts simply found him that way.

So here we are this afternoon on my Saturday. I know. It’s Friday. But Career #7 requires that I work some funky hours. Not that I’m complaining. It’s the best day of the week and I’m writing this in the living room. Most people are at this moment wishing the clock would move more quickly. And I’m here with Charlie the Persistent Pain in the Ass Dog. Whine whine whine. Please let me out to eat the squirrel corpse. Please please please can I go eat the squirrel corpse. Please, sir? Please? There is carrion out there, and I would very much like to help myself to it. Please? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE? Oh good grief, here he goes again.

I reckon there’s not much to take from this little episode except maybe that, you know. Sometimes you’re the dog. Sometimes you’re the squirrel.

With A Shiver In My Bones

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It’s a strange world when the predicted snowpocalypse under-delivers and people are all like WTF, snow? WTF? But that’s Rochester, New York. We were expecting a foot. We got four inches. School was canceled anyway. And everyone’s all shaking their fists at the sky goin’ “Zat all you got? Huh? You ain’t so bad! C’mon!”

I negotiated the snow like a champ. I should. I learned how to drive in Kent, Ohio. If you don’t know how to drive in it there you will spend a significant amount of your driving life upside down in a ditch. Funny. A few years ago when I was leaving here for there, following a fierce all-night snowstorm, I saw this dude who had overturned his Jeep. He was standing beside his car with the most befuddled look on his face. I mean, he had managed to leave the vehicle. But it was upside-down. It was beautiful.

I was asked before the storm hit (by my dear Mom) if we had plenty of provisions for the storm. Mom. This house has a chest freezer full of deer meat and a bottle of bourbon. What else could we need?

Anyway. So here’s the article I’m crowing about this morning:

According to research firm Gartner, 65 percent of self-service interactions currently escalate beyond the Web to an agent. In other words, a customer has come to your website and is unable to complete his or her transaction, and thus needs to call your organization for help.

At my previous job, I’d estimate the rate was more like 85 percent. Or worse. And this was true of pretty much every interactive portal we provided—the membership directory, the online store, the authentication. Everything. I considered it my primary professional mission to solve this problem. Had a little trouble getting the rest of the place on board with that, unfortunately. But, I really appreciated this blog post because it does an excellent job at identifying the problem, at providing it a nomenclature. The “interaction escalates beyond the Web to an agent.” I like that.

Interactive pages that require that the user make a follow-up phone call = epic fail. Such pages should work flawlessly and provide a seamless customer service experience or said organization should throw away that system with the coffee grounds and start over, and it should make said renewal its top priority.