On Service

Goal

To serve quietly

Why

Somewhere, in the dusty recesses of my childhood, whispers the memory of a lesson to give without recognition or expectation.

How

• Give blood
• Donate to food banks
• Register as an organ donor
• Donate to shelters of any kind
• Register for bone marrow donation
• Be consistent in your service throughout the year

A lot of us, making small differences, can make an enormous difference.

Peace,

Cary

Accountabliity and the EU, Ireland, and Apple, et al

Headline

The headline story concerns the EU determining that one of its member states entered into an agreement with a firm which resulted in a favorable tax opportunity for the firm.

Details

Interesting Details

For my purposes, there are some interesting details I've cherry-picked:

• the execution date of the agreement, 1991 and 2007
• the ruling entity, EU Commisison
• the "guilty" parties: Ireland and Apple
• the EU-requested flow of cash:  Apple to pay Ireland $13B Euro

The Reduction

After my admitted cherry-picking, here's what the story boils down to: After a three-year investigation, the EU doesn't like a twenty-five year old agreement. 

Its ruling acts only to punish a business for an action committed by a member of the EU -- as I cannot consider being told to collect $13B Euro a punishment, by any reach of the imagination.

That's right: A country executes an illegal incentive agreement and as punishment is required to collect (benefit financially) from the other party to the agreement.

Imagine that, twenty-five years ago, your child trades his set of Rookie Cards for a bag of Haribo Gummy Bears. At the time, you either didn't notice or didn't care to notice. Three years ago, you start looking around the house - now that you're empty-nesters - and remember that box of Rookie Cards. After asking around for a couple of years, the story comes to the surface. You decide it wasn't fair (had you known, you never would have permitted the trade) and demand the situation be rectified. You're not upset with your kid, though you give him a stern lecture on the value of things. You're upset with the neighborhood kid who had an extra bag of Gummy Bears. Congratulations, you're a helicopter parent.

The EU Commission is similar to that helicopter parent; you know, the one externally committed to  ensuring everyone plays by the rules, while steadfastly refusing to hold their own children accountable for their actions. 

Accountability

If the EU has a problem with Ireland's tax incentives, then the EU has a problem with Ireland. Want to rectify this? Hold Ireland accountable for $13B Euro it should have collected, but didn't. 

Holding firms accountable for twenty-five years of sweetheart deals offered by member countries does not provide any incentive to EU countries to play by the rules.  In fact, it appears EU countries who now understand how this game is played can offer all of the incentives they want, then give a wink and a nod to the EU Commission when they want to collect.

Caveats

Admittedly, I have over-simplified (but not mis-represented) the treatment of this issue to stay at a relatively high-level. I'm much more interested in the forest, than the individual trees. There are likely some dense pockets in this forest which are home to integrity, accountability, fairness, and honesty. There are, no doubt, a lot of good people involved in this investigation and ruling -- people who hold their professional behavior in high regard. I'm not discounting any of their work.

However, I am concerned about an institution whose only avenue for correcting its transgresses does not in fact address the transgressor.

Disclaimers and Full Disclosure

1. I'm not a lawyer. You're welcome.
2. I'm not an International Business Expert.
3. We own a position in Apple, but not enough to get me on the Board of Directors.

Dear PHP5

Spent the better part of week looking into why a linked list was causing a segmentation fault.

I'm thinking its a memory issue as I was trying to create list with 30833 objects. But the behavior was odd. I'd actually get a partial web page back from apache, ...which meant the list completed initialization.

I managed to drive memory consumption from 17M to 30M for the same linked list of objects. One system had no memory constraint enforced on php, while the other limited php to 128M. Not a memory problem.

Further, the entire set of 30833 records obtained from a mysql query were easily blown into an array and accessed without issue. Not an array problem.

Turns out there's some practical limit to the number of objects php can manage during script shutdown (and garbage collection?).  I managed to break it at 22768 objects in the linked list on two different systems. There were likely also a handful of additional objects I created, but the segfault occurred when the linked list hit 22768 objects.

...and then I found the discussion on the web that referenced a fellow who had nested the creation of 40000 objects and experienced the same behavior. Further, one of the comments referenced a PHP bug report that had been marked 'Wont Fix' because 'if it hurts when you do that, you shouldn't do that.'

While I went in search of that bug report, I did not find it.

However, I did place a protective limit on the number of objects that will be added to the linked list. And, I added a pagination capability to the sql query. Now, I got to thinking, ...why cant PHP add a limit to the number of objects its willing to create and throw an exception when things begin to get dicey? Hey, I'd prefer learning a week ago that I had simply created too many objects...

#smh

Dear Synaptics

Suggestion: Trapezoidal Areas for Laptop Touch Pads

The benefit of this modification: Superior User Experience 

Eliminate accidental touches in the upper corners on each side of the pad by the palms of the hand closest to the thumb by reducing the sensitive areas at the top of the touch pad. Use a trapezoidal shape with the short side located nearest the keyboard.

The corners eliminated by the new shape have led to limitless frustration while typing. Even though the 'disable while typing' setting is activated, I regularly end up with relocated text -- or worse, no text at all -- after accidentally clicking the focus to a new, random area of the screen.

Barring a re-design, perhaps some stylish, vinyl-cling overlays with major NCAA or pro-league affinity designs could be offered.

Thanks,

CWR

99 Days of Freedom

While I get the feeling that 99 Days of Freedom was started as a protest against Facebook's unannounced A/B mood-ring testing, I also thought it was an interesting exercise. To "remove myself" from social media for a period.

I started by logging out. And removing the bookmarks on my browser's toolbar.

And noticed there were a lot of thoughts spontaneously forming with no means of escape. Usually, I choose a forum which seems "appropriate" and dump them.

...just deleted some of those items... seems to violate the spirit of my social media-free lifestyle. Clearly, I need to extend the no-fly zone to cover blogging.

Perhaps there should be an anti-social media site, called /dev/null.

Dear Home Depot

Customer Service Ideas

Suggestion: Expand Role of Garden Centers

Help your Garden Centers become the center of activity for the native plant/natural habitat movement. In the same way you've got the construction side of do-it-yourself mastered, start looking at the gardening equivalent: Go Native & Sustainable

• Develop local recipes to assist clients who want to create sustainable, native gardens and habitats. Mine (north Texas) is: full-sun, drought tolerant, zone 7, alkaline soil loving plants. 
• Combine that with appropriate irrigation strategies. Educate consumers on the benefits of buried drip irrigation vs above ground, highly-evaporative irrigation, ....where appropriate.
• Consider offering rain barrels and installation services where your customers are experiencing drought
• Invite regional growers of natives to offer publications and materials to your clients. They mostly sell wholesale only, so going around your Garden Centers is impractical.
• Use your grounds, where possible, to plant what natives you sell .
• This does not mean making an exclusive decision regarding the sale of natural, organic, and chemical plant and pest control.

Suggestion: Step Up Service for Landscapers

Replicate for landscapers the level of service and attention you provide to construction contractors. Give them a separate, distinct place in the store to conduct business that's friendly for buying and loading.

Dear Goodyear

Customer Service / Product Ideas

Suggestion: Embrace B2C

Would really like to have an online account with you to:

• ...view the complete history of the work you've performed on my vehicle(s)
• ...view the recommended work on my vehicle(s) and a current quote
• ...schedule the recommended work on my vehicle(s)
• ...arrange a tow to your shop
• ...have the opportunity to schedule additional valet services (for additional charges) such as detailing and pickup/dropoff while you have the car anyway

mobile, tablet and desktop friendly over the web - no apps.

Suggestion: Enhance Retail Sales

Think of this as the convenience store concept. Behind the counter, add make-model-agnostic incidentals at premium prices. Generic brands until prove-in, then consider branding.

• Armor All Wipes
• Ice Scrapers
• Tissues

Suggestion: Encourage Early-Day Traffic

Consider serving premium coffee to your early morning drop offs to encourage early bookings for the day and a full set of garages all day long. When the premium coffee is gone, serve the regular stuff.