Tag: representative

The Move: Tightening Loose Ends

I suspect Wachovia, along with all the other companies who put you through voice mail hell, are a little freer in spending your time than theirs!

I love Helaine and depend on her amazing organizational skill. In our little family if it’s done on time (or sooner) she’s involved! That’s one reason Stef’s upcoming move is so stressful to Helaine (besides the obvious). She wants the transition to be seamless and is working hard to assure it.

There are so many loose ends that need to be tied. This may be H’s wheelhouse, but it’s mind boggling to me! In this forest she sees each individual tree.

I called Wachovia to make some changes on Stef’s credit card. I was the original co-applicant and, as I’ve been told, will remain on the card. Now the address is changed.

Oh–speaking of which, if Wachovia has an option on its phone tree to allow you to speak to a real person I didn’t hear it. About five minutes into listening to my options I just blurted “agent,” which the system didn’t understand, then “representative” which it did.

The young sounding, American accented CSR was friendly and competent. Yes, Wachovia, that was both pleasant and a surprise. Shouldn’t it not be a surprise?

There are too many canned messages on the way to getting service. I suspect Wachovia, along with all the other companies who put you through voice mail hell, are a little freer in spending your time than theirs!

Nine of Stef’s boxes have arrived in the San Fernando Valley. One is still on its way as is her car. Hopefully they’re there before we are.

There’s always some unanticipated fly in the ointment, but at the moment Helaine’s attention to detail is paying off.

In a few days we switch to relying on my muscle. We’re in deep trouble.

Every Part Of The Danny Forecast Relies On Guesswork

When the initialization is bad everything that follows it is suspect. Take the forecast with a healthy grain of salt.

It’s a little early for the late guidance on Danny, but not too early to tell you my worry. All day long the Hurricane Center has had trouble finding the center of the storm. Here’s what they said at 11:00 AM.

THE EXPOSED LOW-LEVEL CENTER HAS BEEN MOVING ALMOST DUE WESTWARD FOR THE PAST FEW HOURS. IT IS UNCLEAR IF THIS IS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ACTUAL MOTION OF DANNY OR A SHORT-TERM TREND. SO…THE INITIAL MOTION IS AN UNCERTAIN 310/11.

They’re saying it’s moving west, but they’re officially marking it as northwest. Got it so far?

The latest technical discussion just hit a few minutes ago.

THE CENTER MEANDERED ABOUT DURING THE DAY…BUT LAST-LIGHT VISIBLE IMAGERY AND DATA FROM THE AIRCRAFT INDICATED THAT A NORTH TO NORTH-NORTHWESTWARD MOTION BEGAN SEVERAL HOURS AGO. HOWEVER…THE CENTER IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO DISCERN ON RECENT INFRARED IMAGES. THE INITIAL MOTION IS AN UNCERTAIN 330/7.

When the initialization is bad everything that follows it is suspect. Take the forecast with a healthy grain of salt.

The only good news is Danny continues to be a wimp. It wouldn’t take much to knock him out… nor much for him to rapidly intensify.

Earlier this evening my friend Bob, a professor of meteorology and tropical weather expert said, “I think it either remains a TS or becomes cat 2/3. I don’t think there is an in between.”

He’s probably right, but that’s not much help either!

An Insurance Claim–Like Pulling Teeth

UHC–any time anyone says anything against a single payer government run health insurance system I will fondly remember this 20 minutes I’ll never get back.

I’d like to thank United Health Care for today’s blog entry. Who knew calling an insurance company could be such a monumental event.

It all started with the automated voice prompt system. Call me crazy, but the automated voice tried to sound too friendly and it upset me. I know why it’s there. When the decision was made to put it in my convenience was down at the bottom of the list–if it was in the list at all.

Finally, after making a mistake in a date and not knowing how to undo it I asked for a representative. I answered a few questions and was transferred to another agent. She was in the “rapid resolution” department. Please. Spare me.

We went through her list of questions and when everything was done she rattled off a sentence that had lots of words but no practical meaning.

“Is my claim approved,” I asked? That seemed like a good question.

She rephrased my question to remove what I wanted to know and then answered again. It was an answer without the information I wanted. I asked again and again. Each time she rephrased what I was saying so she could answer a different, easier question. That’s a hell of a skill. Are they trained to do that?

After three or four of these little episodes I tightly rephrased my question and she fessed up… I think. It looks like I’m approved.

Why is this like pulling teeth? UHC–any time anyone says anything against a single payer government run health insurance system I will fondly remember this 20 minutes with you I’ll never get back. I know the whole idea is to make it inconvenient enough some people will give up and go away and the money will stay in your pocket.

How could a government plan be worse than yours?

Make Politics Less Like The Prom

New rule: If a politician is speaking from a podium he/she may thank no more than two people.

obama-queen.jpgI just watched President and Mrs. Obama walk into Buckingham Palace for an audience with the Queen. With all due respect your highness, waste of time.

The older I get and the more I see of our complex world the more I realize we spend much-too-much time on pomp and circumstance. Too much effort is spent by governmental leaders doing meaningless crap.

New rule: If a politician is speaking from a podium he/she may thank no more than two people. Even the Oscars have figured out we don’t need to/want to all those damn names. The person running the PA should have some ‘play-off’ music cued up. We all know it’s just butt kissing anyway.

Unless someone convinces me otherwise we can do without military bands too. As a trade-off U-2 and Bruce Springsteen will be disarmed. Let’s throw in Ted Nugent for good measure.

I feel this way about inaugural balls and political conventions too. I feel this way about most meetings out of politics. Many people feel process equals progress–it does not. My experience with meetings has not made me a believer.

In the past I have daydreamed of being a congressman (for some reason it’s Representative Fox, not Senator Fox). My district’s seat is safely held by the well loved Rosa DeLauro, so this is just a daydream–no more. Every time I think about it I also think about all the traditions which are kept that a pol must endure. Waste of time. My blood boils.

Who are these dozens on minions standing behind Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi when they speak (or John Boehner and his posse). Don’t they have something better to do?

Political life needs to be less like the prom.

Photos Of The Folks I Work With

My co-workers were mostly in good spirits tonight. Few didn’t want their pictures taken. Many of those who did mugged as if they’d never seen a camera.

I brought “Clicky” to work today. For a variety of reasons it was a good day to bring a camera.

First, the ‘floor people’ were ripping out a few old walls. These were put in when we used to produce the Sally Jessy Raphael Show!

Behind the remnants of that set is a cinder block wall which was painted in a farm/computer/flag motif one summer around 20 years ago. Our general manager at the time made a deal with ABC to produce a handful of pilots for post-Nightline programming. None made it, but Joy Behar, Richard Belzer, Curtis Sliwa, Bobby Rivers and a host of others took turns trying something new in New Haven. That was a very cool summer.

Some of the people that briefly passed through that summer are surely ‘names’ now. I wish I knew which ones.

My co-workers were mostly in good spirits tonight. Few didn’t want their pictures taken. Many of those who did mugged as if they’d never seen a camera.

It was all very unusual for me since I seldom shoot people! I even used my Speedlight, mounted on top of the camera with an old alcohol bottle over it to provide some diffusion.

What’s posted is a representative sample. I took a lot of pictures. I love digital photography.

Valuing News By The Pound

The struggling company has looked at the column inches of news produced by each reporter, and by each paper’s news staff. Finding wide variation, they said, they have concluded that it could do without a large number of news employees and not lose much content.

As hard as economic times are for TV, they’re worse for newspapers and other print outlets.

So, what do you do to get the bottom line up? I don’t know, but I suspect it isn’t this. Here’s a story from The International Herald Tribune. Michaels is Randy Michaels, CEO of the Tribune Corporation, now owned by Sam Zell, and heavily in debt.

…the struggling company has looked at the column inches of news produced by each reporter, and by each paper’s news staff. Finding wide variation, they said, they have concluded that it could do without a large number of news employees and not lose much content.

Michaels said that, after measuring journalists’ output, “when you get into the individuals, you find out that you can eliminate a fair number of people while eliminating not very much content.” He added that he understood that some reporting jobs naturally produce less output than others.

He said that The Los Angeles Times produced 51 pages of news for each journalist there, while the figure for two other Tribune papers, The Baltimore Sun and The Hartford Courant, is more than 300 pages.

Michaels had been CEO of Clear Channel Communications. When he left there, Radio Ink reported:

…industry message boards were swollen with vitriolic postings vilifying both him and Clear Channel. Various diatribes claimed that Michaels was everything from “the antichrist of Radio” to “a blight on professionalism” to “representative of the heinous crimes perpetrated by Clear Channel.”

Today, it seems Michaels is valuing content the way a butcher values meat – by the pound. But in the real world content is not equal word-for-word. You would hope some of the LA Times lower word count has to do with the depth its stories contain.

It will be sad to see newspapers disappear. I’m afraid that’s going to happen… and sooner, rather than later.

Right now, TV is incapable of providing the depth and story count papers do (though TV kills print in immediacy, emotion and a number of other categories). Few of the Internet news sites really produce their own content, and those that do seldom produce local news.

My daughter and her generation don’t read many newspapers nor do they watch much TV news. No one has yet figured out how to make traditional news more attractive to them.

It’s all very sad.

Graphs Mislead

A good friend of mine is a highly placed producer at Nightly Business Report, the financial news show that runs every night on most Public Television stations&#185. When last I heard, it was the most watched daily financial show on TV! That means bigger than Neil Cavuto or Lou Dobbs or anything on CNBC.

Usually, I don’t get a chance to watch. It’s on at 6:30 PM and we have a nightly news meeting at that hour. This week, my boss is out-of-town. No meeting. Last night I got to watch NBR.

It’s a good show, nicely produced. I love the incidental music they use under graphics (though I’m a sucker for ‘industrial’ music to begin with). Because it’s financial and on Public Television it often covers less than sparkling topics featuring word parsing public officials.

There is a point to this entry – honest.

Last night they were talking about some stock and posted a graph showing its movement over time. I don’t remember the specifics, but let’s say the stock trades for $100. Over the time span of the graph it’s been down to $80 and up to $110. The graph was drawn to only cover the movement. So the bottom might have been $70 or $75 and the top $115 or $120.

The exact numbers here are for example and aren’t important. This is a conceptual problem.

By concentrating on the movement at the top of the stock’s real value the graph made it look more volatile than it really was. When you don’t do zero based graphing, rises look more sharp than they really are, declines more steep.

This is by no means limited to NBR. Years ago, when I knew someone at CNBC, I pointed this out to him. He said it was something they had mulled over, but had never changed.

When a graph has an arbitrary starting point, it allows ‘noise’ to be misinterpreted as valued data. That’s the wrong way to go.

In my opinion, financial TV shows should display graphs with zero basing. Instead of a linear scale on the “y” or vertical axis (1,2,3,4,5,6,…) they should use a logarithmic scale (1,2,4,8,16,32,64…) which is more representative of the way most of us value financial instruments.

Financial television isn’t the only place I’ve seen this scheme in use. There are charts, used to paint out a global warming scenario, also use a high starting point. It is done for shock and effect. Not all graphs are created equally.

&#185 – Thanks to viewers like You.

A Lesson in Good Government

I went out this evening. On my way home, as is my custom, I gave my mom a call. Usually my dad is asleep&#185. Tonight he was not.

The three of us talked for a while. My dad has a cold; he didn’t stay on long.

After all the small talk was out of the way my mom asked if I had seen the verdict? I had not. The verdict in the Scott Peterson&#178 trial was rendered this afternoon.

We had been having an early dinner whe it was scheduled to be announced. Originally I asked Helaine and Steffie if they’d mind me turning the TV on. Then I realized it wouldn’t make much difference to me whether I heard it as it happened or caught it later. I didn’t have any serious doubt that I would hear it a thousand times.

My mom and I talked about how evil Scott Peterson was and then she started to tell me about the jury. They were “eloquent,” she said, though my father came up with another word which seemed more appropriate at the time.

My mom was right. They were eloquent.

I have just finished watching some of the Q&A with three of the jurors. I have no idea if they are a representative sample of the pool in general. I do know if there was a trial whose outcome affected me, I’d like these people in the jury box.

It seemed as if they had taken their duty seriously. They wanted to play fairly – by the rules. They understood that the eyes of the country would be focused on them and the life of one man would be in their hands.

So often what we see with the government are functionaries playing fast and loose with the rules. Just recently Bernard Kerik withdrew from consideration for Director of Homeland Security. The aura of scandal has wafted through the Connecticut atmosphere for months.

It is said that a jury is usually made up of people too dumb to get out of jury duty. Lawyers plot and plan how to manipulate them. Judging by what I saw today the opposite is true. These were citizens who wanted to do the right thing and fulfill their obligation.

Good for us.

&#185 – As I live on Hawaiian time, most Florida retirees live on AST or some other zone where midnight comes around 8:00 o’clock local time.

&#178 – Should it be the Scott Peterson trial or the Lacey Peterson trial? How does one decide? There is precedence both ways: OJ Simpson Trial, Lindbergh Baby Trial.

My Presidential Prediction

This blog is non-partisan. I don’t favor one ideology or candidate over another. I work in a newsroom, which is supposed to be balanced and objective. So, even as the weatherman, this seems like a reasonable policy.

On the other hand, I am not blind. I am watching the ‘dance of the candidates’ as the 2004 presidential campaign gets under way – long before either convention. I can’t remember as early a start. With the insatiable appetite of cable TV news, we’ll soon be sick of it all and anxious for November 2nd, so we can just put all the petty sniping behind us.

I’ve been thinking about the candidates and watching poll numbers over the past few days. Who is vulnerable? Why are they vulnerable? Why is Kerry already head and shoulders ahead of the president (though it is so early that poll any numbers are meaningless)?

It won’t be long before President Bush starts looking to work around his negatives. It is my opinion that he will see Vice President Dick Cheney as a liability.

Again, this doesn’t represent my opinion of Vice President Cheney or President Bush. But, I see the vice president’s association with Halliburton as a huge target for the Democrats. They will try and paint Halliburton as representative of everything bad with this Republican administration and use Cheney’s prior association (he was its president) to drive their points home.

Here’s my prediction. When November comes around, the Republican ticket won’t be Bush/Cheney. The Vice President could find any number of reasons, from health on down, to graciously bow out.

There are a number of Republicans with squeaky clean reputations that come to mind… like Colin Powell or Rudolph Guiliani. Either of those two would more benefit the president’s re-election bid.

I mentioned this tonight to a number of people I work with, and most said it sounded reasonable, though not likely. I called my dad in Florida and he said it was an idea he had thought about, and accepted, a few weeks ago.

If it happens, remember today is March 10, 2004. If it doesn’t happen, it was my dad’s idea.