My phone runs version 1.5 of the Android OS. When I bought my phone earlier this year, Motorola was promising that an upgrade to 2.1 would soon be forthcoming. Not wanting to get locked in to a dead-end technology, I was happy to hear that there was an upgrade in the pipeline, although it wasn’t a huge selling point for me and wasn’t something I was banking on. It was expected that the upgrade would be coming out in the summer.

Early summer turned to late summer, and is now turning to fall, and the delivery date for that upgrade keeps on getting pushed back. First it was 2Q2010, now it is late 3Q2010/4Q2010, or the October/November timeframe. People on the Motorola Forum are, unsurprisingly, completely fed up at the constant delays. Many have already gotten rid of their Cliqs and moved onto non-Motorola devices in disgust. Many of these people are self-described longtime customers of Motorola and are leaving forever.

Motorola has broken the first rule of customer service: always underpromise and overdeliver. Never do the reverse: overpromising and failing to deliver. If they promised an update by December, and got it out in October, everybody would be thrilled. If you promise an update in June, and get it out in September, everybody will be pissed. And, seeing how this upgrade is a serious IT project, they should have known that unanticipated roadblocks would crop up. When it comes to projects like these, you estimate how long it should take, and then double or triple it to get close to how long it will actually take.

T-Mobile isn’t looking so hot here either. People who complain to T-Mobile are told that Motorola is the hardware company responsible for this, etc. etc., and they should take their complaints to Motorola. While true, the fact is that T-Mobile is the first customer service experience that most people facing this delay are going to have. As such, T-Mobile can no more blame the problem on Motorola than a restaurant can blame the food on the poor fish that was delivered today. Customers don’t care that the product you are selling them was manufactured elsewhere. They bought it at your store and it has your name on it, so you have to deal with it.

T-Mobile should have worked with Motorola from the beginning to get accurate information to salespeople and ensure that they would not be overpromising what couldn’t happen. They should be putting pressure on Motorola to get a fix out as fast as possible. When some of these frustrated users jump ship, they are not only ditching the Motorola phone product line, they are sometimes ditching T-Mobile too.

Personally, I don’t care if my phone doesn’t have 2.1 yet. It does what I need it to do. However, this has been a great example of how not to deal with a customer service issue, and everybody in this line of work should take heed.

• Current Mood: Twins!

I really have to wonder how much attention Tom Emmer is paying to his own legislative staff people, who are themselves public employees. First, I would like to know what his source is for his claim that public sector workers make “30 to 40 percent more than private sector” counterparts. Perhaps he gets his information from not-too-bright stories like these which merely compare the average wage for all private sector workers with the average wage for all public sector workers, without bothering to point out that there are no public sector retail, food service, and other low-wage occupations to pull the numbers down for public employees (not to mention that article was mainly about federal employees anyway). Other studies I have seen (such as this one) that have looked at directly comparable jobs show that public sector employees by and large are paid less in wages than their private sector analogues, but benefits like vacation are often better, so it’s close a wash. Lower-income public sector employees like janitors do make more than their private sector counterparts, but that’s also due to the fact that public employees are largely unionized. The main point is that you can find studies that show things going both ways, and there are a host of other considerations that come into play in public employment, so that merely saying that public sector employees are paid 30-40% too much is not only inaccurate, it misses the point. I’d sure like to know if Emmer has asked his staff if they think they are overpaid by that much.

Second, Emmer wants to move people from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans. Again, he must not be talking to his staff, because legislative employees hired since 1997 have been put into just those defined-contribution plans. At least in the debate, it didn’t seem like he was aware of this. More importantly, how is he going to pay for the switch? I actually have no problem with a switch to defined-contribution plans, provided it is done correctly: auto-enrollment, auto-contribution increases tied to wage increases, life-cycle funds, and low administrative costs…those pesky little details that matter. Most importantly, though, a switch has to be paid for up front if it is to be done responsibly, and the cost is going to be quite high. I can’t see how he can move from defined-benefit to defined-contribution retirement plans AND solve the state’s budget deficit, all without increasing taxes.

He also had some comments about the health insurance plans that state employees get. Has anybody asked him if he uses his legislative health insurance?

Most of Emmer’s plans are heavy on ideology and light on details and practicality. But this one stood out because, as a legislative employee, these are issues that I’m pretty cognizant of. He should probably be aware of them as well if he wants to be taken seriously.

• Current Mood: Tired
• Currently Listening To: "The National Anthem", Radiohead

Sadly, it sounds like a gradual phase-out of Fannie and Freddie isn’t going to happen (I am not naive enough to think that there will be major changes to the mortgage interest deduction, so with a bar so low I can’t really be disappointed). This kind of lemon socialism is what the majority of people are really angry about. For the most part, when the government gets overly involved in the broader housing market, it only benefits a few. If there are goals to be sought after, like affordable housing, they can be done via much more targeted, direct subsidies.

Frankly, I think it would be a good thing if the mortgage market got a little simpler. Too much “innovation” has occurred in the financial markets without truly understanding the consequences. We are starting to understand them now.

• Current Mood: Resting
• Just Watched: Little Miss Sunshine

I’ve posted before what is wrong with our nation’s financial sector. The financial reform bill takes a few baby steps towards correcting some of the problems, but the vast power of the sector prevented the serious reforms that are necessary. This is, of course, to be expected: how often do those with power and money voluntarily give them up? The question, then, is whether the reforms that did get passed are enough to prevent another catastrophe. I’m not sure. I’m mildly pessimistic.

One thing I’m definitely not unsure about is the catastrophe that has been HAMP. There is really no excuse for a program that was sold to people as a way to help them keep their homes, but turned out to be a way to screw them over. The fact that there haven’t been mass firings and apologies over this travesty shows a real lack of awareness from the Obama administration. It’s really despicable.

• Current Mood: Flustered
• Currently Listening To: "Please Please Me", The Beatles

Some argue that the promise of increased tax revenue is what is changing minds, but online poker is not going to be a cash cow. It’s a reality anyway, so they may as well tax and regulate it. Let’s hope the full Congress understands this and legitimizes what is already happening: the play of online poker in the U.S. by tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

• Current Mood: Cool
• Currently Listening To: "Since I've Been Loving You", Led Zeppelin
• Just Watched: Knife In The Water

Thus came Citizens United, and thus came the world we live in today. I’d like to see this situation change, although I realize that it will take something a bit more than simply reversing the case. It will take a serious revision of our legal system, up to and including revising our constitution. Perhaps I’ll see some pushback against corporate personhood in my lifetime, although I’m not holding my breath.

That said, I do think that we have reason to think that the fallout from Citizens United will be at least somewhat limited. The way that Target’s donation to MN Forward played out is about as well as I could have hoped: Target was forced to apologize for their donation that funded pro-Emmer ads (MN Forward is certainly not just advocating for Emmer, but so far these donations have not had the negative publicity that the Emmer ads did). This is a huge step forward.

Corporations that were eager to get money into campaigns should take heed: people are paying attention. And no matter what party you donate to, members of the other side are going to get angry at you. Corporations have to ask themselves if it is really worth it? For a lot of them, the answer will be yes, but if some of them decide to sit out, it will be better than the alternative.

What I’d really like to see are shareholder lawsuits against corporations that make poor decisions with their donations, as that would probably put a significant halt to corporate money in politics. The PR disaster that Target experienced, though, will hopefully serve the same purpose to some degree. Until we change corporate personhood, that’s probably as much as we can hope for.

• Current Mood: Friday
• Currently Listening To: "The Partisan", Leonard Cohen

Aside from the fact that immigration policy in this country is a mess, all of these issues have one thing in common: the proposed “solutions” are less about solving problems than about making some xenophobic statement. Yes, the status quo regarding undocumented people in this country is untenable, but the solution isn’t to make people with dark skin carry their papers around all the time. Lino Lakes has never spent money on translation services, and it is doubtful they would ever need to. As for the mosque in New York, that just defies comprehension, especially the Anti-Defamation League’s bizarre statement essentially arguing that yes, they have a right to build it, but they shouldn’t because people’s feelings will get hurt.

The way I see it, a more diverse society is a good thing: more viewpoints, more interesting people, better food. Others focus on the challenge to the existing power structure that it encompasses; often, it is the people who have power now but fear they will lose it in the next round who hold this viewpoint. Lino Lakes, for example, has a tiny minority population now, but what if, what if “those people” start moving in? Then what will we do?

This reactionary wave is doomed to fail, for demographic reasons: it is these reasons that is prompting the wave in the first place. Nevertheless, the damage that may be done as this latest batch of closed-mindedness breaks upon our shores could be significant. There is much more potential ugliness out there.

• Current Mood: Warm
• Currently Listening To: "Better Make It Through Today", Eric Clapton

Since I already have a website, I figured why not host the photos myself? So that’s exactly what I’ve done. My photos are now here, powered by ZenPhoto. It’s not quite as feature-filled as SmugMug, but it works well enough for what I need. Since I’m hosting it, I can customize everything. It’s also very easy to sync my Lightroom catalog with the albums on the site using the Publishing function of Lightroom 3.

SmugMug is a good site for pros, but I’m hoping that ZenPhoto will work for me for a while.

• Current Mood: Extreme Monday
• Currently Listening To: "Gimme Shelter", The Rolling Stones

Yes. Yes I can. So I did. Those are the blogs I’m subscribed to. They are good. Check them out.

• Current Mood: Shiny
• Currently Listening To: "Somethin' Else", Led Zeppelin

As for the MSST program itself, it’s going very well. Our first course, dealing mainly with the psychology of terrorism, is already over, and it was very interesting. Ron Krebs, the instructor for the majority of the class, handled the class exceptionally, with a very good balance of lecture and group activities, as well as engrossing readings. I and several of my classmates were interested in taking a course he is teaching in the fall, but the workload just isn’t something I could handle while working, planning a wedding, and electioneering. Our current two courses, on critical infrastructure protection and science and technology in security, are also very interesting. They are pretty broad courses with a number of guest speakers lecturing on their particular expertises (cybersecurity, biosecurity, food security, pandemic preparedness, and so on) and they will provide for a good base upon which we can expand in later classes. They are also great at scaring the crap out of us.

In a little more than a month, the summer semester will be over and I’ll be 25% done with my degree. Not bad. Next on the to do list: thinking of a capstone project.

• Current Mood: Hump day
• Currently Listening To: "Let It Bleed", The Rolling Stones