Weathering the Broken Links

Back in November I wrote about a relative who was going to lose TV coverage because of the conversion to DTV.  Sure, the government has postponed the mandatory date for conversion to digital transmission to June.  But some stations are making the switch today.

It’ll be interesting to see if the aunt can get better reception as some of her local stations power up their DTV signals.  It’ll be even more interesting to hear the complaints of those who lose TV reception because they don’t live close enough to the transmitters…and whether this translates to even more government delays in the mandated conversion date.  Actually,  I really hope I’m wrong and that the claims of indep2 in these comments are right.

I wonder whether this was brilliant police work or just dumb-lucky police work?  At seeing the story title, I thought the police managed to positively match a specific remote to a specific TV via serial numbers and manufacturer records.  But no, it wasn’t that fancy:

Police recovered‡ a remote control from the victim. Acting on a tip, police went to Gust’s home and used the remote to turn on a 27-inch TV there.

Gust spent 20 days in jail after pleading guilty …

Brilliant? Imagine police talk their way into suspect’s home, demonstrate that the remote actually controls TV in order to scare suspect into admitting guilt and apprehend on that basis.  Backup plan, use functioning remote as probable cause for arrest, get warrant to test TV for rightful owner’s prints and/or expect the suspect fesses up when in custody.  After all he’s just a dumb punk…he wouldn’t know better than to keep his mouth shut and and can’t afford to hire an expensive lawyer to question the probable cause of the remote being used to establish probable cause (BTW, that many/most criminals aren’t this resourceful is actually a good thing, IMO).

OR

Dumb lucky? Police believe that when the remote control turns on the TV this proves the suspect has the exact TV that belongs to the victim and the guy, being dumb, admits it (ya know that you can control, if you want to call it that, a lot of TVs with anything that produces IR light, for example with a hacked mini maglite).

I really hope it’s the former.

‡ I know the word “recover” is standard law enforcement jargon for “to take from” a victim, witness, or suspect.   But, damn it, recover means to take back.  It was the victim’s.  The police didn’t recover it.  They borrowed it.  Or at least I hope the victim was able to recover it from the police.

Wow! I got a call from none other than Jerry Garcia. No, not from beyond the grave. Rather this Jerry Garcia, the CIO of Cardtronics.  I never told anyone at Cardtronics about my blog post.  I merely had described the problem to someone in a voice mail and asked for a callback.  Jerry found the blog post, associated it with my earlier phone call, and took the time to explain to me what happened.

It turns out that I was wrong when I surmised that there were no hotkeys/accelerators.

The screen does not indicate any sort of accelerator or hotkeys for automatically selecting one of the common withdrawal amounts

But I was right that they weren’t displayed on the screen.  According to Jerry, the ATM is equiped with some sort of radio transmitter that visually impaired people can tun into with a radio to get verbal directions.  If you were to be listening to what the ATM is saying when you get to the screen asking for the amount, you’d hear it saying to press the 5 key to withdraw $20.  And the keypad has tactile landmarks that allow a visually impaired person to locate the proper keys.

Further, Jerry indiciated that they’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best ways to accomodate those with disabilities and given the hardware available on the particular ATM model, this was deemed to be the best design.  As I was a little caught off guard with the call and the information on accessibility, I wasn’t able to offer any suggestions for alternatives.  It seems most of the obvious ones add burdens for the visually impaired.

But as I type this up, I wonder if it might be good for Cardtronics to try and add two things to the displayed screen:

1. a message explaining that there are Numbered hotkeys for each of the dollar amounts
2. the number for each amount displayed in a small font or icon next to each dollar amount

In effect, it wouldn’t prevent someone from fat fingering the ATM and selecting the wrong amount.  But it would, give those of us blessed with good vision an indication that the numeric keypad below the screen is expecting input that may affect our transaction.  I don’t know if this is possible with that model of ATM and I’m aware of some of the perils of cluttering the screen with extra information that may not be obvious to your average user.  However, I think it would reduce the liklihood that others get bit by my mistake, and it might even raise awareness that there are disable people with special needs.

Mr. Garcia: thank you for your top notch response to a customer gripe.  Now that I understand what happened, I can accept the design issue…nothing can be perfect and compromises often win out.  I hope that it can be improved at some point and I’ll continue to use your machine; it is so convenient.

I got bit by a usability issue at a Cardtronics ATM a few days ago. I usually use a particular ATM near my house because, despite requiring a $2 fee, it allows me to take out more than other ATMs a little farther away. To minimize the fees, I always take out the maximum allowed, $400. I’ve got the keystrokes down pat, well nearly pat. I fat-fingered a key at this screen.

The ATM is prompting me to select a denomination by pressing a push button on either side of the screen.   In the past, I’ve discovered that I don’t really have to press the button associated with “Other.” Instead, on the keypad below, I can just enter 4 0 0 and it’ll accept it as $400.00. Well, instead of pressing the 4 on the keypad to start entering 400, I bumped the 5 key. Surprise, surprise. Instead of starting to enter a dollar value starting with a 5, it interpreted this as identical to pressing the quick-withdraw button next to the $20 selection on the screen.

Realizing that I was going to be charged $2 for a non-$400 transaction, I tried pressing Cancel and Clear in vain. I spit out a single $20 and my transaction receipt.   I was a little mad.   And I ended up going through another transaction to get my $400, and paying another transaction fee.

So what happened?  The screen does not indicate any sort of accelerator or hotkeys for automatically selecting one of the common withdrawal amounts.  That’s what the physical buttons to the sides of the screen are for.   Also note that the machine only dispenses in multiples $of 20 and only dispenses up to $400.  In other words, you are not allowed to take out $5, $50, or $500.  The machine seems to interpret even numbers as implicitly meaning an “Other” amount and doesn’t require you to press that lower-right button.  But if you enter an odd number, it treats it as an invalid input…and instead of telling you so, it instead treats it as a request to take out the smallest amount possible.

Well this seems like a bit of a scam.  After all, I can explicitly press “Other” and, on the next screen, enter 5 0.  It tells me that this is not an allowed amount.  But on this screen instead of telling me the same thing, it decides to make me pay the highest fee-to-dispensed-amount ratio; that’s 10% fee for the mathematically challenged! 

In the end, I followed Cardtronics instructions for getting my fee back and my financial institution took care of the claim.  I also called Cardtronics and explained what happened.  The service representative seemed to understand the issue.  But I had to press her to forward the usability issue on to someone else.  In the end she said she’d tell the staff that does the software updates for the machine, but it didn’t sound like much was going to get done about it.

So I called back, got a hold of an operator, and explained the issue to her.  She put me through to the voicemail of some one who supposedly can do something with my feedback.  I’ll provide an update about where this goes, if anywhere.

UPDATE: See here for what transpired.

I’m hard on watches. Invariably, I end up scratching or cracking the face or breaking the strap or attachment pins on them just months acquiring new ones. I either have a poor sense of my dimensions or just like walking too close to walls and catching my appendages on all sorts of things.

In fact, I just about gave up on wearing a watch many years ago when I started carrying a cell phone all the time; the phone does double duty as a watch. Yes, I’m hard on cell phones and cell phone holsters too, but apparently I’m not as careless about banging my hips into things as I am my wrists.

Recently, the display on my phone fritzed out and I still had a couple months on my cell phone contract. It wasn’t something simple to fix, replacing the ribbon cable had no effect. Rather buy a new phone I continued using my phone as just a phone as I really didn’t need to see the screen to place and answer calls. But, of course, it no longer functioned as my watch.

So I decide to try to reinstate watch wearing. After all, a phone is awkward as a watch. Even after using my phone as a watch for some 8 years, it still bothered me to waste the time in the motion of removing my phone, pressing a button, checking the time, and replacing my phone. This technique is even more awkward when wearing a coat, driving, or carrying stuff.

So I spent a little bit on a new watch. Not wanting to spend too much and thinking it’d be nice to have one with an alarm and a timer, I picked out not-too-cheesy looking digital sports watch in a black and silver finish.  I figured an “IRONMAN Triathlon” might stand up to some abuse.

I was wrong.  After a mere month an a half, the plastic (ah there was my mistake) body that surrounds the watch cracked right where the metal wrist band connects.  I must have torqued the watch against something, the strap tore out, and ripped the pin that holds it out, bending the pin and deforming the pin holes in the watch body.

I straightened the pin and managed to get it all put back together.  But since it has a gap and the pin attachment holes are now too big, it simply won’t stay together for very long.  Inevitably, I bump it on something, the strap pulls out, and the watch falls to the floor.  I tried filling in the gap in the plastic body with a couple different kinds of epoxy and have found that the plastic that this watch body is made of is just plain inert.  None of the glues stay in place.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t fault Timex for a flimsy watch.  I abuse watches and it wasn’t all that expensive.  I guess I’ve just reached that time in my life where I need to invest in a real watch.

Rarely do you see a story about someone who is not in law enforcement who uses a gun for self defense told in a way that doesn’t spin against gun ownership and use.   This one is a refreshing change.

… “When she pulled over to check her tires one of those person in that other car got out and attempted to rob her at knife point.”

But what the thief didn’t expect happened next. Coppinger says the female driver pulled out her handgun.

“She pointed that at her attacker and he backed away, got in the car and they fled.” …

Quite simply she used a gun judiciously to deter a crime against her. She didn’t lose her mind and go on a rampage killing people because she was carrying a gun.

I congratulate Jared Broyles and KFSM-TV for running this story.

I recorded a show called “Guns in America” on the National Geographic channel last night. I was really hoping to see some sort of positive representation of guns, gun ownership, and gun use. What I saw when I watched this morning was a bad attempt at pretending to perhaps provide a fair story in the topic. They certainly did showed positive aspects of gun ownership, but always managed to inject some disparaging comment from the anti-gun camp.

I could go on and on about all the idiotic things they said pretending to be neutral. But this commentary really got me ROFLing…and then crying:

“This is a family of law abiding gun enthusiasts. Still, if this cache of weapons ever were stolen, chances are they would make it into criminal hands.”

I suppose they meant they’d be sold to gangbangers and such. But I just can’t see how Peter Coyote (the narrator) could have uttered that line and then not complained to the writer, Patrick Prentice, that he’s going to sound like a moron.  After all, a gun stolen is a gun already in the hands of a criminal.

More importantly, this logic is one of many tells of the anti-gunners. They love to see laws that blame the gun owners when a criminal breaks into your home and steals your guns.**  They even want laws that allow prosecution of the original owner of the gun (i.e. the one that it was stolen from) if the gun is used in a crime.

These mindsets are clearly aimed and persecuting gun ownership.  Unless the owner of the gun that was stolen is criminally negligent, for example leaving their gun lying in the street, why are they to blame for being a victim of theft?  Do we try and charge typical burglary victims with conspiring to sell stolen goods when their DVD player or TV shows up on the black market?  No!  Why is a gun any different?

Discussion on the open carrying of firearms has been pretty popular the past couple years.  I don’t know how many times I’ve run across various discussions for or against open carry.  The discussions always talk about the element of surprise, deterrence, ease of access.  I really don’t want to get into a debate as I don’t favor one or the other on principle.  But I think I have yet another factor that I don’t recall seeing mentioned in this endless debate:  the gun’s temperature.

It get’s damned cold where I live.  I’ve not done much outdoor shooting in the winter, but I’ve heard quite a few stories of autoloading handguns not functioning properly in the colder weather.  It’s sometimes attributed to choice of lubricant and sometimes to ammo that doesn’t perform well enough at lower temps.  Regardless, I imagine it can be an issue if you’re not carrying a wheel gun.  I can see this being a rationale for concealed carry in cold climes?   After all, many, modes of concealed carry keep the gun closer to the body, under cover garments and coats, and not as exposed to the elements: i.e. warmer and more likely to function correctly.

I suppose your leg might not kick off enough heat to warm up that ankle holstered gun if that’s how you carry.  I don’t, so I can’t do the experiments.  But I do say that when I carry IWB, my gun stays nice and warm even when it’s 10 degrees below.

Yes, of course if the gun is covered up enough to stay warm it’s not as accessible…but remember I didn’t really want to start the debate again.  I just wanted to point out that I don’t recall ever having heard this argument.

One last thought, I bet there are a bunch of cops and non-cop OC’ers out there who don’t maintain their guns a lot and who haven’t “winterized” them who are carrying some cold guns that aren’t going to work so well if they really have to use them when it’s 0°F or even colder.

Reminder to everyone who carries: go forth and winterize that handgun, just in case.

I decided to design a little bumper sticker.  I’m not much for in-your-face slogans or things that scream party- or organization- affiliation.  They just turn people off and they won’t even consider the message.

I am, however, not shy about arguing for less government.  No, I don’t want zero government.  Nor do I feel that completely unregulated private markets are the solution to everything.  But far too many people expect the government to come up with a solution.  In other words, they feel that money should be taken from the private sector (that’s you and, for a lot of you your employers too) to fund some solution when there is often no viable solution, no real problem to begin with, and sometimes plenty of solutions to be found in the private sector.

My message is with less government, there are more resources for us all to use to do and make great things. We The People are the ones that truly make things happen.

If you agree, consider buying and proudly displaying one of my new stickers:

After February 17th, 2009, there are going to be a lot of upset people.  It’s not news that the US government is mandating that full power analog TV broadcasting after this date.  But it may be news to some people that they’re not going to be able to watch TV anymore.

The government has tried to make it sound like you just buy a converter box, plug it in, and voila, you’ve got digital TV.  That might work for some of you, but it’s not going to for others.  Here’s why:

If you don’t get good enough reception with over the air analog TV broadcasts, you can cope with it.  It’s visually noisy and it may even have ghost images from RF reflections.  But you can still make out the picture unless the reception is really, really bad.  But with digital broadcast TV, if your reception isn’t good enough, you often don’t get any picture at all.  You can sometimes get just the audio.  If the reception is moderate you might get a picture but it’s full of blocky areas where there wasn’t enough information received to display the entire picture.  Or it might be jerky, only showing some of the frames and hesitating frequently while it tries to compose new ones with from the poor signal.

Case in Point

I was out of town visiting relatives.  We stopped by my wife’s aunts apartment.  She doesn’t get cable service through the apartment’s cable because she doesn’t want to pay for it.  She’s been using rabbit ears for years and, while she doesn’t get a great picture, it’s more than good enough for her even with a little noise.

A month ago she decided to upgrade to a new TV.  She bought one with a digital tuner in it and a new “HDTV antenna” on the recommendations of some kid at the local electronics store. After hooking them up she couldn’t get any of the 8 DTV channels currently broadcasting in the area.

Now her building is a mere 2 miles from all the towers.  I checked antennaweb.org and confirmed that she was in the “yellow zone.”  This means a “small multidirectional antenna” should work.  But the small multidirectional antenna she had really didn’t.  We futzed with it and found that at certain angles it would indeed allow you to receive a couple of the digital channels.  But no sooner would you move your hand to scratch your nose and the TV was unable to decode the signal.  The signal quality was simply too poor to allow reliable reception.

I speculated that the issue is that her unit is on the far side of the building from the antennas.  Basically her building is in the way.  Well she has a friend who, incidentally, lives on the other side of the building and was having trouble setting up her converter box for DTV reception.  So we went on over there.  Her problem was one of connecting things properly.  Once we fixed the connections, we turned on the converter box, set it up and had 7 of the 8 DTV stations coming in great.  This supported the suspicion that the building was in the way of the signal.

Back in the aunt-in-law’s unit we tried a few other things:

1. a different type of indoor antenna
2. hooking the TV up to the building’s cable to see if that would magically pull in a stronger over the air DTV signal than her table top antennas did (we weren’t really expecting it to but we decided to double check.
3. Use a coverter box to do the DTV decoding and feed that signal to the TV.  She happened to have a converter box identical in model to the one her friend was having success with across the building so we used that instead of inconveniencing the friend.

Outcome: Very Unsatisfactory

She’s going to try and find yet another indoor antenna that has a good reputation.  The Zenith “Silver Sensor” looks like it might be better than most of the others.

I’m considering building her one of these coat hangar antennas to see if it works better than the store bought ones.  I’m not sure she’ll want to use it because of looks, but if the option is no TV on February 20, 2009 she might not have a choice.

The Larger Problem

Solving my aunt-in-law’s problem aside, I’m going to bet there will be a lot of people who are going to get screwed by this transition.  It’ll mostly be people of low means.  After all, aren’t the people who aren’t on cable or a dish, by definition, unwilling or unable to pay the cost of those technologies.  These people are going to lose a basic service that they’ve taken for granted all these years.   Many of them, particularly those living in more remote areas will not be able to receive TV over the air anymore.

They’ll either have to invest in much larger outdoor antennas.  Or if they’re out of reasonable reception range, they’ll either have to switch to dish/satellite, cable if available, or just go without.  Yep!  Go without a service that’s been available for some 60 years.

Now why is this happening?  The answer the government puts forth is to free RF spectrum for emergency services:

Why are we switching to DTV?

An important benefit of the switch to all-digital broadcasting is that it will free up parts of the valuable broadcast spectrum for public safety communications (such as police, fire departments, and rescue squads). Also, some of the spectrum will be auctioned to companies that will be able to provide consumers with more advanced wireless services (such as wireless broadband).

Consumers also benefit because digital broadcasting allows stations to offer improved picture and sound quality, and digital is much more efficient than analog. For example, rather than being limited to providing one analog program, a broadcaster is able to offer a super sharp “high definition” (HD) digital program or multiple “standard definition” (SD) digital programs simultaneously through a process called “multicasting.” Multicasting allows broadcast stations to offer several channels of digital programming at the same time, using the same amount of spectrum required for one analog program. So, for example, while a station broadcasting in analog on channel 7 is only able to offer viewers one program, a station broadcasting in digital on channel 7 can offer viewers one digital program on channel 7-1, a second digital program on channel 7-2, a third digital program on channel 7-3, and so on. This means more programming choices for viewers.

Arguably, the government mandate will wipe out TV reception to a lot of people in the name of improving public safety communications.  Would you not say that being able to see a weather forecast or monitor the state of a storm or other emergency incident via TV is crucial for the public’s safety?

I know there’s radio too.  But TV has been around a long time.  It’s a mainstream broadcast medium.  You can convey information much more effectively with video and pictures than radio alone   And it’s going to stop working in a lot of places.

But, but, but…it will “offer improved picture and sound quality”… if you happen to live near a broadcast tower.

In short, thrifty and poor people are going to have their access to a valuable piece of public infrastructure mandated away by their own caring government.  How thoughtful.

Add: I happened across this article from last month pointing out the same concerns bached up with some study data.  It’ll be interesting to see how things turn out.