Ordinary Nothing

It was one of those moments that make me sorry I don’t always carry
around with me the digital camera that I don’t have… (Note to self:
Consider buying a decent digital camera, then consider lugging it
around at all times)

Late Friday night. I was walking with a friend along one of the
large streets in Tel-Aviv. The very large majority of stores and shops
were closed. As we were walking we passed next to a large building
front, with locked heavy metal bars on the entrances/windows. And on
the wall, between such two locked areas, was a sign. With one word (in
English): "Exit".

This, as I mentioned, on the outside of the building.

After we finished chuckling, we decided to look exactly what kind of
store would place such a sign on the wrong side of the door. Turns out
it wasn’t a store. Further to the side there was another metal plaque
identifying the building (also in English). "…Consulate… Embassy of the People’s Republic of China".

Now, I can understand it if the Chinese word for entrance can be
translated into English as several different words, and one of them is
"Exit" (My Chinese isn’t good enough to know, it’s just an assumption).
But surely someone must have noticed that it’s the wrong word and told them to fix it, no ?!

I do admit that picking on people that decide to call in to participate in silly radio programs is not very sportive. By definition they won’t be the best and the brightest, so making fun of it isn’t nice.

But still.

I got to hear about 1-2 minutes of some radio show. I didn’t listen long enough to actually figure out what’s their point or what the show is about. All I know is that they have callers which are apparently competing with each other for, or about, something. Also, since I managed to catch a glimpse (can I say glimpse when it’s radio? What’s the proper alternative?) of this show in the past, I know they like to ask the callers to describe things in a reverse order as part (all?) of their challenges.

When I tuned in they asked a participant to briefly describe the plot of Back to the Future, in reverse. The participant responded by an inspiring "eh… back from the future?… hmm… I… err…" . Either she didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, or, as the host of the show told her on the air, she was wasted after drinking too much alcohol.

The second participant was asked to describe making a salad, in reverse. While paying more attention, the poor guy couldn’t get his mind around the fact that he was required to describe the process in reverse. His reply: "A tomato, to cut. A cucumber, to cut. To mix". After finishing to giggle, the host kindly said that it’s not that bad on the salad part (possibly the host never ate a salad in his life? To me the salad part sounds wholly inadequate as well), but totally wrong on the reverse part.

At about this stage I decided it’s not really for me and switched channel. Depressing to know that people with this high caliber of intelligence are wandering around and feeling proud enough in themselves to go live on air.

Industrial laser marking machines are usually adorned by some warning stickers, to inform people that there’s laser radiation, and that the machine should be operated without all the necessary precautions.

Today I noticed someone that got a teensy bit carried away with the radiation
thing. The machine didn’t have any warning against not operating it
with the protective doors close, or about using protective eyeglasses.

What did it have? Something like this:

DANGER – RADIOACTIVE

Which is a total nonsense, of course.
Any
dangers of operating such a machine are solely from the laser beam
itself, and the danger is to the eyes. Lead underpants won’t help, and
are not necessary…

I very much hope that they don’t force anyone to wear protective anti-radiation gear…

Not that it should really surprise anyone.

And yet, the following
correction appeared in the Yedioth Ahronoth (One of the three largest newspapers in Israel) newspaper on Sunday morning
(translation into English by yours truly. Needless quotation marks and needless repetitions of the word "company" were in the original):

Elaboration: In an article that appeared in our paper on Friday about
the new mobile phone by "Samsung" company, which is capable of
"translating" SMS messages, there has been an error: "Samsung" did not
acquire "Motorola" company.

So everyone can relax now. Especially the Motorola people that probably
had no idea that they were for sale, or that Samsung was buying…

A pity I didn’t keep the Friday edition. It would have been interesting
to see how someone managed to slip such breaking news into an article
about yet another new cellphone model.

This greatly amuses me.

I talked with someone who studies Biotechnology in BIU. This is a hard degree with many courses that have difficult material, or that require to study a large amount of material.

And this person had a complaint about one particular course they have to take. Students routinely get very low grades on this course, and it is considered very hard. Many students choose to delay taking the course until their later years, so they will have more time to dedicate to studying for it, or simply since they want to delay the unpleasant for as long as possible.

Mind you, in this degree they have courses which are practically infamous for being hard, such as organic chemistry, cellular structure, and various other courses of this kind. But this really worrying course isn’t one of them.

It’s a course in microeconomics. Yep, microeconomics.

As someone who finished a university bachelor degree in economics, I find this hilarious. I also have an interest in the exact sciences, though mostly as a hobby, so I know, rather than assume, that many other things that they study there are much more complicated. I’m familiar with both kind of material.

But that’s what frightens the biotech students… That’s what they get the really low grades on… Economics…

Go figure. Maybe it’s because they’re all exact-sciences types, and economics is anything but.

Someone broke into our office last night.

He (Maybe it was a woman, we don’t know. I’m making a statistical assumption. If any overly feminist reader wants to complain that women are also perfectly capable of breaking into offices while possibly on drugs, I concede the point) entered through a window on our second floor kitchen, and covered parts of the kitchen in mud.

The alarm went on almost straight away, since there’s a motion (volume? depth?) sensor in the kitchen. This didn’t seem to bother him too much. As it happened, the security company first calls my boss to let him know there may be a problem, and only after getting to him (or maybe if after some time they can’t) they made a call to the police to send someone. By the time the police arrived it was a long time later, and the guy was long gone.

He turned on the lights (well, if the alarm is wailing, using a flashlight to avoid notice would be stupid, that’s true), and went through the storage room, but apparently didn’t touch anything. He then went downstairs, again turned on the lights, and started to rifle through drawers.

The only thing missing (that we noticed) was the money from the petty-cash box. About 30 ILS overall. Hardly worth his time.

He also took a fireproof locked strongbox and carried it with him outside when he left. It’s not really clear why, since it was locked but they key was in the lock. After he left the building, he dedicated the time to look over the box and opened it (This was BTW still in the premise at the parking area, so he didn’t take it away with him, but spent the time still here while supposedly the police were on their way).

Sadly, for him that is, the box only contained CDs, which he apparently didn’t want. They were left strewn on the ground near the box where we found it on the afterward.

He didn’t touch the computer, or any of the equipment and devices he have in the office. No great damage was done.

Basically we can come up with four options:

1. The likeliest possibility is that it was a drug user that wanted some quick cash to buy more dope. This explains the somewhat odd behaviour.
2. Another possibility is that this was also an opportunity to scope the premise before a larger and more elaborate burglary. It could be that the purpose was to see the area and try to find out if there is anything inside that’s worth a full break-in. As a precaution we made extra sure we have backups of everything stored on the computers, but there’s nothing much beyond that to do.
3. Very unlikely, but it could also be some sort of an industrial espionage attempt, and the minor theft was to throw off the scent. While we do have competitors, there’s nothing likely to justify this, so this possibility doesn’t get much credit.
4. There is the new investigation office above us. Maybe someone wanted to get at them, and didn’t count floors properly. From the appearance of our offices it should be quite clear that we’re dealing with laser systems rather than making investigations, but who knows how observant the guy is?

Intermittent errors and problems are very bad. It’s extremely difficult to pinpoint the cause of a problem if the problem doesn’t happen when you check. Like the classic example of a car that gives trouble, except when in the garage.

We had a call from a client today, with a machine that started to cause problems. During the call we identified a possible cause for the behaviour, and wanted the client to restart the machine, since the initialization behaviour will have signs that would allow us to verify (or disqualify) our idea.

The client guy calls back a few minutes later. He turned the machine off, turned it on, and everything is working perfectly. He can’t reproduce the problem.

The client did turn the machine off and on several times in the last day since the problem showed up, so that wasn’t it. But the behaviour shouldn’t have changed given the data we already had on it.

So now we can’t know if our idea was true. We don’t know what’s wrong with the machine. And we can’t try to fix and change anything since there’s no way to know if what we do makes a difference.

So far we just hope everything will keep working, since as long as it does everything is alright. But if the problem happens again, we have a serious… err… problem.

Problems are better when they’re just there until you kill them. This spontaneous solution thing is bad.

This is about the ATM that let you draw money from a bank account, anyone looking for something on ATM networks, not here and now, sorry.

I needed to draw some cash money at a higher than usual amount, to pay for a cash purchase. Sounds simple enough. I went to the ATM to draw money. There’s a menu with different possible withdrawal amounts, and an option for "different amount".

The two highest-amount options were for 1,000 ILS and 2,500 ILS, and I needed a little more than a thousand. So I decided to give the "different amount" option a try. I usually draw less, and doesn’t need it.

After pressing the button I got a screen asking me what amount I want to withdraw. I typed 1-5-0-0 on the keypad, and saw it echoed on the screen. I pressed the "next" button.

No money came out. The screen was redrawn with a message stating "Possible amount for withdrawal 1,000 ILS. Please enter amount" and a few blank lines below the number 0. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I have more than the amount I specified waiting at the account since I knew in advance I’ll need the cash, so that’s not a phyisical limit. And heck, I could have taken 2,500 from the basic menu.
It was also very not obvious from the screen if the transaction was not performed, or if the stated 1,000 are queued and I was asked to enter additional amount.

So just to be on the safe side, I tried to press the "next" button again. I got an error message telling me that I need to enter an amount in multiples of 50. And got back to the initial screen of the "different amount" withdrawal.

I tried again, typing 1500, which to the best of my knowledge is in fact a multipliction of 50. Again, I got the same error message. So I typed 1000, pressed the "next" button, and got a 1000 ILS withdrawal.

Very useful option, this ability to specify different amounts from the predetermined ones. I’m impressed. Not.

A few days ago a UPS courier arrived to our office to take a package. At first they guy said he’s looking for Y, and since we don’t have anyone by that name he was told he probably arrived to the wrong place. After looking at his papers he explained that he was wrong, Y is the person that ordered the delivery. We had a client that needed to pick up a package we made for them, and Y is the person there in charge of these things, so she talked to UPS to arrange the delivery.

He had the right papers, with the proper name and address of our client, so we signed everything and the courier left with the package. So far so good.

About an hour later a different UPS courier arrives, saying he came to pick a package for that client of ours. We only had one package to send them, so we told him it must have been a mistake, and that their courier was already there earlier to pick up this package.

He didn’t seem to happy about it, and asked us if we’re sure. We went over to take a second look at the receipt from the first courier, made sure everything was in order, and showed it to him.

The guy left, but a minute later he rang our doorbell again. He asked again if we’re really sure, since he talked with his superior who told him that he did not send anyone else. We explained again that the package was picked, for the same client, by someone who seemed like a UPS worker just like him, and who had all the proper papers. He left again.

We called Y and the client company and told her about it. She seemed more amused than anything else and said that UPS are stupid idiots not well organized. Her main worry was that they won’t try to charge them twice for the delivery.

Just to allay any fears, the couriers were both genuine, and the original package did arrive on time. From Y’s reaction this is far from being the first time that this sort of thing happened to them…

Remember the story from three weeks ago about Mike Kainrath, the guy who received around $1.78 million by mistake?

Surprisingly, in a very good way, he responded to my post with some more details and followup. Since that post is old, I figured it was better to copy the response in a new post, and comment here instead of back there. Otherwise maybe no-one but me will notice, which would be a pity, since he’s worth reading.

Here’s what he had to say:

Hey cool comments!

Yes, I’m the guy…the rest of the story is the bank charges me a
$12.50 wire fee to send the money back! They refund it…but its
another call.

Turns out that the bank in the Antilles but my bank’s routing number
down in error. 99% of the time banks don’t have the same account
numbers. My bank saw the correct routing number and a valid account
number and so they put it in my account. How were they to know? It is
this foreign bank that keeps putting it in.

Always the same bank–I thought it was drug money being laundered
through my account. The FBI did not think so because I have to initiate
the correction.

Now I’m concerned that I may have an audit flag by the IRS on my
social because I keep receiving these deposits. Don’t banks have to
report these?

I cannot believe how this story has taken off. I had a call from CBS
news, NPR and been interviewed on the local radio here. The story has
been picked up by the Russian press as well and I can see the story
translated into Russian on the internet. All very cool.

Thanks for the comments.  I enjoyed reading them!

Mike

It’s really great hearing from you Mike. I’m glad you liked what I had to say. And that you didn’t take the "Maybe not a particularly bright one" quip in a more serious way than the one it was written in.

I must admit that I find the charge for returning the money to be hilarious. The story up to that point does have it’s amusing aspects, but it’s mostly just a very large and interesting mistake (With a lot of impractical wishful thinking). Charging for returning the money, however, passes it into the realm of a very surreal sitcom… One of the very few cases I can write LOL and mean that I literally did.

Being a geographical ignoramus, I didn’t have a clue where Antilles is, and had to run a quick search. Here’s what the CIA’s World Factbook had to say about Antilles (besides a lot of other less relevant information):

transshipment point for South American drugs bound for the US and Europe; money-laundering center

I can certainly see how drugs and money laundering would be a genuine concern. Although, perhaps due to the effects of too many bad drug-related thriller movies, I’d expect a banker that work with drug cartels not to make these sorts of mistakes. Not more than once, anyway.

I’m not at all surprised that the story received a lot of media attention. People getting a lot of money is always a popular subject (at least when it’s not due to years of hard work). Banks making mistakes with money is also a popular subject. Heck, money is a popular subject.
This way at least Mike can get something out of it besides a headache and a small addition to his phone bill.

Hmm. He can also try to ask his bank if they want to do a TV commercial with him. he can honestly say that at any other bank he would never have gotten so much money in his account… ;-)

Naturally I expect the whole thing wasn’t as fun for Mike as it is for
me, or for other people who read about it. It’s nice to imagine what I could
do with those amount of money, but getting it like that for real is a
problem and a major headache. As is clearly evident from Mike’s very realistic worries
here.

Mike, I do hope there won’t be any further problems for you with the IRS, the FBI, your drug cartel of choice, or anyone else. At least not until next time…

I have a relative who’s a teacher. Well, I actually have several relatives who are, or once were, teachers. The tendency seems to run very strong among the women in one side of my family, for a number of generations. Don’t ask me why. Nowadays it’s a thankless, unappreciated, and poorly paid for job. Of course, as part of a vicious circle, most people that enter the profession get as much payment and appreciation as they deserve. But some are good and intelligent persons, and can be good teachers.

The specific relative I’m talking about has finished her degree just recently. She got the diploma, certifications, and whatever is needed in order to be officially named a teacher. So she’s a teacher, and have the papers to prove it.

I saw her today, and during a short conversation she complained about a recent occurrence. She was talking with someone, and was asked in what school she was teaching. After answering that she isn’t working in any school she got a response along the lines of "Oh, so you’re not a real teacher, then".

According to her she gets that quite a lot. And she is pissed off about it. She may not be teaching in a school, but she has done all she had to in order to become a teacher (Sounds like some ordeal, the way she talks about it. I suppose everything is relative), and feels she deserves the recognition.

Besides, she does actively teach. She currently gives private lessons to "problematical" kids, that need personal attention. But since it’s not school work in front of a class, nobody considers it real teaching.

So there, just to set the record straight, and to do my good deed for the day: Being a teacher is not about what you do, it’s about whether you have the papers claiming you are. Clear?

A client of ours was having problems, caused by two rather old hardware devices. We could have serviced and fixed those devices by ourselves, but that’s a lot of work and quite a mess, so we contacted the manufacturer in the US, and shipped the parts to them.

After an examination they replied that one of the devices they can deal with easily, but the other is more complicated and they would charge a hefty sum to fix it. After thinking about it a bit my boss decided it’s better that we’ll deal with it ourselves.

Since the international shipping charges are on us, my boss asked them to send back both devices together (after they deal with the first, of course) in one shipment. He also asked them to use the international shipping company we usually work with for US deliveries, since the costs will be lowest (I’m not sure if it’s because they’re generally cheaper on that route, or if it’s due to some customer agreement we have with them. What matters is the bottom line). Naturally they agreed.

And shortly afterward they sent back the problematical device. By itself. With a different company than the one we asked, with higher shipping fees. My boss complained to them, and they apologized (But we’re still paying for it).

A couple of days later they finished working on the other device, and shipped it back. With yet a third shipping company. And one which based on past experience is more expensive than the previous two.

My boss looked at the shipment invoice that was faxed to us, and noticed the the price wasn’t listed there. There was just a customer number. Since we had business with that shipping company in the past, we had a customer number from them, so he assumed the prices will be billed separately by the company. He did want to know the cost, however, so he rang the company to ask.

The receptionist there confirmed that it’s possible that for registered customers there won’t be a price listed, since billing is handled for each customer monthly instead of per shipment. She got the customer number from him, which he read directly from the invoice. And to verify she gave back the company’s name from their records.

Not our company.

An old client of ours. And not the one that the current two devices are from.

It so happens that about five years ago we sent something from this client for repairs, to the same manufacturer in the US. And to save time and hassle they then sent it back directly to our client.

And now they took another device, from us and belonging to another client of ours, and sent it to that old client of ours. Charged it on that old client of ours, I may add. Meaning that the old client will need to pay for the shipment before the device is released.

Just in case anyone wonders, we did have more dealings with that US company in the interim. Quite a lot. Why they decided this time to fish that old customer number from their records, and actually use it, I haven’t a clue.

Luckily for us, after a lot of explaining the old client agreed to pay the fee, give us the device, and charge us for what they paid.

[Update: Got a great reply from Mike Kainrath himself. Copied it, and added my own comments, on a new post]

Some people have a truly complicated life.
Like poor Mike Kainrath from Virginia, who got $1,789,830.61 deposited into his bank account by mistake. And he’s a chronic: that’s the third time such things happened to him.

What seems strange is that it took until he noticed it, and reported it (Well, he’s an honest person. Maybe not a particularly bright one, but honest), before it was taken care of. It means that whoever was supposed to receive this money did not notice for at least several days that the money was missing.

One thing I can promise is that if I was due to receive about $1.8 million, I’d check. Repeatedly. And if it was late, I would scream, and I would yell, and I would  generally raise hell (Hey, a spontaneous rhyme. Cool.).

The intended recipient didn’t. Nice to know there are people (corporations?) out there that can be indifferent to such small pittance. The economy must be perking up.

What’s worse, while they did get the money eventually, they lost the interest. Mike here thinks to set his account to interest-bearing to be prepared for next time. But someone that should have gotten the money and done something profitable with it, did not. I wonder if they’ll sue the bank? They could check what gave the best return-for-money during the period, and claim that this is what they wanted the money for. Easy for them to prove damages, hard for the bank to prove what would have really happened.

Why don’t I get these sort of mistakes? It’s not fair. He got three, and I got none…

[Update: Just added title to the monetary units, some people complained]

The original plan for this evening included going to see the Cinderella opera.

It’s a project of our local community center, though luckily singers are from the Israeli Opera and are supposed to be good and professional.
The production being local mostly means that there are a lot of local kids running around in the background, or something of the sort. Or at least I hope that what it means, because otherwise it may be too painful to listen too, or even see (Yea, yea, I’m a snob. But have you listened to non-opera singers trying to sing opera? Or to not particularly good opera-singers trying to sing opera? Once you gain even a little taste in this, it’s just horrid).

Our community center has been running (well, trying to run with varying levels of success, more at the end of this post) for several years now shows and performances. Last week we were at a jazz concert, and Smadar (Who is the community center executive in charge of the cultural aspects) reminded  everyone that the first run of Cinderella will be the following week (today).

We talked to her, and after being assured that the singers are pros, we asked for tickets. She didn’t have any on her, but as she is in charge of everything, and we do have some level of personal acquaintance, she said that she’ll reserve tickets for us to take (and pay for) on the concert evening.

Even better, she said that while the normal ticket price was 75 ILS, she’ll give us a discount to 45 ILS since we’re subscribed to some of the community center series (the Jazz one). We asked if we should call her the following day to make sure everything is alright, but were assured that there’s no need. This is not the first time we arranged tickets by talking with Smadar, so that was that.

Entering into the hall’s parking lot we got a small surprise, it was nearly full. This does not usually happen it. On the other hand, there are probably lots of proud parents of the little kid, so it was not completely unexpected.

We entered into the lobby. The place was jam-packed with people. I made my way to the ticket’s desk (a lady sitting in front of a small wooden table. This is a community center with a hall, not a concert hall by itself), and told the lady our name and that we have tickets reserved. She searched, and didn’t find anything.

We went to find Smadar. He initial response, in a semi-panicky and despairing voice "There are no tickets. We don’t have any tickets. Wait and I’ll see what we can do".

We waited a minute, to see what the heck is going on. Turns out that they had a huge amount of people coming. People who got mailed invitation. Invitations that did not have on them words such as "The Invitation is void unless confirmed by phone" or "Please confirm your invitation to reserve a ticket". Plenty of people assumed that the invitation means they can get a seat.
This apparently was the original idea, but they expected most invitations to be ignored…

So they were swamped by dozens of people wanting their free tickets.
Ah, yes, the invitations did not require to pay for a seat. This means that us, as long time customers and subscribers got a discount, while plenty of other people got a free invitation.
Under the circumstances we didn’t confront Smadar with this, but we’ll ask her.

Regardless of that, we did reserve tickets in advance, directly with Smadar. So we came to her again and told her that. To which she replied that:

1. Tickets for this performance were not under her direct control, so she thought they had tickets while in fact they were already out of them last week. So while she tried to get us tickets, it was simply impossible.
2. She completely forgot we asked her for tickets.

Yes, I did notice that the two claims are not consistent with each other.

She told us, and the other people there, that they’re trying to see if they have any unclaimed seats, and will try to put people there. It seemed to us that the hall was already quite full, and there were a lot of people outside, so we decided to give up and go home. For some strange reason it also seemed that Smadar’s priorities tended more towards finding place for the free invitees than to paying customers like us…

A bit on past community center cultural event in my city

Several examples springs to mind as illustrative.

One thing which doesn’t work is classical music. Last week Smadar tried to arrange a classical-music series. They managed to arrange very good orchestras. The concerts were located in the large hall (same one the opera today was at) with about (crude estimate by me) 300 seats.
How were the concerts? They stopped the series after only two concerts. In both concerts there were 10+ players on stage. In the first concert there were 4 people in the audience. In the second concert there were 8.
Enough said.

One thing which moderately works is the jazz series. Each year they
arrange about 5-6 jazz performances, each with a different jazz band
they bring over. There aren’t a lot of takers, but nearly enough. They
try to make it with a jazz-bar like feeling, so people are given seats
near round tables, and there’s a free drinks bar (water, soft drinks,
and beer of varying qualities They started by offering selection of
three types of beer, than stopped and picked by themselves). It’s nice,
and the bands range from decent to good. It feels that there aren’t a
lot of takers, but due to the arrangement it doesn’t feel deserted.

One thing which works exceptionally well? How about a theater show? Based on The Miser by Molière? What can I have against that, eh? A good cultural sign, right? They run several shows that sold out, and brought it over for another few rounds.
Oh, did I forget to mention? This is the version translated and adapted to the Arab-Moroccan language, and taking place in Casablanca.

This should be enough to give you an idea.

One of our new neighbours, from the firm settling in the floor above our office, have dropped by yesterday for an introductory chat.
I didn’t get a lot, since he was talking with my boss and not with me. But I did manage to get the main highlight.

The guy said they’re some sort of an investigation/detective agency, and work mainly with law firms.

Some coincidence.
Depending on who exactly their clients are, and what kind of work they do, this puts them either exactly on the same end of the spectrum with our previous casino operating criminal group friendly warehouse holders, or exactly on the opposite end.

We, again, get someone that may attract nice people who will want to burn their offices. But this time it doesn’t come with attached 24/7 guards.

My company is located in what amounts to an industrial area of the city, for crying out loud. We’re surrounded by various manufacturers, service centers, and various industry suppliers. So how come when someone new wants to enter our building, they have to do other stuff?

Well, at least I can’t say it’s boring.