Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-X

Remember when you wrote out checks to pay your bills? Those little slips of paper you stuffed into an envelope and mailed off? (Don’t forget the stamp!)

Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-X

Remember when the “Debit Card” was invented? Remember how most stores wouldn’t take it? They called it “funny money.”

Remember when ATMs were going to replace banks? There was going to be one on each street corner (next to each pay phone.)

Twenty Hundred and X

Remember Microsoft Money? Quicken? Programs that enabled you to pay your bills over the magic of the interwebs? I used Microsoft Money to monitor my banking transactions, categorize my spending, set budgets, pay bills, and administrate invoices and payments. It really simplified tax-time.

Eventually, utilities  offered the ability to pay over the cell phone and the web. The gas, electric and phone bills were easy (and most were free) to check and pay over the phone and web.  So I shifted away from Microsoft Money’s bill paying feature for the convenience of paying by phone.

Life was good, until…

Twenty Hundred and Ten

No sign of flying cars, but most utilities have strapped turbo-jet-packs to their service “Fees.” Compounding the problem, Microsoft has discontinued their Money program, and Quicken went to a monthly charge (currently $9.95) to make payments through their software.

Companies have been raising their fees, or charging a fee where there was none before. My phone company, which had free phone-pay system for a while now, recently added a FOUR DOLLAR FEE to pay your bill over the phone.

Four.

Dollars.

Let’s add this up:

• Before: An administrative assistant opens payment envelopes, makes sure checks are properly filled out, matches them to customer account invoices. An accounting assistant keys them in to the ERP system, signs all the checks, and makes a  ‘nightly deposit run’.
• Now: Administrative and accounting assistants are replaced with one computer. Data entry is done by the customer, and money transfers directly into the business account. The company IT guy has one more computer to keep running /backed up  (for the same paycheck)

For this new system they ADD a fee? For a service that costs them LESS to operate? Never mind the fact that YOU are paying them a fee so you can pay them for their product/service to begin with. The price of their service should have decreased to reflect the decrease in operating expense. The price could have stayed the same, and no one would have complained.  They could have added a token fee of a dime or a quarter, even a dollar, and most people wouldn’t think twice. But Four Dollars? This works out to as much as %20 of some of my bills.

Why don’t businesses simply raise the price of their services? I would understand that. But to charge people MORE for a service that costs the business LESS to operate? That’s downright American. Who do they think they are? The Recording Industry?

Going Forward – 3 Methods I Use to Fight the Fees

I’ve decided not to tolerate unnecessary fees any longer. Here’s a handful of ways I have changed my system and saved myself over $400 per year:

1. No longer using payment types that require a “fee” – I will not pay fees to my utilities so that I can pay them… by phone or any other method. I actually considered sending them physical checks out of spite (even though those do set me back the price of a stamp.) Fortunately for them, my bank has a free online bill payment system.
2. Categorizing and Budgeting with Mint.com – I’ve read a lot of good things about mint.com, and the fact that they were purchased by Intuit (makers of Quicken) makes them even more attractive. Mint.com is a “read only” service, meaning it can only pull information from your accounts, it can’t move money around, or send money from your accounts. In that respect it’s very safe, but at the same time, it’s very limiting. If I trust a service enough to give them my account login credentials, then I would also trust them to make transfers at my request. So mint.com is worthless for bill paying and it won’t do invoicing, but it has plenty of features to help categorize my expenses for tax time, and set budgets and analyze spending patterns.
3. Invoicing using Freshbooks.com – I only have a handful of clients, so I can invoice using Freshbooks.com for free. Freshbooks.com is extremely intuitive and dead simple to use.

By using these three methods, I’m saving myself the cost of a Microsoft Money upgrade each year (around $80) and $32 per month in unnecessary “fees”. That’s not enough to save up for a flying car, but since I don’t think we’ll get any flying cars before the end of the world in 2012, I can still use that $400 for something to make the most of the short time left to this planet.

Got any other Fee Killing Tips? Drop them in the comments. And check out MSN’s list of fees that are even more outrageous than the pay-so-you-can-pay fees.

Yours Darkly,
-Z

The Future of #TwitterRebellion

The Devolution of Twitter

The creators of Twitter will tell you that they didn’t know what the hell it was for when they released it. They created a way to send a txt message to the world and watched to see how people would use it.

Like several people I’ve dated, Twitter is fast and easy. The microblogging and public text-chat format is perfect for sharing links, updating status, asking questions or blurting out random props that don’t require the treatment of a fully-formed blog post. Way back in Feb 2009, I guessed what twitter might evolve into.

Unfortunately, twitter didn’t evolve. It devolved.

Automatic for the Tweeple

Automation is one of the cool things twitter had going for it. The open-source platform allows companies like youtube, myspace, facebook and others to tie in to your twitter account and auto-post tweets for you. In fact, this blog post here at conradzero.com will auto-post a link to twitter through the twitterfeed service. Saves me the time and effort of doing it myself. Coolness, right?

Kind of.

Automation is one of the suck things that is killing twitter. The open-source platform allows people to upload a spreadsheet of 10,000 senseless posts which automatically post to twitter on a schedule of about once per second. While the posts on twitter were already nearly mindless bits of fluff, now accounts drown twitter in completely mindless bits of fluff. The goal of these New Media Spambags is to post as many times as inhumanly possible. Post more = get seen more. Get seen more = get followed more. More followers = bigger market for your advertising messages.

Does this work? Of course it does.

Does it suck? Of course it does.

And of course, twitter only encourages that you follow people with lots of followers, because…that’s how you get more followers.

Invasion of The New Media Spambags

Classic Automated Twitter Spambaggery - Note he admits the pic isn't his either!

Of course the people who wreck almost all online things are those who REALLY REALLY want to sell you something. Whether their product is good or not is irrelevant – getting it out in front of people is all they care about. Using the automation I mentioned before, these Twitter Spambags stream continual posts – jokes, quotes, facts… and of course, repeated references to their product.

These are the same douchebags who use e-mail SPAM to sell their products. The idea is the same; a high volume of public contact will lead to a small percentage of click-thru, which leads to an even smaller percentage of sales. The higher the quantity of contact, the larger the number of click-thru, the larger the number of sales.

I’ve included a screenshot of just such a Twitter Spambag. No particular reason I’m picking on this person, there’s thousands of profiles just like this one. But here’s some tips on how to spot a Spambag in the wild.

First, note the frequency of posts. No human can write consistent posts like this every three minutes (Exactly three minutes apart, mind you.)

Second, note the content of the posts. Two tweets of generic quotes or factoids, then every third post is a link to a “Make Money Now” page. Because links take up part of the precious 140 character twitter-post limit, services are used to shorten the post down to a smaller size. Because of the shortening, the links are hidden and you can’t see where they go until you click on them.  But notice that the link in the first post is repeated in the last post. If you scrolled down the list of tweets, you would see this particular Spambag alternating between two links over and over.

Third, note where the posts originate. In this case, they all come from API, meaning they are being sent through a third-party service. Likely, an automated one.

This is another spam artist turning the new social media into a quagmire of auto-babble. Is this illegal? Of course not. But it’s also not illegal for people like this to starve to death because no one buys their shit.

#TwitterRebellion - Putting Twitter Spambags Out Of Our Misery since 2009.

#TwitterRebellion – Block the Twitter Spambags

If no one clicked on the SPAM e-mails and if no one clicked their links and if no one bought the crap they sell, e-mail SPAM would stop. E-mail SPAMmers only continue to send e-mail SPAM because it works.

If no one followed the Spambags on Twitter and no one clicked their links, twitter spam would stop. Twitter Spambags only continue to spam twitter because it works.

Why follow Spambags? It’s time to take Twitter back to the Tweeple. But how?

Simple.  Block the fucking spambags.

If you see someone you’re following post once per minute of all hours, check their profile page and look through their tweets. If they are interlacing mindless quotes and jokes between links to their snake oil, Use the “Block and Report SPAM” feature. If enough people call a spammer on their BS, their account will be pulled, and you will have done a great public service.

It’s not hard to tell a human from a Spambag.  Follow the humans. Block the spambags. Rebel and take back twitter!

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

2007 won’t go down in the history books as a particularly memorable year, although with little competition from the previous 200x years, I would say 2007 wasn’t that bad.

Things Worth Raving About In 2007:

The Demonslayer’s Handbook – The story was finished in the middle of 2007.  I set it aside, and came back to it over the 2007 Christmas break, and re-re-re-read the whole thing cover to cover. It is ready for beta test-readers and feedback, and perhaps one more round of revision before I subject it to an editor.

jaggedspiral.com The website got a MAJOR overhaul, and I personally programmed every last line of HTML/CSS by hand using an esoteric combination of Notepad++ and Adobe GoLive. Thanks to James for the new, shiny band logo.

Days From Evil the debut album from Jagged Spiral, two-years in the making and finally released at the end of 2007. Each track from the album was released one at a time on the internet (FOR FREE) over the last 9 weeks of 2007. Click here and scroll down for the download links. Fans can use the “donate” buttons on the website to set any price on the album they like. Note that Radiohead took the same approach with their 2007 release, “In Rainbows”.

Nine Inch Nails marketing genius. The Alternate Reality Game / Marketing behind the Nine Inch Nails release “Year Zero” was nothing short of genius. Trent Reznor remembered that an album is more than just an album, it’s an experience. The more you can add to that experience for the fans, the better. In the case of Year Zero, the album is great on it’s own, (and if you haven’t heard “Capital G“, you’re missing out) but the experience of the online phenomenon/pseudo-conspiracy pushed this album to the top for 2007, and showed the rest of the world how it’s done.

i-[fill in the blank] In 2007, “i” became the new “e”. Pretty much anything that started with “i” in 2007 was something you shoulda bought stock in. i-Pod, i-Tunes, i-Phone…

Things Worth Ranting About In 2007:

The 35W Bridge Collapse. I was surprised at the reaction of many Americans to this disaster, specifically the reactions of those NOT involved. If there is a house fire in Minnesota, you generally don’t call everyone you know and tell them that *you* are alright simply because you live in a house in Minnesota too.  The bridge hadn’t even finished collapsing and bloggers were posting announcements that they and their families were OK, and tweeting on twitter.com to update their status as “Uninjured”. Someone should come up with a name for this strange behavior…

If you talk to anyone in Minnesota besides myself, they will tell you they JUST drove over the bridge moments before it collapsed. That’s about 4,919,478 people, which pretty much explains *why* it collapsed.

DRM = Dumb RIAA Morons.  As much as I railed against the horrific, poisonous, anti-consumeristic atrocity that is DRM, you simply can’t stop what the consumers want. It’s obvious that people want music, and they want to get it through theinternet, badly enough to put up with DRM, and are willing to let the RIAA force a square peg into a round hole.

Too bad for music fans, but it looks like DRM is here to stay. Sorry, but I did my best…

Things To Look Forward To In 2008:

More stories from yours truly. Because the Demonslayer’s Handbook is written, my inner writer gets laid off for a while and my inner editor takes over. But every now and again I have to shift between the left and right brains, so I plan on letting my inner writer out of the basement periodically to work up some short horror stories…

The End of Ze World. Well, if we assume that Nostradamus made some kind of mathematical error. Otherwise, we’ll have to wait until 21 Dec 2012 also known as Doomsday 2012.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Not that I want to get my hopes up too much, but hey, it’s too late. 22 May 2008 Baby!

Guitars, not DJs. DJs are dead. Good riddance. Long live guitars!

Jagged Spiral LIVE Look out world! Jagged Spiral is coming to a town near you! (…as long as you live near Minneapolis.) The band already held court at a private party back in October, and the first official public performance at Stasiu’s on December 11th. Look out for two upcoming shows, at Club Underground on Thursday 31 Jan 2008 , and a Battle of the Bands at the Dinkytowner on 10 Feb 2008! Check out the band blog for more details, pix, and future concert updates…

The Death of Emo

Art Is Resistance

-Zero

It’s the end of the year again, that time of year when Minnesota, The Land of 10,000 Blogs muddies the water of the internet with lists of things people thought were the “best of 2006″. Oh well, for what it’s worth, here’s my contribution.

2006 – The Good

The Demonslayer’s Handbook

I worked on The Demonslayers Handbook a lot this year. (also known as “The Book”) I’m taking a short break from that now, to focus on audio recording, and will attack the DSH again in January. It’s such a huge project I have no idea how long I’ll be hacking at this thing.

Jagged Spiral

The Jagged Spiral project “Days From Evil” creeps towards completion, and the third single, ‘Forced Entry’ has been entered into the Rift Magazine Compilation CD 2 Contest. My 6-week sore throat and chest cold, and a lovely rebound of congestion is not helping to get this project completed anytime soon. But we are proclaiming 2007 to be The Year of the Spiral.

The Jagged Spiral website progresses in short bursts of manic creativity, we will release an official announcement once we have some real content. In the meantime, you can catch some audio clips on our myspace page. www.myspace.com/jaggedspiral

Pray For Daylight (AKA: The indie Vampire movie that cost about as much as a used car.)

Although the score for Pray For Daylight (also known as ‘The Vampire Movie’) was finished in May 2006, we have yet to see a final version release. To all of you who keep asking to see it, I assure you that it will eventually see the light of day (pun intended, and I promise no more bad puns. This year, anyways.)

The end of… Superstar DJ’s?

Thankfully, City Pages reports that 2006 was the year that Superstar DJ’s died, This assumes that there actually were such things as ‘Superstar’ DJs. But if it’s true, then I guess 2006 wasn’t all bad.

I’m actually reporting that 2006 was the year that City Pages died.  The City Pages covers and cover stories are nearly offensive in their poor quality and topics. God bless them for trying to be ‘journalistic’ but it ain’t like Playboy, people read it to find out what the hell’s going on in Murderapolis. Hey CP, the ‘Reader’ is gone now, you can relax!

I find myself turning towards Vita.MN as my Minneapolis To-Do Resource. I know it’s just a repackaging of the Star Tribune’s Entertainment section, but Vita MN is focused on the local. Easy to find what you’re looking for, and their website gives citypages.com a run for its money.

Mein Kampf über alles.

In 2006 I finished German and graduated from the University of MN with a Bachelors of Philosophy Degree. It will soon be supplemented with a Computer Science second major, which should qualify me to work at a Burger King instead of just the Philosophy Major, which qualifies me to debate on the ethics of eating there.

I did not watch any television this year. None. It isn’t worth my time. And I don’t drink, smoke or weigh any more or less than I did last year.

The Words of 2006

2006 – The Bad

Emo Music

Emo music hit its Godforsaken Peak in 2006, and I hope everyone involved with this travesty of a music genre will die a slow painful death involving internal hemorrhaging. Doubly so for Metal Emo bands like Hinder.

If you are exposed to Emo music, the only cure is to listen to Tool very quitetly for 6 minutes, then listen to Jagged Spiral as loud as you can for three days straight without eating or sleeping. After the third day, have a shot of Jagermeister and repeat until you are feeling better.

DRM – Automatic for the Sheeple

DRM also hit its peak in 2006, thanks to the i-Diots who bought an i-Pod to play their i-Tunes. Did NONE of you investigate the other options? If you can’t name three other mp3 player brands, you shouldn’t be allowed to buy one. If you don’t know what DRM is, you shouldn’t be allowed to buy one. Sheep, sheep, sheep.

2007 – Die Zukunft

For myself, I’m glad 2006 is over. I will look back on 2006 as a year that was high-maintenance, low-payoff. Hopefully, 2007 will be more of a payoff for all the work I did in 2006. Don’t forget, 2007 Is The Year of the Spiral!

Hope you all have a safe, happy, and unboring New Year’s Eve!

Blog on,
-CZ

Just to set the record Straight (pun intended) I am, in fact, Heterosexual. Homosexuality between men? I don’t understand it, but help yourself. Homosexuality between women? I don’t understand it, but can I watch?

I feel the need to bring this up because I recently wore white pleather chaps and a matching vest for Halloween, and if nothing else, it should prove that I am secure in my masculinity.

Thanks to Bob Mould for his timely link to a drug called Hetracil, a so-called ‘Anti-effeminate medication.’

Seriously.

What does it do, make you want to putter around in the garage with power tools? Does it make you want to watch old, black-and-white War movies? Subscribe to Soldier of Fortune magazine? What happens if you overdose?

Is there a reverse drug that could make you a homosexual? What if terrorists slipped that drug into Minneapolis’ water supply? Do we all turn into pooftys?

And who knew that Homosexuality was a disease that could be ‘cured’ with medication? Makes one proud to be an American, doesn’t it? Is there anything we can’t cure with pills? Maybe we could come up with some pills to make people a little fucking smarter? Oh, I forgot, then they wouldn’t fall for crap like Hetracil….

Sorry folks, I have to stop, but this is too easy, so I leave the rest to you as a homework exercise.

Blog on,
-CZ

Back some 6 years ago or so, the University of Minnesota wanted to cash in on the untapped ‘Adult Learner’ market. Remember ‘University College’?

“Hey adults, come get a degree in your spare time! Take night/weekend/internet classes to fit your busy schedule!”

Now, some six years later, the University of MN is up in arms because it’s  ‘taking too long for students to graduate.’ Huh?

And now, they have implemented a ‘minimal credit payment.’ Students pay for a full credit load no matter how many classes they take!

That’s a great deal for kids right out of high school, still living with their parents who flip the bill for 13 credits while their kid takes 20. But it completely screws over working adults taking the odd evening courses, trying to sneak in a class or two when they aren’t working 60 hours per week. Now if they want to take three credits they have to pay for 13? As if the tuition hikes over the past two years weren’t bad enough!

This is surprising for a University where the word “diversity” is implanted into every speech and publication, until it is overused into meaninglessness. It doesn’t seem very diverse to me, to impede the ability of adults with jobs and families to take classes and get a degree in their free time.

I would expect more intelligent decisions from a group of people running a learning institution.

My suggestion to the University of MN is to either discontinue your use of the word “diversity”, or bring back the University College, without the mandatory minimum credit bullshit, and time limits for graduation. Return some fairness to the system for people who did not just step out of high school. What’s the harm if it takes them ten years to graduate?

Sincerely,
-CZ

In case you didn’t know, Real Networks, Inc. is Real Evil. Their intense desire to strongarm all known audio into their proprietary Real Media formats is only matched by the legendarily suck-tastic performance of their products.

Please do not endorse this company or their products.

Thankfully, you don’t have to use Real Player to play Real Media files:

Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer. All RealMedia formats (.ra .rm .rmvb .ram .rpm .rv .rp .rt .rnx .smi .smil) are supported, including streaming content and RealMedia content that is embedded in Web pages

[Jan 2010 Update: C-Net calls Real Media the "Biggest Disappointment of the Decade" and the "Prince of Crapware and Annoyance" in their  5 worst downloads of 2009 article.

It makes me happy to look back on this post from 5 years ago and realize that finally, there was a Bad Guy in the real world who didn't eventually win through their own evil perseverance.  I'd like to think this blog post played some small part in the demise of Real Networks.

Also, I've changed the Real Alternative link over to download.com although if you run across any Real Media files beyond the year 2010, you should send the website host a scathing e-mail.]

-Z

Coke releases fad product with half the calories and all the marketing bullshit

I’ve little sympathy for stupid people, and all those who kneel at the altar of “carbs are the devil” are stupid people.

But if it weren’t for stupid people, marketing people wouldn’t be able to pitch products like the new “C2″ from Coca-Cola.

Since C2 contains both the artificial sweetener aspartame, AND  the natural sweetener ‘high fructose corn syrup’ I’ll bet I can guess the secret formula:

C2 = Coke + Diet Coke

Much like the “Clear” fad that brought us more sillyness in the form of such products as “Crystal Pepsi“, C2 will be gone just as quickly, once the Atkins crowd come out of their low-blood sugar comas.

Now, if all the C2 in the world got mixed up with all the C4 in the world and given a good shake…

Well, it would be a hell of a mess, that’s for sure but it would raise the average IQ quite a bit.

Blog on,
-Z

[Jan 2010 Update] C2 was eventually replaced by Coke Zero, a zero calorie equivalent which tastes more like original Coca-Cola than Diet Coke.

Patrick@93X,

The song by Cold you played earlier today (has lyrics “…I didn’t mean to be so cold…”) was just awful. Anybody can mix together bass+drums+powerchorddistortionguitars, but when the lyrics are pussy+whiny+”I feel”+”I want”+”I need” it really puts a damper on the song. It turns an otherwise decent band into a rocked-up version of Dashboard Confessional; possibly the worst lyric writing of all time.
I believe the style of music (in it’s unplugged, coffee-shop form) is called Emo for emotional, you probably know more about it than I do. There are bands that pull off Emo/Rock well (Outside by Staind, for example) and those who don’t, and they are easy to pick out by counting the number of times they say “I” in the first ten seconds.

Now that I have pointed it out to you, it will drive you nuts…

Sorry,
Conrad Zero