Author: Matt

Yesterday, a coworker and I went through San Jose-Mineta International Airport to catch a flight home from a business trip.  When we arrived and saw how long the lines were for the security checkpoint, we had a little bit of an “oh shit” moment: we had arrived an hour and a half early — plenty of time to check our bags and get through security — but we thought we were arriving during an off-peak time and didn’t expect the lines to be quite *that* long.  (There were maybe 150-200 people in line, I’m guessing.)  I didn’t have any bags to check, so I told my coworker, “yeah, I’m going to get in line now,” and proceeded to the security checkpoint.

As I got in line, a lady came up to me and offered to sign me up for CLEAR — she said it would only take 3-4 minutes to sign up, I’d get the first month free, and that it would let me bypass the long lines.  That sounded good to me, so I said “sure”.

There was a two-part process: part one was applying for the CLEAR (presumably, something I’d only ever have to do once, or at worst, maybe once a year).  The lady walked me over to a nearby terminal, where she logged in and started the signup process.  They collected the following information from me:

• Basic info — name, address, email address, phone number
• Scanned a copy of my driver’s license (both front and back)
• Credit card (cause the service costs money — but at this point, I didn’t know how much)
• Fingerprints — from all 10 fingers
• Photo of my face
• Social security number — followed by an identity check (you know…where they ask you questions about stuff that’s on your credit report — in my case, “which of these streets have you previously lived on” and “how old is your sister”…which is a little creepy)

After the registration was complete, it was time for part two — actually going through the line.  They walked me over to a separate line, where I bypassed the rest of the people in line for the security checkpoint.  I came up to a couple of terminals, where there were maybe two or three people in front of me.  Once I got to the terminal, I scanned my boarding pass and provided fingerprints from two of my fingers.  The machine quickly said I was all set to go, so they then walked me into a special screening line.  (This part was a little clumsy, because I had to walk past the TSA agents — the ones that check your ID and boarding pass — and I had to go past them in the opposite direction that one would normally go in when going past these people.  Also it was slightly crowded.)  From here, they routed us to a line with an X-ray machine and a walk-through metal detector; we were asked to put our bags on the line to be X-rayed, but they said “everything stays in your bag”.  Do I need to take my laptop out?  Nope.  Do I need to take my baggie of fluids out?  Nope.  Do I need to take my shoes off?  Nope.  Do I need to take my belt off?  Nope.  Do I need to empty my pockets?  Nope — just go through the metal detector.  On the first trip through, I set off the metal detector, so they had me empty my pockets (big whoop — two cell phones and a wallet), put them on the X-ray belt, and go back through.  I didn’t set it off that time, so they waved me through.  I picked up my possessions from the X-ray belt and proceeded out of the checkpoint.

As I exited the checkpoint, my thoughts turned to my coworker.  “I wonder how much time I just saved,” I thought to myself.  He had to check a bag, but that hadn’t taken him very long — I remembered seeing him in line as I was walking through the “special” line — so I pulled out my phone and started my stopwatch.  And then I waited.  Finally, I saw him emerge from the checkpoint — and when I pulled out my phone, I saw that my stopwatch had been running for 21 minutes.

So, what’s my impression of CLEAR?

• They ask for an awful lot of personal information to make this process work.  On top of that, the person that recruited me didn’t exactly explain how this information was going to be used (past “the credit card is used to pay for the service”).  I suppose it’s understandable, given that it’s airport security, although it’s sad that we have to surrender all but our DNA samples to the government in order to get on a plane nowadays.
• It was nice not having to unpack half of my bags, take off half of my clothes, or go through the Backscatter X-Ray Scanner of Certain Doom 5000.  (The “5000” makes it sound cooler than its predecessor, the Backscatter X-Ray Scanner of Certain Doom 666.  Travelers — especially the more evangelical ones — didn’t respond well to that, a fact that *somehow* failed to come out during consumer testing.)  I did feel like CLEAR improved that part of the process and made me feel more like a real human being.
• The price of this service was a bit hefty.  (Notice how the girl that recruited me didn’t tell me how much it was?  There was probably a reason for that.)  As I was walking through the airport to my gate, I got an email telling me how much the service was going to be if I didn’t cancel in the next 28 days — $179.  (Turns out, that’s a per-year charge.)  Unfortunately, this is the second time I’ve traveled this year, so the cost/benefit ratio here doesn’t work in their favor.  When I went to cancel (more on that below), they offered me a discounted rate of $109 per year; however, even that is considerably more expensive than TSA Pre✓ (which is $85 for 5 years, as of this writing — which works out to $17 per year), and doesn’t really offer much of an advantage over TSA Pre✓.
• CLEAR isn’t available everywhere — in fact, it’s available in very few airports right now (13, as of the time of this writing, with Seattle listed as “Coming Soon”).  Their website has a map showing where they’re available, and even includes a draggable pin that you can drag to the airport where you want them to be available.  However, you can only drag the pin to locations that they’ve pre-defined, and my home airport isn’t one of those choices — which tells me that they’re not going to be available where I am anytime soon.  Having them available in my home airport would make their service doubly useful, as I would be able to use them on both my outgoing flight and my return flight (assuming I’m going through an airport where they’re set up).
• When I went to their website to cancel, the process was a little clunky.
  • At first, I started up a chat window with them, which sat there and did nothing for at least 20 minutes.  I chalked it up to issues with my company firewall, so I closed it out and didn’t think much of it.
  • Later in the day, I got an email from them that had a “Manage my account” link in it, so I clicked it and tried to log in.  I didn’t know what my password was (the application process didn’t ask me for one), so I used their password feature, which went fairly smoothly.  Once I was logged in, I got an error page (haha, now I know you guys are using force.com!) that wouldn’t go away, even if I logged out and logged back in.
  • Finally, I resorted to trying the web chat again.  This time, it worked and I got a hold of “Tanyia M” immediately.  “She” was very helpful and got my subscription canceled; however, her responses came back to me so quickly that I’m not sure of Tanyia is an actual person or one of our impending bot overlords.

Overall, I liked the experience, but I think this service would be more worth it if I were a frequent traveler with money to burn — or if the service had a much better price point.  As it is, my company is allowing me to travel less and less, so this just doesn’t make it worth it to me.  I don’t think the time savings, when compared to TSA Pre✓, would have been that significant — especially given that I usually show up to the airport far earlier than I need to.  In fact, I just learned that TSA Pre✓ is $85 for 5 years (I thought it was $79 for 1 year), so that option just became a lot more tempting.

I’m sharing this because this took me forever to figure out, and I’m hoping that this bit of information does someone some good.

I have a Polycom VVX 500 VoIP phone.  This phone is USB enabled, and it so far it’s recognized every USB headset I’ve plugged into it (which has probably been two); however, when I plugged in my headset, the volume would reset to the median setting after every call.  It wouldn’t do that when I connected it through the headset port, however, so I just plugged it in via the headset port and left well enough alone.

That changed today, as I picked up a Plantronics Voyager Legend headset.  The headset only came with a small USB dongle — no way to wire it into the headset jack on the phone.  That’s fine — it’s working great so far, I love the way it fits, I love how well it works with the phone, and I love that it came with its own carrying case — that doubles as a battery-powered charger!  But, my old problem resurfaced — each time I make a call, the volume resets to the middle setting.

After scouring around the web today, I finally found a helpful answer on the Polycom forums, which also describes why this setting even exists in the first place (apparently, some countries have laws that require the phone’s volume to reset to its default setting after each call).  Here’s how to make it work:

1. You’ll need to enable the web interface, if you haven’t done so already.  To do this, go into the settings app and go to Advanced (the default admin password is 456)->Administration Settings->Web Server Configuration->Web Server and set it to Enabled.  Set Web Config Mode to something other than Disabled (I suggest setting it to HTTP Only.)  Exit out of the menu.  (The phone will probably reboot at this point.  Wait for it to come back up before proceeding to the next step.)
2. On your computer, pull up a web browser and type in the phone’s IP address.  (You can find this in the settings app under Status->Network->TCP/IP Parameters.)
3. Log in as the admin user (again, the default password is 456).
4. Go to Utilities->Import & Export Configuration.
5. In your favorite text editor, create a file with the following contents (yes, it’s just one line):

   <Volume voice.volume.persist.usbHeadset="1"/>

6. Under Import Configuration, click Choose File.  Choose the file you created in the previous step, and click Import.

Now you should be done!  The phone should remember your volume preferences between calls now.

The latest Powerball jackpot seems to be making everyone a little crazy and/or stupid (myself included), but sometimes you just gotta call people out on it when they take the “stupid” part too far.

Today, one of my Facebook friends shared a very stupid picture.  I’m not calling the friend who shared the picture stupid; I’m calling the picture itself stupid, for multiple reasons.

There are several issues with this:

• There’s a very simple math error; $1.3 billion divided by 300 million people is actually $4.33, not $4.33 million.  (EDIT: It occured to me that the person who made this might have used the archaic British English definition of “billion”, which was one million million, or one trillion in American English.  However, even if we use this definition — which isn’t common today — we end up with $4,333.33, not $4.33 million.)
• $1.3 billion is an annuity payout.  It’s paid out in 30 equal installments over the course of the next 29 years.  Spread out over 300 million people, that actually comes out to about $0.14 per person, per year.
• This fails to account for taxes that would be withheld.

The second point actually makes a good case for taking the lump sum option — as of the time of this writing, the cash payout was estimated at $806 million, which comes out to about $2.69 per person — still not $4.33 million (or even $4.33), but now we’re starting to get a little more realistic.

Even at $2.69, we’re still not accounting for tax withholdings.  I don’t have the patience to go and figure out how much would be taken out of a Powerball jackpot for taxes; fortunately, other people have done that work for me.  It’s going to depend on what state you live in — you’re going to be much better off if you live in California, Delaware, Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, or Wyoming — but for sake of argument, we’ll take my home state, which seems to have a 5% tax on lottery winnings.  If I took the lump sum option here, I’d get $564.2 million after taxes, which works out to $1.88 per person.

Even this number is slightly off, because 300 million people is a pretty bad rounding of the US population; according to the US Census Bureau’s estimates, the current population is closer to 322.8 million people.  (Where did those other 22.8 million people go, random internet person??  It’s like the Holocaust all over again…)  Using this figure, we get closer to the neighborhood of $1.75 per person.

Now, let’s face reality: this would never happen.  In a best-case scenario, you would take your winning ticket into your state’s lottery office and tell them “I want this jackpot paid out to everyone in the United States.”  There is precedent for splitting jackpots among multiple winners (and my state’s lottery office confirmed that there’s no upper limit on the number of people that can split a jackpot), but the logistical nightmare caused by splitting it among 322 million people would most likely be enough for them to tell you “no” on the spot.  In a next-best-case scenario, you would turn the money over to the federal government and ask them to do the same; but without an act of Congress, they’re unlikely to oblige.  This means you’re left to do this on your own, and the likelihood of tracking down the home address of every single person in the United States is next to nil, even in today’s world.  And, even if you did, you’re going to have to add in administrative costs for paying out to every single person — you’re likely going to pay almost $84 million alone just in postage to mail a check out to everyone.

Lastly, we have to ask the question — what good would it do to even mail $4.33 to everyone in the US?  $4.33 doesn’t go far in today’s America.  For most people, this might be a couple gallons of gas or a cheap meal at McDonald’s.  The benefits of spreading the wealth around in this manner just aren’t there.  (This is not to say that you couldn’t take your Powerball winnings and put them towards a good cause — but there are better ways to do it than by splitting it up and sending everyone a check.)

Now then — this post actually provoked a rather interesting thought.  What if you took the annuity option?  Would you split it up between everyone who was alive at the time you got the first payment?  Or would you take each annual payment and split it between everyone who was alive in the US at the time?  For the sake of this argument, let’s ignore administrative costs — let’s assume everyone signs up for direct deposit and it costs us a pittance to actually do so (split up, of course, over 30 equal installments of 1/30th of a pittance).  Let’s also assume that we don’t have the Fed’s cooperation here — we’re going to be stuck paying taxes on the initial amount, and we’ll divvy up the rest to everyone after taxes are paid.

The first option actually works out better for the people who are alive at the time of the first payout, because the truth is that not all of them will live to see all 30 payouts (or even the second payout).  The US Census Bureau has the death rate (as of 2015) pegged at 8.2 per 1,000 people per year; this means that, of our 322.8 million people, only about 320.2 million of them will live to see 2017’s payout.  After taxes in my home state, each year’s payout is going to be $30⅓ million.  This means that the first year’s payout is going to be a whopping $0.094 per person; the second year’s payout will fall just shy of $0.095 per person.  The good news is that the death rate is projected to increase over time: by 2050 (just a few years after our experiment is over), it’ll top out at 10.3 per thousand people per year.  By the time of the last payout, 75 million of you will be dead; those who are left will get about $0.122 each.  Here’s how the math works out:

Now, keep in mind — my math isn’t perfect.  The Census’s death rates are only calculated at 10-year intervals starting in 2020 (except that they also did one for 2015), and I just did a simple linear interpolation of the death rate for the years in between.  If someone else can come up with a better model, please send it my way.

Figuring out the second option is easier, because the US Census Bureau has already done most of the work for me.  They’ve put together projections showing what the population of the US will be each year, through 2060, so I don’t have to bother with birth rates/death rates and trying to figure out what the population is going to be each year.  If we’re just going to take each year’s annuity and split it between everyone that’s alive in the US at that time, the first year’s payout will be the biggest — $0.094.  The second year’s payout will still be around $0.094, but it’ll slowly decline, and by year 29, you’ll only be getting $0.078:

Conclusion: This idea of spreading out the Powerball winnings between everyone in the US is stupid.  Just give me your Powerball tickets instead.

Update 1: On a whim, I called up my state’s lottery office; they confirmed that there’s no upper limit to the number of people that can split a jackpot.

Why am I posting a copy of my car insurance policy online?  To illustrate a point.  Also, I’m fairly confident that I’ve blurred out all of my personal information.

Continue reading “Beware the Gap Coverage”

The last few weeks have been pretty stressful for me.  I have a number of assignments I’m trying to get done in school, and there’s currently 9 days of school left.

Last night, I had some reading that I needed to do for one of my classes.  I have trouble concentrating on textbook reading, but I’ve found that walking on the treadmill helps me to concentrate.  (And hey, if I lose a few pounds in the process…)  So I walked…for almost 3 hours.  I walked 7.9 miles total.  That’s how long and dry this textbook reading is.

When emerged from my basement, I went upstairs and found my son trying to make Easy Mac out of a regular box of mac and cheese.  He had put the macaroni into a drinking glass, filled it with water, and was about to put it in the microwave for 3 1/2 minutes.  I quickly put a stop to it — partially because I could see third-degree burns in his future, but also because we were out of milk.  He was determined to try, however, so we took a trip to the grocery store.

Continue reading “How My Son Made the Claw Machine His Bitch”