DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I have a few positive experiences to report. I’ve had the pleasure of sending money to a few companies that promise to treat my personal information as something to be guarded, rather than as something to be sold.

Loudspeaker manufacturer Polk Audio includes a card with their merchandise promoting online warranty registration. The card claims, “The data we gather on our on-line registration is never sold or otherwise shared with anyone.” I love to see that! I stopped filing warranty registrations ten years ago, when I realized that the amount of junk mail I received was directly proportional to the number of boxes I’d checked off the last time I sent in a warranty registration card. But I took Polk’s claims at face value and registered online in an effort to support the sort of business model I can feel good about, i.e. making money by selling a product rather than selling customer data.

One caution: I’m pretty sure the analog registration method (that is, the postcard with 60 checkboxes on it, asking what magazines I read and — unbelievable — how much money I make), is almost certain to generate an avalanche of glossy, coated-paper crap via the USPS. Buy Polk, but register online.

I also made a purchase recently from Crutchfield. As it is a huge, catalog-sales, mail-order vendor, I was surprised to see this on the order form:

The remarkable thing is, the “NO” option was prechecked! When was the last time you saw a company use opt-in rather than opt-out? I’m online more often than not and I was shocked (happily) to see this.

In the privacy doghouse is the Life Extension Foundation, whose FAQ claims, No information, including names, addresses or e-mail addresses is leased or sold to anyone else. But when I called them to confirm, two sales reps admitted that their opt-out system is broken — once you’re in the customer database, they lose control, and your private data could be sold to anyone.

Further caution: LEF.org uses Microsoft’s Passport service! That’s a great big red flag for anyone concerned about privacy. Microsoft’s track record is so poor that the phrase Microsoft security is an oxymoron.

So, LEF lost my business, and earned the wrong kind of publicity right here. If you’d like to live forever, I strongly suggest you place your order for anti-aging supplements with iHerb.com, whose privacy policy is short, unambiguous, and confirmed by their sales reps:

We do not sell, rent or share personal information with any third party. The information you give us is totally confidential, and will not be sold or given to any individual or company or organization under any circumstances. This is our simple promise to you.

When I called to confirm this claim, the iHerb rep actually scoffed at me. I generally don’t like to be scoffed at, but if ever there was a time to be scoffed at it’s just after asking the question “Will your company sell or rent my private data?” We don’t do that, he said derisively.

So, applause all around: Polk Audio, Crutchfield, and iHerb (maker of fine organic home theater components), thank you and good luck!

(The standard disclaimer applies: I’m making these endorsements without compensation, and regrettably do not expect to profit should you decide to patronize these fine merchants.)

What does it mean that I’ve only heard of about one-third of the artists in CDNow’s Top 100? I’ve always felt a bit out of touch with popular culture; this is clearly related.

Must read: Firewalk accident leaves fast food bosses working for Colonel Cinders. (Sydney Morning Herald — local mirror)

It was meant to build confidence, but 30 managers of the KFC fast food restaurant were left nursing sore feet after a firewalk did not go as planned.

Twenty people were taken to Hunter Valley hospitals, where they were treated with the Colonel’s “Secret Recipe” of 11 herbs and spices, and a side of mashed potatoes and gravy.

OK, I’m kidding about the gravy.

Does this story sound familiar? See BK Broiler!. (What is it with these lunatics, thinking they can walk on fire?)

Thanks to Aaron for forwarding this story!

Human cannonball Ermes Zamperla, injured two weeks ago when he overshot his landing pad, is unable to walk… but managed to crawl off his couch to punch his girlfriend during an argument. He was subsequently arrested.

I do this sort of thing way more often that I care to admit…

The story starts with a switch: a 3Com 3C16464A 12-port fast-ethernet switch for you bitheads in the audience. It has worked marvelously for a long time (at about 2% of its capacity given the 3x7r3m3 traffic levels I bring in, not) but recently developed ventilatory arrhythmia — that is, the fans started groaning like old men in traction — and eventually my initial solution, cranking up the volume on the stereo, was no longer appropriate.

It was apparent that the fan inside the switch had thrown a rod, or its engine block had cracked, or at the very least the head gasket needed to be replaced. And so, armed with my enormous knowledge of electronics, not to mention my fabulous track record with assembly and repair of machines of all sorts, I decided to fix it myself.

Of course, I called 3Com first to ask about a warranty replacement. The phone tech was cheerful and supportive, and managed not to burst into pitiless laughter as she informed me that the repair would take 45 days. She also said I could purchase an “advance replacement” for $300, which is about 4x what these 3C16464As sell for on Ebay. I declined.

My next step is the one I regret: I decided to repair the switch myself. So I spent an hour trying to figure out what brand of fan is used inside the switch: I quizzed three levels of support techs at 3Com, pored over 3com.com, and searched the web for a dozen combinations of relevant terms via Google. But ultimately I failed. And so I waited until the weekend, when I took the switch offline and popped the case open for inspection. Fan model numbers plus more research yielded the fan manufacturer’s site, and a half-hour after that I’d learned that the fans cost $15 apiece (I’d need two) and have to be imported. This was becoming expensive, but I reasoned that I could probably figure out how to wire a resistor inline with each fan to reduce rotational speed, quieting the noise.

I stewed for a few days on my plan.

I think my success as a software engineer is partly due to my belief, deep down, that I’m just a little bit smarter than everyone else. So, even though I thought it was fairly likely that I’d electrocute myself in the process of replacing these fans, I continued to stew, weighing the possibility of early death against the possibility that I had the soldering-iron chops to repair and even upgrade the switch.

Fortunately, my wife really is a little bit smarter than everyone else, or at least smarter than me, and she frequently spares me the absurd consequences of my conceit. She said, “Why don’t you just buy a new switch?”

The light dawned on me, like the morning, you know, just before sunrise. It took only a few minutes of digging to learn that NetGear makes fast-ethernet switches designed specifically for home offices, where noise is a concern: the FS-116 has an external power supply, and therefore no fan, and is therefore silent. I plugged it in yesterday and am absolutely loving it; I can now hear my firewall, previously masked by the eternal-train-wreck sound of the 3Com unit, and have already begun planning a fanless replacement, which of course I will design and build myself.