DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Today I was amused to read that Toppik, a cosmetic solution for thinning hair, is packaged in “an elegant, discrete molded container specially designed to dispense the fibers through 167 digitally optimized openings.” That is, a plastic shaker bottle.

This wins my first-ever Corinthian Leather Award, which I will assign periodically as new instances of ridiculous, obfuscating marketing language come to my attention. Submit yours today! You might win this genuine faux-woodgrain pressboard plaque!

(“Corinthian Leather” is a phrase invented by Chrysler’s marketing department in the late 1970s, when Ricardo Montalban was hawking their autos via a famous series of television commercials. There is no such thing as “Corinthian” leather. They made it up. And yet everyone believed it, to the point where today some companies still sell “Corinthian Leather” foil handles and bible cases. Whether these vendors are deceived, or simply attempting to cash in on Chrysler’s 25-year-old deceit, is an interesting question, suitable for discussion when you’re next trapped in an elevator, or trying to pass the time during your prostate or cervical exam.)

According to gomez.com, TWA’s website ranks #1 in ease of use as compared to other airlines’ sites.

This is clearly a crock of shit. (That’s a marketing term.)

Here’s a chronicle of my attempt to purchase flight tickets via twa.com:

1. search for flights with Mozilla 0.9.4. The results page does not render.
   
2. search for flights with IE5. The results page works fine. I select flights, and at the end am told I have to sign up for an account to make the purchase. I click the “sign up” link. My browser crashes.
   
3. repeat step 2 with Navigator 4. Browser crashes.
   
4. I restart my workstation.
   
5. repeat step 2 with IE5. Successfully pick flights, create account, fill out long form of frequent flyer numbers, credit card information, billing address, etc. Submit form.
   
6. website rejects my billing address. I go back, verify the address. It’s correct. I re-submit.
   
7. repeat step 6.
   
8. I enter a variation on my billing address. It’s rejected.
   
9. I dig a credit card statement out of the file. I re-type the address, byte for byte, and submit. The address is rejected.
   
10. I try another credit card, entering address data perfectly. The address is rejected.

At this point, I’ve wasted a half hour and am intensely wishing some other airline flew the route I’ve selected. I’m forced to call TWA’s 800 number, where a telephone operator takes 15 more minutes to collect the same data I’ve already typed in several times. But at the end of the process, she can do what TWA.com’s #1 ranked website cannot: she can sell me flight tickets.

Avis, the car rental company, just sent me some official-looking junk mail that reads “Check Enclosed” on the outside. I am ever-wary of mail fraud so I eagerly opened the envelope. I was disappointed to find, inside, a real check for $2.50.

Of course, the scam is as real as the check. This isn’t a gift — if I cash the check, Avis will automatically enroll me in their “AutoVantage” program, which offers many great benefits I will never use, but for which I’ll be charged a monthly fee after a free introductory period.

My question to Avis is this: if AutoVantage is such a great deal, why do you have to pay me to enroll?

I saw a loaf of bread in a friend’s refrigerator the other day. What a terrible fate for a good loaf of bread, I thought. I’m happy it wasn’t one of mine.

Here is all you need to know about storing bread: the fastest way to make it stale is to store it in the refrigerator. Leave it on the counter, or freeze it, but do not refrigerate it. And for gosh sakes, never microwave it.

In his seminal food-science book On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee explains that the staling process is dependent on temperature:

It proceeds most rapidly at temperatures just above freezing, and very slowly below freezing. In one experiment, bread stored at 46°F (7°C), a fairly typical refrigerator temperature, staled as much in one day as bread held at 86°F (30°C) did in six.

What is staling, anyway? It is the “retrogradation of amylopectin,” of course. I’m surprised you had to ask.

The important thing isn’t to understand the process so much as to know how to prevent it, and how to recover from it. My best recommendation for preventing staling is to eat bread fresh, within two hours of baking. This approach works for me 100% of the time — my bread never goes stale.

If you do have to save bread, wrap it tightly and store it either at room temperature (good for 3-4 days generally) or freeze it. To prepare it for consumption, you’ll need to heat it to 140° to re-gelatinize the starches, which temporarily reverses the staling process. The easiest way to do this is to slice the bread, spritz the slices with water if you have a spritzer available, and warm the slices in the toaster for a minute or two. Warning: if your only spritzer is ordinarily used for plants, you might want to make sure there’s no plant food in it before you hose down your toast.

If you want to heat an entire loaf, wrap it in foil and bake it for 10-20 minutes at 300°-350° F. Optionally, slice the bread first and push pats of butter between slices. Take care to wrap the loaf and set it on a cookie sheet so it doesn’t dribble butter in your oven.

As reported throughout the web, the Gartner Group has recommended that some enterprises “immediately investigate alternatives to [Microsoft’s commercial webserver application] IIS, including moving Web applications to Web server software from other vendors.” The report’s title is telling: Nimda Worm Shows You Can’t Always Patch Fast Enough.

Think that through… one of the largest, most-quoted technical analytical groups on the planet is recommending that companies not use Microsoft software. More strikingly, they’re recommending that corporate users abandon Microsoft software. A reasonable person might have to conclude that the Microsoft software in question is dangerous.

But if that’s the case, how could IIS have gained 26% market share? How could systems administrators be so blind, to install such bad software? Especially in light of the fact that the market leader, Apache, (58% market share) is free and has a dramatically better security history?

To be sure, updating server software, and watching for new vulnerabilities, is required for all admins. But I contend that Microsoft still fares worse than any other vendor. Here’s the evidence: Microsoft has released 11 “critical security updates” in 2001 alone.

Gartner goes on to say that IIS will continue to be a victim to worms and viruses until Microsoft releases a new, “completely rewritten, thoroughly and publicly tested” version of the program. Consider the implications of that statement: IIS is so bad it can only be fixed by discarding the entire mess and starting from scratch.

Joel Spolsky has written a well-reasoned essay about why rewriting software from scratch is a huge strategic mistake. Why? Because there is no guarantee that the rewrite will be any better than the original. I agree.

But his comment that “IIS has been publically tested, for about six years now, on millions of web servers and with thousands of hackers trying to find bugs,” ignores the reality that IIS is clearly not robust enough for enterprise use, no matter how well tested it has been.