Erica's Adventures In Saudi Arabia

Erica has some great adventures in Saudi Arabia, catching Spike the uromastyx (giant lizard), catching a Bufo dhufarensis (toad), and finding Cistanche flowers. Great stuff.








Related: kid in a claw game - Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap - Backyard Wildlife: Great Spreadwing Damselfly

Earthlink/Covad - Failure after Failure and No Desire to Improve

Earthlink supplies my internet connection (via Covad). the connection is remarkably bad. Normally it will fail several times a month but for relatively short periods of time when I actually want to use it (under an hour). As I say very bad but given teh monopolistic behavaior of the alternatives I haven't switched. Who actually choses to subject themselves the Verizon or Comcast if they have any way of avoiding it?

For several days the connections has become 3rd world like. Down over 1/3 of the time for 3 days.

Here are some example ping results from teh last few days
8562 packets transmitted, 5621 received, 34% packet loss, time 8570442ms
135 packets transmitted, 3 received, 97% packet loss, time 134157ms
140 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 139189ms
346 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 345519ms
281 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 280259ms

Calling up for support I have learned over the years is useless. they force you through all sorts of obvious steps to waste time that I have already told them I tried and failed. Every time they go through the same steps of forcing you to remove your router, test out this and that and every time it does nothing. The connection is somehow broken, having nothing to do with my local setup but they never will explore that problem. All they will do is go through the steps and find out wow the connection doesn't work. No kidding. They now add an amazingly horrible push button hell that fails to provide sensible options - press 1 if you service works, press 2 if you want to check on your email.... repeated over and over - no actual option.

Yesterday - since the service is obviously broken I gave up and spent 2 hours trying to deal with them. the sum total of that was 2 hours wasted and the "support" person just hung up after getting tired of seeing that the options they were trying failed as I told them they would. Not surprisingly Earthlink just dropped the matter. No follow up by them on the "service" they were providing. I called back twice and asked for them to tell me what had been done, what steps they took after hanging up (or if the call really was just disconnected... in which case we all know no-one interested in service would then just abandon the service because the call was disconnected...). Nothing is the answer. And again, I asked. Again more nothing.

They have devolved to be so bad that I have to consider using 2 companies that have "service" records only rivaled by soviet era collectives. What a sad state of affairs we have created that we force people to rely on such horrible service if they want to have a connection to the internet.

What fixes the problem of the broken connection Earthlink and Covad provide me. Wait. That is it. The only thing that helps is waiting. Normally that means every month or two I just don't get to use the internet when I want. The last 3 days it has meant I don't get to use it for many hours on end (over 6 yesterday) or it is repeatedly interrupted for 2-25 minutes and then comes back then breaks then comes back. All the fiddling with settings and rebooting and... accomplishes nothing. Just behave like a soviet citizen in 1979 and be happy you have electricity occasionally is Earthlink/covads answer. Unfortunately my options are to use some other soviet style customer service company. How sad for me.

Related: Customer Service is Important - AT&T's Attempt to Take Away Consumer's Rights Denied - Is Poor Service the Industry Standard?

Hulu Desktop for Ubuntu

I have been having all sorts of trouble with Hulu on my new Ubuntu desktop. When it does work it has a great fullscreen display. But the fullscreen mode would not work quite often. And when it did work it would always choose the smaller of my two monitors no matter what I did. The Popout option was nice and I could move it to the monitor I wanted but the control (pause, restart etc.) wouldn't work.

In trying to find solutions to these bugs I stumbled across Hulu desktop for Linux (including an Ubuntu 64 bit option). It works very well. The interface for Hulu desktop is flashy and nice in some ways but in some ways it is not easy to navigate. For example, it is much easier to see a list of the episodes you have subscribed to and their expiration dates.

And I get to watch programs like Caprica that I couldn't otherwise, since I don't have cable TV.

Related: Embedded YouTube Videos Won't Play - Using Multiple Firefox Profiles at the Same Time in Ubuntu

Problem: Hulu full-screen mode fails on Ubuntu in Firefox, Chrome and Opera. Hulu popout screen controls fail - Ubuntu 9.04, 64-bit. How to move a Hulu fullscreen to another monitor (using Hulu Desktop you can choose which monitor to use).

Our fiscal practices have been irresponsible for years

Thoughts At Tax Time: Big Bill Coming Due by Emily Anstaett

We all agree on the facts: the national debt is closing in on $13 trillion and our fiscal practices have been irresponsible for years. With that starting point, we can all come to both an understanding of the gravity of the situation and the realization that difficult decisions and sacrifices will have to be made to get our economy back on track and restore the overall satisfaction of Americans to comfortable levels.

Unfortunately we don't all agree we have been "irresponsible for years." We have lots of politicians acting like the huge debt problem is some new issue. Every time times are good they want to give favors to their friends. And when times are bad they want to give favors to their friends. And we keep electing politicians that don't care about ruining the country so long as they can give their friends big amounts of cash favors. Until we grow up and realize we are selling out the future of our country by electing those they seek to put favors to the friends today above the interests of the country we will fall further and further into debt.

I am pretty cynical about the ability of us to vote for ethical, competent, intelligent leaders. Or for the type of people we elect to take sensible steps. I can be surprised though. The ability of the Clinton administration to pass a balance budget (even if you say that it wasn't really balanced given the funny accounting Washington uses it was still pretty amazingly good).

I would love to be wrong and see our politicians put the well being of the country 1st or even 3rd or 4th but I don't think that is very likely. I believe we will have to show them we expect them to put the country first and I don't think we, as voters, will. And even if we did we have to elect people that have the skills to know what is right and the leadership to put the right policies in place.

 

John Hunter

Related: Taxes – Slightly or Steeply Progressive? - Taxes per Person by Country - Failed Leaders Protect Trust Fund Babies Instead of the Country

The Boom in Adult Interns

The great recession and huge loss of jobs has created a growth in internships. Working for Free: The Boom in Adult Interns

When you hear the word intern, you probably don't think of people like Kristina Shands. For starters, she's 38. And she had notched 10 years of experience as a fundraiser at a nonprofit in Tennessee before she was laid off last year. But now that Shands is considering moving into sports management, she's interning with the Knoxville Ice Bears hockey team, writing game summaries and handing out stats on game day. She devotes about 10 hours a week to the Bears, and she does it for free. "I'm getting to see the inner workings of a professional hockey team, learning about the business side of sports, and I get to watch hockey," Shands says. "I'm having fun."

The increase in internships, however can go to far: The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not

Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York's labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department's top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.

Related: find internships by state - Federal requirements for internships - USA Unemployment Rate Remains at 9.7%

Embedded YouTube Videos Won't Play

On my Ubuntu machine embedded YouTube videos won't play (in any browser (Chrome, Firefox, Opera) but videos from the YouTube site play fine.

Lazyweb: What is causing this? How can I fix it?

Health Care System Needs Much More Reform

Why is every other rich country able to provide universal health care for far less than the USA can provide partial health care? Are we just less capable than every other country? The only other area I know of we are so universally worse than every other country is in the percentage of the population that is free (not locked up in jail). All the health care system performance studies I have seen show the USA on the low end of performance and at a cost 50-100% higher than other countries. If the system we have used in the last 30 years is so great why are we do we have bad to mediocre results at a huge cost?

I don't think the current health care reform bill does anywhere close to enough to address the huge problems with our current health system. It seems that yet again (they have been doing so for decades now) those trying to restrict changes have successfully stopped much in the way of reform.

I am not sure how anyone can believe the new law changes to a new cycle of increasing health care costs. Health care costs have taken an increasing percentage of the GDP every year for decades. The worst that can possible happen is the continuous cycle of costs increases are increased.

This heath reform failed to do enough to stop the increases. But we can see how good a job of those against reform did to stop reform. Until more people refuse to accept the continued extremely poor USA health care system results those against reform are going to continue to stop attempts to fix the system that hugely damages our economy year after year, decade after decade. There is no question reform will happen it is only a matter of how long we wait.

Special interests can maintain systems that harm the society to maintain their special interests to an extent. But the health care system failures have grown so large the economy cannot sustain the special interest favors without drastically reducing economic performance for everyone else. Currently we waste easily $500 billion a year (compared to what other countries can do). It is sad we have to through so much money away year after year. Unless we are just not capable of matching even the 2nd most inefficient health care system in the world, in which case we are going to suffer a great deal. But I don't believe we are incapable of being say 30% worse than the next poorest run health system. So now we tax the rest of society some hundreds of billions each year (and increasing). So far the rest of us are willing to accept this. But at some point the increased demands of those against having the US even perform much much worse than the 2nd worse country in the world will be too much and reform will happen. And it already happens in lots of small way. Companies move jobs offshore due to the poor health care system in the USA...

My blog post on health care system economics - health care system improvement

Preaching False Ideas to Men Known to be Idiots

Re: Yes, Debt Matters

Over the last several weeks I've been contemplating how things have changed in my still relatively short lifetime... how the word "freedom" has somehow morphed to mean "I work so others get free stuff" or perhaps even better "I better stop working so I can get free stuff." Personal accountability has gone out the window, an increasing number of people pay no taxes - coming dangerously close to the 51% tipping point where tax policy will be set by those who don't pay anything, and somehow all kinds of new "rights" have magically appeared in the Constitution."

A huge amount of debt is bad, like the amount we have taken on. Those that have continued to elect politicians that pour on the debt the last 30 years should be ashamed of ourselves, but we do not seem to be. We shouldn't elect people that year after year pay out money they don't have with the (unspoken) promise of future taxes.

Saying people don't pay taxes when they often pay much higher proportional taxes than the rich is very misleading. Pretending that income taxes are the only taxes is just not true. When people try to say a small percentage of people pay taxes, usually they mean there is a significant portion that don't pay federal income taxes. Which is, of course, not the same thing as not paying taxes.

I'm not sure where your claim of 51% pay no taxes comes from but it sounds like the extremely misleading "data" presented by those that think the poor are somehow responsible or to blame and we should be doing more to support the lifestyles of the rich.

Buffett Slams Tax System Disparities

Buffett cited himself, the third-richest person in the world, as an example. Last year, Buffett said, he was taxed at 17.7 percent on his taxable income of more than $46 million. His receptionist was taxed at about 30 percent.

Interview with Warren Buffett:

Most of my income is taxed at 15 percent, and-- and doesn't pay a payroll. Mainly it's dividends and capital gains. And if you look at the For-- Forbes 400, a bunch of my fellow rich guys-- they will-- their tax rate overall to the federal government will be less than that of their receptionist.
...
I'll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges-- me that the average for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists. So, I'll give 'em an 800 number. They can call me. And the million will go to whichever charity the winner-- designates.

Criticize the politicians that have for decades passed budgets that hike the taxes in the future to give their current voters a false sense of well being (because they know the voters won't think about the future costs the largess [big tax cuts now without spending cuts, for example, are not in fact tax cuts in any real sense, they are just shifting taxes to the future. But that is not what the marketers peddling those giveaways say, of course] today costs). Criticize the voters for mortgaging a significant amount of future economic wealth of their country to such charlatans. I concur with such criticisms.

But I get frustrated with attempts to distort people's perceptions with misleading data. The debt problems are not because the poor are paying too little in taxes.

We spent like crazy in the last 10 years. That is a huge part of the problem - almost no-one disagrees with this. We reduced taxes on the rich. That is another huge part of the problem - some disagree with this. I can understand people feeling differently, that is their choice. But I see any attempt to market giveaways to voters today, that sticks a huge bill to those in the future as poor policy. Cutting taxes is fine as long as you cut spending a the same time (and you don't rely on fake financial projections to justify your current largess, of course).

We blow hundreds of billions a year in a very poorly run health system (again a problem that has existed and grown for decades). One can argue the current attempts makes it worse. One can't argue we elected people that have done nothing significant about it for decades.

No one must buy our debt. I have, for more than a decade, thought the main reason Japan and China buy so much of our debt is not because it is wise investment but for other economic reasons (and some political reasons). They wish to keep the dollar value high and allow the USA to buy their goods. I think they would be wise to massively reduce those purchases. And I suspect they shall. But we shall see.

It isn't tricky. Those of us that have elected politicians that created huge debt loads (by increasing spending or reducing current taxes) created the need for huge taxes for the future to pay off that debt. We continue to elect them so it is just playing out the way we chose.

Unfortunately we suffer a great deal from

1) the inability to think beyond the current year with any degree of sense. We act like 8 year olds. That isn't a good thing for adults to do on matters such as long term saving and debt. We not only do it with those we elect but also in our own retirement accounts.

2) the intellectual discourse on the most important and complex decisions our country makes is about at the level of a Coke commercial. Again this is something we chose. If we didn't acknowledge/accept ill informed campaigns on matters of pubic policy then talking heads would actually be replaced with thoughtful people that detailed the cost and benefits of options and provided alternatives they support. Instead we want simple minded marketing minds to set the policy landscape so we get decisions based on fear, rhetoric, oversimplifications, marketing gimmicks, manipulation, demagoguery...

H. L. Mencken said it well, a demagogue as "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." I can't tell how many of our politicians are demagogues and how many are the idiots that demagogues play for fools. But an awful lot of them are in one or the other camp. I imagine many think they are demagogues, but I bet quite a few are really fools.

Ubuntu and Linux Resources

• Ubuntu Kung-Fu





• order book from Amazon


• Ubuntu Pocket Guide - paper book from Amazon





• Linux-Unix cheat sheets - The ultimate collection

Related: Tips for Your First 24 Hours with Ubuntu - Ubuntu: Closing a Program That Won't Respond

Real Journalism Exposes Bail Bond Corruption

It is far to infrequently that I actually find real journalism. Here is a great example of a journalist doing their job and informing the public of how corrupt the bail bond system is in practice. It isn't surprising NPR is behind this journalism as they actually run their organization in a way that allows true journalism unlike so many other "news" organizations. Sponsor NPR.

Bail Burden Keeps U.S. Jails Stuffed With Inmates

"Follow the money," Henderson says. "Usually whenever you've got questions of money, you follow the money and they'll tell you the reasons why some things operate."

He says the bail bondsmen don't want to see his program receive anything more than limited funding. The bondsmen "make money and they contribute their influence," Henderson says. "I would do more if we had the funding to do more." It's not that Lubbock's bondsmen want Henderson's clients. They don't. Henderson's clients can't afford a bondsman's fees.

But Henderson says the bondsmen lobby to keep his program as small and unproductive as possible, so that no paying customers slip though — even if that means thousands of inmates like Raymond Howard and Leslie Chew wait in jail at taxpayer expense, because they never find the money to become paying customers.

"The bonding companies make a living," Henderson says. "That's just the nature of Texas and Lubbock."

But it's not just Texas and Lubbock. Industry experts and a review of national lobbying efforts by NPR show that pretrial release programs across the country are increasingly locked in a losing battle with bonding companies trying to either limit their programs or shut them down entirely.

As Henderson walks back downstairs, he stops and reads the sign above the door in the lobby. It says: Protecting our community by changing lives. "Jail doesn't do anybody any good," he says. "The only thing that jail is good for is to keep the dangerous people in the community away from the people who don't pose a risk."

But that is not who is in the nation's jails. According to the Justice Department, two-thirds of the people in the nation's jails are petty, nonviolent offenders who are there for only one reason: They can't afford their bail.
...
Bondsmen's main responsibility is to bring defendants back to court if they fail to show up. But it turns out that many bondsmen aren't doing this job.

Statistically, most bail jumpers are not caught by bondsmen or their bounty hunters. They're caught by sheriff's deputies, according to Beni Hemmeline from Lubbock's district attorney's office.

"More often than not, the defendants are rearrested on a warrant that's issued after they fail to appear," Hemmeline said.

Asked if the bondsmen are fulfilling their end of the deal, Hemmeline says, "Well, it may be that [the bondsmen] can't find them. They can't camp at the door 24 hours a day. They do the best that they can, I think."

If a defendant does run, the bondsman is also supposed to pay the county the full cost of the bond as a sort of punishment for not keeping an eye on the client.

But that doesn't happen, either, Hemmeline says.

Hemmeline says Lubbock usually settles for a far lower amount than the full bond. In fact, according to the county treasurer in Lubbock, bondsmen usually only pay 5 percent of the bond when a client runs.

Consider that math for a minute. The bondsmen charge clients at least 10 percent. But if the client runs, they only have to pay the county 5 percent. Meaning if they make no effort whatsoever, they still profit. Hemmeline says asking for more might put the bondsmen out of business.

"Bond companies serve an important purpose," she says.

NPR found bondsmen getting similar breaks in other states. In California, bondsmen owe counties $150 million that they should have had to pay when their clients failed to show up for court. In New Jersey, bondsmen owe $250,000 over the past four years. In Erie, Pa., officials stopped collecting money for a time because it was too much of a hassle to get the bonding companies to pay up.

It is possible to skip the commercial bail bonding business entirely by just paying cash. Show up for court and you get your cash back. But it turns out that this is not as easy as it sounds. It takes hours longer to post a cash bail. And many people, like Sandy Ramirez, don't even know that it's an option.

Ramirez came to Lubbock Bail Bond for her 18-year-old son, who was arrested after getting into a scuffle with his friends. They were charged with public mischief. Her son was given $750 bail.

She says neither the district attorney's office, the judge nor the court clerk told her she could leave cash with the court as a deposit and get it back when the case was over.

"I never knew that," Ramirez says. "That's awful not to know that."

Lubbock Bail Bond tacked on some additional fees for, among other things, paying on a payment plan. In the end, she owes the company $260 — more than half the cost of the bond. Two weeks after the scuffle, prosecutors dropped all the charges against the teens. But two months later, she's still paying the bail bondsman.

Related: Death of Newsprint - Police Failing to Enforce Law If Lawbreaker is a Police Officer - Watching the Watchmen - Photographers are not a Threat - Buying Favors from Politicians - Lobbyists Pay Congressmen to Keep Taxes Off Billion Dollar Private Equities Deals and on For Our Grandchildren

Lines of Confusion Illusion

Cool illusion. I like to remind myself that such examples show that what you think it true is not always true.

Related: Albert Einstein, Marylin Monroe Hybrid Image - Fooled by Randomness - Seeing Patterns Where None Exists

Site to Share Pasted Code

Nice tool to quickly share code: Pastie

Related: Create Instant Screencasts - Regular Expression Cheat Sheet

Life is Short. What Do You Have to Show for Yourself?

I think there are 2 good points here. One is doing work that you believe makes a difference. To me that is the more important factor. Will 5-10 years from now you be happy with what you accomplished in that time? Are you glad you spent your time that way?

The second issue of owning what you have produced is nice. But it is not easy to create very valuable content that can be converted into cash. Some can and then it is great.

I think really, more often, it can be the freedom that your own work gives you that is rewarding. Not so much the monetary value it brings. I do have quite a few web sites (Curious Cat Management Improvement Site, The Life and Legacy of William G. Hunter, Management and Leadership Quotes, Curious Cat Economics and Investing Blog...) that I really enjoy working on and I think are worthwhile. And they get lots of visitors (when I compare it to people I meet or train in seminars or the like). But they are far from properties I can sell for any significant amount of money.

Comment on: Life is Short. What Do You Have to Show for Yourself?

Think about it: a decade goes by, and I don’t have anything to show for it.

Man, that sucks.

How much of your last 10 years do you own?


2009 is different.

I own – outright – 99% of what I’ve done in 2009.

Photo Essay: Longwood Gardens, Delaware

See photos from my visit to Longwood Gardens in Delaware.

Google's Wonder Wheel

I found out about this cool search tool via Powerful Seo tool all bloggers should know about. Google's Wonder Wheel lets you view related search terms. It is interesting to follow the path for a few steps to see where it leads.



Related: Viewing Unpersonalized Google Search Results - PageRank Distribution

Photo Management and Web Gallery Creation Software

What suggestions to people have for photo management and web gallery creation software. I don't need anything fancy. I have been using Picasa and it is ok. It does take me a long time to do some things though. And the latest version (Picasa 3.0 for Linux) seems to eliminate the main function I liked (replaced with only letting you upload photos to their web site).

Essentially what I have been doing is

• putting the photos I want in this gallery in one folder (these are the high resolution unedited photos)


• cropping the some of the photos


• using Picasa's make a web page feature (which automatically created thumbnails and let me set the maximum size of photos [say 800 pixels] and it reduced the image size - for web display)


• it also created pages for each of the photos (the idea is you could just upload the resulting files (html and jpg) to your site and you had a live web page

I like this model. I want to keep the photos on my Curious Cat Travels site - not some third party site (like Picasa Web, Flickr...). The most annoying thing about old process was I had to manually edit each page and the html Picasa generated wasn't really what I needed - so I just cut out a portion of the html from each page and pasted it into the template I had for my photo galleries.

Does anyone have suggestions for the best tools to do this using Linux?

I am installing digikam, now and will try it out.

Related: Curious Cat Travel Photo Blog - Using Your Digital Camera

Interactions and Data Analysis

Re: Context Matters

Multivariate testing is great. And it a great way to determine interactive factors - which are essentially not possible to determine with one variable at a time testing (though a smart person can see indications within this type to view them).

Your example though seems to largely be about properly stratifying the data for optimization. While it is always difficult to tell with short examples it seems like it may well be that you have 2 different audiences and a solution that, for example, intercepts the search engine traffic and gives them some context might help a lot (you see this on many blogs where they say - "I see you find us search on X - you may also be interested in Y...

But the biggest point I think your story illustrates is the importance of the experimenter. They need to think. Their role is not just to calculate some numbers and whatever number is higher wins. George Box: "it’s not about proving a theorem, it's about being curious about things. There aren't enough people who will apply [DOE] as a way of finding things out."

Related: YouTube Uses Multivariate Experiment To Improve Sign-ups 15% - Using Design of Experiments - Statistics for Experimenters

Stonefather by Orson Scott Card

Stonefather by Orson Scott Card is a novella and prelude to a forthcoming fantasy saga: Mithermages. I found it enjoyable and reminiscent of his previous fantasy work especially the Alvin Maker series. I don't read hardly any fantasy, other than that by Orson Scott Card.

Another recent publication (2008), Keeper of Dreams, collects 22 short stories and novellas by Orson Scott Card, not found in Maps in a Mirror:

The Elephants of Poznan
Atlantis
Geriatric Ward
Heal Thyself
Space Boy
Angles
Vessel
Dust
Homeless in Hell
In the Dragon's House
Inventing Lovers on the Phone
Waterbaby
Keeper of Lost Dreams
Missed
50 WPM
Feed the Baby of Love
Grinning Man
The Yazoo Queen
Christmas at Helaman's House
Neighbors
God Plays Fair Once Too Often
Worthy to Be One of Us

Both are well work reading in my opinion.

Related: Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - Reading in 2006 - Create Your Own Book

Disregard for People by FedEX and UPS

My comments prompted by UPS: Disrespect for People? by Dan Markovitz

I consistently see UPS and FedEx park in traffic lanes, in front of a fire hydrant, in no parking zones meant to provide pedestrians view of the traffic to cross the street safely... when there are available parking spaces less than 20 feet away (and actual loading zones not much further away).

It would seem they must do this hours every day (based on the level of abuse I see). I often see the illegally parked vehicle from UPS or FedEx, park legally, get done what I need to do, and drive away and the illegally parked vehicle is still there.

It is obvious that UPS and FedEx systemically violate traffic laws and make the roads more dangerous. The extent of the abuse make it obvious to me they design their work process with full knowledge that they endanger and inconvenience others for their convenience. I am not sure why such consistent intentional systemic dis-rearguard for laws is allowed to continue, but obviously it is.

Maybe in Manhattan parking in traffic lanes is the way things work, but that is not the case in most places. Only UPS and FedEx chose to systemically endanger inconvenience others for their convenience (well, and others such as chemical companies dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply, here I mean only UPS and FedEx do so with an obvious policy on how they use the roads). Society doesn't work when you allow those that just don't care about anyone else to do whatever they feel like and force others to suffer the consequences (for the actions they take based on their disdain for the rest of us). Ethics obviously have lost the ability to influence a significant number of people - whether they chose to park illegally hours every day or loot "their" companies. The government is suppose to enforce laws to punish those that have disdain for others rights. When that is not done everyone suffers so a few rude and disrespectful can do whatever they feel like.

Arguments like we have to break the law to deliver packages make no sense to me. If package delivery is important then buildings need to provide parking or delivery companies drivers drive around drop of packages to employees with carts to deliver a few blocks worth of packages then meet up with another truck... Or whatever else will work, I would sure hope a multi-billion dollar company can figure out better solutions than I can in 5 minutes. If you can't figure out how to meet a customer need without violating the law that means you don't have a viable business - not that you have to violate the law. You can't say, oh we dump the toxic chemicals in the river. Yes, it is against the law but, we have no other option but to violate the law so don't blame us for our disdain for those of you who must cope with our actions.

Related: Don't Excuse Immoral Looters - Manners - Why Pay Taxes or be Honest - Violations tagged as ups were caught parked in a bike lanes around the world 50 times

Double Parked Delivery Trucks

I'd go with a carrot and stick system. I like the "FedEx" loading zone idea. Let delivery companies purchase a special parking permit (Ex:a "D" permit) that lets them park in any of these loading zone spaces and then put them in all the logical places with consultation from the delivery companies themselves. Charge a price that will keep those who don't really need one from buying one but keep it cheapish.

Then enforce double parking and escalate tickets for it. After the 5th ticket, they double, ad infinitum. If UPS starts getting some $12000 parking tickets, they'll rethink their strategy.

I Love xkcd Animated Clip

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

Awesome. The xkcd comic is great.

Related: What Makes Scientists Different :-) - Comic About Programming - Friday Fun: Correlation - Home Engineering: Reading in Bed