Archive for May 2009
Um, you really want my opinion?
The Bank of America chat help line is in fact, incredibly helpful. They managed to transfer my chat window between two departments without losing me, and then they answered my questions patiently and solved my problem. The survey I was given at the end made me laugh though. What kind of meaningful suggestion fits in…
Read MoreReturning An Enterprise Rent-A-Car At JFK Airport
[See update at bottom for Enterprise Rent-A-Car's response.] Be warned. If you ever have to return a car to Enterprise Rent-A-Car "at the JFK airport", here's a few things to note: Staff at both the Newark Penn Station Enterprise facility (where you might rent a one way rental and pay the $175 one way drop…
Read MoreI continue to improve against Sparbot
At my coach's urging, I have been playing heads up battles against University of Alberta poker bot, Sparbot. It's the dumbest of their algorithms, playing a heads up hold'em game that's perfectly balanced without taking into account any opponent tendencies. I'm playing it with it's configurable parameter set to "passive". When I say "balanced", I…
Read MoreAre vampires more popular now than before?
One of my friends on Facebook asked this, and the answer is yes. Let's use Google Insights for search as a culture zeitgeist measurement. Google's data only goes back to 2004, which postdates most of Anne Rice's Lestat novels. Vampire popularity appears to have declined steadily from 2004 through 2007. In 2008 the rush to…
Read MoreConsider Larry Lessig for the long list for the Supreme Court
I’m sure that since the transition, President Obama’s team has been thinking about nominees for the Supreme Court. A democratic president means that some of the justices that weren’t comfortable with an imbalance on the court could finally get to retire. And now we have one. I don’t know if they’ve considered it, and I…
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