Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Given it’s the start of the consumer spending season, I thought I should review Ron Burley’s short book Unscrewed: The Consumer’s Guide to Getting What You Paid For, which I read about year ago.

Billing itself as a “powerful and informative guide” to helping you deal with companies, it offers advice and strategy on “who to talk to, what to say, and when to walk away.”

While it does do this, I think at times the strategies are either unrealistic or way over the top. I personally have managed well with companies by simple being polite and making sure I’m talking to the person that actually has the power to make the decisions. If you do that and have a valid case, I think you’ll get what you want 90% of the time.

For example, when buying my car, I never spoke to a salesmen (except during test drives). Instead, I’d called and asked for a “Sales Manager” and said, “I want to buy a 2007 Honda Accord EX-L, Silver, Inline 4, Black Interior. I don’t need dealer financing. I’m calling the 5 dealers in town and whoever gives me the lowest price wins. I’ll come in with a check and pick up the car tomorrow.”

This actually worked really well, I didn’t need to learn about Dealer Incentives, Loyalty Bonuses, or play the “how much can you pay a month” four-square game. Instead, I got back 4 bids and then picked up my car from the dealer with the best price.

A great source of contact information is the Consumerist blog. While it has a disappointing signal to noise ratio, it does have contact info for the executive customer service line at a lot of companies. So when I couldn’t get Sprint to process my ~$80 refund, I used the relevant contact info, send a polite note explaining the situation, and immediately got my refund.

Again, the combination of being polite and knowing who to talk to solved the problem.

So, back to Burley’s book. Burley starts out explaining why customer service is bad today. First of all, there are lot more companies and customers out there, so personalized attention is hard to get. Second is that pressures on the bottom-line reduce funding in non-revenue departments like customer service. Lastly, since these businesses are rarely local, customers are basically seen as anonymous account numbers.

Next Burley presents a series of techniques to get attention from the right people. Some of them seem unethical, like pretending to be an accounting firm in order to get a CEO’s fax number and then spamming him with letters explaining your problem. Some are more reasonable, but pretty intense, like threatening to picket a business that you feel wronged you.

Generally, all the techniques involve making yourself annoying enough that you get what you want. In the end, if the amount of money owed to you is large enough it may make sense to use the more extreme techniques.

There’s one technique that I wish the book had gone into: don’t get into the situation in the first place by reading reviews, asking friends, and getting recommendations. If you do this, you’ll rarely need to use these techniques.

In summary, Unscrewed is a quick and probably worthwhile read. I would get this book from the library though, it’s not worth reading twice.

About a year ago I borrowed Debt is Slavery, by Michael Mihalik, from the library. It’s a very short book (about 100 pages long) that discusses consumer debt.

Since it’s aimed at beginners, it doesn’t contain much in-depth knowledge. While it may be useful for people without any financial knowledge, it doesn’t have much original material.

As you might expect, the book explains how debt can be good: to buy income-producing property or to pay for an education. And it also covers when debt can be bad: to let you live outside your means.

The book contains warnings about the “Great Marketing Machine”, so you can understand where shopping impulses come from and fight them. It also presents a simple plan to paying off those credit cards.

There was one part of the introduction that I did like. Mihalik mentions that when you seek advice you should ask yourself two questions:

1. Has the person practiced what they preach?
2. Do they have your best interests at heart?

Nothing earth-shattering, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t do this.

In summary, Debt is Slavery is quick read for people with very little financial acumen. The only original thing in the book is the attention grabbing title. I would venture a guess that without the title, the book wouldn’t have ever been published.

The best advice I’ve found on this topic is Saturday Night Live’s sketch entitled, “Don’t buy stuff you cannot afford.” Enjoy!

A while ago I finished reading John Nance’s new book Orbit and was disappointed. I think I need to stop reading anything “thriller”.

The plot is about a average guy named Kip Dawson who hates his life (including his wife) and wins a trip on a private space tourism flight. After a freak accident leaves the only other person aboard (the pilot) dead, Kip realizes that he will die in a few days. With nothing else to do, he flips on the onboard laptop and starts writing his thoughts about this life, his regrets, and the words of a man resigned to his fate.

And unknown to him, his words get broadcast to the entire world. Somehow his writing captures the attention of billions of people and the incredible public support starts a race between the space capable nations to go rescue him.

This plot is definitely clever, but the execution is poor. Much of the book concentrates on the people back on Earth trying to rescue him. So we hear endless bickering between bureaucrats and politic rants on ineffectiveness of government.

And instead of being rescued, Kip turns into a modern-day Macgyver. He manages to repair, fly, and land the space ship to get home. Pretty unbelievable.

Despite Kip apparently baring his soul during the course of the book, his character still isn’t very developed. Many key people in his life, like his wife and kids, are never introduced to the reader. Instead, Kip’s wife is a one dimensional character that is stereotypical “mean, nagging wife”. He says that he loves his kids, but we only briefly meet one of them.

Skipping over this leaves us with an incomplete picture of Kip. We see how he sees the world, but we never see how the world sees him.

Lastly, Kip’s narrative is not at all gripping. If it couldn’t keep my attention, how are we to believe that he captures the hearts and minds of billions of people?

This may be a good book for killing time at the airport, but not much else; great idea, but poor execution.

About a year ago I finished reading The Blind Side by Michael Lewis and felt it was one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read. It has several topics intertwined into a very entertaining and gripping narrative.

One set of topics is about football. Specifically how the game evolved from a running game to a West Coast offense (lots of passing, but the quarterback is insignificant) into today’s game where the “big pass” is more important and thus the quarterback position is valued.

And now with teams making big investments in their quarterbacks, they need to protect that investment. This led to a run up demand, and pay, for offensive linemen and specifically the left tackle who protects the quarterback’s “Blind Side”.

But the more interesting part of the story is that of Michael Oher. This a kid with no education and a horrible family background and ends up in a upper class white school and adopted by a wealthy white family.

From there he discovers football and quickly becomes one of the top college football prospects by virtue of his size and incredible athleticism.

And his story is one that forces you to take a deep look at our society. It is the true value of the book, it’s not a football book; it’s a book that shows you the parts of our society that are hidden and the kids that are completely left behind.

Which forces you to think about one of the greatest challenges of humanity today: how do we close the gap between the haves and have-nots?

How is it even possible that such poverty exists alongside such wealth? How can a child be without housing, education, health care, or any measure of security for their entire childhood?

“He left a neighborhood in which he could drive all day without laying eyes on a white person for one where a black person was a bit of a curiosity.”

I feel that the world would function best as a meritocracy, but this necessitates that we have equality of opportunity.

As we learn about Michael, we see that the problem isn’t intelligence, it’s access to the system. Even something like sports, which should be a meritocracy, over 80% of kids that are good enough to play college sports are not academically qualified.

And for many of these kids, this is their only way out.

Blind Side is really the story of how much academic and emotional support is needed to allow for “equal access”. And the amount of that support which is needed to help kids avoid the plethora of hurdles and challenges in their way, including everything from illiteracy to crooks to even car crashes.

Anyone that reads this book will be deeply rewarded by the experience. It’s a very thought-provoking story and it will challenge how you look at the world.

One last thing, I was once told that those of us born with opportunities will ultimately be judged based on how we used those opportunities to better the world. I think the many people who help Michael on his journey will be judged very favorably.

Greg Bear came by the Google Kirkland office to talk about his new (at the time) book Quantico and I snagged a free copy. By the way, this was in May of last year; I told you I was behind on posting about books I read. :-)

I’ve never read anything by Greg Bear before and though lots of people rave about his other books, I found this one disappointing.

Basically this book is a present day thriller about the War on Terror, Government agencies, and some new technology. The central theme seems to be something along the lines of:

Bio-terrorism is a real threat, but the government created unnecessary and redundant bureaucracy that ends up slowing things down.

Nothing terribly original there. The book is primarily plot driven and there’s no real literary value (irony, symbolism, characters, etc); after all it’s a thriller.

Unfortunately, the plot in this book moves slowly and it’s a little disjointed. We hop from character to character and since they are under-developed, you start getting them mixed up.

And then at the end, we get a completely out of left field event that is supposed to wrap up the plot, but it’s so weird, it’s unbelievable.

While researching this, I learned a new phrase that describes this, deus ex machina, which means an “inferior plot device that expeditiously solves the conflict of a narrative”.

In summary, Quantico is a sub-par mass-market thriller. I won’t read it again; I tried selling my copy, but copies are going for a couple of bucks online. Apparently, I’m not the only one that didn’t like the book. :-)

(I read this book a little over a year ago and am now finally getting around to reviewing it.)

Shortly after it came out, I read Tim Ferriss’ widely popular book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. And then I felt slightly ill. Suffice to say, I didn’t care for the book at all. I’m really happy I got the book from the library, instead of paying money on it.

The first part of the book is reminder that life is short, so don’t worry so much and have some fun. Not a very original thought, but I suppose lots of people always forget this. He also tells us to read Thoreau, doing which would essentially makes this whole section of the book incredibly redundant.

And yes, “live your life now, don’t wait until later” is great advice, but just about every philosopher and good parent has been saying this for years upon years.

The rest of the book is basically a get rich quick type plan sprinkled into self-promotion and tips on how to eliminate wasteful time-consuming activities from your life. Basically he says, working a job is stupid, you should just sell something online and outsource every piece of the business so you can do whatever you want.

It’s good strategy, but let’s be honest; it’s not at all original. “Absentee ownership” is a tried and true income making method. The trick is that you need some income producing property or product. And that’s the tough part. Anyone can profit from an income generating asset. But how do you get one? Ferriss doesn’t really talk about how to do this.

Ferriss’ product (aside from the book) is some unregulated dietary supplement that body builder types use. So far, he’s a one hit wonder. Lots of of people hit it big once. I want to hear from the guys that do it more than once; those guys have real experience, skills and knowledge; they weren’t just lucky once.

A lot of the book is about how to use outsourced personal assistants to do your busywork for you. Generally this is a reasonable idea, but Ferriss takes it way too far. He basically says, “Why send your mom a birthday card like a sucker? I just have my assistants sign a card and send it with flowers.”

Sadly, I’m only barely exaggerating.

The other concept of the book I wanted to discuss is the idea of a “low-information” diet. Ferriss talks about having “selective ignorance” so that you ignore and don’t seek out information. For voting for president, for example, he ignores everything and then a week before asks some of his friends who to support, reads some news for an hour and then decides.

I’m really disappointed in this. This is basically voting for whoever is more popular. Instead of using your god-given ability to learn, reason, and be an intellectually curious individual, you’ll just go with whatever most people think.

What about learning, self-exploration, development of a value system and then acting on it? Nah… it’s easier to hang out at the beach. That’s just sad. If there’s ever a time to listen to Mark Twain, it’s in today’s world:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Lastly, Ferriss’ own auto-biographical elements make him seem like, well, a jerk. He brags about winning a big kick-boxing championship with basically 4 weeks of training. He explains that he lost nearly 30 pounds for the weigh-in and gained it back before the tournament. This way he was able to compete three levels below his weight bracket and got to beat up on those “poor little guys”.

Also, he exploited a loophole in the rules that said, if his opponent “falls off the elevated platform three times in a single round”, he loses. So Ferriss just basically shoved guys 3 weight divisions below him out of the ring and won the championship.

I’m not sure I’d brag about that.

So if you want to get rich quick, Tim’s got a great book for you. All you need are some affiliate marketers, a drop shipper, and a website. It’s so easy! And if you call now, he’ll even throw in an AbTronic!

In summary, don’t read this book. I think I lost 10 IQ points in the course of reading it. :-P

I used to be good about blogging about books I read, but for about a year now, I haven’t reviewed anything… so there’s some weirdness that I’ll start up again by writing about a book I’m just a few chapters into.

The other day while hunting for something to read, I picked up my copy of A Game of Thrones, fully intending to re-read the series.

But then I noticed a recommendation on the back cover that said, “Reminiscent of T.H. White’s A Once and Future King…” and thought, “Wait I have that book and still need to read it!” I bought the book two and a half years ago, using a birthday gift certificate from Crissy’s parents and still hadn’t read it. That’s pretty sad. :-(

So I started reading it last night and it’s really really good! I can’t believe I’ve never read it before. For tonight, I had planned a quiet evening reading, but after about 2 weeks of cold, cloudy weather, the sun finally came out.

As a result, we’ll probably go out somewhere. After all, sun is so rare in Seattle; you have to go out and play when you get the chance.

(And if you’re keeping count, it’s now less than two weeks before our big move to Boulder! 300 days of sunshine per year, here we come!)

If you read my review on Nickel and Dimed, you know that I didn’t like it. This book, written by Barbara Ehrenreich, discusses her experiment of living as an “unskilled worker” and trying to make ends meet. I felt that the author went into her experiment with the goal of proving her hypothesis that essentially the system keeps people in poverty. This “begging the question” led her to avoid opportunities that would have helped her situation. Most notably, she doesn’t even take the advice of her co-workers and maintains a condescending, defeatist attitude throughout the book.

I started reading her newer book, Bait and Switch, which claims to expose the middle-class working world. But I felt it was more of the same; assuming that it’s impossible to get a job and not getting it. Assuming all career help resources are rip-offs and getting ripped off. Too much pontification and too little unbiased investigation.

So these books got me thinking: maybe when people tell us that that your attitude is 90% of the battle, they are correct. If you go into anything expecting to have a bad time, you most likely will. Your brain harps on whatever negative it can find: you’re tired, the movie will be bad, dinner service will be slow and so on.

The opposite applies too. If you go to a bad movie expecting it to be bad and expecting to have fun laughing at it, you’ll probably have fun.

I came across this story about a guy named Adam Shepard who tested the “American Dream”. He started with what he was wearing and $25. By the end of ten months he had an apartment, car, and saved almost $5000.

Obviously, he had a very different outcome than Ehrenreich. One thing that is evident is that Shepard that a very different attitude. His premise is that you can work your way up from poverty and that’s seems to be what he achieved. In fact, he set out to “disprove” Ehrenreich’s book.

So what were the differences between Ehrenreich and Shepard? Until I read Shepard’s book, I can only guess. But it seems like the major difference was their attitude. Of course, their gender and age are different. But, I’m not sure how much of a difference this would have made.

There are lots of similarities: both of them had an escape hatch (a “real life” they could fall back too), both have college education, and so on.

Of course, the big question is: why do some people get stuck in poverty? It surely can’t all be attitude; presumably there is some degree of luck, health, and circumstances. Obviously being a young man with a college education helped Shepard a lot.

I added this book on the list of things to read. I’ll let you know what I think when I get around to reading it!

Given my huge backlog of books that I read but haven’t written about yet, it’s seems weird to write about a book I haven’t even gotten a hold of. But, it’s not everyday that Book 7 of Harry Potter is about to be released.

Despite my usual complaints about the Harry Potter series, I’m excited about the book coming out this Friday. In case you forgot, my complaints about the books are:

• Repetitive Filler Subplots – Slytherins are rude. Snape picks on Harry. Harry feels bad for himself. Hermione knows all the answers. And so many more.
• Unchanging characters – Neville is clumsy. Malfoy is mean. Yeah, yeah, we get it.
• Simple themes – Good is good. Evil is bad. Love and friendship are good. Hey, let’s add some depth here.
• Boring, straight-forward prose and tone – I’d love to see some clever humor or some intellectual subtlety here.

With the media frenzy, there are high expectations for this book. Plus, since this book has to actually resolve the story, we can’t have a bunch of filler subplots. Also, the characters will presumably have to change since they are involved in some extraordinary circumstances. And the prose, tone, and simple themes? My guess is that this will stay the same.

I decided to set very low expectations so that I will be happy with the book. With that spirit in mind, here are my predictions for the 7th book:

• Book 7 will be in the “Choose your own adventure” format.
• Voldemort is discovered to be the Dumbledore in disguise.
• Hermione is really Ron (this is explained by the use of Time-Turners)
• Harry wakes up at the end and we learn that it was all a strange dream. Harry resolves to stop eating gas station taquitos before bed.

Hopefully a mob of Potter fans won’t come after me for writing this. :-)

About a month or so ago, I finished reading Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. It won the Man Booker Prize and had a great tag-line on the inside cover: a story that “will make you believe in God.” Even though the book didn’t involve circles or apples, I felt I had to read it. :-)

It looks like I may end up being one of the few people in the world that didn’t love the book. Parts were entertaining and insightful, but other parts dragged the book down. Essentially, the book had three parts, first was the young boy (Pi) learning about different religions, followed by a discussion about zoos and animals, and last, a survival story of the Pi on a life raft on the ocean with a tiger. Tacked on at the end was the part that was supposed to make you believe in God.

The first part of the book was the young Pi’s journey into religious syncretism (I learned a new word!). As we’re introduced to Pi and a number of interesting secondary characters, Pi decides to be Hindu, Christian, and Muslim at the same time. Unfortunately, the “many paths to God” and “all religions are the same at the root” themes are barely discussed. Rather, any further exploration is put aside in favor of the old “a child is wiser than adults” theme, as Pi’s faith challenges his parents and priests from each religion.

I feel that Martel missed a huge opportunity here. His setting was very unique and engaging, exploring these religious themes in this context could have been amazing.

The next part of the book was a discussion about animals and zoos. Here the major theme was challenging the romantic view of nature: the idea that nature is an Eden-like state where animals have peaceful and happy lives. Most people instinctively feel bad when they see animals in a zoo, thinking that they would prefer to live in the wild. Like all things, this is arguable. After all, the wild is a pretty tough place: things are constantly trying to eat you while the things that you are trying to eat keep running away.

Martel presents a lot of good information here and this was probably my favorite part of the book. But the tone of this section came off as unnecessarily defensive and was distracting.

From here, we abandon the zoo and India, as Pi and his family take a boat to Canada with a handful of animals. The boat sinks and we’re left with Pi, a tiger, and a few other animals (zebra, hyena, and orangutan) on a lifeboat. This section is pretty interesting as the animals are clearly out of their element and it takes a while before only the tiger and Pi remain. The tiger, named Richard Parker, is very anthromorphized through the story.

Along the journey we get long descriptions of the Pi’s and the tiger movement on the lifeboat, but as we never got a clear description of the boat, it’s hard to understand how all this could be happening with a tiger on board. We also read about a hallucination where the boat comes across another castaway and later then an island of algae and meerkats. The latter is a straight-forward literary device indicating major psychological change, but most of the effect was lost since the island adventure was so nonsensical.

We also get a lot of details on how Pi survived on the boat: taming the tiger, catching fish, sharks, and turtles, and building a smaller raft for him to live on. We also learn how he reached a mutually beneficial arrangement with the tiger (Pi catches the food and feeds the tiger) which is similar to the relationship between a zookeeper and his animals.

Finally, Pi and the tiger get to Mexico and the tiger disappears into the forest. Pi is then interviewed by some insurance adjusters about the ship sinking. They express disbelief in his story and he tells them a much more realistic but disturbing parallel version of events that where the animals are replaced by other survivors from the ship. This version includes Pi’s mother’s murder and Pi murdering the cook.

Pi tells the insurance adjusters that since the “true truth” can’t be proven and both stories seem to fit the details, they should choose the story they prefer. By metaphor, the religious lesson is that we don’t believe in things because they are true, but because we choose to believe in what makes us happy. So why not opt for the more happy story, even if it’s not the more plausible.

It is interesting how the subconscious can push us to accept the happier story, but in this case, Pi is completely aware of both versions and consciously chooses the one over the other. As a result, the “religion is a better fiction” theme fails, because the story didn’t execute properly on it.

So ultimately I was a little disappointed by the book. It had some great themes and ideas, but failed to execute. The book was enjoyable and I’d recommend it to others, though I probably wouldn’t read it again.