Writing? What's that?

I wrote just 7575 words in February, and 2100 so far in March. The total for the year stands at 22,785.

Many thanks to the person who sent this page of engineering humor. It includes a lot of jokes that I actually hadn't heard before.

Customer relations really aren't rocket science. If you make customers mad, they won't give you money, and they'll persuade their friends not to, either. And in the Internet age, every customer has potentially thousands or millions of "friends" to persuade. Coincidentally, IBM's Cranky User column talks about customer hostile practices in the same week that I added a major hotel chain to my e-mail blacklist.

If you insist on sending me junk mail after I ask you not to, I will ban your domain. Your junk mail will vanish just as surely as if you'd taken me off your list, but I'll be much grumpier about it.

I'm not naming the chain in question because I suspect the problem was due to incompetence--a broken opt-out processor--rather than malice. Still, if you can't handle your email list properly, hire someone who can before you ask for personal information from your customers.

Good for Harvard. The university is eliminating tuition for students whose families make less than $40,000 per year, and substantially increasing financial aid for students from families in the $40,000 to $60,000 per year range. Here's hoping more top tier schools follow suit. Education should be a way to break class distinctions, not reinforce them.