September 15, 2007.  A few tidbits.

> Our Polls Section's survey of possible nominees for US President hasn't drawn much participation, but so far respondents are evenly divided between Clinton and Obama on the Democratic side, with more varying opinions on the Republican side.  Are people just following the herd, or is this the way the campaigns are shaping up?  (Note that the poll does not ask whom they favor but asks them to predict the nominee.)  My take is that, with the election still more than a year away, we could see some big surprises.

> It is increasingly difficult to contain our patience as we prepare for the installation of our new 58-inch, high-def plasma TV on October 1.  We want the entire home-theater system set up right, though, so it's worth it.  The family room where it will go has been repainted and looks like a new room, but the carpet won't be installed for another week.  In the meantime, because of conflicting reports from DirecTV about whether we have a clear enough line of sight to the satellite for high-definition TV, we have arranged to have a fiber-optic (FiOS) line installed instead.  That development complicated the setup arrangements, but we think we have it all worked out.  Apparently, having to delay delivery until room renovations were done was a blessing in disguise; it has given us the time to deal with unexpected changes in plans.

> We had a one-man contractor (entrepreneur) do the painting.  He does everything himself, and it's excellent.  It is a delight to deal with just one person who takes pride in his workmanship instead of some outfit that subcontracts to workers who may or may not.  Part of the reason we are reluctantly giving up our longstanding satellite service is that we got conflicting stories from the would-be installer and the management at DirecTV.  We didn't know whom to believe.  I feel that we lost something very important when American business shifted its emphasis from the small organization of dedicated artisans to the mega corporation.  I miss the days of the corner drug store and local hardware store where people were courteous and helpful.

> I wonder what mysterious power causes some days to get into a rut.  Especially since we've been involved in a number of projects, I've noticed a pattern.  Days that begin well tend to go smoothly.  Other days, however, seem to consist of one setback or disaster after another; once things start to go wrong, a sort of negative momentum seems to kick in.  I realize that we sometimes make this happen because we get into a negative mindset that becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, but that doesn't explain this phenomenon altogether.  Sometimes, the negative gremlins just seem to be in control.

September 23, 2007.  I read the New York Times online every day – or rather some of it.  My routine at the start of the day is to open my e-mail program, delete the spam, read personal messages and put those that need answers in the "To Reply" folder, and then skim the online edition of the Times.

I used to spend most of my time reading the op-ed columns.  [Okay, they tend to be very "liberal," but I'm not exactly a conservative myself (only in some matters).]  However, a couple of years ago, the Times made certain items and most of the op-ed pieces available only to "Times Select" subscribers.  The cost for this service was almost as much as that to receive the Times delivered to our home.  [We already have mountains if recycling, so I don't do that.]  Since most of these columns are reprinted in our local paper a couple of days later, I decided not to bother with "Times Select."  I also sent a letter to the Times, stating that I thought they would erode their online readership by implementing the new policy.  That could, in turn, make the online Times less attractive to advertisers – and anyone who knows anything about the newspaper business knows that advertising, not subscriber dollars, pays the bills, and that circulation (how many readers the paper has) is the chief factor in determining how much advertising the paper gets.  Naturally, the Times paid no attention to me.

Much to my surprise today, I saw that the Sunday Times had no items that were restricted to "Times Select" subscribers.  I could access the full text of all the op-ed columns.  I didn't see any of the usual promos for "Times Select."  This may have been a technological glitch, or it may be a short-term test, but I hope it means that the Times has finally come to its senses.

No, I don't think I am entitled to a free online newspaper, but even though I am not paying for it, it isn't free.  I'll explain.  Advertisers are paying for my "free" online copy, and I'm indirectly paying for the advertising by putting up with it.  That's true of a lot of "free" or very inexpensive stuff on the Internet and elsewhere.  In return for the opportunity to promote their wares to me, advertisers cover all or some of the bill for providing me with the medium in which they advertise.

That's how the system should work.  If I want the free version of the Weatherbug program on my computer, I have to put up with ads; if I want an ad-free version, I have to pay for it.   If I had to pay for it and put up with a deluge of ads, I wouldn't have it.  (As it is, I do pay for it because it's useful and I hate ads.)

Indeed, my extreme animosity toward the glut of advertising is that it intrudes on many services for which I am paying (sometimes a healthy chunk of money).  We have stopped going to movies almost altogether because we resent having to sit through 20 minutes of ads before a movie that we paid to see.  I hate Disney and won't watch the Disney Channel because I pay, indirectly, for access to that channel via my cable or dish subscription fee.  I do not consider a channel that interrupts every show with self-promoting commercials to be "commercial-free."  Although almost all DVDs nowadays do it, Disney DVDs are especially top-heavy with promotions for other Disney films before one gets to the feature film that one paid to own when one bought the DVD.  The cumulative effect is that I buy fewer Disney products than I otherwise might.

I'm not the only person who reacts this way.  I have a friend who is going to switch from Comcast cable TV to Verizon's fiber-optic service solely because he cannot stand Comcast's steady stream of self-promoting commercials.  He has endured Comcast's typically rotten service for many years, but the ads have pushed him over the edge.  "I don't care what Verizon costs," he says, "I've had it with Comcast's ads."  For the same reason, he has joined the millions who, like me, rarely go to the movies anymore because they resent the preshow advertising.  Time and again, I hear people saying, "I won't buy X because I hate the ads" – and what they usually mean is not so much that the ads are offensive but that there are just too many of them.

Businesses should wise up, but don't hold your breath until they do.  They are addicted to the view that, if they just bludgeon consumers with enough ads, consumers will buy anything.  Of course, the people who sell advertising aren't going to tell businesses otherwise, that too much hype can backfire.  Advertising firms depend upon the stupidity of the company's marketing departments; marketing personnel depend upon the stupidity of corporate executives (and marketing personnel also depend upon lots of advertising activity to ensure their own job security).  Furthermore, there's no absolutely reliable way to measure the extent to which advertising creates sales, and even fewer reliable ways to determine whether excessive advertising hurts sales.

I don't believe that the glut of advertising has come about because of consumers' gullibility.  Indeed, as advertising has become even more udiquitous, consumers have become more skeptical and more adept at ignoring it or tuning it out.  Many of us have come to take a contrarian view:  the more heavily something is hyped, the more likely it is to be bad.  After a few experiences when a heavily promoted movie turns out to be a turkey or a heavily promoted product turns out to be junk, we become wary of all heavily promoted movies and products.

Nevertheless, no matter how much we reject the hype and no matter how often we use our DVRs to bleep over the commercials, advertising will proliferate.  No matter how skeptical we become, the advertising industry will line its pockets by selling ad campaigns to gullible corporate executives who are convinced that hype is more important than quality of the product or service.

September 28, 2007.  I've been busy.  The renovations on the family room are complete, and our new 58-inch, high-definition, plasma TV is scheduled for delivery on Monday.  Once I had cleaned out the room, there wasn't that much for me to do, as all the renovations were done by contractors.  However, I've had to set up and reconfigure the entire audio system that was taken apart before the renovations, including rewiring all the speakers.

Much of this is work that I don't do very well and certainly don't enjoy doing much.  There are always unforeseen problems.  For instance, because of the thickness of the new carpet, it is not possible to run speaker wires under closet doors; they must go around, up, over, and down.  I swear a lot, especially when I'm trying to attach speaker wires to the terminals in the receiver.  I am ready to give a Nobel Prize to anyone who designs a user-friendly speaker terminal on an audio receiver.

Once the TV is in and the technicians have applied their expertise to the system, I hope that I won't have much to do except minor tweaking.  Nonetheless, I can already see that we have weeks of work ahead of us before the room is the way we want it to be.  When it was a rather grungy, old converted garage (albeit one with a TV and a killer sound system), I could live with clutter and boxes of old videotapes scattered about.  That won't do now.  I certainly hope it's going to be worth all the expense, time, and effort.