Mattsapundit

I had this song stuck in my head yesterday. As MeMo pointed out, it’s Lumbajac:

[gv data="9-K7wxWm46g"][/gv]

Matt Bramanti | May 31, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Posted to Business, Humor, Music, Video

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I can’t believe I missed this in my post about useful phone numbers, but PayPal lets you send money via cell phone. Quoth Lifehacker:

To start sending money from your phone, log into PayPal and associate your mobile phone number with your account. I know. I hate giving away my phone number too, but PayPal’s already got my bank information, so that makes the voice digits seem like less of an issue. Once you enter your cell phone number in your PayPal account and set up a mobile PIN (separate from your account password), PayPal’s voice robot calls your phone on the spot and asks you to verify the PIN. Once the PIN’s matched, your phone is PayPal-enabled.

Then, to send someone else’s phone $5.50 in cash, text message PAYPAL (729725) the message send 5.50 to 7185551212 where the recipient’s phone number is (718) 555-1212.

PayPal doesn’t exactly advertise this (it’s buried in their help pages), but you can PayPal someone’s email address from your mobile, too. Just make your text message send 5 to editor@lifehacker.com instead.

The cool factor is pretty good, but I could see myself using this on the run, for splitting checks and things like that. Check it out.

Matt Bramanti | May 30, 2006 at 11:22 am
Posted to Business, Products, Reviews, Tech

1 comment

Pay attention, businessperson! I’m about to share a story of good customer service, and how you too can keep your customers from spending their hard-earned money at that piker’s store down the street.

A few days ago, I skipped down to my local McDonald’s hamburgery and bought an Asian Salad from the drive-thru. The salad comes with a little packet of sliced almonds, which provide a nice contract in flavor and texture to the greens and sweet dressing.

At least, they’re supposed to. I don’t know what these almonds tasted like, because when I opened the packet, I found the nuts covered in blue-green mold. I don’t mean a few spores here and there. This was a fully-functioning mold city.

I didn’t have time to deal with it then, so I just threw out the almonds, checked the rest of my salad for rot, and munched away. Eventually I called McDonald’s corporate headquarters and talked to a very helpful young guy who took my complaint and promised to forward my concerns to the franchisee. Okay, whatever. At least I bitched to someone.
To my pleasant suprise, I got a call Friday morning from the restaurant’s owner, a woman whose name eludes me at the moment. She was very apologetic and seemed genuinely interested in my complaint. She was pretty embarrassed that there would be problems with such a high-profile, much-ballyhooed product, and she pledged to investigate the matter.

She even offered to send me some gift certificates so I can come back in for free (hopefully) non-fungus-riddled food. I haven’t gotten them yet, but I figure it’ll be five bucks. Fine by me.
I am now once again a satisfied customer, and I’ll gladly go back to that McDonald’s, because that business proved it wants my patronage.

Matt Bramanti | May 30, 2006 at 9:54 am
Posted to Business, Food & Drink, Houston, Out and About, Products, Reviews

4 comments

To date, well over a million American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines have died in this nation’s wars, from Valley Forge to Fallujah.

To those men and women and their families, thank you for your sacrifice. As we celebrate Memorial Day, may we rededicate ourselves to honor your memories, pray for your souls and carry on your mission.

Matt Bramanti | May 29, 2006 at 12:01 am
Posted to Holidays, Military

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Besides the standard numbers everyone carries around (girlfriend, mom, bookie), I’ve got a few reference numbers that come in handy on a daily basis:

• Free411 (800-373-3411): Just what it sounds like — free nationwide directory assistance. Every once in a while, you’ll have to listen to a short commercial before getting your listing. Interesting business model — if you’re looking for a business, Free411 will serve you an ad for that business’ competitor, and you can press ”1″ to be connected to the advertised competitor.
• 411Metro (800-411-6387): Same thing, less catchy name.
• Auburn Information (334-844-4244): The Foy Student Union at Auburn University. It’s the information line, where you’d call for campus schedules and things like that. Except there’s a tradition at Auburn of answering any question that a caller comes up with. It’s like having your own talking Google machine.
• TellMe (800-555-8366): This is a voice-driven service that offers the same sort of information you’d find on a portal like Yahoo — sports scores, news headlines, weather forecasts, stock quotes and the like. A cool feature is the ability to flag favorites that can be recalled whenever you call back from the same phone number. You can even play blackjack against a Sean Connery sound-alike.
• U.S. Naval Observatory (202-762-1401): This is the official time of the United States, as determined by a phalanx of atomic clocks.
• Audioblogger (415-816-0205): This service allows users to post audio messages to Blogger blogs. You can even jury-rig a WordPress conduit.
• The White House (202-456-1414): I’ve never called the president, but it doesn’t hurt to have his number in the cell. That way, if he calls in the middle of the night, it’ll show up as “President,” giving me precious extra seconds to sober up.

I also use a number of services via SMS text messages:

• Google SMS (text 46645): Send a text message to Google to retrieve quick snippets of information. I frequently use this to get phone numbers by listing type and area (“pizza 77079″).
• Houston Transtar Alerts: Sign up to get text messages from Transtar whenever there’s a major traffic problem on one of Houston’s freeways. This happens about a million times a day, so you can narrow down the alerts you want to receive by day, time, route and type. I get the Katy Freeway from 7-9 a.m. and 6-7 p.m.
• Yahoo Alerts: You can get text-messaged alerts on anything from sports teams to Amber Alerts to low airfares. I get the weather every morning.
• Verizon TXT Alerts: Same idea as Yahoo Alerts, but with a broader array of niches, many co-branded (Maxim, CNN, WaPo).
• Facebook Mobile: Takes the social-networking site and puts it in my pants.

In addition to these, why not get familiar with the rest of the N11 family? Here’s what’s available from my phone (a Verizon line in the 713 area code):

• 211: Community services, state benefits, etc.
• 311: City of Houston services
• 411: Directory assistance
• 511: Nothing
• 611: Verizon customer service
• 711: Relay Texas (allows relay calls to the deaf)
• 811: Service to locate underground utility conduits
• 911: Houston emergency services (Good friggin’ luck)

Then there are the toll-free customer service numbers that are nearly impossible to find.

• Amazon.com: 800-201-7575
• eBay: 800-322-9266
• PayPal: 888-221-1161

Got any more useful numbers? Leave ‘em in the comments.

Matt Bramanti | May 28, 2006 at 12:29 am
Posted to Out and About, Personal, Tech

3 comments

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post marks the first appearance of a guestblogger — the lovely and talented Diane Heilmann. Go easy on her, folks, or she’ll take it out on me.

Hello everybody.  I’ve never blogged before, so I must admit that I’m a bit intimidated at the thought of having an audience.  Matt and I are watching Saving Private Ryan right now.  I guess if I’m going to write anything for a bunch of people to read, I’d like to thank everyone who ever has or is currently serving our country in the military.  You have my utmost respect and appreciation.  I admire your bravery and willingness to dedicate your lives to making life better for fellow Americans and people abroad.  You are all in my thoughts and prayers.  I hope everyone is having a good memorial weekend, and please keep in mind the people this holiday was made to honor. 

Diane Heilmann | May 27, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Posted to Movies, Personal

3 comments

What a day. Took the dogs for a walk, made some breakfast, and then I pulled a Peter Gibbons:

I would relax, I would sit on my ass all day, I would do nothing.

That’s not exactly true. I didn’t do nothing. I sat around in various locations: by the pool, in front of the TV, in front of the computer.

Also, I have noticed something interesting. Despite my relative lack of blogging over the past couple of days, the world continues to function pretty well. Carry on.

Matt Bramanti | May 27, 2006 at 5:48 pm
Posted to Personal

3 comments

This weekend, Mattsapundit Central Command is being temporarily relocated to my boss’ house. I’m watching his house, kids, dogs and other assorted chattel while he’s on a golfing jaunt in Louisiana.

Sweet.

Tonight, I’m watching a movie. Tomorrow, while my coworkers are busy appraising property all across the Bayou City, I’ll be sprawled out on a lounge chair by the pool with a cocktail in my hand. Accordingly, blogging and email will be very light over the next couple of days while I live the sweet life.

Tomorrow’s forecast: Partly cloudy, 89 degrees.

Sweet.

Matt Bramanti | May 25, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Posted to Out and About, Personal

No comments yet

Watching — and making — fake movie trailers is rapidly becoming America’s national pastime. Here’s the best one I’ve seen to date:

[gv data="CJBsyePY8zQ"][/gv]

Matt Bramanti | May 23, 2006 at 7:17 am
Posted to Culture, Humor, Movies, Video

1 comment

The Whited Curse strikes again — Southwest Airlines is considering scrapping its open-seating policy:

The airline is overhauling its computerized-reservation system to add the ability to assign seats and offer international flights. Officials say neither change is for sure.

The earliest Southwest could switch to assigned seating, used by every other major U.S. carrier, is 2008, Chief Executive Gary Kelly said Wednesday. The system won’t be able to handle the tax and customs information required for international travel until the following year, he said.

It would be a mistake to move away from open seating. As SciGuy has discussed, it’s faster and more efficient than assigned seating. One of Southwest’s major competitive advantages is its quick turnaround time. Planes don’t make money sitting on the ground, so Southwest keeps ‘em in the air. By shaving just a few minutes off each flight, you can accumulate enough saved time during the day to fly one more hop. The flipside is also true: waste an extra few minutes on the ground every flight, and you run out of daylight pretty soon.

To see, let’s crunch some numbers. Let’s say a Southwest plane’s workday is 12 hours; the first takeoff is at 8:00 a.m., and the plane has to be on the ground in its final destination city by 8:00 p.m. Let’s assume 1-hour flights with 20 minutes on the ground in between flights. For simplicity’s sake, all flights are within the same time zone.

The timetable looks like this:

• Flight 1: 8:00-9:00
• Flight 2: 9:20-10:20
• Flight 3: 10:40-11:40
• Flight 4: 12:00-1:00
• Flight 5: 1:20-2:20
• Flight 6: 2:40-3:40
• Flight 7: 4:00-5:00
• Flight 8: 5:20-6:20
• Flight 9: 6:40-7:40

That’s 9 flights a day. To make it easy, we’ll assume 100 passengers per flight, each paying $100. That’s 10 grand in revenue per flight. Fly this route every day for a year, and you pull in $32.85 million.
Now let’s say you introduce assigned seating, and let’s say it adds just 5 more minutes on the ground, per flight. Now your timetable looks like this:

• Flight 1: 8:00-9:00
• Flight 2: 9:25-10:25
• Flight 3: 10:50-11:50
• Flight 4: 12:15-1:15
• Flight 5: 1:40-2:40
• Flight 6: 3:05-4:05
• Flight 7: 4:30-5:30
• Flight 8: 5:55-6:55

Because of all the dilly-dallying on the ground, Flight 9 won’t get in before closing time, so it gets cut. Using the same assumptions as before, annual revenue just fell from $32.85 million to $29.2 million, a loss of $3.65 million or 11.1 percent. And that’s just on one route. Extrapolate that figure systemwide, and you’re talking some serious coin.

Of course, this idea makes sense if enough passengers are willing to pay a premium for assigned seating. It would have to be a pretty big premium, though — 11.1 percent just to break even. I don’t think many Southwest customers would pay it, given the choice. I sure as hell wouldn’t.

[Hat-tip: Laurence]

Matt Bramanti | May 19, 2006 at 3:50 am
Posted to Audio, Business, Overanalysis, Travel

9 comments

The president will outline his horrible, poorly-thought-out immigration policy this evening, and I’m gonna need a drink or nine. With that in mind, I give you the Open Border Drinking Game!

Directions:
For each time the president mentions the following words or phrases do the following…

- Welcome- Salt Glasses
- Welcoming Society- Swig from “XX” Drink!
- Jobs Americans won’t do- down one “XX” Drink!
- Nation of immigrants- Tequila shots Drink!
- Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande- Drink, Si?
- Good-hearted people- Bottle of “XX” Drink!
- Path to citizenship- Beer bongs! Drink!
- Vicente Fox- Beer bong! One “XX” Drink, Si?
- The distinguished senator from Massachusetts- Chew tequila worm, Swallow!
- This is not amnesty- Naked pyramid,… tequila, chug!

I’ll watch the speech tonight and report back tomorrow morning at some point. Buena suerte, gringos!

Matt Bramanti | May 15, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Posted to Blogging, Food & Drink, Immigration, Products, Sports

1 comment

Most of my readers haven’t had the pleasure of meeting my girlfriend Diane (aka “RedZilla”), and I’m sure some of them think she’s a figment of my imagination. Well she’s not, dammit; she’s real! Here she is:

At Mardi Gras in New Orleans. She’s the one in red.

Showing off her new haircut.

At the boardwalk in Kemah.

At my office.

At the beach in Galveston.

King Kong vs. RedZilla

At the zoo.

At The Redhead Piano Bar in Chicago

So there you have it, folks. She’s real. Now quit hassling me about it.

Matt Bramanti | May 15, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Posted to Friends, Personal, Photos

9 comments

These guys are pretty good:

Matt Bramanti | May 12, 2006 at 9:55 am
Posted to Food & Drink, Sports, Video

4 comments

(UPDATED with new pictures, 11:22 a.m. on 5/15/06)

Please join me in welcoming the newest member to the Mattsapundit team.

Barry Tapwater, Mattsapundit Fishbowl Bureau Chief

The Mattsapundit Fishbowl Bureau: One gallon of top-notch content.

His name is Barry Tapwater, and he’s a Betta fish. Barry was hired at Petco after a brief interview process. His areas of expertise include kicking the shit out of other fish, and bubbles.

For now, Barry will be retained in a purely advisory role in the Mattsapundit Fishbowl Bureau; he will not be blogging, as his species has neither thumbs nor higher brain function.

Welcome aboard, Barry!

Matt Bramanti | May 11, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Posted to Blogging, Friends, Home, Personal

7 comments

Meg gives me a dirty look.

A bottle opener — dubbed “The Popener” — with a likeness of Pope John Paul II, of happy memory.

A nugget of fried macaroni and cheese.

Meg, expressing her approval of the fried macaroni and cheese.

The most extensive soda fountain I have ever seen.

A Rum Runner. It was good.

Matt Bramanti | May 10, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Posted to Food & Drink, Friends, Out and About, Photos, Travel

4 comments

I really, really like Kevin Whited. He’s a brilliant guy, a hell of a local blogger, and he knows cool places to drink and listen to 80s covers.

That’s why I was so disappointed when he cast a voodoo curse on me.

You see, Dr. Whited is a Continental Airlines partisan, whereas I always fly The Company Planeâ„¢. We recently exchanged comments, in which I detailed Southwest’s total and utter dominance over its tectonic counterpart. In a desperate attempt to redeem his crappy carrier, the good (witch) doctor conjured up some unholy tardiness hex against my beloved Southwest. I’ve flown four times since his demonic incantations, and every one of those flights has been late.

And so, Kevin, until karma evens out this little disturbance, may your stewardesses be surly and your luggage bound for Ouagodougou.

Matt Bramanti | May 10, 2006 at 10:26 am
Posted to Out and About, Personal, Travel

4 comments

As I write this, I’m sitting in Concourse C of Tampa International Airport, trying to digest the weekend. I flew out here to visit my friend Meg, a good buddy from my Observer days. Since it’s hard to get away from work, I tend to take my vacations in short spurts — fly out Friday, pack as much action into 48 hours as I possibly can, and fly home Sunday. This weekend was no different.

I enjoy my style of short-duration, high-intensity vacation, but it has its drawbacks. Chief among them is the fact that I get really introspective towards the end.

Meg is a fellow at the Poynter Institute, and several of her friends are fellow journalists. Hanging out with these folks, seeing a cool town with beautiful weather, and generally getting out of Houston really made me second-guess my life. Part of the problem is the thought-distorting effects of nostalgia. Seeing friends from college brings back the good old days, which I know I remember inaccurately.

I remember the fun times: shooting pool at Corby’s, drawn-out dorm-room discussions and snowball fights. Of course, in that sort of nostalgic mindset, I tend to forget the impossible statistics exams, high-pressure deadlines or not being able to get a date. That’s how nostalgia works, I suppose.

But a lot of this little mini-crisis is just good old-fashioned FUD. All these what-ifs buzz around my head, and no one can answer them. What if there’s a perfect house in Chicago or West Texas or London, just waiting for me to make an offer? What if I could make more money at another firm? In another industry? What if I bought a dog or enlisted in the Army or started a business or ran for office?

The second-guessing bothers me because it’s close to disloyalty, as though what I currently have isn’t good enough. And yet, I’m very happy with my life. I have a very comfortable armchair. I live close enough that I can drop in on my family whenever I want. I make a good living at a job I love in an industry I find fascinating. I’m in love with a wonderful girl who loves me back.

Intellectually, I know all those “what-if” questions are unanswerable. I know that constant second-guessing is paralyzing, and I’ve got too much stuff to do. So the solution for now is pretty easy — knock it off. Tomorrow I’ll get up, appraise another building, visit my folks, kiss Diane, and get on with life.

Until my next vacation.

Matt Bramanti | May 7, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Posted to Out and About, Overanalysis, Personal, Travel

1 comment

You have spoken, and I have listened. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the Soul Glo commercial from Coming to America.

Matt Bramanti | May 4, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Posted to Humor, Movies, Video

3 comments

I was looking over my blog’s stats today, and I was blown away by the sheer volume of numbers involved. In the 489 days I’ve maintained Mattsapundit, here’s what my readers and I have generated:

• 768 posts (1.6/day) in 43 categories
• 298 comments (0.6/day) from 78 commenters

Here are some stats on my traffic since I’ve been on WordPress (80 days):

• 4,323 unique visitors (54 visitors/day)
• 8,622 visits (108 visits/day, 2 visits/visitor/day)
• 78,567 pages served (982 pages/day, 9 pages/visit)
• 1.53 GB of data served (19.6 MB/day, 186 KB/visit)

And here are the records:

• Highest-traffic day (visits): April 28, 2006
• Highest-traffic day (MB): April 3, 2006

Most popular time for viewing Mattsapundit is 4:00-5:00 p.m., and the least popular is 1:00-2:00 a.m. The highest-traffic day of the week is Tuesday, and the slowest day is Sunday.

The top referring sites are Lone Star Times, the old Mattsapundit and blogHOUSTON.

The vast majority of readers are in the United States, which I expected. The second most common country is the Netherlands for some reason. I have no idea why. Canada rounds out the top 3.

Windows XP is the most common operating system of Mattsapundit readers, followed by Mac OS X and Linux. Internet Explorer (yuck) is the leading browser, followed closely by Firefox, with Safari in a distant third.

Google is by far the most popular search engine, garnering 89.3% of the searches that end up here. Yahoo and MSN are both in the single digits.

Speaking of search engines, here’s the fun part — the most common search phrases people use to find Mattsapundit. Here are the top 10:

1. soul glo
2. wetback mountain
3. houston roller derby
4. soul glo video
5. soul glo audio
6. mattsapundit
7. just let your soul glo
8. carlos mencia wetback mountain
9. russ sartain
10. carlos mencias wetback mountain

As a highly trained statistics professional, allow me to make a hypothesis. Y’all really like Coming to America. Good crowd. Along with the popular search phrases, though, there are a lot of bizarre ones. Here are a few:

• beat you like a redheaded stepchild movies
• alexander euthanize oliver stone
• bizarre hooker september holidays
• transgendered razor bumps african american
• dried feces on pizza

I’ve asked this before and I’m sure I’ll ask it again: What the hell is the matter with you people?

Matt Bramanti | May 4, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Posted to Blogging, Overanalysis, Tech

3 comments

Just got an email from Thomas, master of rhetoric. It is reprinted here in its entirety:

fuck you

Now, now, Thomas, that’s not very nice. Do you use that kind of language with your coworkers at WorleyParsons?

UPDATE: It just occurs to me that Thomas is the same guy who chided me about my water heater a while back. He was deeply concerned that without proper exhaust, my ELECTRIC water heater would produce “termendous amounts of carbon dioxide.”

Matt Bramanti | May 3, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Posted to Personal, Stupidity

6 comments