Now, I can see where you would get confused...

Picture this: Customer X calls up, wanting an additional domain authorised to service Y. Fair cop, easy job. All I need to do is to send an authorisation email to address Z on said domain, and all the customer needs to do is to reply back to the system from address Z. The authorisation will only be verified if the reply comes back from that address. Seems easy enough, right? I explained this pretty clearly to the customer and, to his credit, the customer seemed to follow. So I send the authorisation email off to address Z, and end the call.

...Three minutes later, I get a system generated email back, saying that authorisation was refused. Why, I ask?

Authorisation was rejected as the addresses are mismatched.

Sent to "Address Z"
Received From "Address A"

...

...Oh, for fuck's sake...

So I've just sent the customer an email (to address Z, A, and 17), explain that I had to resend the authorisation email, WHY I had to resend the email, and how to do it properly this time.

And a paraphrased "...this time, try listening the fuck up".

Violating the laws of possibility for both fun and profit.

So, I got back into work today from a five day weekend. Only missed three days of work, but as soon as I stepped in the door to my floor, a little part of my soul died.

Know anyone who's hiring at the moment?

I sat down, strapped myself in, and hoped for the best. I mean - how bad could the first issue be? Well...

I just had a customer given our internal number here, and prodded in our direction by an other department who don't have the skills or panache to solve the issue. This fucks me off to no end, 'cause it's the WRONG way to do it, but we're to do it ANYWAY. So, I grit my teeth, roll my eyes, and see just how bad it was.

"So you're saying you're being billed for cellular broadband access at these times?"
"Yes."
"...And you say that they are during times where the handset is not even physically connected to the laptop?"
"Yes."
"And you're absolutely positive of this?"
"Yes, certainly."

...

The way that cellular broadband works is that data traffic is registered against a handset's ESN - which is a unique identifier, much like a MAC address. It's possible to have two handsets with the same cellular number, but not the same ESN. Simply put - the data traffic showing on the account was applied to the customer's ESN - which cannot be hacked. It shows up on the bill, then those bits and bytes went through that handset. QED.

So this customer was assuring me that all these "strange" data charges were being registered by the system at times when the handset was not physically connected or interfaced with the laptop.

"...You know, the way that you've described the situation, and the information I'm seeing here are mutually exclusive. What you've just describe to me is physically impossible."
"I know!"

...

So what was I to do?

"Well then, if that's the case, I'd recommend having the handset serviced or replaced, because there is no way this could happen is everything is working as intend."

Then I sent him on his merry way.

Now, what was the point of all this? What was the moral of the story I just related to you? Well, it's a simple one, and universally constant;

The customer is always lying.

Don't doubt yourself, never second-guess the systems. The customer is just fucking lying. Remember this, and dealing with them is just a little bit easier.

Quick! Save yourself!

...

I read an abstract this morning for a study entitled 'Sparing effects of selenium and ascorbic acid on vitamin C and E in guinea pig tissues.'

I'm currently reading the full article, somewhat incredulously. For anyone not familiar with their vitamins, you probably won't see at first glance the reason I spent a good five minutes reading the abstract and giggling. I even showed it to a colleague to make sure I wasn't missing some subtle hidden nuance. But apparently not.

Ascorbic acid is vitamin C.

The title and abstract so far suggest that 13 scientists spent a good deal of time and several dead guinea pigs to establish that there was less vitamin C in the tissues of guinea pigs fed less vitamin C. Wow. Giving animals an essential nutrient causes a raise in that nutrient's level in the animal? Rocket science!

I'm currently reading the full article to see if there's some pressing reason why this needed to be established. So there may well be a relieved post from me later - I'd hate to think that people really sit down and waste time, money, and small cute mammals with adorable squeaking noises on the blatantly stupid.

I recommend against holding your breath.

As a side note, I really hope they didn't use Ribena as their source of C.

There's been some changes 'round here...

A ninja template change from the stealthiest sunflower around. Let's see how long it takes the Nihilist to notice we're no longer black and angsty.

No, now we're just the angst without the colourscheme!

What do you think? Do you find this more readable?

Note: proper post coming up this afternoon, in between digging myself out from under the pile of paperwork that keeps getting strategically 'stored' on my desk, and heading out to a work function. At this rate, 'this afternoon' may well mean 'sometime tomorrow'.

Short but sardonic

"Medical statistician: one who will not accept that Columbus discovered America ... because he said he was looking for India in the trial plan."

- Stephen Senn, Statistical Issues in Drug Development. (1997) (lifted from the British Medical Journal)


Since it's Wednesday and I have hump-day-itis, as well as far too much to do, you'll just have to make do with the quote rather than a rant. Still, if you're looking for amusingly dismissive off-the-cuff summations, it's a pretty good one!

Have a good day, everyone, and stay tuned for 'Five things that will make Stealthflower point and laugh at your research'.

The grass isn't greener on the streets

Just a quickie today, for anyone who has ever wondered whether those kids living on the streets are eating better than you. You know, what with all those three course meals and nutritious fresh vegies you can forage out of garbage bins and all.

A group of researchers has established that homeless kids in Toronto are 'nutritionally vulnerable' - that is, not as well fed as kids with homes and regular meals. Well, there's more research money gone on establishing the blindingly obvious.

It's probably unfair of me, but wouldn't that money have been better spent on buying those poor kids a sandwich?


Study is Tarasuk V et al. Homeless youth in Toronto are nutritionally vulnerable. J Nutr 2005 Aug;135(8):1926-33. Full text is available from the Nutrition Journal here.

Weighty matters

Time for Stealthflower's award for pointing out the blindingly obvious.
Today's imaginary trophy goes to the Canadian researchers who compared the nutrient intake between obese and non-obese kids and teens. They carefully quantifying the differences between the two groups in their methods, then discovered in their results that there was a statistically significance between the two groups in both weight AND Body Mass Index!

No, really?

It actually is both interesting and useful to compare the nturitional and vitamin intakes of the two groups, but do you really need to experiment to find that fat kids are fatter than non-fat kids?

Someone I work with has been known to say that common sense has to step in at some point. I'm still waiting for that point to arrive, me.


For the curious or pedantic, the study is: Gillis L & Gillis A. Nutrient inadequacy in obese and non-obese youth. Can J Diet Prac Res 2005;66(4)237-42. Pubmed abstract can be found here.

You'll get what you asked for, and you'll bloody like it!

I just got a call from another department. A lot of what I do here involves helping out the front like staff by either dealing with escalated cases, or advising the reps directly. So, in this case, I got a call from a rep asking for some advice. In this situation, a customer had some issues with a PDA. Errors when they hooked it up to their computer and what-not. So, the customer got some instructions mailed to him, instructing him on what to do. According the the rep, he didn't follow the instructions, instead going off and doing something completely different, and then called back for more help.

...

"The fuck?" I say.

So this guy had asked for help, ignored what we sent him, and then had the audacity to call back for more help. I'll be honest, this kind of brutal illogic stalled me for a bit. I blinked for a second, audibly, before telling the rep that if this customer wished for our assistance, then he was required to actually attempt the solutions we provide before asking for additional help. Worded slightly more sardonically.

I mean for fuck's sake. How does it make sense to ask for assistance or a solution, and then to ignore what was provided? And worse - then call back for "more" assistance? This is what happens when you design devices and services to be used by idiots.

Oh, and I'll write a self-effacing introductory post in the near future. You lucky, lucky fucks.

Welcome! Greetings. Pull up a drink and sit down.

At some stage I should probably introduce myself, I suppose. I'll let the Nihilist speak for himself, even if that speaking is likely to consist of drunken ramblings interspersed with the occasional cuttingly articulate dummyspit.

I'm a researcher, among other things, for a natural supplement company. I've been working in the alternative therapies industry for the last seven years or so, in a whole variety of roles, and I've encountered an ever surprising range of fuzzy thinking, poor logic, and blind optimism in the face of all apparent fact - as I expected.

What I didn't expect, in my naivety, is to encounter exactly the same thing on the more 'scientific' side of the fence. In my current role, I'm wading through more research papers than I care to think about every work day. And while I knew that medicine was a developing field, I didn't realise just how poorly thought out some of the research contributions were.

I managed to dismiss the first trial I read, that concluded a particular herb wasn't more effective than a placebo, when they used a placebo that contained the herb in it as well, as an oversight.

Then I started reading trials that concluded supplements were ineffective for conditions they weren't clinically used for. Trials that went for too short a time to show a difference in long-term conditions. Placebo-controlled trials that didn't actually say what active ingredient they were testing. And my personal favourite - a study that 'proved' several herbs had potentially negative effects on male fertility... by washing extracted sperm in an alcohol extract of the herbs, and trying to use it to knock up an isolated hamster ovum.

(I'll be pulling that particular study apart later, so if you have a roadkill fascination with drunken sperm trying to get a hamster egg in a testube into the sack, stay tuned.)

It was at this point that my ever patient partner (who I'm tempted to call Mr Flower, but I'd probably better find another nickname for him), pointed out I really should be blogging this shit.

So here I am.

There is no such thing as "underestimation" in customer service.

You may work for a major ISP/Telco. You may be working with DNS, VoIP, and other fancy acronyms. You may associate with other technicians, both within and outside your corporation of employment. But there is one thing you just simply cannot achieve. Not in any way, shape, or form.

You just simply cannot underestimate your clients and coworkers.

IT: where you have to be nominally smarter to deal with the same stupid people.

The RDI of vitamins is good for you! Honest!

Ok, it's not strictly research, but have any other Aussies read the National Health and Medical Research Council's recommended daily intakes of vitamins and minerals?

I was reading the entry for magnesium the other day, and was rather suprised to read that while the recommended intake for kids (4 to eight year olds, to be precise) is 130mg, the upper level considered safe...

is 110mg.

So basically, it's suggested that kids need to eat more magnesium than the government is willing to say is safe for them. *amused*

I've read their justification - it's not a typo, and there's no erratum up on their site.

If anyone's curious enough to go see for themselves, you can download the pdf from here (it's quite large, I warn you!), or you can look at their site here.

Welcome, strangers

I'm a researcher in the alternative medicine field, among other things. And, in the many years I've been working in the industry, it seems that every ten minutes someone turns around with some new scientific study that 'proves' that a particular nutrient causes/cures cancer/aging/obesity/spontaneous human combustion/you name it.

You'd be surprised some of the things I've seen claimed for all manner of random foodstuffs or supplements. I really wish I still was. And often, there's some 'research' or other to back it up. Well, I've got news for you, oh gullible wunderkiddies. Scientific studies are just as prone to demonstrating random stupidities as the next person with a budget and a sloppy supervisor.

From the 2001 study I read yesterday that found that not only were children in a Romanian orphanage more neurotic than kids with families, they also had lower magnesium, which of course must be the cause, to the archetypical 'well, duh!' study in the 1990s that 'proved' that what you ate changed the makeup of your shit, I'm going to share with you just what our best and brightest medical minds do with their research dollars.

Well, maybe not the best and brightest. Possibly just the most entertaining. But isn't it more fun that way?