JDPFu.com 2025

I love gummi candy. LOVE IT.
Recipe for homemade gummi candy

I’ll post the outcome here after trying it.

The last few years, companies have added customer loyalty programs to their marketing. Most of these fail for a number of reasons.

Which companies have the highest customer loyalty and why? Which have failed, at least for me?

Successes

Coke – People like to drink Coke everywhere in the world. When Coke changed their flavoring based on taste testing, the world cried out to put back the old flavor almost like an addict would. Flavored sugar water doesn’t mean much to me.

Apple – Apple fans go crazy about their products and will tell EVERYONE how great each is. Apple product cost between 20% and 100% more than similar products that aren’t as easy to use. People are willing to pay more for that. I’m not a fan of Apple – mostly because they charge more and their fans are obnoxious.
I did get a phone call from Apple last year because someone was trying to use a credit card with my name on it to buy an iPhone and iTunes stuff. This call was from Apple, not my credit card company. I became hostile towards to nice man on the phone immediately, before I gave him a chance to explain the issue. He never wavered and was always polite and professional – without any accent in his speech. While this hasn’t changed my negative opinion of Apple product pricing, it hasn’t added any more negative thoughts either.
Apple, when will your customers be able to multi-task on an iphone? When will they be allowed to change the battery? When will they be allowed to select from any application that can run on the device?

Google – Google does most things they do VERY WELL and don’t ask me directly for anything in return. They make their money by correlating all my web data together, building a profile about me and selling ads around that data. Most of us don’t really know what this means and we don’t care. I avoid google without filtering personal connection, use, computer data. Further, I avoid sending email to gmail addresses.

Airlines – Delta and United FF programs. They aren’t really that useful to me anymore. I’ve used Continental and AA FF programs in the past but never used an award ticket from them. Which FF program works best for you depends on where you live and where you travel. I have turned in some Delta points for a $1400 international ticket, which made it completely worth while. My United miles expired before I could use them, so I transferred them to a charity.

McDonald’s – Kids, advertising, convenience. I don’t get it at all. I haven’t eaten at McD’s in perhaps 2.5 years. It was an emergency the last time I did because I needed something to eat, quick, on the way to a once in a lifetime event. The closest restaurant to my home is a McDonald’s. I could walk there. I have never been to that store.

Twitter – You love it or your don’t care. I don’t care. Why didn’t AIM or gTalk or MSN setup interfaces with SMS texts? Maybe they did, but I just didn’t know about it?

What’s missing?

Customer loyalty needs to feel like a friend telling another friend about something great that they know is likely to be relevant to them them, not just something good. My friends know the types of things I’m interested in based on prior communications. They contact me when they see something really interesting to me. When was the last time you got any great insight from a customer loyalty communication. Seriously? Most of these communications are a list of 50 things on sale and none are of interest. None. The same old marketing like newspaper inserts. It needs to be targeted and on point for my needs.

Acura – I’ve owned two Acura vehicles and I’m mostly pleased. My interactions with most Acura dealers has been pleasant enough too. When I purchased my last Acura, my last name was misspelled on all the documents and on the title. Boo. A single attempt to correct that through Acura failed, so I gave up. When my annual registration comes due, I initially tried to correct it, but that failed too. My name gets misspelled a lot, so this isn’t a big deal. At least the Acura misspelling result isn’t offensive. Every quarter, an Acura magazine arrives with stories, lifestyle articles, travel hints and offers – Free Augusta National Golf tickets and the like. I don’t golf, but the offer is appreciated. Some of the other deals are interesting and generally leave a favorable impression of Acura.

My next vehicle will probably be another Acura in a few years. The last purchase occurred without visiting the dealership. The papers were signed on my kitchen table on the day the vehicle was delivered to my home. That impression is hard to beat even with the misspelled name.

TiVo – These guys are similar to Apple, except I like them. Their product works better than any alternative, but it costs more than any alternative. I dislike that a monthly plan is even offered and I wish the lifetime plans weren’t so expensive. I’ve been a tivo owner since 2003. That same device is working. I swapped the disk drive a few years ago to get more storage. It is about time to swap the drive again to further increase the lifetime. I don’t use any of the paid add-on options, but I do have it download free internet content like Tekzilla and hak5 weekly shows. Convenience rules.

Failures

Hilton Hotels – I signed up for a Hilton awards program a few years ago due to conference attendance. I tied my room reservation to it, then attended. After my visit, I checked that it was recorded to my HH program, it wasn’t so I sent the information about my stay to the feedback link on the program site. A few days later, I started receiving emails from the hotel manager asking how my stay was. I provided good feedback and explained that the program hadn’t connected my stay with the frequent stay program ID. I attempted to connect it once more. No joy. It has been a year and still isn’t connected. I get monthly emails from Hilton which reminds me they don’t follow through. Attempts to leave their email marketing list have failed too, which frustrate me even more, every month. I’m at the point where I avoid staying at Hilton Hotels or any of their 10 other names. FAIL.

Microsoft – The two most common communications I get from Microsoft is patch your PC and your antivirus is out of date. Is that really the message they want to send weekly? Microsoft has lost my trust. Every time they create something new, I immediately wonder how it will prevent me from using anyone elses’ stuff or how much it will cost me. exFAT file system is their latest push for memory cards to support large media files. I don’t understand why all the memory manufacturers don’t just use the FOSS ext2 file systems instead? Oh – because Microsoft doesn’t (and won’t) support ext2. OTOH, WinXP and earlier OSes don’t support exFAT either.

Linux / Ubuntu – This isn’t really fair. Linux isn’t a company and has no advertising budget. Ubuntu doesn’t seem to have much advertising budget either, at least for the masses. What can Linux do better? Well, they can show 30 second clips of people using the software to solve a real problem with FOSS. It would be best of the problem highlighted something that Windows or Macs don’t do well at all. #1 – every time should show price followed by system maintenance and upgrade processes (click the red triangle in the corner). Currently, failing. Yes, I know that Linux is just the kernel and that no users actually use it directly. We all use some higher level tool created by GNU or Ubuntu or Red Hat or SuSE or Mandrake or some developer in his basement.

Amazon – I shop on Amazon for price and convenience. I maintain a wish list of things to make gifts easier and as reminders for things to purchase later. I don’t think I’ve ever purchased anything recommended for me from Amazon. They know the types of things I buy with over 200 purchases. If I bought a router, I probably don’t need another. 3 months later, I don’t need to see CAT5e cables or a switch either. I’ve had a few issues with Amazon product shipments over the years, but Amazon has always made me whole again, always. Their customer service does a good job. Their product suggestions, not so much.

Travelocity – They know where I’ve traveled, how long I’ve stayed and when I tend to go. They also know my searches for destinations. Yet, they don’t send deals for those destinations or worse, keep sending them when I’m already back home. I want international travel deals. I doubt I’ll ever take a vacation to Los Vegas or fly to Ashville, NC. STOP OFFERING THOSE DEALS, Travelocity. Offering a flight from Atlanta to Savannah is a waste of your time too. I’d end up spending more time dealing with airport garbage than a simple drive there. I’m not going to fly commercially to Savannah, ever. I’ve routinely searched for flights to Bali, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, London, Europe, Chili, and Peru. Get the hint and target those deals, please?

My Senators – About once a year, I get an email from my senators claiming to have stopped some bill that is bad for the country. I wrote to them a few years ago about some of my concerns which they responded to by a carefully copy/pasted paragraph about each of my concerns. Most recently, it was about the health care bill, which I’ve never written to them about. Nice. Fail.

Grocery Stores – They give small discounts for the cost of you letting them see what you purchase. I’ve never had a grocery store loyalty card. My privacy is worth more than $100/yr. When my local Kroger started pushing them, I spoke with the store manager about my displeasure. He wasn’t helpful, I stopped shopping at Kroger. Publix is a local competitor where I started stopping. They also had a discount card, but if I didn’t have one, the cashier always scanned hers so I got the discount. Kroger – FAIL, Publix – Success. I suppose manufacturers would be snail-mailing coupons to me if I had a card? That local Kroger went out of business. I doubt I had anything to do with that, but the store manager definitely did. Good Bye.

Customer Loyalty Programs

Which programs work for you and which have failed? Why?

Sometimes you don’t realize what a great day you had until later.

Over Thanksgiving, I spent a day near Tallassee, Alabama hiking on the Cherokee Ridge Alpine Trail.

Finding the trail head from the parking lot wasn’t as easy as it should have been and later I ended up taking a turn that shortened by hike by 2 miles due to poor signage. The fallen leaves everywhere made it difficult to stay on parts of the trail. The trail was still enjoyable with ups and down parts. I rate it moderate overall with a few short difficult sections. Along the way, I saw wild turkey, deer and an interesting spider that I’d never seen before along with the normal squirrel and bird life.

According the the Bugfinder site I saw a Spiny Backed Orb Weaver in the center of its normal web. It was a little over 1cm in diameter.

Anyway, it was a nice few hours spent hiking in nature next to Martin Lake with a few overlooks.

I’m easily amused. You know that by now.

In a quest for great homemade curry recipes without too much difficulty, I’ve tried a few. Yesterday, I found the best mix.

The key was the curry – Kitchens of India is imported from, er, India. It is a curry paste and comes in a sealed foil package. A 6 pack runs $12 from amazon – ouch. It is worth it.

Follow the last curry chicken crock pot recipe I posted here, just use the Kitchens of India curry instead. Here’s the result

Yum.

Breakfasts around the world vary greatly in my limited experience. There are differences based on eating at home, eating out, eating with friends and on holidays, in my experience. Obviously, everyone eats just a little differently at breakfast based on family, culture, and available foods in season.

American

I’m American and have lived all over the USA. I’ve found there are regional differences based on family location. Southern families might have grits with their breakfast and norther families might have oatmeal. I’ve had both, but tend towards my norther family/culture a dozen times a year or so. Most of the time breakfast at home is much simpler.

I’d guess over 30% of Americans just have something to drink for breakfast whether it is coffee of milk or juice.

Children

Cereal plus whatever else Mother can get them to eat and drink. Milk and juice and fruit, but only if cut up and put on cereal. The cereal usually has tons of sugar – Captain Crunch was my favorite as a child, but Cocoa Krispies and Life were fine. The bowl was always more than 1 cup, usually 2-3 cups. Raisin Bran became a staple after age 16 thru to my mid-30s.

Healthier Adult

Coffee, juice, some kind of fruit and a fairly small bowl of grainy cereal.
An alternative is tea/coffee, fruit, and some protein like an egg / bacon / sausage. I’m a protein, fruit, tea guy.

Special Occasions

When out with family or friends, going to a restaurant for breakfast usually means a waffle/pancake, eggs, and sausage/bacon ordeal. I usually get an omelet with almost every type of veggie and ham.

For holidays, my family has old German recipes that mix eggs, bacon, bread, and cheese all together and bake it. The sodium level will give anyone a heart attack, but it is sooooo good. About once a year, I’ll make gooey cinnamon rolls. There are also the odd times when donuts are purchased.

Japanese

I’ve heard the normal Japanese breakfast is a raw egg over a small, cold bowl of rice with green tea. I’ve tried this and found it unsatisfying. I suspect the Egg McMuffin is popular in Tokyo.

Chinese

On multiple occasions while in China, I’ve eaten breakfast out with the locals. Cantonese breakfast tends to be a hearty bowl of soup with veggies and meat. Of course, a western-style breakfast is available too, but 80% of the diners that I saw were having that big bowl of soup. Even the American chain, KFC, sells the potato + sausage soup in China. Further, it is really tasty.

Of course, if you go to a place known for dim sum, you’ll see that instead. It is definitely popular with a huge list of options on the ordering pad you will be provided with. Just check the boxes and enter the number you’d like for each available type. Ask for the English menu if it isn’t automatically provided.

Central American

Varied just like in America – French toast some days, but there’s always, always fresh fruit – papaya, cantaloupe, banana, and varied juices with coffee. Hash brown potatoes or other locally fried starches (banana) were also provided a few times. I’ve never eaten so much and so many varied fruits in a single meal, yet it probably had only 200 calories.

Metro-South American

Coffee and a small scone. I don’t know if this is typical, but while in BsAs for a few weeks, every corner had a coffee cafe that provides this. Seeing a Starbucks here is odd since the locals have known excellent coffee for their entire lives and laugh at people going to Starbucks. Starbucks is losing money, big time.

The oddest thing I found here was that carbonated water was often provided with coffee. Agua con gas or agua sin gas_. Interesting. Argentina has some specialized menus that make ordering breakfast a challenge.menus I guess the good news is that you were probably out until 3-4am drinking after eating dinner around 11pm, so breakfast isn’t really that important.

French

Coffee and croissant. My experience was on my first trip to Tokyo while spending a few weeks in a French hotel. The first week there, the company CEO and I met for breakfast in the main lobby and he loved it. On subsequent trips I stayed in the same hotel, but discovered a different breakfast was available downstairs for the same cost – about US$23. Good thing the client was paying for everything.

British

I’ve never been to Britain, but I have seen their influence in China and Japan. Thank GOD for the Brits, or I would have starved in Japan. A proper British breakfast was provided in every hotel I’ve stayed at in either place. It was usually buffet style with bangers, bacon, eggs (3 styles), fruit, and pastries.

Eating Bangers and Mash for breakfast in Hong Kong Central while watching an American Football Superbowl at 7am is a trip highlight that I’ll never forget. Since football was on TV and the expat pub, Bulldogs, was full of Americans (overflowing), Budweiser and Coors beer was available too, but paying import prices for bad beer doesn’t make sense when Carlsberg is available cheap.

Away from Home

When I’m away from home, I tend to relish in the differences and take a little of the best things back home. These turn into habits. Breakfast was some of the best experiences that I’ve had every where in the world.

Whether in an MTR station Le Madelene’s in Kowloon eating sausage soup with veggies or on Macau Island having 20 different dim sum portions or a simple home made French toast in a mountain-side home in the Monteverde Rain Forest or a Café Doblo con leche in a Buenos Aires corner Cafe, any of these experiences beats standing in my kitchen chowing on a hard boiled egg and banana as I wait for coffee or tea to steep.

When away from home, breakfast is usually a meal you can find something tasty, yet local, that will get you going for the rest of the busy day. Breakfast doesn’t usually come with the unusual-to-me or you want me to eat what concerns either.

What have been your experiences with breakfast around the world?

On Saturday, I went GeoCaching with an expert Geocacher (over 1000 caches found and logged). We went to a trail that I’ve hiked twice before, so I knew the terrain and was prepared for the effort required. At least I thought I was prepared. It turned out, I was not.

Equipment

I have a Nokia N800 that gets tethered via Bluetooth to a GoPass GPT800 Bluetooth GPS Receiver SiRF Star III. At the time of purchase, this was a highly regarded GPS receiver chip.

My sister had a hiking-specific GPS unit from Garman with a big antenna. I don’t know the exact model, but think it is a metal grey color with black and white screen. No color, since that uses too much energy.

My brother-in-law uses a few applications and scripts that he wrote to grab GPS point data for any geocaches near where we are planning to be. His scripts also grab hints and comments from other enthusiasts.

The Issues

So, we’re hiking on the path and we both have waypoints/POIs entered into our units marking the cache locations. I keep walking on the path, then my sister heads off into the brush. Not just a few feet off the path, but out of voice yelling range. We both have whistles, which is good hiking practice. My GPS was still telling me to continue on the path. She found it. I didn’t realize the cache locations wouldn’t be fairly near a trail. Since I’d already hiked these trails with my GPS tracking enabled, I had that prior track loaded into my map and could see approximately where the best place to take off into the bush would be.

GPS units appear to be designed for movement, somewhere around 10mph or faster seems ideal. I can’t walk that fast. When we stopped to get readings, mine jumped around a lot – hundreds of yards. Further, if the GPS signal gets lost due to trees, hills, whatever, then mine takes you back to a previous location as an initial guess. With tracking enabled, the map gets really busy with a pseudo-star pattern of lines.

Cockpit Error – i.e. user error ;)

On about the 3rd cache, I realized that the built-in compass for the GPS software wasn’t really working the way I thought. Fortunately, the same tool that my whistle is on has a compass, signal mirror, magnifying lens, thermometer and an LED flashlight . It is a really handy little plastic tool for hikers to have. I don’t mind that it is cheap, it does work. The compass was more than accurate enough for my needs, but sadly, the GPS location was still off. My sister kept making a beeline to the caches and found almost all of them in this area.

Final Result

I’ve decided that geocaching with my current setup isn’t fun. I get frustrated when technology doesn’t work as expected. To resolve the issue, wiping the original OS2008 included with the N800 will be needed. I’ve been unable to update the GPS mapping tool software since it was loaded due to some underlying libraries that couldn’t be updated too. A fresh OS install with the newer release will be good and get me out of Application Manager hell. Maemo 5, here I come. Then I’ll re-visit the same location and see whether the new software helps with the accuracy of the GPS. Knowing where some of the caches are located, will be helpful.

If this doesn’t work, perhaps it is time for a new bluetooth GPS receiver. The current receiver is really good for driving – seriously, so that $35 was well spent.

You can manage your google data here https://www.google.com/dashboard/. This is good. I don’t really use all the google apps, but seeing all the searches I’ve made over the last few years and the trend data, was eye opening. I elected to wipe my data, then pause all future capture of that data.

What other data did the dashboard show? I have removed anything personally identifying below.

Account
Name: xxxxxxx
Nickname: xxxx
Email addresses: xxxxxxx@gmail.com, yyyyyy@yyyyyyyy.yyy
Requesting data for Account...
Manage account
Edit personal information
Privacy and security help
Calendar
Country United States
Time zone (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time
Requesting data for Calendar...
Manage calendars
Manage mobile devices
Calendar privacy policy
Contacts
Contacts 58 entries
Requesting data for Contacts...
Manage contacts
Docs
Owned by me 1 document
Most recent: Weight 2008 on Jun 6, 2006
Opened by me 1 document
Most recent: Weight 2008 on Jun 6, 2006
Starred 1 document
Most recent: Weight 2008 on Jun 6, 2006
Requesting data for Docs...
Manage documents
Sharing documents
Finance
11 securities in 1 portfolio:
My Portfolio 11 securities
Portfolio value: $0.00 at Nov 6, 2009
Requesting data for Finance...
Manage portfolios
Gmail
Inbox 11 conversations
Most recent: TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT at 7:42 AM
All mail 40 conversations
Most recent: TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT  at 7:42 AM
Sent mail 7 conversations
Most recent: gmail test on Oct 11, 2009
Spam 2 conversations
Most recent: Ref: ssssssssssssssss on Oct 30, 2009
Trash 25 conversations
Most recent: New private message has arrived on Oct 18, 2009
Requesting data for Gmail...
Manage chat history
Manage HTTPS settings
Manage all Gmail settings
Gmail privacy policy
Privacy and security help
IGoogle
Gadgets installed 10 gadgets
Most recent: on Jan 24, 2008
Tabs 1 tab
Most recently added:
Requesting data for IGoogle...
Manage iGoogle settings
iGoogle privacy policy
Profile
About me 2 entries
Name: xxxxx xxxxxx
Profile URL: http://www.google.com/profiles/pppppppppppppppppppppp
Requesting data for Profile...
Edit profile
Manage sharing of contact info
About access and privacy of profiles
Talk
Contacts 1 contact
Sample Contact: zzzzzz@gmail.com
Requesting data for Talk...
About talk
Talk privacy policy
Voice
History 140 calls
Placed calls 4 calls
Trash 36 items
Forwarding phones 2 phones
Requesting data for Voice...
Manage Greetings
Manage Google Voice settings
About privacy and security in Google Voice
How voicemails are transcribed
Web History
Web History: Disabled
Requesting data for Web History...
Remove items or clear Web History
Web History help
Web History privacy policy
Web History privacy FAQ
Other products
Google Maps

There was a list of 3rd party sites with access to this data too. I didn’t recall authorizing any of them. Data removed and future 3rd party access prevented.

Major kudos to google for allowing us to manage our data and privacy settings.

I did leave some of the private data out there for use. It isn’t important to me. Your internet use may tell others things that are better not shared. Suppose you search on a medical term because a friend tells you a story about his mother. That search term is saved and tied to your account. What happens if 5 yrs later you end up being medically diagnosed with that illness? Your insurance company may start legal discovery efforts, or just pay google for the data. Now they refuse to cover your treatment since it was a pre-existing condition. Even if you don’t care about this, you know someone who does. What if you search for foods that are bad for you or visit weight loss web sites for 5 years? Expect your insurance company and the govt to have access to this data. If it is stored, it will get out.

It should be noted that if you aren’t logged into your google account, the data captured doesn’t appear to be correlated with your account. That doesn’t mean it isn’t captured by your IP address or a google cookie, stored, and correlated. Further, you can’t manage the data with the dashboard. Google writes about this other data

Today, google is a little less evil. Until they let me remove my data from other peoples’ accounts (contacts, phone calls, email addresses), I’ll still avoid using google with an expectation of privacy.

11/8: The Washington Post Security Fix guy has an article on this now too.

It is really simple to end all the personal data leaks that we read about all the time, make the penalty of the leak so high that no company would ever allow it to happen. Further, make the fine be paid directly to the impacted persons, so it isn’t the class action lawyer or some neutral party being paid.

A few years ago, my college leaked 20,000 transcripts on the internet. Mine was not one of the leaked, but if I were going to cost $2,000, per instance, for the fine, I suspect my University would be more careful. That fine would have cost them $40M. Yep, they wouldn’t leak anything, that’s for certain.

There are a number of systems out now that are known to leak private data, MySpace, Facebook, and Paypal are constantly found to be deficient with security practices. If there was a $2,000 fine for each failure, I bet they’d fix it or refuse all private data. Or, they’d go out of business, which would give them an opportunity to come back with better security after bankruptcy. Further, venture capitol would demand excellent security processes to prevent any private data breaches.

How is any of this bad? I suppose the companies (slime?) who make money offering bogus privacy insurance would be harmed. They would convert into audit companies or fold. I suspect lawsuits against Microsoft for common program breaches would increase, forcing them to create a secure OS if they wanted to retain customers. I can get behind that. The people and companies certifying private data won’t be leaked will be held accountable if their system fails too.

Is financial data the only private data or is anything not found in either the telephone book or government documents to be considered private? Is there an expectation of privacy for all other information that should be protected?

Spam Comments

So, the number of comments here has gone way up, sadly, most are spam comments with links. We use moderation, so those comments will never be seen, but it is still a pain to DELETE them. I’ll probably resort to blocking entire ISP ranges for those outside the USA. The problem isn’t that bad yet.

Gallery

Also, my photo gallery was found by Google this week. Ouch. I’ve blocked google’s image scanner and relocated the program and images, so they aren’t found anymore, but the damage may be done. Without the database that contains the descriptions, the photos aren’t very useful, but that isn’t the point. There are over 24GB of photos and short videos. That’s about 10,700 files.

Beautiful Fall Weather

The leaves are changing and dropping here. We had our first freeze warning this week too. High temps are in the 50s now, so working outside in the afternoon is comfortable again. Time to charge the camera and head into the woods for some fall snapshots before all the leaves are gone. My maple trees have dropped some leaves, but the remaining leaves are still green today.

I know it is fall when there are many changes to the tzconf, that’s timezone file for non-computer people. Basically, many governments tweak their timezone changes in the fall and spring. In the USA, we call it Daylight Savings and shift 1 hour forward and back every spring and fall. A few years ago, they changed the dates when it happened, screwing all electronic equipment that had the dates hard coded. They moved it a few weeks longer in the fall so Halloween trick-or-treaters will have more sunlight on Oct 31. There have been studies performed that DST actually costs more to than it saves. I don’t know, but it does seem strange to arbitrarily change clocks forward and back through political will. Seems that summer hours and winter hours would be easier.

Don’t recall where I came across this link to smart company logos, but is was interesting enough to publish here.