A coupla words about "The Apprentice"

And here I was all set to do Scalzi's weekly assignment.  I'll do that tomorrow -- right now, he's being pre-empted for a little reality television.

So, tonight was the second-to-last episode of The Apprentice -- we saw the two contestants do the final task, and have their final chance to have their say in the boardroom.  Pretty much all that's left is for Trump to stall to try to fill an hour of live television next week.  Nobody on the West Coast will watch it -- it was boring as all get out last time, and we will have read the results on the internet by the time it airs.

The thing that I'm wondering now is, exactly who is editing this show and how much discretion do they have?  Because, in the final task, it looked like Kenda wiped the floor with Tana.  And -- in what looked to be an adorable little twist -- Tana was too full of herself to even notice that she was tanking the challenge.  Leaving the Governor of New York standing around doing nothing?  Printing up thousands of copies of a program that said one of the athletes was useless as a competitor but would look good on camera?  These were not just itty bitty errors.  And compare that to Kendra -- whose event sponsors were so happy with the work she did, one of them offered her a job.  Not to mention the difference between the way they interacted with their "employees" -- Tana was all about the image of being in charge and having respect, while Kendra actually earned it.

The point is:  that's how it looked to me.  As a viewer.  Watching the edited version the producers of the show wanted me to see.  For all I know, Kendra screwed this thing up as badly as Tana did, and it just didn't air.  But the way this show was edited made it look like Trump would be a freakin' moron if he hired Tana.

Same sorta thing happened last season -- although, there, it wasn't so much the final episode, but the entire season.  Two competitors:  Kelly and Jennifer.  During the whole season, Kelly was shown as cool, calm, and professional, while Jennifer looked to be just sliding by.  Indeed, each week Jennifer escaped firing, you sorta wondered how that happened.  So, by the time of the great big one-hour live finale -- after all of America had seen the show which was edited to make Jennifer look like a moron -- Trump claimed that he didn't know which one to hire (so he needed to take an hour-long show to make his decision), but everyone knew what would happen.  And it did happen -- every time Trump asked someone which one he should hire, the answer was always "Kelly."

So here's what I wonder ... suppose there were no live finale, and Trump had made his decision at the very end of the prerecorded episode (the one which just aired tonight).  Assume further that he decided to hire Tana.  If that had happened, the episode we saw would have been edited way differently -- because the people behind The Apprentice never want to make it look like Trump made the wrong decision.

So, near as I can figure, one of two things is going on.  Either (a) Trump has already decided to hire Kendra, and has passed the word to the editors so that they would validate that selection in the editing; or (b) Trump seriously had absolutely no idea who he would hire at the end of the episode, and left the editing up to someone else, but now that the episode has been edited the way it was, he has no choice but to hire Kendra, so he doesn't look like a world-class idiot.

Either way, the show would be more honest without the live finale.

 

What's Appropriate at the Ball Park

Went to a Dodger Game the other day.

Some people in the crowd were throwing around a beach ball.  A woman got hold of the ball, and apparently did not pass it in the direction the rest of the crowd had in mind.

Dude sitting in front of me called her a "stupid [f-word] whore." 

(Course he actually SAID the f-word.)

He yelled it.  In a crowded ballpark.  Nobody said a word.

Later that night, everyone in my section started standing up.  I couldn't figure out why, but stood up so I could see, too.  Turns out, there was some guy about 15 rows in front of us who had stood up to take off his shirt.

Dude in front of me tells him to, "Sit down, you [f-word] [other f-word that's a derogatory term for a homosexual]."

I was APPALLED.  I was even more appalled that nobody said anything.  Had he made a similar comment which was race-based rather than sexual-orientation based, I expect everyone in earshot would have kicked his butt from here to Tuesday.  But since it was about orientation, nobody said anything.

(I sure didn't.  I'm small and female.  And I bruise easy.)

The now-shirtless guy yelled back at the dude in front of me, "I was just taking off my shirt."  To which the dude came up with, "I don't see no sun."

To which I burst out laughing.  Sad that he apparently had the quickness of mind to actually come up with a witty retort, but preferred incendiary foul-mouthed insults instead.

Clothes Shopping

You know, sometimes when you go shopping, you're looking for a particular image.  For the "interview suit," you want "conservative and professional."  For the evening gown, you want "sexy and elegant."  And so forth.

But, sometimes, when you go shopping, you try something on at random and it volunteers the image itself.

The other day, I was at a clothing store and tried on this khaki skirt.  It was a full skirt with extra panels, so it was very flouncy, but in a casual, cotton, don't-bother-ironing-it way.  As soon as I put it on, the total image magically appeared in my head -- it needed an olive-colored tank top, and a casual shirt hanging open over it -- perhaps in camouflage.  Shoes would be thongs (which I normally disdain for anything but beach wear) -- leather ones, probably with some beads to give it a "crunchy" look.  Hair casually pulled back in a loose pony tail.  Just give me a rifle and I would be the Special Guest Star on a MacGyver episode -- I'm the spunky daughter of the rebel leader who has been kidnapped by the agents of the evil dictator (who only recently took over in a military coup) -- and I'm going to get my father back "with or without your help."

Bought the skirt.  Damn Banana Republic.

This Week's Homework: 'M' is for the ...

For this week's homework, Scalzi asks:

Weekend Assignment #58: Post one of your favorite mother/child pictures. This could be a picture of you and your mother (at any age), or a picture of you with your children (again, at any age), or even one of your spouse and kids. But it should be a mother who is important to you personally.

Extra Credit (this is an optional part of the assignment): Share a piece of fun trivia about your mom.

Hmm.  When I was thinking about what photo to use, I had forgotten the bit about me having to be in the picture too.  But I decided on using this one, and this is the one I'm going to use.  I'm just a rebel that way.

There are a lot of things I've gotten from my mother.  You can argue till the cows come home whether I picked them up by some sort of biological predisposition or if it was just that she was so enthusiastic about things that her love for them ended up rubbing off on me.  But whatever way you slice it, I picked up mom's math nerdiness, her love of science fiction, and her theatre geekiness.

Oh yeah.  Big time Theatre Geeks, we are.  Sometimes, she'll just leave my dad at home and hop on a plane to come see plays with me.  That's just Our Way.

And, one of those times, we ended up in New York.  At a theatre flea market and charity auction.  (For details, see this entry.)  At the flea market, different Broadway shows set up different tables or booths, where they try to out-do each other with fun and exciting ways to get you to part from your money in support of the cause -- maybe by selling off props or autographed playbills, or other fun things.  Which brings us to the booth for The Producers.

If you've seen the musical, you know it involves an ensemble of "Little Old Ladies" (young men and women dressed as little old ladies).  One of the highlights is a dance number in which the Little Old Ladies, all identically dressed, do a "tap dance" in which their taps aren't made by their shoes, but by their walkers.  (It's in questionable taste, but funny as hell.)  And, at the flea market (for a small donation), you could get your picture taken with two of the actual Little Old Ladies from the show.  Why, they'd even give you your very own walker to stand behind, and your very own little black handbag to dangle over your arm.

Thus, my mom:

Isn't that the best?

No Phishing Zone

Got a phishing email yesterday.  It was different from most phishing emails I'd received in that everthing in it was spelled correctly.  But still, I could tell it was Phishing.

It claimed to be from PayPal.  (And the "From" didn't contain an email address -- it just said it was from PayPal Support.)  Told me that there was some unauthorized activity on my PayPal account (how would they know?) and I should just click on this link and verify my account information.

Here's the beauty part:  The link I was supposed to click on was spelled out, and the URL was a perfectly good secured link to PayPal.  On the other hand, when I ran my cursor over the link, it showed me where it was ACTUALLY linking -- and that wasn't PayPal at all -- that was someone's private website which would (I have no doubt) spoof the PayPal site and collect all my financial information.  Sneaky.

Now, there were plenty of reasons I was suspicious of this email.

Not the least of which being that I don't have a PayPal account on the screen name to which this email was sent.

Also, I could not make it disclose the email address from which it was ACTUALLY sent -- something a real PayPal email would never do.

The fact that the link didn't actually GO to PayPal was just icing on the cake.

Got me to thinking.  I know that AOL takes a very aggressive attitude against spammers and phishers.  And that it does LOTS of things to educate its users against spammers and phishers.  And also does things like automatically disabling links in incoming mail in order to prevent users from falling for this.

But I started thinking that the REASON phishers get away with stuff like this is that they're ABLE to hide both their real originating email address AND the true destination of any email links in the message.

I imagine a phisher would be totally powerless if AOL automatically noted the TRUE originating email address next to the name the sender wants to use -- and/or automatically inserted the TRUE destination of any link right next to the link.  I mean, would anyone click on a link to "Paypal Member Info" if, right next to it, in parentheses, there was a URL for "Joe's Website"?

Do we have this technology?  Any reason we're not using it?

Fast Things

There's the speed of sound.

There's the speed of light.

And then there's the speed of my cat, after she fell in and momentarily joined me in a nice, warm bath.

 

....I found her a few minutes later and I swear there wasn't a drop of water on her.

Score another for the internet

So, I'm sorta shopping for a new car.

OK, I'm actually shopping for a new car, but even the act of shopping isn't something I want to affirmatively commit to until I've actually signed the purchase agreement and am driving off the lot in my new car.  Because, I mean, the whole thing is rather stressful.  And expensive.  (And I can back out at any time and get my deposit back.)

But the really nifty part is how the shopping experience itself is vastly changed by the existence of the internet.

I've found that, in my own experience, it usually takes two times for me to give a task completely over to the online world.  Like, the first time I got my hands on TurboTax -- I did my taxes by hand that year, then used TurboTax to confirm the result.  Once I was confident that TurboTax did everything I did (only faster), I used TurboTax exclusively the next year.  Same thing with booking travel.  First time, I used the internet for researching the flights I wanted, but I still booked them by phone.  Second time, I became my own "internet travel agent," and I haven't really looked back since.

So.  When I bought my last car, I poked around online to get some vague idea of the cars I wanted to test drive, but I did all the legwork out there in the real world.

This time ... well, this time I did all my comparison shopping online.  My good pals at Edmunds.com gave me all the information I wanted about all the vehicles in the class I was looking for -- even enabled me to print it all out in a nice comparison chart.  AND (bonus), they also gave me three prices -- the msrp, the invoice price, and the average price the car was actually selling for in my area of the country. 

Armed with this information, I went out for my test drives.  Let me tell you -- you have such a feeling of confidence when you're going into a dealership with all of the data you could possibly need.  I so totally felt like I wasn't falling for any of their crap -- when they tried to steer me toward a vehicle I didn't want, I was able to give them an itemized list of all the reasons why I'd already rejected that choice, thanks very much.  And when I saw a dealer who tried to charge me $5000 more than the average selling price for the car -- see ya, bye, I'm outta there.

Edmunds even hooked me up with a dealership in my area which would guarantee selling me the car for the "average price" as posted on Edmunds -- so I'd know I'm getting a fair price for the car and there's no need for all that posturing and negotiating.  Of course, there's still room for negotiating when it comes to the price they'll give me for my trade-in -- but I've already investigated my car's blue book value online (at two different sites), so I know whether their appraiser is giving me a fair deal there, too.

It's still stressful and scary and expensive ... but with all the information I got from my pal, the internet, I am certain I'm not being taken advantage of -- which fact genuinely makes the car-purchasing process a whole different ball game.