Customer service

I’ve had a very strange experience dealing with Citizens Bank. Someone else wrote a check for $1600 on their account, and Citizens Bank decided to take that money out of my account instead of the correct account. The check image on the statement shows a different account number on that check, so this is a rather obvious bank error.

I’ve spoken to three people at Citizens Bank about this. All three say that this is clearly an error, that Citizens Bank will fix this in a couple of days now that I’ve pointed it out to them, and that Citizens Bank will reverse the low-balance monthly fees that this caused on my account. One person who claimed he was calling from the Chairman’s Office to apologize implied that I must know the person who the check was written to, either failing to comprehend the error or accusing me of attempting to defraud the bank in a truly bizarre manner. Another person first tried to claim that the low-balance monthly fee was still my responsibility, not caused by the Citizens Bank error. And all three said that they could not possibly put the $1600 bank in my account immediately. None seemed at all surprised by the error, or particularly concerned about it.

If I were working for Citizens Bank, I hope I would take a different approach. First, apologize profusely, and say that this error is extremely rare and unacceptable. Second, correct the error immediately. Third, assure the customer that the bank will take care of any fees caused by this error. Fourth, assure the customer that the bank will confirm all of this in writing on the next business day, and ask the customer whether they would prefer to receive that confirmation by mail, fax, or email. That seems like the bare minimum. Going beyond that, I’d like to see the bank offer to waive the fee to mail printed statements on this account, since any sense of trust the customer might have towards Citizens Bank has clearly been misplaced violated. Having a reverse fee schedule for this sort of bank error would improve the sense that the bank is operating in good faith—if they want to charge me $9.99 for not having as much money as they would like in my account for a month, they could pay me $9.99 for having wrongly taken money out of my account. Assign a specific person to take full and direct responsibility for seeing that the error is corrected, and give the customer that person’s contact information. And finally, ask the customer whether there is anything else the bank can do to keep the customer’s business.

And Citizens Bank, if you really want to convey a sense of competence and restore trust, stop calling your customers and asking for their account numbers, social security numbers, or birth dates. That just shows that you neither understand nor care about helping your customers keep their personal information any more secure than you keep their money.

Baby products we have loved

Lotus Travel Crib
http://www.amazon.com/Lotus-Travel-Crib-Portable-Playard/dp/B00AKKDSNG
Lightweight, yet no weight limit. Mesh sides all the way down for maximum airflow.

Fisher Price Rainforest Jumperoo
http://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-K6070-Rainforest-Jumperoo/dp/B000LXQVA4/
Stable, durable.

Tiny Love Gymini Bouncer
www.amazon.com/Tiny-Love-Gymini-Bouncer-Yellow/dp/B003GAMMN4/
Unlike other bouncy seats, the toy bars move to the sides to make it easy to put the child in and take him out.

Kolcraft Wonderbug
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00499DU1O
Seat spins. A safe place to stash a baby while doing other things.

UppaBaby Cruz
http://www.amazon.com/UPPAbaby-0071-JKE-Cruz-Stroller-Jake/dp/B0051Y1G4E/
Enormous storage basket. Seat can face forward or back.

Daydream: The Friday Night Service Social Club

Gather a committed core of 6-10 people who regularly do every component in order to get this off the ground. The core means never having too few people to make the evening a bust.

On first Fridays, the host house opens at 5:30 for a quick Friday night service starting at 6:00. (Random idea: instead of a d’var, take a few minutes before the Amidah to let everyone say something they accomplished or hope to let go from the previous week or something they are looking forward to in the following week.) Dinner to follow starting at 7:00, winding down at 9:00. People beyond the core are welcome to join for services and/or dinner as they wish.

On third Fridays, choose a service at a different shul every month (perhaps alternate reform and conservative), followed by dinner back at the host house. For 7:00 pm or later services, gather at the host house for appetizers and then carpool together. For earlier services, meet at the service. People beyond the core are welcome to join for services and/or dinner as they wish.

We get to have our own service once a month. (Anyone who wants to lead is welcome to, and I’m happy to lead as a default.) We can print off some extra Friday night service books from a local Hillel that recently put one together with full transliterations. We get to see what services are like at different shuls without ever being the only newcomer at a service and without having to make our own individual decisions about going somewhere. We get to have a group Shabbat dinner together twice a month. That would work for me.

Trying to choose a shul

Shul A
Hebrew School meets twice a week starting fairly young. More kids?
Tot Shabbat is attended by up to 15-20 tots, though I’m not fond of the person running Tot Shabbat.
Friday night service (18 people) led by the rabbi and cantor didn’t have the feel I’m looking for, and I didn’t like the rabbi’s sermon.
Saturday morning service (12-15 people) led by the cantor was passable, but inaccessible (as expected). Sermon by the cantor was good.
Shul is growing, with lots of young kids. More kid programming.
Good lay leadership.
A little closer to home, membership is significantly less expensive.

Shul B
Hebrew School meets once a week. Fewer kids?
Tot Shabbat is attended by very few tots, though I like the person running Tot Shabbat.
Friday night services (8-15 people) do have the feel I’m looking for, and good sermons.
Haven’t tried Saturday morning service yet. Once a month they have an abbreviated and perhaps more accessible Saturday morning service.
No idea if shul is growing.
Some very friendly and nice people at services.
Adult education seems more likely to be appealing here.
Nice families at the playgroup that meets here, but none seem involved in the shul in any other ways.

To be determined: Saturday morning services at Shul B? Membership count at both shuls? High holiday services? Hebrew School size?

Seeds of innovation

Monsanto patented Roundup-ready soybeans, which are now almost all of the soybeans grown in this country. Any farmer who plants Roundup-ready soybeans has to buy the beans they plant from Monsanto, and it comes with a license that says the farmer is not allowed to replant the next generation of beans.

Along comes a farmer who decides to buy his beans from a grain elevator as if he were using them for feed, with no license and no assurance that the beans are Roundup-ready (but a reasonable guess that most of them are). He plants those beans, harvests them, and keeps some to replant the next year. [Along the way, he uses an herbicide which kills weeds as well as the non-Roundup-ready plants, so the next generation is entirely Roundup-ready, but that’s not really relevant to the decision.]

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled in favor of Monsanto:

“That is because, once again, if simple copying were a protected use, a patent would plummet in value after the first sale of the first item containing the invention. The undiluted patent monopoly, it might be said, would extend not for 20 years (as the Patent Act promises), but for only one transaction. And that would result in less incentive for innovation than Congress wanted.”

I’m heartened that the Supreme Court will soon tamp down the newly efficient used book market, or allow us to insist on royalties to be paid to publishers and authors on used book sales. After all, Congress has promised authors and publishers that copyrights will last for many more decades than patents. We are entitled to our perpetual profits cut of all book purchases. But the newly efficient used book market means that publishers only make money in the first year or two that a book is on the market. This is why we don’t keep old books in print, and why we put out new versions of textbooks as fast as we can, and why book prices are driven up and up. [College bookstores make far more money on textbook sales than publishers do, because college bookstores make money on sales of used books over and over.] This is clearly not what Congress intended, or there would be no reason for copyrights to last for decades. Congress wanted me to have a much greater incentive to write and publish. On that logic, the first sale doctrine clearly should no longer give consumers a right to sell used books.

On its surface, the Supreme Court is focused on self-replicating items like seeds as a unique problem. But a consistent Supreme Court cannot write the quoted passage and then insist that it could not be applied to copyrights.

And by the way, what happens when you receive a patented gene therapy to save your life, and then fail to pay the monthly (or weekly, or daily) survival fee to Pfizer or Merck for your body’s continued replication of new cells containing the patented genes? If you think that’s absurd, you haven’t been farming lately.

The Adobe trap

My objection to Adobe going subscription-only isn’t the price. It’s the fact that my files have future value to me.

I learned something from my old PageMaker files back in the day. I learned that the only thing that will open old PageMaker files is an old copy of PageMaker. So if I want to keep accessing old PageMaker files, I’d better keep an old copy of PageMaker around. And since I publish academic books, not ephemera, I do sometimes need to access those old PageMaker files.

These days I use InDesign CS5. At some point my lovely new InDesign CS5 files will be old InDesign CS5 files. And when that time comes, I’ll still have InDesign CS5 around to open them with, even though I’m sure I’ll have moved on to something new for creating new files.

Adobe has taken that assurance of future accessibility away with subscription-only software. If I use InDesign CC to create a file and I ever want to open it in the future, I’ll have to pay whatever amount Adobe decides to charge at that point in order to run InDesign CC to open it, because I won’t have any way to keep InDesign CC working on my computer on my own. And if Adobe decides to stop licensing InDesign CC at any price? I won’t have any way to open the file at all.

I do core workflow processes using several different versions of Acrobat because Adobe has added, removed, and changed important features with different versions of Acrobat. If I always had to use the latest version of Acrobat, some steps in my workflow would be much harder and some steps would be impossible. Subscription-only software is a disaster for anyone trying to set up a consistent complex workflow, because that workflow is vulnerable to whatever changes Adobe decides to push out in their software. Why invest resources in creating a workflow that could literally become wasted effort at any moment?

The marzipan experiments, part 1

Odense marzipan: slightly starchy and a little sticky, not very sweet.

Mixed with dried grated orange peel: nice orange flavor, but the gritty/chewy texture of the peel threw everything off.

Mixed with orange extract: stronger orange flavor, great orange nose, integrated well, but a little bitter. (Might be better if the alcohol evaporated longer.)

Mixed with ground cardamom: flavors didn’t really mix, so I’d only recommend if you particularly want to taste cardamom by itself.

Mixed with orange extract and ground cardamom: both flavors brought out the bitter in each other, and the result was terrible. Never try this again.

Mixed with orange extract and granulated vanilla sugar: the vanilla sugar barely cut the bitterness of the orange extract, and added a graininess that didn’t help the mouth feel.

Mixed with maple syrup: a nice sweetness balance, very nice flavor mix with good integration, great maple nose, and distinctly different from marzipan by itself. Hard to mix together. You have to like both marzipan and maple syrup individually, of course. It might be worth comparing this to simple maple cream.

MA Senate primary

Feels like we’ve had a few Senate elections in Massachusetts recently. The 2013 version of the Senate primary is tomorrow, and I’m voting for Markey—he will be a much better Senator than Lynch would be. What I find exciting, though, is that I can then vote for Carl Sciortino in the fall to take Markey’s seat in Congress.

Most importantly, though, go vote on Tuesday!

Pippin montage

We saw this revival three times in Boston, from the first preview to the last week of Boston performances. It was fantastic. And this video makes clear that it would be wonderful to own a video of the full production. I’d pay good money, and I’d buy copies for several other people as well.

2013 Passover recipes

Poached salmon
(Ok to prepare in advance.) Mix 2-3 rough-chopped onions with oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Layer at the bottom of a medium baking dish, and place 3 pounds salmon fillet on top. Sprinkle with salt, cover with aluminum foil, and cook covered in a 350 oven for 30 minutes. Uncover and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

Curried couscous

(Now that Pereg is making a kosher-for-Passover couscous.) Cook chopped onion with oil, salt, pepper, and curry powder. When transluscent, add cooked Israeli couscous, cooked chopped asparagus, raisins, more curry powder, and a small amount of mango puree. When all is hot, melt in a bit of shredded cheddar for a risotto texture.

Matzah pizza

Spread a thick layer of tomato sauce on matzah. Add oregano, paprika, red pepper flakes, and chopped scallion. Top shredded cheddar. Broil for 5 to 8 minutes. Note that some people may consider pepperoni to be treyf.

Matzah crack  
Preheat oven to 350. Line a large cookie sheet with foil, then parchment paper, then matzahs. Bring 3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar (ok to use light brown sugar instead) and 3/4 cup salted butter to a boil, stirring constantly. After 3 minutes boiling, pour over matzahs and spread evenly. Bake for 15 minutes. Sprinkle 1 1/4 cups chocolate chips over top, let melt for a few minutes, and spread out evenly across the top. Optionally add shredded coconut. Allow to cool, or don’t.

Banana matzah brei

Dampen two matzahs, break into small pieces, mix in two eggs, cinnamon sugar, and an entire sliced banana. Fry with butter, serve with maple syrup.

Shopping

Buy a Macaroon Layer Cake from Oberlander’s. Do not serve at seder, or there won’t be any left over. It is better than the Hagada railroad cake. Oneg dairy-free chocolate chips are very nice, and would be good year-round.

Horowitz Margareten matzah is good, similar to Yehuda. Manischewitz matzah is too thin. Streit’s is a step down in flavor. Whole wheat options get terrible reviews, so don’t bother. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how much I disliked shmura matzah the one time I splurged on that, but a reminder doesn’t hurt.

Anti-shopping

Do not buy the premade Manischewitz coconut macaroon pie crust. It tastes like gravel. And not in a good way.

Frankenplumbing

Do you need an adjustable plug for a slightly less than 3.5" diameter pipe end? We had that situation for our main drain cleanout in our basement, and nothing fit. The old metal cap had been broken getting it open, which seems to be a common side-effect of lazy plumbers around here who don’t want to work at getting a cap off without damaging it. The 3" adjustable plugs fell down the pipe. The 3.5" plug was too large, and the 4" plug was far too large.

Home Depot around here carries the Sioux Chief Test Titan mechanical test plugs:  http://www.siouxchief.com/Testing/Plugs-And-Caps/Test-Titan.698E7. Similar styles are made by Oatey, Cherne, and more. They have a plastic or metal bottom plate with a spoke sticking up, a rubber gasket, a plastic or metal top plate, and then a plastic or metal thumb screw or wing nut. The bottom plate and rubber gasket are supposed to fit in the pipe, the top plate is not supposed to fit in the pipe, and then you use the thumb screw to force the plates together, squeezing the rubber gasket outwards to create a tight seal.

The solution we found was to use parts from the 3" Sioux Chief mechanical test plug 882-3 (from Home Depot) and parts from the 3.5" Sioux Chief cleanout test plug 882-35 (from True Value). The rubber gasket from the 3.5" plug fit into the pipe with a little encouragement, but the bottom plate from the 3.5" plug was too wide. The bottom plate of the 3" plug fit into the pipe, but was too small to actually compress the 3.5" rubber gasket. So we took the top plate from the 3" plug, turned it over, and put it below the gasket. The 3" bottom plate presses against the inverted 3" top plate, which presses against the bottom of the 3.5" rubber gasket. Then we added the top plate from the 3.5" plug, and one of the thumb screws (they were interchangeable). A little mix and match, and we have a working plug for a 3.4" pipe end.

Another possible solution would have involved grinding down the outer edges of the bottom plate from the 3.5" plug to fit into the pipe. The bottom plate doesn’t need to be a tight fit against the interior of the pipe. It just needs to be large enough to press against the rubber gasket from below.

Old wounds

My open response to the rabbis of the Conservative movement who refuse to officiate at interfaith weddings:

I’m Jewish, and my wife is not. Just as we committed to when we got married over 10 years ago, we keep a Jewish home, and we are raising our son Jewish. Was there really no role for a rabbi at our wedding? The Conservative bet din was willing to convert our son based on our expressed intent and commitment. Why couldn’t a similar process have been used to allow a rabbi to officiate at our wedding?

When a Conservative rabbi refuses to officiate at an interfaith wedding, it certainly sends a message. The message is that the Conservative movement refuses to accept a relationship so important to a couple that they want to form a permanent bond, that the Conservative movement rejects the non-Jewish partner, and that the Conservative movement seeks to punish the Jewish partner. That message is conveyed to the couple, to our families, and to our friends.

Then, after the wedding, the Conservative movement wonders why so many couples doubt that they are truly welcome at a Conservative shul. The same rabbis who absent themselves from our weddings in order to publicly shame interfaith couples run outreach programs to those same couples. They create membership policies which explicitly welcome interfaith partners, offer educational opportunities to make the non-Jewish partner feel more comfortable at services, and even convert our children.

What is that turn-around based on? The only change is that the couple is now married instead of engaged. How can Judaism accord our interfaith marriages so much respect while refusing to participate in our weddings?

Perhaps I am simply living through a strange and difficult time of transition. After all, the Conservative shul in which I grew up would never have welcomed an interfaith family at that time. The Conservative Hebrew School I attended described interfaith marriages as a new Holocaust. Now the Conservative movement recognizes that the demographics of interfaith marriages are not inexorably bad for the size of the Jewish population, while a policy of rejecting interfaith families does guarantee a decline in the next generation. The Conservative movement now recognizes that interfaith couples can support the Jewish partner’s faith, can participate meaningfully in synagogue life, can raise Jewish children, and are more likely to do all of those with support from our rabbis and our shuls. Where in this new mindset does the old policy of refusing to celebrate our weddings fit?

Update: The story at http://www.interfaithfamily.com/life_cycle/weddings/Rabbi_Levin_to_Officiate_at_Interfaith_Weddings.shtml explains the reasoning of a Reform rabbi who changed his position on officiating at interfaith weddings, and is worth reading. Another such story is at http://www.interfaithfamily.com/blog/iff/intermarriage/why-i-now-officiate-at-interfaith-weddings/.

A winter morning

 
 Photo by Michael

Recommended maple syrups

First place: Gingerbrook Farm, Vermont Grade A Dark Amber, 2012 season

Produced by Robert Machin and Family, South Washington, VT 05675. I found this maple syrup at Upper Valley Coop in White River Junction in 2012. I didn’t try the other grades.

Second place: Merck Forest and Farmland Center, Vermont Grade A Medium Amber, 2010 season

Produced in Rupert, VT. Organic. Excellent flavor for a medium amber, which I usually find too mild. Their dark amber and grade B both had a distinct aftertaste in 2010, which is why I chose the medium amber.

Free at last