I thought- ooooh, I’ll bet we get to track packages via GPS-equipped trucks. I’ll know where my package is within 6 feet at all times!

So I went and played their little video of the upcoming changes. I couldn’t believe what it was. Here are the new changes:

A progress bar, because you’re an idiot!

Hurray, their tracking information now includes… tracking information! Now available in 12 hour or 24 hour format! Finally!

It’s nothing at all like the old one! Right?

Revolutionary! But wait, there’s more!

Introducing: email updates!

Just like before!

FedEx says, “Check back in January to see how the new FedEx Tracking will exceed your expectations.”

FedEx, you got my hopes up then totally disappointed. Don’t promote minor and mostly insignificant updates to your website. Just do it. We don’t need a “sneak peek.” Let me know when you’re ready to track my delivery truck with GPS.

PS. Where’s my package?

PPS. Their theme is a crystal ball. Is that really how they want us to think of their tracking service? As accurate as a carnival gypsy? See for yourself.

UPDATE: I just got a comment on this post from “Mark” at FedEx. Here it is:

Way too much time on your hands my brother. I like the progress bar, as its helpful when I am viewing 100′s of numbers. AND there is zero question they do a great job of tracking, unlike say D-H-L!

I agree – FedEx does a great job of tracking. I just thought it was silly to create such a fuss over a little change to the website. And apparently FedEx really hates DHL.

One morning last week I woke up to 2 missed calls. Thankfully the ringer had been off. Not to worry, they were going to call back. Again. And again.

I have stopped counting now, almost a week later. Most of the calls come in the early morning, and some throughout the day. They all seem to originate from either Virginia or Florida. The worst offenders are: Westgate Resorts, National Reader Service and eTour & Travel. Yes, I checked – they’re all scams.

Usually they ask for me by name. I have quizzed a few of them; they know more than my name. They usually have my name, address and cell phone number. Interestingly, they have the wrong email address and birthdate for me. Often they’ll try to tell me that I filled out an online survey (or requested to be contacted by a realtor about foreclosure properties, etc). I think that’s just a scam to get around the telemarketing laws. Rather than being a cold call, they’re claiming that we have a relationship – I asked them to call me.

Thankfully, they’re slowing down. But for the few that still trickle in, I have a new weapon in my fight against the annoyance. I found a way to get them to hang up on me.

I let them do their little introduction, which invariably includes some prize that I’ve won. Then I calmly say: “I currently reside in Nevada and the laws of this state may apply to this phone call. Do you understand?” That’s all it takes. They make a few confused noises, perhaps asking me to repeat what I said, then finally realize that something is up. And they hang up.

Why do they hang up? They aren’t legit and they know it. Now leave me alone.

Consider a black box. The box takes, as inputs, a number of things. As output, the box produces some output that is both expected and desired. How the box works and what’s inside of it is of no moment. What matters, for now, is whether it works or not.

Not understanding the inner workings, the only way to properly test the operation of the box is by observation. Put in some expected inputs and see if you get the right output. If the box works on the expected cases, then you have, in the least, a mediocre box.

The greatness of the box (and its component parts and design) is evidenced at the boundaries and the extremes – not in the predictable. So give to the box something quite unexpected. If, for example, you were supplying numbers, give really big numbers, followed by the number zero and some negative numbers. If the black box still produces the correct and intended result, then you have a superior box.

A poor designer, after finding that some inputs produce the wrong answer, will look to create exceptions, carve-outs and work-arounds for such inputs. The engineer should instead recognize that his design is flawed and change the contents of his black box or how they operate.

A perfect black box will work in every situation, on any input and will always produce the right answer.

The Church as an Organization

Today, at church, I taught about the organization and destiny of the church. Merely as a way to frame my thinking about the organization of the church, I considered it a black box.

The Church of Christ is necessarily the perfect organization. It takes, as inputs, every time period, every culture and every one. The Church has to take all these varied inputs, and perform the exact same operation on all of them, and lead them all to salvation. See Acts 10:34 (God is no respecter of persons); Malachi 3:6 (God doesn’t change); Moses 1:39 (God’s work is to bring eternal life and immortality to all).

God, as the architect of our salvation, has created a plan and has organized a way to bring salvation to His children. This organized way is His church and has been established at various times throughout history. But the Church has not changed. We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth. Article of Faith 6. And so, regardless of the historical input or scenario, the Church has not changed. That same organization which existed at the time of Christ exists again – unchanged.  And given different historical inputs, it still produces the right output.

The Church has grown from just a few members to include millions across the world. The input changes from a few people to millions. It changes from a small community, to dozens of nations. The politics, economics and culture vary across the inputs. But the Church doesn’t need to change. It continues to grow and produce the same results it always has.

Those same observations about the inputs generally are true about individuals specifically. Everyone needs to be able to come inside, receive the same treatment and eventually gain the same promise of salvation.

The Automaton

Let’s now peer inside the black box and consider why it works. This is also where the discussion turns irreversibly nerdy. I will now consider the black box in computing terms – that of algorithms and data structures. Inputs will come in, they will be operated upon, then output.

The principles of computing are based on the idea that you can have states and transitions. Any computing operation can be defined in this way, no matter how complicated. At the most fundamental level, it is asking the question, “I’m here. Where do I go next?” Usually, you know where to go based on something about yourself. “What color am I? If I’m red, go here. Otherwise, go there.”

From any given state, you can follow a particular transition and arrive at a new state. When you’re at a state, and there are rules about which transition to take, you are considered to be deterministic. That is, given some facts about you, your next step is determined beforehand. “I’m green, so I’ll go here.”

But we don’t always know everything. Sometimes, we just want things to progress to the right state. “If I’m going to turn blue in the future, I’ll go this way.” Not knowing beforehand the transition you will make, you take a nondeterministic step. But the key is taking the right step, based on what will happen in the future. Eventually, that step will lead to the right result, thus making each nondeterministic step the right one.

A state diagram from Wikipedia illustrates a nondeterministic step (they are the epsilon transitions from S0):

How the Black Box Church Operates

But how do you know which step is the right one? Based on your current state and what you know about yourself, you can’t know which step is the right one. Sure, you can use intuition or even good guessing, but this leads to the condition described in Ephesians 4:14 (being tossed about by every wind of doctrine).

You need to know the end from the beginning. See Abraham 2:8. The element in our black box that makes this all work is revelation. The Holy Ghost can inspire our minds with which step will, in our eventual hindsight, turn out to be the right one.

As an organization, the Church must have revelation to know what to do. The eternal doctrines of the Gospel define which states are available (that’s why it’s a finite state automata – the doctrine only allows for certain things to happen). The Spirit directs which step to take. This produces the right result, every time, no matter what state you’re in.

This principle is true for individuals, and applicable to the organization of the church. It has a structure, and a defined way of operating. But there are choices to be made – inputs are rarely, if ever, the same. In computing we might just guess at different options, or try them all (like doing Sudoku). But “God does not play dice with the universe” as Einstein said.

Conclusion

The Church is perfect. It does not, and will not, need to change. God gave it the ability to operate in any circumstance. But it is not a rigid structure, with everything defined beforehand. Rather, it is able to operate by continuing revelation to those appointed to lead it. Because of that, it will always produce the right result.

The other night I was thinking about a friend who shares an email account with his wife. I know there are a lot of efficiencies that come from sharing – but does that apply online, when things are free and no real resources are consumed? Sharing an email account seemed more like a bother than anything. Do I write to both of them? Then who responds? Do they have to confer?

Couples share blogs, too, and this is pretty common. But again, rather than having separate authoring accounts, every post comes from Jim & Kathy, Susan & Richard, Bramlet & Chartreuse. That doesn’t make sense. Let’s be honest – it’s the wife writing it.

I started seeing shared profiles on facebook recently, too. Facebook even provides a way to link profiles through a marriage indicator. I didn’t go to high school with both of you – that just doesn’t make sense. Again.

So I decided to see if my friend with the shared email account had a blog. I took a pretty good guess that it would be his_nameandher_name.blogspot.com. The site existed, but it wasn’t them. Surprise. Frankly, it might as well have been them. I can’t tell the difference between most personal blogs anyway – more on that later.

But I wondered – how interconnected are all these silly blogs? People tend to link to the blogs of their friends. But friends seem to form circles. So, the big question: is there enough overlap, that I could navigate from a random blog back to my own?

There’s only one way to find out, really. So I developed a heuristic [from computing: proceeding by trial and error or by rules that are only loosely defined] for how to traverse the blog-space:

• Prefer last names that I know
• Prefer geographical locations where I have a connection
• Prefer other commonalities
• Prefer anything familiar
• Don’t follow links already followed (obvious) [cycles don't help anyone here]

[nerdy: If you consider blogs a tree, I was doing a depth-first pre-order traversal, with a self-imposed depth when I felt I wasn't getting anywhere. But if you consider blogs a tree, you're crazy. Obviously a tree isn't the right topology for how the blogs are connected. They're more like a disconnected graph (and therefore I was doing a Prim-Jarnik traversal?). I suggest they're disconnected because it's certainly not a complete graph and I don't believe every blog is connected - unless you count google as some kind of super-node, but google isn't a blog. Really, I was building a minimum spanning tree representing my paths. And I think anyone with even the simplest of advanced degrees in computer science would recognize that. ;) And that's an allusion to a line from Simpsons, to take this nerdy post up another notch.]

So I started clicking on links. I obviously had no idea how long it would take. [nerdy: Worst-case big-O(time) would look like the number of all connected nodes to that particular blog, which is not just unknown but potentially huge.] At first I had no hope that it would actually work. But I stuck to my rules, and kept clicking.

I was so shocked that only 37 blogs later I had connected back to my own blog. Now, that was 37 trials [there were 37 nodes on my constructed tree]. But if you follow the direct path, I was only 15 steps away from my own blog [15 nodes on the tree before reducing it].

Would you have guessed that? That is, from a random blog, I was only 15 clicks away. It may actually be fewer clicks if I took different paths and found a shorter one [a reductive step].

What did I learn along my journey?

• Blogs look the same.
• For some reason, when people decide to have music on their blog, it’s usually country – so, doubly obnoxious.
• People blog about really mundane things. I wasn’t reading blogs as I went, but I could tell it was nothing exciting. But while neither I nor the internet at large cares about what people are doing – whoever is reading that blog does. That is, I care about what my sister is doing, but I don’t care what your sister is doing – unless you’re my other sister.
• People have strange last names.

[Edit: Ok, I realized that it's not necessarily a Prim-Jarnik algorithm. That would be used on a weighted graph, which this isn't. All paths here have equal weight. And this exercise was more about searching than about finding minimum-paths.]

There’s a crowded restaurant at lunch. Choreographed masses spin with loaded trays. Lunch-goers approach the register, present a magic Visa card, a quick swipe, the card is handed back and they walk away. Some poor clod gets to the counter and tries to pay with cash – the dance is brought to a halt.

The Real Version:

You approach the register. You hand them a $20. The cashier gives your change. Or – some poor clod hands over a Visa card. Maybe the cashier wants to see ID. There’s a swipe. Then a wait. Then the little machine prints out a tiny piece of paper that unavoidably curls up. Need a pen now… where’s a pen? Then a signature is placed on that little paper – only to be ignored by the clerk. Finally, the card is handed back with 2 receipts for your $7.95 lunch.

Variations:

What about when you’re at a restaurant, and you need to split a check among 8 people? You get to spend the next 15 minutes shuffling cards and trying to explain to the wait staff how to charge the various cards. Then it all comes back again, for a round of paperwork.

Visa, what’s the point? Are your cute ads trying to convince us that your procedures are, in fact, convenient? They’re the exact opposite of reality. Today’s credit card is yesterday’s personal check. Whip that card out at certain places and watch the people behind you grow impatient.

Traditional media have been ad-supported for a long time. When people wanted to offer content and services on the internet, it’s no surprise that they turned to ad-based models. Of course, it seems great. We get to use Google’s superior search engine as much as we want – for free. And Google has become an incredibly large company, in spite of this counterintuitive arrangement. Most people would say they’re a dotcom company that specializes in search. Aren’t they really just in advertising? Are they creating new products to keep the ad revenue coming in? Or are they selling ads so they can continue to innovate?

And what are we, as consumers, willing to buy with someone’s advertising dollars? New services aim to offer MP3 downloads for free – supported by ads. We’re clearly willing to search the internet on ads. Will we download music on ads? Isn’t that why we left the radio? What else will we accept, for the price of advertising? What personal information will we hand over?

Am I the only one who thinks that advertising is a sandy foundation? If you’re not sure, just look at how print newspapers are struggling. Look at the estimated $2 billion loss that came from a television writer’s strike. Then ask yourself: who is clicking on these ads? "Coke vs. Pepsi – click here to vote!" I can’t resist! I have an opinion and I have to let these dancing bottles know! Are people falling for that? The answer must be yes. How do I know? Because the ads persist and because someone has to pay the bills of these online content companies.

Online advertising is click based. Advertisers will pay a rate based on how many people click on their ad. That’s why they’re so obnoxious and deceptive – Google doesn’t want you to know it’s an ad when you click on it. They’re getting paid every time you do. Who falls for their schemes? Who really finds the advertising useful? I don’t. According to a recent report, it’s males between 25-44 who make less than $40,000 a year. Now you understand why online ads are so decidedly lowbrow.

But here’s the most compelling number from the report: 6%. Six percent of web surfers account for 50% of ad clicks. I’m just not sure what I’d have to say to these people. I suppose I should thank them, for allowing me to use things like Google for free. But I should also blame them, for encouraging the use and growth of advertising to support all manner of things. I guess my feelings toward these people depends on whether I think what I’m getting (Google, et al.) is worth what I’m paying (in being annoyed by ads).

For now, I’m not sure. But the advertising will become more pervasive and more cool products/services will be supported by it. Both the cost and the benefit will continue to rise. But I believe there’s a natural threshold, where we just can’t take it anymore. And at that point, Google will be today’s New York Times.

The guy next to me came in loudly and sat down. He had some story about how he usually cuts his own hair, but botched it and since he’s 26 he figures it’s time to let someone else do it anyway. He then related, in detail and by region, the particularities of his hair – including some oddly placed swearing. What I thought was strange was that he didn’t have much hair, and he was requesting a number one on the clippers. It doesn’t get much shorter. How picky can you get?

My lack of pickiness may lead to frequent haircut disappointment. But that’s my fault. If I cared enough, I’d probably do something. I think it’s because getting my haircut falls pretty low on this chart:

Imagine the X-axis as being: how infrequently you do something. The Y-axis is how much you’re allowed to be picky. So basically, the more you do something, the less picky you should be.

Let’s consider some examples:

Eating. You’re going to do this about 1,000 per year, not including snacks. So maybe you’re seated at a meal and something is put before you that you don’t like. You’ll be eating again in a few hours. Don’t worry about it.

Buying a house. It’s not often you do this. Spend a lot of time figuring out what you want and don’t be afraid to walk away from a deal simply because it doesn’t feel right.

Somewhere in between those two is a haircut. It’ll grow back in a couple weeks. I think that warrants telling the person what you want, but not griping when it’s not perfect.

Maybe the guy getting his haircut was allowed to be picky because he knows his days of needing haircuts are numbered. I’m, thankfully, not going bald and look forward to a lifetime of haircuts. I’m not picky.

The purpose of either form is to promote and protect fairness. When we talk about the process that is due someone, we refer to the safeguards that shield that person as he traverses through the process – which will result in an outcome that is fair and proper. With this perspective, it seems the two cannot be separated and the only essential element is fairness. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the seeds or the fruit are fair: the whole system, being consistent and homogenous, is therefore fair.

When defining our view of what fairness is, it may be easier to talk about behaviors that aren’t fair, than behaviors that are. Perhaps, collectively, we have a better sense of what is unfair (and should be prohibited) than what is fair (and should be required). That is, our lowest thresholds are more likely to be alike than our highest ideals. And so what we get is a restrictive list of don’ts.

I can’t think of a judicial system with more judges, who operate more often, on a larger set of people, with more significant decisions to be made, than people who date. I can’t dictate what level of fairness people should exercise – these are their decisions to be made, after all. But was fairness supposed to be self serving?

A lot of emphasis is put on the procedure of dating. Specifically, we talk about what the other person did and why it wasn’t correct. Again, we seem to have an understanding of what violates the rules, but vary on what should be extolled.

So we date and have a variety of opportunities to interact in a diversity of situations. Are we to marry the person who, while dating, doesn’t violate the rules? maybe just rarely and not very egregiously? And if we do, do we necessarily get what we thought we were getting? That is, if, as above, we take a series of steps that are all fair we get a fair outcome. Does that conclusion follow here?

Ask someone to describe who they want to marry. He or she will tell you about a person that has this certain feature, has that sense of humor and does some certain job. What is this, but a substantive description? We envision our ideal mate as having certain characteristics. Do we talk about procedure?

There is where, perhaps, the two are appropriately conflated. But before discussing that, I’d like to highlight my central premise: does focusing on the process get us the substance that we want? do we really just want someone who is good at the game?

Maybe procedure and substance are the same with people, too. Does an honest person tell a lie? Does a hard worker take a day off? As Batman Begins taught us, "it’s not who you are but what you do" that defines you. I guess there really isn’t a way to directly observe character. Our next best thing is watching people and interacting with them, filling in the gaps with assumption, then surmising what their character really is. If what we saw was a good thing, we hope that they’re consistent and that the behavior was demonstrative. If we saw something bad, we can hope that it was anomalous.

So let’s assume that we can only judge people by what they do. What do we learn from dating? Of course we pick up on those holistic traits and some of the nuances. We’re also learning how good they are at dating. To resolve my premise, we must know how this knowledge informs us – substantively. They are good at dating. Therefore, what?

Perhaps the guy called the girl the right number of days after a date. Can she conclude that he’s a considerate person? that he wants to talk to her? that he strictly adheres to the rules of dating? Does following the rules indicate a trait? that he’s interested in her enough that he’ll follow silly rules, because he thinks that’s how you get what you want in this game? Sure that might be flattering. But what have we learned about him substantively?

Perhaps he opens a car door for a date. Is it just because he knows she’ll think he’s a jerk if he doesn’t? Yes, a lot of these questions are intertwined with motive. But before we can connect behavior with character traits, don’t we need to understand motive? That’s another topic for another day, for sure.

What I’m trying to get at here is that we can be pretty hard on people for not following the rules of dating. Is it because we think they’re bad people for breaking the rules? At a job interview lunch, poor table manners may turn a potential employer off. Isn’t that the same issue? Using the wrong fork tells you something about someone’s character?

Maybe the rules of dating, like dinner etiquette, are sometimes arbitrary. But after generations of refinement, perhaps they’re the best benchmark we have.

Still, I’m left wondering if we’ve focused on procedure over substance. And isn’t substance what we want? This is a game that we have to play. But remember that the game is only a means to an end. This isn’t baseball – take your eyes off the ball. Don’t just play to win. Make sure you’re on the right team.

I took apart the drain in a move calculated to make me feel like I had a command of modern plumbing.   I was going to conquer that clogged p-trap and walk away feeling like a real home-owner.  I discovered a few things:

• the trap was clear, meaning the problem was further down
• our trash chute was also full…to the 7th floor – coincidence?
• the black goo in the pipes smells exactly like it looks
• my career plan B is no longer plumbing
• I am not a home-owner. I am a renter.

So I did what renters do: I submitted a work order online.

Different civilizations have had different contributions to plumbing innovation. Maybe it was the Romans and the aqueduct.  The Babylonians had complicated internal drainage systems.  History, may we submit: the X-50 pipe snake.

Andy said it was a big job, and I guess that means using the X-50 pictured above.  I didn’t feel so bad about not being able to clear the clog myself – I simply didn’t have one of those.  He said it’s a pretty common maintenance issue.  Apparently people think they can put anything down the drain hoping the garbage disposal will take care of it.  But batteries, residents? You serious?

I had a good chat with Andy.  Turns out today is his birthday.  Also, he plays percussion.  He’s independent, but does play with Orquesta La Romana.  They’re performing at Zanzibar next Wednesday the 27th.  It’ll be recorded for a DVD the band is making.  If salsa dancing is for you, check it out.  Andy will take July off though – his wife is about to have a baby.  Congrats, Andy – and thank you.