Thinking aloud: Azure, AWS, DevOps, cars and opinion from Alex Neihaus

  • NY AG to pwn Charles Schwab; get me and thousands of other dupes our pound of flesh

    The short version of a long story is that Charles Schwab sold me auction-rate securities, promising liquidity, then stonewalled me when the market disappeared for the ARSs. Meanwhile, every other firm on the planet — and I mean every one — made their clients whole. Goldman Sachs, the auction agent for the ARSs I bought:…

  • zug.com turns it up to 11 on Verizon over privacy

    Remember the original Spinal Tap movie in which the amplifiers go to 11? Voila! Instant meme. Well, I’ve just read a blog post from zug.com called “The Verizon Prank” in which John Hargrave risks big dogs and angry neighbors to make a point I wish more people were concerned about: lax privacy controls. Maybe we have…

  • amazon.com redefines doubleplusgood for the 21st century

    On the off-chance you haven’t heard about amazon.com erasing Orwell novels from Kindle users’ devices, here’s the coverage from nytimes.com. You really have to congratulate amazon.com for creating new levels of nested metaphor. My Room 101 isn’t rats: it’s DRM.

  • Currensee gets it

    I often use my blog to diss marketing that’s stupid, misleading, dangerous or derivative.  This time it’s my pleasure to share marketing that’s on it…at the top-dead-center of the power stroke…so damn good it’ll make your day. Coffee lovers often talk about the “blend” — a mystical combination of the beans, the roasting and the…

  • Lunch with a former colleague …

    Lunch with a former colleague I hadn’t seen in 7 years. People change a lot/don’t change at all.

  • All clogged up

    This is going to be a short and badly written blog post. It’s devoid of content. It has no theme. It really won’t make that much sense. I’m trying to expunge a serious case of writer’s block by — what else — writing about it. And I’ve been cursed at the worst possible moment. I need…

  • Email marketing results measured in basis points, and it’s all our fault

    This is post is for all my colleagues in the marketing biz. I want to tell you that we collectively destroyed email. What did we do that was truly stupid? Simple: we have so overdone email that now it’s useless for all of us. Have you noticed that no matter what you do — text…

  • Get a Grip on Miracle Wipe

    Do you crunch? Or fold? After over three years of blogging, I am officially nonplussed. Update 2019-04-29:  removed Shockwave link. I guess it’s time after almost 10 years not to be so upset. Plus, Shockwave is both dangerous on my website and deprecated.

  • Gymkhana, or I ain’t your target market

    OK, I don’t know what DC Shoes are…and whoever these people are, they certainly didn’t create this video to try to get me to buy their stuff. I am just not their target market. But I gotta say, this video has four minutes of the most spectacular drifting I have ever seen. “Oooo!,” you’ll say…

  • Puttin’ it all together on the ‘Net

    My good friend Chris Williams, CEO of Vuuch, emailed me the other day and said that I really had to talk with Josh Mings of solidsmack.com. I just got off the phone with Josh, and I can say is, “Thanks, Chris, for connecting us up.” See, Chris is a “true believer” in community — when he…

  • The two best choices for the worst company in America

    I just love The Consumerist blog. It’s snarky, fun and to-the-point. But it worried me no end when Consumer Reports bought it. You know, the people who have the temerity to “accept no advertising” but who continue to sell useless “car price information.” These are the people who hawk their magazine shamelessly while being among…

  • All right, so it’s been over a month …

    All right, so it’s been over a month since I last posted. I’ve been busy at work and, well, I must say nothing has pissed me off enough to blog. Still, I care about having a personal blog and keeping it active. The question then becomes: what to say when you are (temporarily) speechless. Writing…