Great presentation on Lee’s passion and what we do at PointClear! Congratulations, Lee!

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From this very compelling story: “When we asked them if they see universal healthcare as an unfair burden to certain taxpayers (and would they like a lollipop), almost all children said yes.”

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare

I’ve been watching the olympics and enjoying it immensely, although my fingernails are now all bitten off. I’ve been struck by the commentary on the morning news stations, and also after the competition is over, and noticed that the prevailing philosophy is sometimes “gold or bust.” A silver or a bronze doesn’t seem to be something to celebrate, but instead a reason to feel disappointment. It reminds me of a favorite quip in competitive cycling (and probably other competitive sports as well): “Second place is first loser.”

I’m no Olympian but I’ve been fortunate enough to dip my toes into the pool of professional cycling. It’s both a blessing and a curse: when you reach a certain level as a female cyclist, you can compete with professionals in national events. It means you have the opportunity to race with the best, but it also means you’re not likely to win.

In my four years of competition (probably around 100 races), I’ve only won four times. Two road races and two time trials. I consider my top achievement to be an 11th place finish in a national time trial, where I competed against pros and actually beat some of them. I have been thrilled beyond belief to get 2nd, 3rd, and even 10th. Sometimes in national stage races I am thankful just to make the time cut. If people know I’ve competed in race, sometimes they will ask, “did you win?” Rarely do I get to say, “yes.”

To me, winning isn’t everything. I figure if I’m winning I should go find some better people to compete against. There are many times that something within the race (a lap led, a prime won, a rival out-sprinted, a climb conquered) is what really fuels my fire.

I’m proud of everyone who competes in the Olympics, even that guy who comes in after Michael Phelps has his goggles off, already cheering his latest gold and world record. It’s an incredible accomplishment, whether you’re first, third, or dead last.

I just finished paying some bills online, but before I could do it, I had to go through a rigorous new security setup with my online bill pay. I had to choose an image (which doesn’t work so well in FF for Mac), name the image, and choose five security questions and answers. It seems to me as though the planning for this new level of security didn’t include any user experience research.

My husband and I both use our online banking site and I doubt we’re unusual in this. But how is he supposed to remember the make of my first car (he didn’t know me then) or my favorite teacher? Luckily four of the five questions were things we would both know, but I had to pick a personal one for the fifth, and just tell him the answer.

Next I used two of my new nifty questions and answers to log in. I’m assuming that they’ll rotate with every log in. I can see all kinds of problems here. One of the answers has a hyphen in it. What if I forget to put it? Will I be able to log in? What if we move (since this question is geographically specific)? Can I change it? A favorite thing of mine has a weird spelling. What if my husband misspells it? What if our pet dies? The security questions are fraught with issues, especially because they involve the input of free text. Seems like these work a lot better on the phone.

This reminds me of a bank application problem someone described to me once. You get three tries to log in before you are “blocked out.” But someone isn’t careful with the implementation, and three erroneous tries over a period of several months leave you blocked with not much understanding of why. Ugh, bad planning!

I’m all for security but it has lots of gotchas. When I see people’s printouts of their passwords taped to their desks, I know something could have been done a little better. Maybe I should just tape a printout of our security questions and answers to the fridge, so we don’t mess up.

UPDATE:

Well, I knew it. On his first login, my husband got us locked out of the account. First, I couldn’t remember if my favorite animal was a dog or a black lab. Then he got the location of our rehearsal dinner wrong! (I do understand…could the answer be the hotel? Or the city? Or the state?). So I call the help desk, and this nice lady informs me that no, I can’t change the settings…this is all very important to keep people who want to phish my account out (no matter that I can’t get in). Then she says, “why don’t you just print the questions and answers?” Oh right, because that is so secure! Geez. :)