How to exclude traffic from Google Analytics

With previous versions of Google Analytics (ga.js) you could simply add a utm_nooverride=1 parameter to a redirect URL to retain the source data from the first referral instead of attributing conversion to the last redirect. If you are trying to exclude online payments / checkout data from Google Analytics: This doesn't work with redirects to banks as this parameter is not passed along, so the issuer will be seen as the referrer.

In the most recent version of Google Analytics library at the time of writing (analytics.js), the utm_nooverride=1 parameter is not a recommended (and perhaps unworkable) solution (as noted in this blog here). The recommended solution in Universal Analytics is to add the domains to the referral exclusions list. From Google's own documentation:

 

The referral exclusion list uses CONTAINS matching. For example, if you enter example.com, then traffic from sales.example.com is also excluded (because the domain name contains example.com).

 

When you are adding domains to your exclusions list, you can add the bank url base domain. By adding the base domain, you can exclude subdomains of redirect referral URLs (and 3DS redirect URLs for payments). Please note, this solution does require some upfront manual work, but will exclude these redirects as referrals in the future.

There also seems to be some advanced workarounds using cross-domain tracking, which you can find in Google's own documentation. 

Why did my expired credit card get processed?

An expired credit card is not necessarily an invalid credit card. It's ultimately your credit card issuer's decision if they want to accept your transaction. While the merchant who processed your transaction almost certainly sent along your CVC code and expiry date in the payment request, sometimes the credit card issuers and/or acquirers do not even look at or process that information. If there is enough information to go off of to for the issuer to believe that this is a valid transaction, they still may decide to process your transaction regardless of your card being expired or the CVC being incorrect.

Most major credit card issuers and acquirers now also offer merchants software that automatically updates subscription customer card data as well. On top of that, expiration dates are not considered sensitive information. Under certain use cases, it's fine for merchants to retry your transaction with a new expiration date - it's pretty easy to guess and build logic around what your new expiration date probably is.

This also means that merchants should never decline a card at checkout just because it looks to be expired. In my experience, there is no change in authorization rates between expired cards and cards that have not expired yet. 

If you are a consumer, always destroy old expired cards when you receive a new one. And do not assume your account has closed just because your credit card has expired.  

What I've Read in The Second Half of 2023

(First half of the year here.)

I read or listened to most of these books by borrowing the digital copies or digital audio-books from my library. I would recommend you do the same thing. I would also suggest looking to see if you can sign up for local county or for nearby cities’ library cards. Despite not living in a nearby city, I was able to register for a library card; they have a vast selection of content compared to my local library system. While each book cover here links to an affiliate Amazon page, you can also sometimes find the same physical copy of the book you are looking for on Better World Books or Thriftbooks.

The Marching Morons - C. M. Kornbluth

Short story by C. M. Kornbluth. It’s hard to tell if this book was a satire or an actual argument to try to justify eugenics. The way that this idea is unfolded in the story made me think the author was a eugenicist until the rest of the story peels that back a bit. The book could make an interesting discussion for a course on utopias and dystopias. Otherwise Kurt Vonnegut’s quote “we are what we pretend to be” comes to mind along with the fact that a lot of early pulp science fiction can turn out to be complicated.


Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and The Stoning of San Francisco - Alia Volz

A mix being a tour de force of the history of San Francisco and a personal memoir of being raised by hippies from the sixties through the early eighties: told through the perspective of the daughter of the woman who ran Sticky Fingers Brownies in San Francisco. I first heard about this book when the author gave a talk at one of my local libraries.

I would say that there probably is not a lot of new things here in this book for you if you’ve previously read or studied the history of San Francisco or marijuana in the US. The biggest takeaway from this book for me is the quote “San Francisco is a city of mass migrations and collapse”. The author of the book does that thing people in the Bay Area do where they’ll acknowledge that we’re on stolen Ohlone land, and then kind of complain about transplants; she says that she “sees techies as an invading force to colonize and pillage”, all the while she acknowledges that her parents were gentrifying San Francisco.

The author kind of also leans into entertaining the idea that certain characters in the book might be psychic. I dunno man... I was taught to never trust a hippy. Here is a doctor in 1967 basically describing hippies as being incredibly passive aggressive people.

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? -  Mark Fisher

When I started this book it felt like a philosophy book written by a Redditor with its references to V For Vendetta, Children of Men, and Fight Club; as I continued reading to book I found myself agreeing with it wholeheartedly, take that as you will. Capitalist realism is "loosely defined as the predominant conception that capitalism is the only viable economic system" - which I’m pretty sure makes the book an investigation of the Zizek quote "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism". At times the book can come off as wordy and pretentious, at one point the author makes an obscure reference to the film Videodrome that would leave the reader lost had they never seen the film. Capitalist Realism reminds me of an assigned reading I would get for a philosophy class where we would have a compelling class discussion about the book for one day and then we’d never discuss it again. It also reminds me of something that the hosts of the podcast Chapo Traphouse would love. Sure enough while I was reading this book, they did a segment on the book. Small world.

Scenes From The Real World - Harlan Ellsion 

Harlan Ellison was a science fiction writer that was revered for his writing, but loathed for his personality. This video gives a good impression of the vibe Ellison gave off. In hindsight, I'm not really sure who should be reading Ellison. Maybe he's for misanthropes who are tired of being misanthropes and are hoping that holding a mirror up to themselves will help them.

The Scenes From The Real World stories come from a collection of short stories called Stalking the Nightmare. I didn’t read the short stories in the book because I don’t want to read any further from the guy that wrote I Have No Mouth And Must Scream and who also vocally resented his audience. Instead I wanted to read about supposed real life experiences from someone difficult like Ellison.

The first story starts with about how his most interesting sexual experience was tying up a woman naked in her living room, leaving her to be found by her mother. I used the cover of the audio book for this one so that you have to look at his face on its cover as you read that. He puts the story first because he thinks that sex is what it takes to get the audience’s attention, but since Ellison has basically expressed contempt for his readers in the past, it’s more clear the story’s intention is to let you know that Ellison very much wants you to know that he can get laid if he wants to. The second story in this chapter gets into how he once got into an altercation with some men who this time he very much want to let you know are black - it comes off with the same “try-hardness” of the first story to say the least. Ellison was known for kicking the asses people in general, so he's probably not making this story up. Again, take that as you will.

The second chapter is about how he was fired from his job at Disney on the first day for making rude Disney jokes in front of Roy Disney. This story is worth reading. The third story is about a NASA press conference on Saturn. The fourth story is about dealing with the politics of being a writer in Hollywood, this story is also worth reading and reminds me of certain episodes of The Critic. The last story is about his experience on the road as a carny. Also worth reading.

Killerbowl - Gary K. Wolf

Picked this up because I saw it in the author bibliography of Who Censored Rodger Rabbit, and thought it looked interesting. This book is a good read for someone who thought that the 1975 movie Rollerball was an interesting concept but poorly executed. Had this book come out before the short story Rollerball was based off, of rather than two years after, I imagine the movie rights for this book would have been picked up instead. In fact, some covers advertise that this book is “Deadlier than ROLLERBALL!” It’s pulp paperback science fiction from the 70s. I kept thinking that the author of this book was the author of Of Mice And Men.

I was annoyed by a plot point in the book. Incriminating evidence that is on tape is destroyed. No one thought to make backups. I guess in the 1970s data redundancy was not something many people talked about.

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America - Marcia Chatelain

In the 1988 Eddie Murphy film Coming To America, John Amos plays a franchise owner of a knockoff McDonalds restaurant. At one point of the book, Franchise paints Amos’ character as a sort of snap shot into the zeitgeist and history of black McDonalds franchise owners, The book chronicles this history strating with McDonalds relying on black franchisees to grow their brand in black communities in Chicago up today.

One of the repeating themes in the book is that the term “black-owned” obscures the systems that keep money outside of black communities, and is a problem that capitalism itself cannot fix. Reading this book was like learning about another level of American class history that I never knew about, akin to reading about how police would lie in wait to beat union workers and steal their money after they had cashed their paychecks in The Riders Come Out At Night.

Mouse Tales: A behind The Ears Look At DisneyLand - David Koenig

This book, published in 1994, is a little dated now. If Disneyland is a topic you’re interested in, you’re better off listening to / watching Kevin Perjurer’s Youtube channel Defunctland; which probably borrows from this book, but definitely borrows from more established Disney History books when doing research. The book starts as a history of Disneyland (which is better covered by Perjurer’s Defunctland) and then goes into a series of uncited stories from employees working at the park. The stories are broken up into chapters such as Cast, Rides, Injuries, Lawsuits, etc. I think I most enjoyed all the ways Disney cast members would play pranks in the park, and learning about the politics around going to court against Disney in the jurisdiction in which it is a major employer.

The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka

I’m not in a place to write anything about The Metamorphosis which is new, compelling, or interesting. I picked up a book of Kafka’s stories because in the linear notes on Frank Zappa’s album We’re Only in it For The Money, the track The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny says to read Kafka's short story In The Penal Colony before listening to the track. The track ends up being an avant garde interpretation or approximation of the short story. The short story also has a provocative ending that resonates probably even more today than it did when the short story was written in 1914.

Jesus and John Wayne -  Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Jesus and John Wayne is an admittedly dry history of evangelicalism in the United States and how evangelical leaders slowly culturally aligned their version of Jesus and the gospel with “traditional” gender roles. I put traditional in quotation marks because the book details how evangelicals came to define traditional. Like I said about The Riders Come Out At Night earlier this year, If you’re an American or have been following American politics closely, you can probably drop off of the book from where you ended up starting in real life and skip the last few chapters. You’re probably already an expert on the subject.

NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories - NOFX and Jeff Alulis

Initially all I was going to write for this was: “The first sentence of this book is ‘The first time I drank piss was on the fire escape overlooking downtown Los Angeles.’ ten out of ten, buy this as a stocking suffer for someone you love... or someone you hate”. But after the first chapter, which was probably put there to pull you in with shock value, you find it’s not needed because the book gets dark, personal, and profoundly fucked up real quick. There’s frankly... some messed up stuff in here, with that being said, this book is very good. The way that the book is edited demonstrates that some of the personal stuff band members share is the first time they’ve shared some of this stuff with the other guys. It kinda feels like church confession at times.

I was able to get an audio book copy from the San Francisco Library after it had been on loan for months. The audio book is the way to go here, the chapters are read by the band members themselves, and the two early ex-band members of the band’s chapters are read by Tommy Chong and Jello Biafra, both excellent orators. In a similar vein that’s worth mentioning, The Dirt - which is a band autobiography on Mötley Crüe is also an incredibly interesting book about a group of messed up people, each chapter told from the point of view of one of the members. Books like these really go to show ways in which life can be completely awful.

Strangled Queen - Maurice Druon

This is the second book in the French Accursed Kings series. As the cover above says, this series inspired George Martin to write his book series. I read the first book after trying to get my Song of Ice and Fire fix after having finished the books that have been released sometime in the mid-teens. These books are historical fiction based around French kings in the 14th century. The books are about 200 pages each, so they're not as in depth as the ASOIAF books, as a result they kind of feel like Game of Thrones-lite, but that's not fair because these books came first. The first book has better plots and characters than the second book. It's pretty apparent what's going to happen in this book, given the title, especially after you finish the first book. Maybe French people already know everything that their monarchs got up to.

How to Setup an Electric Guitar

Years ago I was looking for someone to show me how to do a guitar setup. My music teacher got me in touch with a guitar tech who told me that if I paid for a setup he'd walk me trough the process and let me take notes, that nobody should have to pay for a setup more than once. He ended up making the notes for me, and sure enough I've never paid for another setup! I get tired of taking picture after picture of these instructions so I'm posting them here for posterity. They've been cleaned up a bit.

These are the original written instructions.

You will need:

• a set of allen wrenches that measure in metric and imperial. Eklind makes quality allen wrenches. 
• a 6 inch empire depth gauge.

Setup Steps:

1. Adjust the neck as straight as possible with the truss rod using the strings as a guideline. (You can check the neck by holding the guitar like a rifle with the body away from you and looking down the neck towards the body of the guitar (using the strings as a guideline)). I go by "tighten for bow, loosen for hump". I don't like thinking visually in terms of clockwise and counter clockwise because I've confused myself before by turning the wrong way when the nut is at the bottom of the neck rather than at the head stock.

2. Adjust the action of the strings at the saddles measure 2/32nds at the 15th fret while fretting the first fret. (Just put a capo on the first fret.)

3. Adjust intonation by checking the notes of each string:

    - If they are flat, move the saddles forward.

    - If they are sharp, move the saddles back (away from the neck).
 

    Once the notes on the 12th fret match the open notes of the strings - you're good to go!

4. Adjust pickups by fretting the last fret and raising or lowering the pickups to 2 1/2 and adjusting by increments of 32nds.

How to Get Therapy or Mental Health Care Under Kaiser Permanente

As Always Avoid Alliteration slowly turns into something more resembling a professional blog, rather than a source of ad revenue, I hesitated to post this guide as there is a stigma around mental heath. I've decided that if being open, honest, and helpful about my experiences in trying to find a mental health provider puts me at risk of not receiving a job offer in the future, I'm better off for it. If this helps one person, then it's all more than worthwhile. The way in which Kaiser Permanente operates is far more shameful than anything I am going to say here. I initially wrote this post as a forum post, replying to someone else who was experiencing the same issues with Kaiser Permanente Mental Health Services. I have somewhat expanded on and cleaned up that initial post. 

If you are experiencing crisis and need to talk to someone immediately call 1-800-309-2131 at any time of day. If you're paranoid you can dial *67 first and this will mask your phone number.

I want to set the expectation with you that Kaiser's mental health system is specifically made to be negligent and discourage anyone who is experiencing mental health issues from actually using their services. In October 2023 Kaiser settled with the state of California in regards to not providing mental health care that they were legally required to provide. Second article. This is also not the first time Kaiser has been fined for this exact same problem. Impacted patients will receive no compensation as a result of this settlement. At the end of the day, there's a litany of reasons why Kaiser Legal has multiple floors of office space in a building overlooking Lake Merritt.

Here are the steps to receive mental health care from Kaiser Permanente. I'd recommend reading through all of the steps before starting your journey:

1. Call the Kaiser Mental Health office local to you (Google your local number).

2. Almost certainly leave a voicemail for an appointment. Kaiser will say that they will call you back in 48 hours. They almost certainly wont. You can kill two birds with one stone by preemptively leaving a bad Google review while you're on hold to leave a voicemail, for what it's worth.

3. Repeat this process, playing phone tag until you get someone on the phone. If Kaiser can't reach you on the phone this is where this process ends and you will need to call them back.

4. Once you get someone on the phone, Kaiser will try to offer you an appointment with a Kaiser therapist in three months, or if you're lucky, you'll get an outside referral right off the bat. Ask for one right away if the soonest you can get an appointment is more than a month away.

Optional step: If you get a Kaiser therapist plan to be stood up on your appointment in three months or plan to have the appointment cancelled the day before. In California you need to file a compliant with Kaiser about this before escalating to the state. (In California you have the right to timely access to care.) This requires documenting every phone call and appointment in forms they provide, and then again on forms the state provides. So if you have the energy to file a complaint, start documenting every phone call and conversation you have. Kaiser meanwhile will provide documentation of every single time they've called you and every appointment they've offered. The intention is to paint a picture that you the individual trying to get mental healthcare are the one that has been inaccessible this whole time, not them the giant company with thousands of workers who aren't staffed appropriately to pick up the phone or call you back.  

5. Call the outside referral program and have them find a therapist for you. While they will provide you a list of therapists you can call yourself, they usually know of a few that are actively open to receiving new clients. Around the time I went through this process I literally called over 50 therapists and did not get a single call back.

Optional step: While calling around I got a more than one recordings saying the therapist I called is not accepting any male or cisgender male clients. This is illegal in my state of California. If this happens, and you have the energy, record the recordings and file complaints with your state's mental health board or board of psychology.

6. Repeat steps 1 through 3 with the outside referral program. They tend to be more professional than anyone at Kaiser that you'll talk to and will actually call you back in the time frame that they give you. If you go longer than a week without getting a therapist with the outside referral, Kaiser is pretty good about just giving you a different outside referral once you have one, and renewing your referral once you have a therapist you like. 

 

7. Expect to initially get a few really bad therapists before landing on one that rocks. Plan to continue looking for a therapist again after a few sessions while continuing to see the therapist you have.

As I stated at the beginning: Kaiser's mental health system is specifically made to be negligent and discourage anyone from experiencing mental health issues from actually using the service. Good luck and I'm sorry that you had to read this article.