Monthly Archives: June 2011

Q: Just how quickly does Googlebot visit a page after it is linked to from a post on blogspot.com?
A: Pretty darn quickly.

I am curious about just what data is being passed to pages by user-agents. To try to gather some of this data, I created a test page at Aleph Studios. This page records the keys and values of the $_GET, $_POST, and $_COOKIE arrays, along with the values that belong to the keys starting with HTTP_ from the $_SERVER array, and the value of $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_TIME’]. It bundles all this up into an email and sends it to me each time the page is accessed.

In order to get this page into Google, I posted a link to it on my throwaway blog at Aleph Studios on Blogger. The timestamp of that post is 9:13 pm. The email from the page as triggered by Googlebot is timestamped 9:14 pm. That’s pretty slick.

The HTTP headers sent by Googlebot and recorded by the page are:

HTTP_ACCEPT = */*
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING = gzip,deflate
HTTP_CONNECTION = Keep-alive
HTTP_FROM = googlebot(at)googlebot.com
HTTP_HOST = alephstudios.com
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

The page’s filename, title tag, and H1 tag are all “WvVdWfwgMcmypDqv7t”, so it’ll be easy to find in Google later. As I’ve observed in the past, within 20 minutes, the page on blogspot.com containing the string shows up in Google for a search on the string.

New pages don’t really take twenty minutes to show up in Google, but I don’t check Google very quickly after hitting the Publish button. The fastest I’ve personally witnessed a new page on ardamis.com appearing in Google was under 4 minutes.

Update 6.28.11: Yes! The Tribune just posted an article by Jodi S. Cohen that validates all the suspicion and skepticism: Family, friends got head start in Bright Start match Thanks for keeping at it, Jodi.

Well, it looks like those of us who didn’t receive the matching funds from the Bright Start Savings Direct Save and Match program are left with two options: leave the funds in the 529 plan or accept a refund. According to all reports, Bright Start/Oppenheimer Funds will not be doing the stand-up thing and matching the contributions made before the Bright Start and Office of the Illinois State Treasurer web sites were updated to state that the promotion had ended.

The Chicago Tribune wrote a follow-up article, Treasurer to refund Bright Start contributions, that again gives voice to the nagging idea that people closely connected to Bright Start or the Illinois State Treasurer’s office were among the only account owners to benefit from the promotion.

A telling fact in the article is that “About 7,300 account holders, who unknowingly invested too late, are eligible for the refund.” I’m surprised the number isn’t higher, but it still indicates the degree to which the Treasurer’s office underestimated the response.

Also, the Tribune article is clear about where the blame is being placed for not giving account owners up-to-date information. “Oppenheimer, the program manager for Bright Start, was supposed to update the website to reflect when the limit had been reached, Byron has said.”

Oppenheimer, as we all know by now, has been sued by the state of Oregon and eventually settled with Illinois and five other states over mismanagement of the conservative “Core Plus” bond fund when it lost 38% of its value in 2008.

It’s probably time to start turning the screw on Oppenheimer or shopping around for other managers. Is T. Rowe Price available? Two of the top five 529 plans, as rated by Morningstar in their Morningstar Analyst Rating for 529 College Savings Plans 2010, are managed by T. Rowe Price. (But go with them only if they’re willing to offer Vanguard index funds.)

As of June 20, the Bright Start and Office of the Illinois State Treasurer web sites have been updated with what seems like the final word on the matter.

Contribution Reversals for Bright Start June Save and Match Promotion

Participants of the Bright Start June Save and Match Promotion who did not qualify for the match but made contributions prior to the time that the plan’s website was updated to reflect that the promotion had ended, may be eligible to request a reversal of their contribution.

You are eligible to request a reversal of your entire unmatched contribution amount, without being subject to any fees or penalties if:

(a) You made an online contribution prior to the brightstartsavings.com website update at 1:20pm CT on Saturday, June 4, 2011, informing visitors that the match limit had been reached, and you were not allocated the matching funds.

(b) We received your contribution check in good order before close of business June 10, 2011, and you were not allocated the matching funds.

Please contact your own legal or tax advisors to learn more about the rules about how a reversal might affect individual situations.

To request a reversal or for additional information, participants can call 1.877.43.BRIGHT (1.877.432.7444). Reversals must be requested by 8:00pm CT, July 8, 2011, and may take up to 30 days to process.

This material is not intended to provide legal, tax or investment advice, or to avoid penalties that may be imposed under U.S. federal tax laws. Please contact your own legal or tax advisors to learn more about the rules that may affect individual situations.

I don’t have any evidence that either the Bright Start or the Office of the Illinois State Treasurer web site was updated at 1:20pm CT on Saturday, June 4, 2011. If I recall correctly, the Treasurer’s web site was still displaying the incorrect data as of Sunday, June 5th.

What to do?

I’ve already decided to leave the money in the 529 plan. I’m concerned that there would be unforeseen tax implications for withdrawing it.

Thankfully, I have all of my 529 funds invested in the Vanguard age-based index portfolio, so hopefully Oppenheimer gets no more of my money than is absolutely necessary.

Dan Rutherford, if you’re listening, your office and Oppenheimer really borked this up. Distributing the scholarship funds back to Bright Start account owners was a great idea, but the decision to restrict the matches to 2,500 accounts was awful, and it will not soon be forgotten. Both the Bright Start and Office of the Illinois State Treasurer web sites are pretty lousy. Hiring someone with some internet savvy to identify and resolve some of their problems them would be a smart move.

The last official word…

Update: An appropriately humble letter was sent by Bridget Byron to account owners this week. The text of the letter, along with a scan, is below.

June 20, 2011

Dear Account Owner:

I have personally spoken with many of you and understand your frustration with the execution of our recent promotion and that you did not qualify for a match. I want to personally apologize and assure you that the sole intention of the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office in offering this promotion was to give back to current Illinois account holders. The promotion was announced on the Bright Start website on May 27, 2011, and eligible account owners were sent a letter, via first class mail, on May 31, 2011.

The promotion began on June 1, 2011, at 12:01am CT and offered matching contributions for the first 2,500 contributions up to $250. We now know that the maximum number of contributions as set out in the promotion’s rules, 2,500, was reached by the close of financial markets at 3:00pm CT on Friday, June 3, 2011. Unfortunately, due to standard transactional procedures, this information was not available until the afternoon of Saturday, June 4, 2011, and the brightstartsavings.com website was updated at 1:20pm CT on Saturday, June 4, 2011.

We wish we had the funds to accommodate all contributions but we must abide by our promotion’s restrictions. Nonetheless, we have heard and empathize with your frustration and have worked diligently on a solution for participants who did not qualify for the promotion, but who made contributions prior to the time that the website was updated to reflect that the promotion had ended. Therefore, if (a) you made an online contribution prior to the brightstartsavings.com website update at 1:20pm CT on Saturday, June 4, 2011, or (b) we received your contribution check in good order before close of business June 10, 2011, and you were not allocated the matching funds, you are eligible to request a reversal of your entire contribution amount (without being subject to any fees or penalties). Please contact your own legal or tax advisors to learn more about how a reversal might affect individual situations.

You may contact 1.877.43.BRIGHT (1.877.432.7444) if you decide to request a reversal. Reversals must be requested by 8:00pm CT, July 8, 2011. Please be aware that reversals may take up to 30 days to process.

Thank you for your feedback and candid comments. We appreciate you choosing Bright Start to help save for your child’s college education.

Sincerely,
Bridget Byron
College Savings Program Director
Illinois State Treasurer’s Office

This material is not intended to provide legal, tax or investment advice, or to avoid penalties that may be imposed under U.S. federal tax laws. Please contact your own legal or tax advisors to learn more about the rules that may affect individual situations.

Bright Start Contribution Reversal Offer Letter of June, 2011

You can listen to Rutherford’s interview on WJBC about what caused the problems. It starts with some babble about what he eats for breakfast, but then gets into some good information misinformation.

Update 6.28.11: Rutherford and Byron had a number of chances to come clean about Treasurer’s office employees’ friends and family getting a head start on the matching funds, but did not.

So I finally watched The Social Network over the weekend, and it’s made me feel jealous and a bit guilty.

In a meager effort to console myself for so far failing to be a billionaire, I’m assembling the short list of web-application type things I’ve built here.

  1. A dice roller: rollforit. Enter a name, create a room, invite your friends, and start rolling dice. For people who want to play pen and paper, table-top RPG dice games with their distant friends.
  2. A URL shortener: Minifi.de. Minifi.de comes with an API and a bookmarklet. It really works, too! The technical explanation has more details.
  3. A social networking site: Snapbase. Snapbase is a social site that shows you what’s going on in your city or anywhere in the world as pictures are uploaded by your friends and neighbors. The application extracts location information from the EXIF data embedded in images and displays recent images taken near your present location.
  4. A trouble-ticketing system for an IT help desk or technical support center. It’s really pretty extensive, with asset management, user accounts, salted encrypted passwords, and all sorts of nifty things. I really must write a full description of it at some point, but until then, the documentation is the next best thing.
  5. An account-based invoice tracking and access system for grouping invoices according to clients, then sharing invoice history with those clients and allowing them to easily pay outstanding invoices via Paypal.
  6. An account-based invoice access system where clients can view paid and unpaid invoices, and even easily pay an outstanding invoice via Paypal. I actually use this almost every day.
  7. A simple method for protecting a download using a unique URL that can be emailed to authorized users. The URL can be set to expire after a certain amount of time or any number of downloads.
  8. An update to the above download protection script to protect multiple downloads, generate batches of keys, leave notes about who received the key, the ability to specify per-key the allowable number of downloads and age, and some basic reporting.
  9. An HTML auction template generator called Simple Auction Wizard. It helps you create HTML auction templates for eBay, and uses SWFUpload and tinyMCE.

I have another project in the works that promises to be more financially viable, but the most clever thing on that list is Snapbase. It’s in something akin to alpha right now; barely usable. I really wish I had the time to pursue it.

Update 6.28.11: Yes! The Tribune just posted an article that validates all the suspicion and skepticism: Family, friends got head start in Bright Start match
Update 6.20.11: A refund of contributions is the best we’re going to get from Bright Start and Office of the Illinois State Treasurer: Illinois Bright Start Match Promotion Update – Refunds
Update 6.11.11: The AP article has been picked up by Forbes and Businessweek. HuffPost Chicago also has a post that references both the AP and Chicago Tribune articles. Bright Start College Savings Program Contributors Feel Duped Over Matching Funds Promise
Update 6.9.11: The AP has written a story about this that has been picked up by The State Journal-Register. Thousands miss out on Illinois college savings offer
Update 6.8.11: The Chicago Tribune has written a story about this. Bright Start contributors angry over missed matches

When I got home from work on Friday, June 3, 2011, I found a letter from Bright Start, Illinois’ 529 College Savings Plan, that announced a really promising contribution-matching promotion. The text of the letter, along with a scan, is below.

Dear Valued Bright Start Account Owner:

As your Illinois state treasurer, thank you for your continued support and investment in the Bright Start College Savings Program. When I took office, I made a commitment to not only the people of Illinois, but also to the over 100,000 Bright Start account owners and their families.

While I am very pleased with the current financial health of the Program, rest assured I will continue to monitor the Program’s progress very closely in order to fulfill my promise to safeguard you investments. Bright Start continues to offer account owners some of the lowest fees in the nation, making it one of the best ways for you to save for your child’s college education.

As we get ready to kick off the summer season, I have some exciting news to help you get your summer off to a BRIGHT START:

We have a new College Savings Programs Director!

Bridget Byron brings 14 years of investment experience to the Bright Start Program. She was employed at UBS Financial Services for the past 11 years and specialized in fixed income securities. Bridget is a graduate of the University of Chicago with a degree in Economics.

We want to help you jumpstart your college savings!

As your state treasurer, I have decided to use our scholarship funds to help you get a little further ahead with your Bright Start account.

For the month of June, any current Bright Start Direct Sold account owner within the state of Illinois can make a onetime, special contribution to each of their beneficiaries’ Bright Start accounts and we will match that contribution, up to $250. If you have been meaning to put extra money away to help your child get to college, make your money worth more in the month of June.

Participation in the matching promotion for current Bright Start Direct Sold account owners within the state of Illinois is limited to the first 2,500 one-time contributions made during the month of June 2011. Please visit brightstartsavings.com to make a one-time contribution.

As you start to plan your summer vacations, please plan for some extra savings for your child’s Bright Start account!

Sincerely,
Dan Rutherford

Illinois State Treasurer IL0000.117.0511 June 6, 2011

Bright Start Match Promotion Letter

Bright Start Match Promotion June, 2011 Letter

Realizing that with 100,000 accounts, the 2,500 available matches were going to be used up quickly, I immediately went to the Bright Start web site, found the little blurb mentioning the promotion on the home page, logged in and contributed $250 to each of my two 529 beneficiary accounts. This was probably around 6:15 pm on Friday, June 3.

False assumption #1: that the letter was the first public announcement of the promotion

The Bright Start web site stated that the number of contributions matched so far would be reported on the Office of the Illinois State Treasurer web site.

When I checked the page at http://treasurer.il.gov/programs/college-savings/college-savings.aspx around 6:30 pm on Friday, June 3, it displayed an image of a stylized thermometer showing that 893 contributions had already been matched. The meter came from a third-party site, and there was a hyperlink at the bottom of the meter to that site. I now deeply regret not taking a screenshot of this meter at the time. I would very much like to know why this company’s data was so wrong and to contact as many of their clients as possible with this story.

Thank you, Google! Below is a screenshot of Google’s cached page as it appeared on Jun 4, 2011 16:48:56 GMT.

Office of the Illinois State Treasurer

Office of the Illinois State Treasurer page as of June 4, showing 893 contributions

Dear www.easy-fundraising-ideas.com, you and someone at the Treasurer’s office have some explaining to do.

Based on the information at the Office of the Illinois State Treasurer web site, I was confident that more than half of the remaining matches were available as of June 3, 2011 and that my contributions would be matched.

False assumption #2: that the information on the Office of the Illinois State Treasurer web site was up-to-date

When I checked the meter again on Sunday, June 5, it had not changed. This sort of made sense, as I didn’t expect that any more contributions would be processed until the following business day, so it was reasonable to believe that the meter was accurately reporting only processed contributions from the previous Friday.

But, it now appears that the meter was not dynamic and was not updated as of the close of financial markets at 3:00 pm C.S.T. on Friday, June 3, 2011. The reported number of contributions as of 6:00 pm Friday was, and probably always was, inaccurate.

Already too late

Today, June 7, 2011, at 5:03 pm, I receved an email from BrightStartCollegeSavingsProgram@e.oppenheimerfunds.com:

Bright Start Match Promotion Update

Dear Valued Account Owner,

On May 31st, 2011, the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office mailed hard copy letters to all of our Illinois Bright Start Direct Sold account owners via first class mail announcing a June Matching Contribution promotion.

Due to an overwhelmingly positive response, the maximum number of contributions as set out in the promotion’s rules, 2500, was hit by close of financial markets at 3:00 pm C.S.T. on Friday, June 3, 2011.

We are thrilled that so many account owners chose to participate in this first-ever matching promotion. While we wish that we had the funds to accommodate all contributions, we must abide by our promotion’s restrictions.

Those contributions that were received, either electronically or via hard check, before the cap was reached will be matched. Please check your upcoming account statements or call 1.877.43.BRIGHT (1.877.432.7444) to verify if your contribution was matched.

We appreciate your continued support of the Bright Start program and hope that you will take advantage of any future incentive programs.

Sincerely,

Bridget Byron
College Savings Program Director
Illinois State Treasurer’s Office

http://ebm.e.oppenheimerfunds.com/c/tag/hBN7p$hB7vEh4B8bk1gEDXGPe7X/doc.html?t_params=&om_rid=EDXGPe&om_mid=_BN7p$hB8bk1giF&heartbeat_id=

So basically, by the time I opened and read my letter (and for those people who received their letters on Saturday, before it was even delivered), this promotion had already been fulfilled.

Bridget, I fervently assure you that I will be very wary of taking advantage of any future incentive programs if they appear as poorly thought-out as this one happened to be.

According to the hard copy letter, there are “over 100,000 Bright Start account owners”. I’ll look for more accurate numbers, but assuming for the sake of argument that all 100,000 owners were citizens of Illinois, that each account owner had only a single beneficiary account, and that each account owner made a contribution of $250 in order to receive the maximum match, that means that only 2.5% of the beneficiary accounts would benefit from the match.

Furthermore, I would venture to guess that a good number of account owners have more than one beneficiary account and contributed $250 to each (as I did), so that the matching funds probably went to far fewer than 2,500 families. If the average account owner has 2.5 kids, then only 1 percent of account owners would have seen any of this money. Now, these estimates are purely hypothetical, but at best, only 2.5% of the families who are saving for college benefited from this.

Would it not have been better to lower the amount of the match and thereby increase the number of accounts that could receive some of the $625,000 in available funds. Halving the match to $125 would benefit 5% of the beneficiary accounts, and reducing it to $25 would have spread it among 25% of the accounts.

Now, it probably wouldn’t have maxed out so quickly, but Bright Start still would have gotten their $625,000 in new contributions, and they wouldn’t have so many pissed-off people, either.

Pats on the back

As of Monday, June 7, 2011, the Bright Start web site has been changed, with the information about how to take advantage of the match replaced with the following text:

Save and Match
Promotion Ends!

Thank you for your interest in the Bright Start Savings Direct Save and Match program. Due to the positive response to this offering, we have met the maximum match offers. Thank you for your continued interest and check back regularly for future promotions.

Hooray! What a huge success!

I feel particularly bad for Bridget Byron, who joined Bright Start as the College Savings Program Director only last month, and who had to put her name on the bottom of the email that must have been among the least favorably received emails in all of Illinois today.

Amusingly, Bright Start has a twitter account: http://twitter.com/#!/Bright_Start but hasn’t used it yet. Also, according to the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office company page at LinkedIn, “Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias serves as the state’s banker”. So maybe it’s no wonder that the office can’t make web sites work. However, I am delighted to find that there are frustrated people on Twitter and elsewhere complaining about this.

There are a few things that I find particularly disappointing about this whole debacle.

First is that there is an expectation that easily measurable data, such as the number of entries submitted so far in a promotion, should be accurate and updated in real-time. There is absolutely no reason that the time-sensitive information on the IL Treasurer’s web site should be so incredibly inaccurate for days at a time.

Second is that the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office/Bright Start makes no apologies for running a promotion that did not distribute the available funds to a sufficient number of account owners. You contacted a huge number of people who even if they had acted as fast as reasonably possible to participate still had no realistic way of getting their contributions in on time.

Third is that the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office/Bright Start did not offer to refund the contribution amount to account owners who had contributed between close of business on Friday and when the web sites were updated and/or the email announcing the end of the promotion was distributed on Tuesday. I feel that this would be just and fair. I participated in this promotion because I saw a high likelihood of getting a 100% return on my investment. Now, as that return is no longer possible, I want to invest that money somewhere else. Sour grapes? Maybe. But Bridget Byron/Bright Start’s attitude in the Tuesday email of “thanks for the money, suckers” is hard to swallow.

I rather expect that Bright Start will consult with some lawyers and decide on a course of action that will compensate the people who made contributions between Friday and Tuesday. I hope that this will get some attention in the Tribune, as it’s not the first time that Bright Start has seriously disappointed its participants.

Update: It seems that the promotion was first announced on the Bright Start website on May 27, 2011, at https://www.brightstartsavings.com/OFI529/PN/generated/en_us/PrimaryNavigation_05-27-11-101806.xml in a post titled “Bright Start wants to jump start your summer savings by matching your special contribution!”.

This would explain how certain account owners were able to take advantage of the promotion before the letter was distributed. So if they were willing to announce it on the web site, why couldn’t they also send an email on June 1st and then follow up with a letter?

The official rules from https://www.brightstartsavings.com/OFI529/PN/generated/en_us/PrimaryNavigation_05-27-11-102113.xml are below:

Illinois Bright Start® College Savings Program Deposit Match Offer Official Rules
The first 2,500 Illinois residents with existing Bright Start Direct-Sold Accounts to make a manual contribution into a Bright Start College Savings Program 529 Direct-Sold Account between 12:00am (CT) June 1, 2011 and 11:59pm (CT) June 30, 2011, will receive a matched deposit, up to $250, from the Bright Start College Savings Program. Manual contributions include both electronic and hard copy check contributions. Please check brightstartsavings.com and treasurer.il.gov to see when the 2,500 limit has been reached. Automatic Investment Purchases and Payroll Deduction Contributions into the Bright Start College Savings accounts are excluded. Limit one (1) deposit match per account. If an account owner has more than one (1) Bright Start account, each account is eligible for one (1) match up to $250 each. Deposit match amount will be deposited to the Bright Start account no later than 90 days after the qualifying deposit. This promotion is only available to existing Account Owners that are Illinois residents with Bright Start Direct-Sold Accounts and is limited to the first 2,500 participating accounts. Accounts opened after 11:59pm (CT) May 31, 2011 or under the Bright Start Advisor-Sold Plan are not eligible. Employees of the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office are not eligible to receive matching funds. Void where prohibited. This material is provided for general and educational purposes only, and is not intended to provide legal, tax or investment advice, or for use to avoid penalties that may be imposed under U.S. federal tax laws. Contact your attorney or other advisor regarding your specific legal, investment or tax situation. Sponsor: Bright Start College Savings, Program PO Box 6498, Chicago, IL 60680-6498.

Seriously, what about the poor saps who sent in checks? They probably haven’t even arrived yet.

The more I think about this, the more it seems like someone came up with this promotion in order to distribute funds to well-connected people who were privately informed of the promotion in advance of the hard copy letter. Bright Start had gained at least an additional $625,000 in the first three days of June, not to mention all of the contributions made by people on Friday evening and over the weekend while both the Bright Start and the Treasurer’s sites still implied that their contributions would be matched. If I were trying to scam people, I’d certainly time the mailing of the letters so that they were delivered on Friday and Saturday, and – oops – forget to update the web site all weekend. It’s pretty outrageous.

And I still want my contributions matched.

While making changes to my WordPress theme, I noticed that the error_log file in my theme folder contained dozens of PHP Fatal error lines:

...
[01-Jun-2011 14:25:15] PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined function  get_header() in /home/accountname/public_html/ardamis.com/wp-content/themes/ars/index.php on line 7
[01-Jun-2011 20:58:23] PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined function  get_header() in /home/accountname/public_html/ardamis.com/wp-content/themes/ars/index.php on line 7
...

The first seven lines of my theme’s index.php file:

<?php ini_set('display_errors', 0); ?>
<?php
/**
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Ars_Theme
*/
get_header(); ?>

I realized that the error was being generated each time that my theme’s index.php file was called directly, and that the error was caused by the theme’s inability to locate the WordPress get_header function (which is completely normal). Thankfully, the descriptive error wasn’t being output to the browser, but was only being logged to the error_log file, due to the inclusion of the ini_set(‘display_errors’, 0); line. I had learned this the hard way a few months ago when I found that calling the theme’s index.php file directly would generate an error message, output to the browser, that would reveal my hosting account username as part of the absolute path to the file throwing the error.

I decided the best way to handle this would be to check to see if the file could find the get_header function, and if it could not, simply redirect the visitor to the site’s home page. The code I used to do this:

<?php ini_set('display_errors', 0); ?>
<?php
/**
* @package WordPress
* @subpackage Ars_Theme
*/
if (function_exists('get_header')) {
	get_header();
}else{
    /* Redirect browser */
    header("Location: http://" . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . "");
    /* Make sure that code below does not get executed when we redirect. */
    exit;
}; ?>

So there you have it. No more fatal errors due to get_header when loading the WordPress theme’s index.php file directly. And if something else in the file should throw an error, ini_set(‘display_errors’, 0); means it still won’t be sent to the browser.