Category Archives: Commentary - Page 3

The More You Know

Posted by on March 3, 2015 No comments

I guess I’ve been on a Tumblr-hating kick lately.  Actually, I guess it’s more of a social media hate-fest.  But mostly, it’s just seeing how fucked up Tumblr users are.  I was searching for articles to support my position and was surprised that it wasn’t the articles, but the comments on those articles that proved my point.

In a Forbes article (Forbes!), the author was writing about a Tumblr post that had millions of reblogs/likes (“notes” in the Tumblr world) and how cool it was.  One reader wasn’t happy that her special world had been exposed:

Dearest Jason; let alone Forbes.
If you had a heart, and knew how tumblr worked, tumblr is one big family, and if you are someone who knew how tumblr worked, before it was mainstream, you’d understand: The people of tumblr are lazy f*cks who don’t change posts because the are ignorant a-holes like you.
We respect each others posts like how we would respect each other in real life. For the fact that you even had the though of changing the title from it’s original is completely wrong of you, and that you actually did so, you have failed to be my friend.
It is also hard to rewrite a title when there are comments in the body about the original title. Again, if you delete the body, you are once again an ignorant a-hole.
So thank you for telling everyone that you do not have a heart, and try to be a smart*ss, when really, you are just destroying the rules of tumblr.
PS Treat others the way you want to be treated
PSS Romney still sucks.

I think the overriding message here is respect.  And maybe grammar.  No really, the issue here is hypocrisy, with a heaping helping of self-righteousness.  Actually, a Tumblr user would be a self-righteousness machine, oiled with hypocrisy, manufacturing indignation and outrage for a marketplace of similar machines that continue to process and refine the product until it reaches maximum absurdity.

The One Minute Manager Synopsis

Posted by on February 2, 2015 No comments

After reading the book, which was an extremely quick read, maybe half an hour, I figured I ‘d make a few quick notes to keep the ideas in my head.

The three main things the technique tries to instill are: 1-minute goal settings, 1-minute praisings, and 1-minute reprimands.  Obviously, the one minute thing isn’t literal, but it is all meant to be quick and not dragged out.

Some of the details of the story stuck with me, and some raised further questions.  For example, there is a lot of stress on the idea that a worker has clear goals and it is their job to do them.  If that worker doesn’t know how to accomplish a task, who do they turn to?  I thought it would be the manager, because the manager should know everything that is going on in the department.  But the manager doesn’t want to be doing the job of his workers, that is a drain on his efficiency.  There is the weekly meeting where everyone describes their current progress and roadblocks.  That may be where issues get raised and assignments made to resolve them.

Some things don’t sit all that well with me.  It doesn’t seem very useful for a “working” manager – one who has things of their own to do in addition to managing people below them.  The book never talks about that.  The manager is always available, never has clutter, never seems to be doing anything.  But maybe that’s the trick, to delegate everything.  If one of your goals is to create a report of how successful your department is, do you assign that task to another person to do?

One part of me says that this is correct.  A manager should do nothing but manage the people and tasks and make sure the work gets done.  Another part of me says that it’s not enough and wouldn’t be very fulfilling.

The book also doesn’t discuss how much time a manager must spend in meetings.  The story always has the manager fully available, except for one team meeting.  Surely this manager must have superiors and peers at his level.  What about that time?

Lewis N Clark Urban Gear Duffel Review

Posted by on August 9, 2014 No comments

I have two fetishes and I’m not exactly shy about them.  The fetishes are office supplies and luggage.  Both center around the concept of organization.  Like when I go to Staples, I fantasize about owning all this office equipment which necessitates the need for organizational supplies like binders and filing drawers and stands and on and on.

And luggage, well, I just appreciate a well-designed bag that holds just what you need.  Because of this, I am constantly trying to find the right size bag for what I need at the time.  And style has to be considered of course.

So, this bag came up on Woot:

03819561-95e8-4088-8909-3df0a2692d94 daf9bf12-149b-4aa1-80a0-0383f3269e43

And I really liked it.  I’ve been using the bag for a while now and I still really like it.  But one thing I never got around to testing was the bag’s capacity.  I assumed I could use it for a week’s vacation, but would that really work?  I mean, it’s only one bag.  But then again, I am a guy.  Guys don’t pack like women, am I right?

Therefore, this post is now the inaugural ManPack Experience.

You can see the empty bag above.  First thing I’m going to pack is t-shirts.  I am an advocate of the “rolled” packing style, so if you pack differently, you may get different results.

wp_20140809_005

Nine t-shirts on layer 1.  That also includes sleep shirts.  I also expect I will buy a shirt or two on vacation.  Next up, shorts – because I’m not going to go somewhere that’s cold, duh.

wp_20140809_006

Five pairs of shorts and one pair of jeans.  I could probably swap out a couple of the shorts for pants. Next up, Shirts, socks and underwear.  These fill in the front.

wp_20140809_007

Two button-down shirts, six pairs of socks, eight pairs of underwear.  Next, toiletry bag, shoes and a belt.  Of course, I’ll have the shoes and belt I’m wearing, too, so adding extra shoes is just an example.

wp_20140809_008

A pair of sandals, a pair of loafers, and a belt.  There is still room for more, too.  Probably another pair of pants or a couple shirts.  Now, will the bag close?

wp_20140809_009

Sure it closes, and there’s more room on the outside.  On the left, I keep a laundry bag for dirty clothes.  On the right, I have my Kindle keyboard in its case.  It’s shown vertically, but does fit horizontally.  Front pocket holds a small tablet, which does fit horizontally.  And I couldn’t think of what else to put in the front.  So fully loaded, what’s the weight?

wp_20140809_011

It’s 17 pounds loaded pretty full.  You could stuff it further if you wanted.

So, this is a great travel bag for multi-day trips.  If you had two bags, you could go for quite a while.  But I don’t travel for long periods, so I am glad for another nice feature of the Lewis N Clark Urban series.  I also bought their laptop bag, and it is a perfect fit inside the duffel.

wp_20140809_012

The laptop bag fits my 15.6” Toshiba laptop just right.  The interior of the bag is very sparse, with just one zippered mesh pouch that I use to hold the power cords.  There is room in the bag for a legal padfolio, which I make use of.  The front pockets hold cables, pens, and a flash drive.

Overall, I think the Urban Gear line of bags from Lewis N Clark is great stuff.

Random Pieces

Posted by on July 10, 2014 No comments

Recently, Flickr, which is part or Yahoo, decided they were going to do away with integrated authentication (OAuth, SSO, whatever you want to call it), meaning you had to have a Yahoo login instead of logging in with a FaceBook or Google account.  Curiously, Microsoft Live wasn’t included in the SSO program, even though Yahoo has a good working relationship with Microsoft.  But none of that matters now.

Predictably, people are up in arms that they have to have a Yahoo login.  I’ve had a few Flickr accounts over time, two still current, but will probably drop down to just one.  That remaining one was integrated with FaceBook, so I had to go through the process of creating a new Yahoo account.  I didn’t like doing it, but what I do like is having 1TB of free picture hosting that I can access via API.  Let me explain that value a bit more.  Hopefully, Yahoo doesn’t read this post and figure out how to stop it.

I have a virtual server with GoDaddy that I can use to host whatever web sites I want.  It’s certainly not the fastest server in the world, but then again, I don’t host the biggest sites in the world.  As part of this bare-bones plan, I have about 30GB of drive space, 20 of which is used up by OS and system applications.  So, space is definitely at a premium. 

If I’m going to host a web site that has a photo gallery, which I do as part of a side project I’m involved in, things get a little tense.  But, with a little clever coding, I can host all the photos on Flickr and use their API to display the albums and photos on my website.  You’d never even know the images are on Flickr unless you look at the URLs, and what normal web user does that?  So, even with a free account, you can have 1TB of photo hosting – with no advertising.  Sounds a little too good to be true.  But I’m grateful.

And for that one reason alone, I can tolerate having a Yahoo account.  And I’d have to tell any of the people all upset about having to create a Yahoo account:  You’re late to the game, guys.  Flickr used to have its own login before Yahoo bought them and before SSO became a “thing”.  Would you have been upset that you had to create a whole new Flickr account to use their service?  Of course not.  Get over it.

In other news, for the afore-mentioned side project, I just purchased a vinyl cutting machine and heat press machine.  It seemed like a good purchase at the time because of all the team jerseys that were always needed on short notice.  And also, I am a big proponent of doing as much myself as possible.  When you control everything from end-to-end, your costs and timelines are more predictable.  (It’s almost like dropping login support for other parties and doing it all yourself, eh, Yahoo?)  Outsourcing the printing of the jerseys had previously resulted in different costs, sometimes due to rush jobs, sometimes due to the printer’s whim.  One job resulted in an incorrect name printed, with no time for correction since we paid out the nose for rush processing and shipping anyway.  So bringing the shirt printing in-house was, to me, the best solution.  Par for the course, both machines had to be rush shipped so we had enough time to print jerseys for the next game.  Even so, buying entry-level equipment only cost about $600.

Now that I own this equipment, there is a serious potential to make that money back and then some.  I have to say, the setup and operation of this equipment was really simple.  If you can: use any graphics program, print a document, follow directions, and count, you can probably run a t-shirt business.  And I have to say, watching a vinyl cutter, which is just a plotter with a knife instead of a pen, is mesmerizing.

Who Wants To Live Forever?

Posted by on June 28, 2014 No comments

Things that MSN Healthy Living says are bad to eat:

  • BBQ Sauce
  • Pasta Salad
  • Macaroni Salad
  • Potato Salad
  • Ranch Dressing
  • Fatty steaks
  • Breaded chicken
  • Fried chicken
  • Hot dogs
  • Sausage
  • Hamburgers
  • Pie
  • Cake
  • Gluten-free foods
  • Greek frozen yogurt
  • Asian Chicken salad
  • Fruit Smoothies
  • Fish Sandwiches
  • Chinese vegetarian dishes
  • Chipotle’s burrito bowl
  • Tomato soup
  • Baked fuckin’ potato
  • Omelet
  • Microwave popcorn
  • Light salad dressings
  • Trail mix
  • Granola
  • Artichoke spinach dip
  • Flavored fat-free yogurt
  • Dried fruit
  • Flavored soy milk
  • Energy drinks (well, duh)
  • Turkey sandwich
  • Parfait
  • Blue corn chips
  • Chicken wrap
  • Low-fat muffins
  • Frozen diet dinners
  • Canned soups
  • Veggie pizza
  • Spinach pasta
  • Wheat bread (or any fucking bread)
  • Diet soda (duh, again)
  • Reduced fat peanut butter
  • Fruit cocktail
  • Swordfish
  • Imported catfish
  • Farmed eel
  • King Mackerel
  • Orange Roughy
  • Chilean Sea Bass
  • Shark
  • Imported Shrimp
  • Tilefish
  • Bluefin Tuna
  • Non-organic strawberries
  • Anything from McDonalds
  • Canned Tomatoes
  • Corn.  Yes, corn.
  • White chocolate
  • Artificial sweeteners (no, really?)
  • Sprouts
  • Anything with food dyes
  • Ice cream sundaes from chain restaurants
  • Eggnog
  • Candied Yams
  • Creamed Spinach
  • Cranberry Sauce
  • Cheese straw
  • Fruitcake
  • Swedish Meatballs
  • Pot Roast
  • Yorkshire pudding
  • Prime Rib
  • Sausage stuffing
  • Dark meat turkey
  • Green bean casserole with fried onions
  • Croissants
  • Potato pancakes
  • Lobster Newburg
  • Yule log
  • Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha
  • Caramel apples
  • Gingerbread
  • Sugar cookies
  • Plum pudding
  • Mashed Potatoes
  • Gooseberry pie
  • Beef Wellington
  • Glazed Ham
  • Gravy
  • Cinnamon Rolls
  • Peanut Brittle
  • Apple pie a la mode
  • Chocolate covered cherries
  • Cheese fondue
  • Shepard’s pie
  • Smoothie King’s Hulk Strawberry Smoothie
  • Starbucks’ Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino Blended Creme with whipped cream
  • Coldstone’s PB&C Shake
  • Auntie Anne’s Jumbo Pretzel Dog
  • Cinnabon’s Caramel Pecanbon
  • Wendy’s Sweet and Spicy Boneless Wings
  • Dunkin’ Donuts’ Coffee Cake Muffin
    And although there are many more articles I could have pulled items from, I think that serves to show that if you really want to be healthy, all you can eat is organic lettuce.  But even then, some articles complain about foods that are improperly produced or prepared, so make sure that straight-from-the-ground organic lettuce doesn’t have any bugs, dirt, or animal feces on it.

Do not, I repeat, do not cook.  Mankind has been lucky to survive as long as it has with people indiscriminately making food.  If you didn’t pull it from the ground or from a bush or tree with your own hands, it is not safe and you will die.

Advances in Management Through Nudity

Posted by on April 10, 2014 No comments

In other Florida news, a mostly-naked woman went berserk in a McDonalds, trashing the equipment and eating ice cream.  Yeah, that’s pretty much the headline.  But after watching the video, I had one primary takeaway.  It didn’t have anything to do with the nudity.

I have no idea what the woman was upset about.  That point actually doesn’t matter.  The thing that was the most informative in the video.  She calmed down after sucking on the ice cream machine.  She then made herself an ice cream cone and didn’t trash anything else.  Low blood sugar, maybe?

Regardless, here’s my idea.  With an agitated customer, the manager has to do two things: establish trust and defuse anger.  The first should be offering to meet on neutral ground to discuss the problem.  When a manager is behind the counter, there is a clear barrier between the parties.  This can allow the manager some safety and power over the situation, but it can also raise the perception of inaccessibility to the customer, which just intensifies the situation.  The manager can say, “Let’s sit down at a table and discuss this.”  There will still be a barrier between them, but the playing field will seem more level.

Defusing the anger can be easy.  Ask the customer if they want a drink, dessert, or ice cream.  Whatever they want, have someone immediately make it and bring it to the table.  The manager should not make or bring the request; the manager’s attention is solely on the customer.

If all goes well, the customer will be snacking and explaining the problem, maybe very aggressively.  But by seating them at a table, you’ve gotten the scene away from the front counter, where others would be subjected to the tirade.  Additionally, the customer may not back down from their argument in front of a bunch of spectators, but in isolation, may be more agreeable.  Everyone wants to look strong in front of others.

And if the customer is nude for all of this, it may be a blessing for some.

Consultancy

Posted by on March 27, 2014 No comments

The recent Dilbert strips have got me thinking abut the concept of consulting.  I think it’s a pretty recent thing, probably since the 90’s?  At least in the tech industry, I think it is.  Maybe it’s always been around for other fields.

Consulting, as the comic depicts, is a lifestyle.  It’s at odds with holding a regular job and has different benefits and drawbacks to working in that capacity.  Personally, I see many more drawbacks, and not just for the consultant.  The consultant’s issues are pretty easy to identify.  I’m just concerned that some things have been allowed to become “the standard” because they’ve been going on so long.

In the first place, businesses have become accepting that they don’t need to retain the talent to have the most advanced “stuff”. (Stuff is an ambiguous term for anything: a process, a piece of hardware or software, a design methodology.)  They think that the most advanced stuff just handles itself.  You just need to set it up.  So you can “rent” the expertise instead of “buying” it.  That’s not how stuff works, and it’s painfully obvious when shit goes wrong.  But this is the way it’s done now.

Because of that point, you can make a summary statement that “consultants don’t make solutions, consultants fix problems.”  Database running slow?  Bring in a consultant.  Need to solve a technical hurdle?  Consultant.  Need to adopt an entire new accounting system?  Consultants!  But consultants leave, and when they do, it’s back on you.  Yeah, it’s great to be on vacation, but you need to come back to work eventually.  So, what if the problem happens again? 

And what makes a consultant so amazing, so important?  Because they’ve helped dozens of other companies with the same problem?  That’s a great breadth of knowledge.  Does it mean the same as a great depth of knowledge?  No.  Can a consultant get a great depth of knowledge?  Not likely, because they are constantly jumping from one flower to the next, pollenating fixes here and there.

Yeah, I’m sure there are good consultants out there.  Ones who will teach and share knowledge while they work; ones that will dig deeper and solve the root cause instead of addressing the symptoms.  But that also depends on what the business is willing to pay for.

I guess it comes back to my first point.  The fact that business (and life as a whole) is so sped up, there is no time (and money) to do things the right way and no time to learn something in its entirety before it is obsolete.  This, along with the idea that there is always something better, which is probably true, but that it is incompatible with older versions, which is simply bad, is leading us into a state of perpetual rebuilding, so that there is never time to actually measure the success we have attained.

Doing It Way Wrong

Posted by on November 20, 2013 No comments

http://www.ibtimes.com/kleargearcom-woman-hit-3500-fine-bad-credit-score-after-writing-negative-review-online-retailer

This story caught my attention, so I had to do a little looking into it.  I’m no uber-sleuth, but I can put some things together. I can put together enough to make some conclusions.

My first thought when going to KG’s site was, oh, they’re ripping off ThinkGeek.  Then I saw the copyright date of 2001, and thought, maybe they were first.  Turns out they’re not, ThinkGeek’s copyright goes back to 1999.  But in the course of figuring that out, I found that KG’s internet domain was first registered in 2004.  I’m not sure you can copyright a domain name before it’s even registered.  Scam flag #1.

Looking at the next level: the address.  A reputable company will display its address prominently to provide credibility.  However, the address is a Michigan address and there is no corporate record in Michigan for their company – no DBA record either.  Looking further, the address is simply a mail drop, not a physical location.  Scam flag #2.

So where is this company?  The BBB website says that KG’s legal department had an address in San Antonio, TX.  No corporate records found in Texas for them either.  A quick search in LinkedIn shows three members, the CEO and the CMO of KG (Rob Key) and a freelance writer who contracted with KG.  The CEO and CMO are both in Michigan.  Hmmm.  Rob Key also might have an address in San Antonio, TX according to internet searches.

So let’s just assume that’s a dead end.  The biggest red flag is their help page, which basically spells out how you’re going to do business with them.  in short, it’s the most unfriendly terms possible.  There isn’t any way to check the status of your order.  I couldn’t even find a login to check your profile.  When you have so many other options out there, why would you even buy from this site?

I’ve seen this business approach before.  It was in my Finally Fast review.  Companies like this need to die a quick death because they are doing no one any service.  The unfortunate thing is that the owners live on and create a brand new entity just like the last one.

Seems Way Too Fast

Posted by on October 18, 2013 No comments

It feels like I’m constantly doing something with some computer or another.  This month, it’s the release of Windows 8.1 and Visual Studio 2013.  It just doesn’t feel like I’ve had long enough with Windows 8.0 and VS 2012.  But here we are again.

So, I uninstalled VS2012 from desktop and laptop, and updated Windows on the laptop to 8.1.  Fortunately, I only have to deal with the changes.

Like I said in my recent Windows 8 post, you must simplify your start screen.  On my laptop, this is all I really do.  Not a whole lot of anything.

image

One of the nice features no one is talking about is the automatic background colors for tiles.  I recall a big blog post from Microsoft about the process and technique of choosing what color to make the background glow for the icons in the taskbar.  It was a lot of analyzing the colors in the icon and determining if a complimentary or contrasting color would be the best choice.  They seem to have applied that logic to the tiles and I think the effect is much more pleasing than 8.0, as you can compare with the screenshot in my other post.

The other new feature that is going to make a lot of positive waves is the ability to use the desktop background in the start page, as I’ve done.  It definitely helps keep the two environments feeling connected.  The Start button’s return?  Big meh.

I poked around with some of the metro apps, to see how things are progressing on that front.  I’m still not impressed.

In programming land, I opened one of my old projects and was met with this warning: “ASP.NET MVC 3 projects have limited functionality in Visual Studio 2013.”  Oh good.  A link was provided describing how to upgrade the project to MVC 4.  The recommended method is to create a new project and copy all your files to it.  Uh huh.  The manual method involves a lot of steps with changes all over the place.  I guess I’ll have to do that once to see how it goes.

But again, it seems I’m working through these things more often. The software development industry always talks about “iterative, continuous improvements”, well, it seems that life is becoming the same way.

On Community

Posted by on September 25, 2013 1 comment

The big, huge, #1, all-important “thing” right now in online business is “community”.  No matter who you listen to, you will hear that you have to build a community with your customers.  There’s one case where I feel this business dream was present long before it became a “thing” and just as the concept of “community” was gaining traction, they went and blew it all away.  That business is Woot.

Woot has had spectacular growth in its relatively short life.  It started as a deal-a-day website, offering one different product every day until it was sold out.  We’ll call that Woot 1.0.  Then there was the idea that Woot could offer more than one product a day, in multiple  specific categories.  Thus became Woot 2.0.  Then there was the idea that Woot could offer many products in each category for periods longer than a day.  This ushered in Woot 3.0, where it continues today.

Back in the 1.0 days, there was a very active community in the product forums.  You could discuss a product all day.  When 2.0 came along, this community became diluted.  And if it wasn’t diluted, it was stressed in that the members had to participate even more.  They didn’t have to, of course, but they wanted to because the brand was fun and all their friends were there.  When 3.0 landed, there was simply no way to keep up with the sheer amount of products begging for discussion.  And it showed.  Products would go days without any discussion on them.  Maybe due to lack of interest, maybe due to people not finding them or maybe not even bothering to look for them.

This change, while certainly increasing the bottom line of the Woot company – because stuff did still sell – created an environment totally different from past versions.  Imagine walking into a room and there’s a product on a display stand in the middle.  Also in the room are 50 friendly (sometimes sarcastic) people chatting.  All of these people have an opinion about this displayed product and you can listen to them talk about it or you can directly ask anyone about it.  Now, imagine a room with 20 products on display.  Still 50 people, but some are huddled around one or another product.  Your source of feedback is lessened and the credibility of the products and your business suffer.

So that’s the business aspect in favor of remaining small.  You have a group of loyal followers and they’re going to support your choice of product (or limited products) because that’s what you offer.  You’ve made the work easy for them to help support because your product offerings are limited.  As much as it pains me to make the comparison, look at Apple.  They have, what, like 5 products?  Anyone can help you to some degree on those.  On the other end of that comparison, just as painfully, look at Microsoft.  Such a massive selection, it’s so difficult to find any assistance with some obscure product like Small Business Accounting.

But getting back to “community” in Woot, you have to look back to the 1.0 days to find where that community really shined: the Woot-off.  Because you had one site, but the products constantly refreshed after being sold out, you’d have people discussing products all day.  And if the products were slow sellers, the people would stick around and chat about anything else.  It was normal for people to admit their work productivity dropping to zero because of involvement in the Woot-off.  Today, in the current 3.0 incarnation, there is a Woot-off happening on five different sites.  How are you going to possibly keep up on conversations on five different sites?  Why would you want to?  And the effect is very obvious.  Products now turn over much, much more slowly during a Woot-off.

So you have a brand community that is stretched too thin over too diverse a product base.  Could it be made any worse?  Sure.  These changes I described are also creating a strong sense of community apathy.  No one really cares anymore because there’s just too much.  I see some people becoming specialists in one category or another,  and bravo to them.  But you have to wonder if there’s any benefit to being a lone expert.  Where are your peers?  If you leave, then what happens?

There’s another change in Woot that is feeding this apathy – actually two changes.  The first change is the “no dead air” policy Woot seems to have adopted.  If a product sells out too quickly, another product is posted in its place.  This goes against the old policy of “you snooze, you lose”.  Yeah, you still lose out on the earlier offering, but there’s still something for you to buy, so no hurries.  The other change is the recurring items.  When you see Gunnar glasses sold for a week on one site, then sold for the next week on another site, then sold in a woot-off, then back again afterwards.  Or if you see another product on a side sale also appearing in a Woot-off, or like what just happened – a product comes back a second time in a Woot-off, what are you supposed to think?  There’s no shortage of supply, there’s no exclusivity, there’s nothing special about the sale at all.  You are cheapening your offerings.  Call it the Starbucks effect; or the Best Buy effect.  When it’s always available, the desire to have it drops.

So in conclusion, just when other companies are discovering how to rally their customer base and make strong advocates for their brand, Woot has figured out how to lose one of the most valuable company assets it could ever have.  If you’ve lived through Woot 1.0 and 2.0, you can see what you need to do with your business (and what not to do).  If you came in with Woot 3.0, you can only read history of what it was like.