Subway stuff

My allergies have been killing me lately (honestly I had almost forgotten I had them, since it had been so long since I had weather-realted allergies), so I'm in a bit of a fog. Also, my commuting subway lines (the L and the 6) have been having random problems lately, which has caused me to take some routes I normally wouldn't take. Two things I've seen in the subway in the last 24 hours that struck me:
Yesterday afternoon I got sick of waiting for the L train at Union Square, so I figured I'd walk home from there. On my way out I saw this dude singing Ombra mai fu in the original range! I swear to God that guy sounded like a castrato - I've heard plenty of counter-tenors in my life, but that was something entirely different. I was absolutely blown away and disturbed - I wish that I had stayed longer (in my allergy-muddled mind I had the idea in my head that I had somewhere important to go). At least I should have recorded some of it on my phone, because it was absolutely ridiculous (and I mean that in the "awe-inspiring beyond conveyance" sense).

This morning, I walked down to the 14th St subway entrance (which I do if the weather's OK, it beats walking underground), then as soon as I walked in I completely got turned around and started walking back up underground. I walked past four police officers looking at a backpack that had been left on the ground. The backpack looked nice (i.e. almost new, not abused), it was pretty large and obviously full of something, and it was sitting in an area that, honestly, didn't look like a spot where someone would accidentally lose a backpack - it was just sort of in a random spot on the floor of the middle level (between the ground and the rails) of the subway station. So, if I were a cop, all of those things would be red flags for me. If it was, for example, a purse sitting on the bench at the actual subway level where people wait for the train, I wouldn't be as concerned. If it was a beat-to-hell backpack, I might have thought that someone just got tired of their backpack and threw it right there on the floor (and yes, New York is the kind of town where people just randomly decide "I don't want this anymore" and throw it on the ground, as if to commemorate the spot where they made the decision to finally get rid of the thing). However, if we're supposedly at a level of alertness where we randomly search people entering the subway (and yes, this is still going on, although not as often as before), then I would think that a like-new backpack in a random location in the subway would be considered a pretty significant threat. So, what did the police do? The same thing they would have done before all this terror business began - they cautiously opened it up and took a look inside. I noticed, however, that the cop was careful to put on his gloves before he opened the backpack.
I can't say I watched this for a long time, because 1) I didn't want to be noticed by the cops - if I were one of them, I would have been pretty on-edge at that point, and 2) I hate to admit this, but if there was a nasty surprise in the backpack, I didn't want to be too close to it. However, when I reached the end of the station, I realized that I had been going the wrong way and I had to go back. When I passed by the location again, two of the cops had wandered off, and the other two were walking to the exit with the backpack, so I guess there was nothing scary in it.

I find myself wondering if the NYPD's reaction is a good thing or a bad thing - in fact, I've been thinking about it all morning. What does this mean? I can only think of a few possibities:

1. These cops were just dumb and didn't realize that "new backpack, obviously relatively full, in a place where it's unlikely it was just misplaced there" should be some kind of red flag.
   
2. Some precautions were already taken before I happened by the scene - perhaps a dog had been brought in to sniff it, or something like that, although I doubt it (since whatever or whoever had checked it before would probably still be around when they decided to open it).
3. This one scares me - maybe the higher-ups in NYC law enforcement realize that this whole subway thing is no more than security theater, but it keeps people feeling that essential combination of scared and protected that's been so beneficial for everyone. Plus, I'm guessing that the NYPD is really using the subway searches to look for illegal immigrants and folks who just look "suspicious" in general, so maybe it's working for them, as opposed to actually checking for terrorists. Of course, I haven't seen any news or stats about the fruits of the subway searches, so maybe it's not really working out for them.

I dunno - all I know is that it seemed really weird.
Back to the first thing (the guy singing yesterday afternoon) - I'm going to start filming the really cool subway buskers, maybe I'll catch that guy again and get some footage.

Mama visit and service organizations

My mom came and visited us last weekend, it was great to see her again (I saw her a couple of weeks ago for a few hours, but before that it had been quite a while). She and Larry stayed over the weekend and we went and did lots of stuff, mostly walking around and checking out various institutions. Clau tried to get us to go to a gospel service on Sunday morning, but unfortunately I was a big buzzkill and didn't want to leave the apartment so early.
We ended up checking out the Tribeca film festival - we watched a documentary short collection called "Family Legacy" (you can find it here), which was really good. That night we watched Planet B-Boy at the "Tribeca Drive-in", which was also very, very cool. I probably would have rated both of them 4 stars out of 5 on Netflix. We also tried to get into the comedy panel, but since that was about the hottest ticket in the festival, we didn't really stand a chance. But, we tried.
Mama and I talked about part of her work, which is improving service processes. Of course, one thing I'm constantly lamenting about (although not in this particular venue) is how the standard of customer service in the U.S. has gone completely downhill in the name of efficiency and the bottom line. My mother is trying to educate companies on ways that they can improve this and still make money - theoretically, they could actually increase their bottom line, although I'm sure it's a tough sell. Let me just outline a few anecdotes about customer service.

1) Whenever you have a forum or other thread regarding the customer service hell for Dell / HP / whatever, you invariably have an Apple fanboy pop up about how great Apple's service is. I haven't tested this myself (since I haven't had any problems with my Macbook, which is perhaps the best testimony of all), but apparently you can call for support with either a hardware or OS X problem, and the phone is actually answered within 5 minutes by a native English speaker. If you don't live near an Apple store (by virtue of living in Manhattan I happen to live near a 24-hour Apple store, with another on the way in my own neighborhood), they will send you a postage-paid box to send them the item for repair. What's a little sad is that this makes Apple absolutely head-and-shoulders above the rest; IMHO, this ought to be the norm (or at least not quite so far ahead of the norm).

2) About 8 years or so ago, I had a problem with a bill that I had paid online. If memory serves, the receiving party had inadvertently moved the decimal point, so that a $20 payment was registered as a $2 payment. IIRC the payee was AT&T, but don't quote me on that. I checked my bank records and the payee had indeed received $20 from my bank account. So, the first thing I did was call AT&T to see if they had discovered the mistake and corrected it. I must have spent 45 minutes in voicemail, on hold, talking to the AT&T CSR, on hold some more, finally talking to a supervisor, with the end result being that they would look into it after receiving by certified mail a copy of the canceled check. I explained that it was an electronic payment and there likely was no physical check, and they basically told me I was SOL. Worst of all, they made it very clear that they had no intention of investigating the matter further until I came up with some proof. I hung up in disgust, took some deep breaths, and prepared to go through the same thing with Wells Fargo. I talked to the rep, explained what had happened, and gave him the confirmation number for the electronic payment. He immediately responded with "Well, it looks like you paid them $20, so AT&T probably made a mistake." My heart sank for a moment, and then he said "we'll take care of it". He gave me a case number and told me to call back if it wasn't resolved in 5 days. The whole thing took less than 5 minutes. The best part? They actually took care of it - I never had to call them again about the case. And, I'll tell you, even though I don't live anywhere near a Wells Fargo bank anymore, that's still my primary bank account, all because of that one incident. Of course, usually when I tell this story to people, I add the footnote "You know, it's sad that the Wells Fargo story is so exceptional - this sort of experience ought to be the norm."

3) My wife works for a large food company who has outsourced their IT department, and she is constantly lamenting the poor service. The contractor company routinely pulls really, really nasty tricks, most notably closing tickets without actually solving the problem, then opening a fresh ticket when the customer complains. For those of you who can't understand why they do this, the reason is twofold:

• Companies typically have SLA (Service Level Agreements) with the customer, such as "we will fix 90% of your issues within 3 business days and 95% within 10 business days". Since most calls are of the "I forgot my password" variety, this is actually a pretty easy metric to meet. However, if you realize you've screwed up, you can always cheat by closing the ticket prematurely, then opening a new ticket, thus reseting the clock.
• Service companies are paid based on the number of incidents you're logging. It's usually on a "we expect X incidents per month - if that number goes up or down, then we'll adjust the accounting next month", but it could even be on a "you will pay $x per incident" basis. Obviously, having two tickets is better than only having one.

There are many ways to avoid these problems, the most obvious of which is a "pending customer approval" feature in closing the ticket: after the tech closes the ticket, the clock stops pending an approval / rejection from the customer. If the customer rejects the ticket closure, the clock starts up again. This is far from revolutionary; most modern ticketing systems have this feature. At the very least, you should have a customer feedback option for a ticket - this allows the customer to both praise and complain. This is at least an opportunity for the customer to say "you shouldn't have closed this ticket, since you didn't actually do the thing you were supposed to do." It's also an opportunity for excellent CSRs and techies to get their due praise. When I worked for QAD, they had a pretty simple system where three positive comments (or perhaps just one particularly gushing comment) would earn you a "blue dot", complete with a cheesy certificate. Three "blue dot" certificates could be cashed in for a day off, anytime, no questions asked. Most of us actually ended up saving our blue dots and decorating our walls with them, or stacking them somewhere. I think that, deep down, everyone was really proud of their blue dot collection, even if we all acted like they were stupid.
Anyway, to get back to my wife's outsourced IT contractor, they don't even have a way for the customer to enter feedback. So, they basically have license to create their own metrics. And the best part is that whoever signed these jokers up is probably being praised for trimming the cost of IT so efficiently. In the meantime, my wife's issues (most of which are of the "I need this piece of software installed on person X's workstation" or "I need person X added to domain group Y" variety) are usually completed after more than a week, and far too often involve multiple tickets.

Just like everyone else, I can probably rattle at least 3 or 4 hellish customer service experiences that I've had in the last few years. Since I'm pretty handy with most tech things, I'm guessing that I'm on the low end of the spectrum. I can only imagine what life is like for folks who don't know computers / software / whatever very well - it would probably turn me off of ever learning how to use a computer in the first place. Unless, of course, I bought an Apple.

How geeks think

So, the elevator in the building where I work sucks - when you get in on the ground floor and hit the button for your floor, it takes about 30 seconds before the elevator doors shut. I know that's not a long time, but it feels like an eternity when you're standing there waiting for the doors to close.
So, I noticed that when one elevator car is in this process, and another elevator car brings people to the ground floor, the second elevator car will close its doors almost immediately after the folks get out. So, I figured, the programming for the elevator designates the first car as "waiting for folks to get on", and the other cars as "free to roam". This situation actually comes up quite often.
So, after noticing that, the next time the opportunity pops up I jump into the second elevator car right after everyone gets out. Someone else jumps in with me. We both hit our buttons as the doors are closing, and the elevator immediately resets - the doors open, all the lit buttons become un-lit, and then 30 seconds later we're off. Definitely not an improvement.
So, the next time it comes up and I'm alone, I jump in at the last second, wait until the doors close and the elevator starts to move, then hit my button. Success!

I know it sounds stupid to be going through all this trouble just to figure out how to save 30 seconds once in a while, but it's more the challenge of it and the idea of "is there a way to make this experience better / faster / more efficient?". That's how I think all the time, about everything. My wife, thankfully, finds it quirky and charming, but give her a few more years with me and she may change her mind about that.
For you non-geeky people, this is how geeks think about everything - I don't know if it's on account of my work or if this trait makes me suited for tech work, but it seems to be a trait common to most techies. If you can't stand someone like that, don't get involved with a techie...

Tech things everyone should know

OK, so the other day I'm talking with someone at work about a problem w/ some systems. Basically we have a couple of PCs with very large Dell monitors, which for some reason aren't hooked up. I talked more multiple people and the response I kept getting was that the computers didn't have enough power for the monitors, to which my response was always "huh?"
After finally taking a look at the systems themselves, I realized that they only had VGA ports, and the monitors only had DVI inputs. You would not believe how long it took to explain to people about what a video card is, and how we just needed another type of video card to connect to the monitors. The simple concept of a video card seemed to be too much for most of the people I talked to.
In my extensive time working in tech, I've discovered that there's a lot of things that people don't seem to know, and that I have to keep reminding myself is not common knowledge. So, here's a quick list of things that you ought to know if you work with computers in any capacity (not "If you fix computers for a living" - just "if you work with a computer in the course of your regular job, particularly if you work for a tech company").

1) What is an IP address. I'm shocked at how often I'm trying to explain something to somebody and the whole concept is so foreign. An IP address is a unique number that identifies your computer on a network, like a phone number identifies your phone. Is that so hard to memorize or understand?
Extra credit 1: The concept of private vs. public IP addresses, even more credit for knowing the private subnets (at least the popular two).
Extra credit 2: How to determine your IP address on your computer

2) The concept of network storage. Again, if I had a nickel for every time someone told me they put something on their "M drive" with no idea whatsoever of what that means...well, I'd have a lot of nickels. I could understand it back in the mid-90's, but c'mon! The concept has not changed at all since it was introduced a loooong time ago.

3) Viruses and spyware are bad, even if they're not messing up your life too badly. Again, in the "if I had a nickel" department, folks who's computers are just completely infested with crap, so badly that I'm scared to plug my laptop into their network. When I ask them "how long have these porn pop-ups been appearing?" the answer is usually in terms of weeks or months. The fact that you didn't seek help until your system was unusable indicates an underestimation on your part of the seriousness of the infections. Funny how people don't do this with anything else: "Well, the car has been getting slower and slower, now it won't go more than 25mph, but since I can get anywhere I need to by city streets, I'm not really concerned about what might be wrong. Maybe I'll contact a mechanic when it starts topping out at 10mph". And most of this experience is from when I was the I.T. guy at work (i.e. it didn't even cost them anything).

4) You don't have to double-click everything. Yeah, maybe it's obvious to you, but you would be amazed at how often I see people still double-clicking everything, be it a folder, a link in a web browser, or whatever. Lots of times this can really screw things up (for example double-clicking the Submit button in a web form will make it run twice).

5) Know what to look for in a new computer. This one comes up a lot - someone calls me up, since I supposedly know a lot about "computers" and tells me they're thinking about buying a new one - there's an ad in the paper for a computer for $499, and it has a 100GB hard drive - that's a good deal, right? Of course, there are a lot of nuances regarding pricing, but the main things you should be concerned with are CPU type/speed and RAM. Of course, the rankings of "adequate / better / more than you need" are constantly changing, but everyone's got someone they can call and ask about that. And, the most important thing to know is that HARD DRIVES ARE CHEAP! A computer with a 200GB HD is not worth twice as much as one with a 100GB HD. Seems obvious to you? Believe me, it's not to most people. Oh yeah, and one other thing people don't seem to get: in terms of bang for your buck, laptops are a hell of a lot more expensive to buy, prone to break, and expensive to fix, so don't get one unless you really need the mobility.

6) Applications cannot be transfered by copying files. This one doesn't necessarily qualify, since you need to have some basic understanding of files etc. to make this mistake, but a lot of people mistakenly believe that when they buy a new computer, they should be able to just copy their applications from the old computer onto the new one. Unfortunately this almost never works - I don't expect people to understand the registry (least of all because then they'll probably also discover the regedit command and that's game over), but people really ought to know that you can't just copy an application from one machine to another. I do have a lot of forgiveness for this one, though, since the assumption seems pretty logical on the surface, and I don't expect the layman to know about the registry.

I have, of course, left out a lot of other stuff that seems basic to me but I understand is foreign to people who don't work with this stuff on a regular basis. I mean, I get that most people don't want to know any more about their computer than they need to in order to get the job done, but seriously - these are just really basic things that everyone ought to know.

Netflix reviews

You know, I really rather like Netflix - they had a really great and revolutionary (for the time) idea, they pulled together the (very large) amount of money required to get it off the ground, and the whole thing really took off. Most companies would have rested on their laurels, raked in the money while putting forth minimal effort, and ultimately suffered the demise of all the dial-up ISPs. Netflix, however, has been trying to continually improve the experience, and so far I have to say I like all of their features - the way you can interact with friends or search for other folks who have the same tastes as you, the recommendation system (admittedly not great, but they did put up that famous $1M bounty for anyone who can come up with a better one - and turn it over to Netflix). They've created an "online viewing" credit system where you can watch movies streaming over your broadband connection (Windows-only, DRM up the wazoo, but hey at least they're trying).
My only issue, I suppose, is that there doesn't seem to be any way to request a movie. I've got three movies in my "Saved" list (i.e. movies that Netflix doesn't have but you would like to rent): My Dinner with Andre, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Thesis. I don't think that any of these are too esoteric (except maybe Thesis) to warrant having at least one copy around somewhere, right?

Finally, I was surfing Netflix and looking for films I can rent while Clau is out. I saw a preview for The Protector and I figured I would check it out while Clau's out. The review by Stephen Richards sold me on it:

"If you see this film, a lot of your problems will be solved, this I promise you. You will know, after viewing this feature: 1. What your favorite action film is. 2. How to break a person's leg in three places using only the area behind your knee and 3. How to dispatch of four or five wrestlers on steriods using only the bones of an elephant. This film saved my life. Will it do the same for you? The short answer is 'yes'. The long answer is ALSO 'yes'."

Yeah, that guy really liked it.

Diet + gym = misery

OK, so the wife and I have been on a joint-venture diet for a couple of months now, and we're actually doing pretty well, although I feel like we've been slipping a bit over the last week or so. Last week was especially rough for me since I ended up going to a lot of after-hours work functions at which I was offered free beer - and let's face it, I can't turn down free beer. A friend of our was leaving NY and had a party at the Spotted Pig (they have a fantastic burger smothered in Roquefort), Clau had two midterm exams last week and needed some beers to chill out, Sam cooked and invited us over to eat the food (Sam's a really good cook so you can't turn that down), etc etc. You know how it goes - when it rains, it pours.
So, to make myself feel somewhat less guilty, I've gone to the gym slightly more than usual lately (well, going at all is really slightly more than usual for me). Normally I just chug on the elliptical treadmill for 30 minutes or so, since every other type of cardio is a bit hard on my knees (they really started to give me trouble in my mid-20's - all that basketball in my youth probably messed them up good). I decided yesterday that I should try the 30-minute abdominals group class, figuring I'd maybe speed up the shrinking of my beer gut, and I could get about 20 minutes of cardio afterward.
Oh man, was that ever a bad judgement call. After the ab class I basically stumbled home, with only the thought of not passing out or puking on the sidewalk, and I just wanted to make it into (and out of) the shower before every muscle in my midsection and back locked up and prevented me from moving again. I actually felt better after the shower and was able to function, but today I have aches in places where I wasn't even aware I had muscles. I don't know how I'll convince myself to ever do that again.
The funny thing about exercise, diet, etc is that it's all so damn hard in the beginning. I'm sure that if I stick with the ab classes (although just the thought makes everything hurt even more), I'll end up getting through it and even enjoying it, and I'll wonder what I thought was so hard about it in the first place. Dieting is the same way; you feel so damn hungry all the time, but after a couple of weeks it just feels normal, and eating something you used to have no problem with (like a big-ass burger and fries) makes you feel sort of queasy. So, I think I'm going to try to tough it out, maybe I can have a nice flat stomach for swimsuit season (truthfully, I'd be content to just not be embarrassed on the beach). Today, however, I'll be proud of myself if I can just get back on that elliptical machine for 20 minutes and not spend the evening playing video games instead.
Overall, the diet's been a really positive experience. Both Clau and I have lost somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of our original body weight, and we're both feeling a lot better in general. She's going to be on a business trip for the next couple of weeks, hopefully she'll be able to stick to it (although I certainly won't blame her if she can't), and I'm going to try to work out every day, since I won't be sacrificing any time spent with her. Hopefully she can come home to a man who's in considerably better shape than I am now. But more likely is that I'll just end up hanging around and watching TV. Hey, at least I know myself.

Thinking of Sam and Matt

Sam and Matt had to race to London for a family medical emergency, so we haven't talked to them in a little bit, although we're certainly thinking about them. In the meantime, stuff with Matt is popping up everywhere.
We went out to dinner w/ them last weekend and Matt told us about this insane dream that he had - he wrote out the story on his blog and I gotta say it's freaky. Sam said that she woke up at the same time as him, he told her about the dream, and then she couldn't get back to sleep because it freaked her out so much. So, check it out - it's bizarre.
Also, Matt turned me on to the best of bootie last year - I was never into mash-ups but I thought it was really cool. And now the Best of Bootie 2006 is available. I'm listening to it and I'm totally digging it.
This weekend will be all about errands - we bought a storage space in our apartment so we'll be moving all of our crap out of Chelsea Mini-Storage and putting it in our new unit, plus some other errands. If there's time I really want to go to the Robert Mueck exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, hopefully we can go to that and maybe even see the Botanical Gardens while we're there...

I gots me a Mac

About a week ago, we went with Anderson and Andrea to help them get a new laptop - Andrea settled on a MacBook, and I could only sit there and drool over the shiny computer. Clau made me a deal: if I got rid of all the computer gear lying around the house, she would get one for me.
As luck would have it, there was a massive electronics recycling drive yesterday at Union Square. We enlisted Anderson and Andrea to help out and ended up taking two desktops, five laptops, and two suitcases full of various parts to the recycling drive. And, as a reward, I got my own MacBook. It's soooo pretty. I can't wait to get home and play with it some more - I'll post more about it as I learn more.

Happy 2007!

Well, as a reward for getting the Professional side of search out on time, our reward is to scramble to get the Consumer side out this week. This is actually much more of a burden on other folks than it is on me, since I worked pretty hard on getting it out last week, and as far as I can tell it's just finishing touches. Of course, as everyone in tech knows, the last 5% of the work can often take a disproportionately large amount of time - part of being an experienced pro is recognizing that the "polishing up" can sometimes take nearly as long as the core of the application.
The NYE party was a big success - Sam and Matt brought Matt and Lily over, Ted and Katie came over as well and a good time was had by all. The Brooklyn crowd brought lots of beer, Prosecco, wine, and muchies; Ted and Katie brought hard liquor and killer bean dip. Clau and I provided the camarao com catupiri and the midnight champagne (Veuve Cliquot and Tattinger). When Clau and I cleaned up the next morning, all the wine and champagne had been drunk, as well as the majority of the liquor, so I think everyone enjoyed themselves. The only drag is that Matt lost his awesome phone and now he has to go through insurance to get another one.

End of the Year

Had Neil over here for the week before Xmas, it was so good to see him but I barely got to spend any time with him due to work overload. Due to my improper time management he almost missed his plane home (I'm guessing his bag took a different flight), but at least I managed to get him on the plane. Ted took him around for a day, so Clau and I are taking him and Katie out for dinner tonight. Incidentally, we still owe Sam and Matt a dinner for Sam's referral money.
Apparantly we're hosting a NYE party on Sunday - I actually like that, although anyone who wants to get back from our place is going to have a rough time getting a cab.
Recruiter stuff has died down, which works out well for me since I've been so busy lately and wouldn't have had any time for interviewing.
Worked some really insane hours for the last few weeks in an effort to get a new search platform out the door in 2006. I'm actually pretty surprised that we pulled it off.
Lately I'm so tired, all I want to do is sleep for about 16 hours. So, most likely there will not be any cool insights from me coming up until 2007.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Company_A Happenings

I guess that in some other posts I've been saying "there's lots happening at Company_A and I'll write about it soon", but I haven't really updated. So, let's get into it:
1) Company_A has been working on a very large project. I don't want to get into what it is (not sure if I can legally get into it), but suffice it to say that it involves some very expensive products, a large team of consultants, and just about everybody in the tech area of the organization from both sides of the house (consumer-oriented and professional-oriented). The consumer side of the house has taken a serious beating for the last six months or so, with a few people having absolutely lost any hope they might have had of a life outside of work. Fortunately, this doesn't include me at the moment, but my day in the barrel is coming.
2) Two people from my group have left - this is out of a group that's only made up of seven people. I can guarantee that at least one more will be leaving within a month.
3) Most of the senior developers have left.

Right now I wouldn't call it a sinking ship - I'd more call it a revolving door. There's people coming and going at a high rate, and for every person that leaves, there's another one coming in before the first fellow's seat has gone cold.

As a result of the people in my group leaving, I now have many more projects than before. Naturally, I have to play catch-up with all of them, since I'm going into mostly unfamiliar territory with most of them. I will probably be very unhappy with the workload in a few weeks, but to be honest it feels good to just be doing something in the Linux world; I've spent the last few months focusing on a video project that's all Windows-based, and mostly it's been pretty dull with a lot of drudgery. I had one good opportunity to learn some Windows scripting, but it came at a bad time (I didn't really have any time to commit to it), so I cheated and installed Cygwin, then wrote a bash script to deal with it.

I could write a long list of gripes about Company_A (you know I could do that, since I'm such a big fan of gripe lists), but suffice it to say that I'm not happy and I don't see that changing in the future. Actually, it's more like the relationship I had before I met Clau - I liked her, there was nothing wrong with her per se, and I could see myself being with her for another five years, but I knew she wasn't right for me. It broke my heart to break up with her, but I knew it was the right thing to do. I'm not unhappy with Company_A, but it's not (and never was) the right place for me, and it's time to do the right thing. Two days ago I bit the bullet and called my recruiter. I spent yesterday fixing up my resume - from what I wrote about it, you would think I've been having a blast at Company_A; my list of completed projects looks varied and impressive. For the next gig, I'm going to either go with "big fish in a little pond" or "little fish in a big pond". There are benefits to both - big fish allows me to move my skills in some different directions, whereas little fish allows me to hone my craft and eventually work towards "big fish in a big pond".

So, those are the big developments in my working life. Personal life is basically the same as it was - the big news is that Clau and I are going to the Bay Area for our annual visit and my grandmother's famous Xmas party - Clau's brother is also in the Bay Area, so now we have even more folks that we have to divide our attentions among. I'm very much looking forward to finally meeting my little sister, and I'm also going to get to see Adrian that weekend (who I haven't seen since last Thanksgiving in Missouri). After that, we're taking the redeye on Sunday night back to NY, and Neil is coming with us and staying for the week - we really have to look up some stuff for him to do (and make sure he brings appropriate clothing - it's getting really cold).

Hopefully I'll have another update before the holidays...

Fish on Thanksgiving

Clau and I went to Aruba for the Thanksgiving week - it was a good way to get some time to ourselves with a limited number of vacation days. I don't think we'll be going back there - it has the advantage of being (relatively) nearby and environmentally unspoiled, but other than that the whole damn island feels like one big tourist trap. I'm guessing that the population when we were there was probably equal parts tourists and locals (and probably swings to the tourist side during the winter months). Overall I did get what I wanted: beach, tropical drinks, a little time to get reacquainted with my wife, etc. However, there were many things that I didn't like and why I wouldn't recommend Aruba to my friends. In my usual fashion, I've compiled a list of gripes:

• Every hotel and some of the restaurants automatically add a "service charge" to the bill. In hotels, this charge gets tacked onto _everything_, from the restaurant to the spa to the coffee cart in the lobby. Unprovoked, they will go to great lengths to explain to you that it's not a gratuity. It really started to piss us off after awhile. After that experience, I understand how Clau feels about taxes in restaurants in the U.S. (in Brazil, taxes are included in the menu price, so end up spending what you think you'll be spending). Of course, the "service charge" is even worse - you could make an argument either way on including the tax in the price, but it's something that the restaurant has to pay to the government no matter what - it's just a matter of factoring it into the listed price or not; what these hotels are doing is setting a price, then asking for 15% more on top of that price for no apparent reason, then expecting a tip on top of it. I should also mention that the prices are roughly equivalent to NYC (although the quality is generally sub-NY).
• Everything is geared towards Americans. Perhaps this seems like an odd gripe, but when I go to another country, I like to feel like I'm actually in another country. The fact that every transaction takes place in English with prices in dollars takes away from some of that charm - especially when the prices are just as expensive as home.
• It's way too difficult to find good fish. This place is an island with lots of local fish, yet nobody seems interested in serving it. Of course, that's partly due to the last point; Americans don't generally like fresh fish (you can argue with me on that one, but most common ingredient on every menu was beef, and it probably wasn't because it's easier or cheaper to get in Aruba than fish). We tried to eat fish the whole time, and 50% of the time it was a disappointment.
• Although there seems to be very low unemployment in Aruba, almost everyone is employed by something for tourists (i.e. in a hotel or restaurant). In other words, their entire economy seems to involve other people coming to the island and spending money, as opposed to generating their own money and goods. There are very few (if any) aspiring entrepreneurs or small business owners there. As a result, nobody seemed to have any money of their own. One of the many consequences of no local businesses is that we didn't find any "local" restaurants (and we looked!). I was hoping to find a hole in the wall with the smell of seafood and the sound of families speaking Papiamento coming out - as far as I can tell that place doesn't exist, or else it's extremely well hidden from the gringos.
• The Radisson (where we stayed) was extremely structured; you had to sign up for everything, and the times were pretty limited. Breakfast is from 7-10:30, lunch is from 12-2, etc. Not that the food in the restaurant was terribly good anyway. Clau started referring to it as "camp". Oddly enough the best breakfast we had was on our last day - we ordered room service, got a ton of food, it was better than the food we had in the restaurant (although it was probably the same kitchen, so maybe we just got lucky) and cheaper as well. Go figure.
• The Radisson also screwed up our bill. We knew we had booked some kind of special or discount, but we didn't bring the reservation paper with us (hey, we were on vacation!). When we got the bill slipped under the door the night before checkout, there were some charges on it that we knew we hadn't made, and there was no discount of any kind. We went and asked the front desk about it that night (it was admittedly 11pm or so) and they said that they would have to leave a note for the accounting department. The nice man at the front desk wrote down our request on the bill and put the bill in the accounting department's inbox. We decided to follow up early the next morning before breakfast, and - surprise! - the note had magically disappeared overnight and nobody professed to know anything about it. The woman working at the front desk said that it would take about an hour for the accounting department to put together our receipts. I wanted to go back to the room and have some breakfast, but Clau pointed out that the front area would soon be packed with people checking out, and if we didn't stand over them and watch then the "accounting" simply wouldn't get done until it was too late (and really, shouldn't all the receipts for a given room already be together, if for no other reason than to assuage guests who fear they may have been wrongfully charged?). I sighed and admitted that she was probably right. So, we waited for an hour an a half, until finally we were presented with the reciepts. Sure enough, two of them were obviously not ours (names and signatures didn't match, although the room number did). The "accountant" (actually the same woman who was working the front desk) removed the fraudulent charges from our bill, and upon request discovered that we had in fact booked a $100 discount (which, as my father says, had been "conveniently forgotten"), and took that off. All in all, the bill went down about $200, and all it cost was our last three hours of vacation.

Of course, there are some good points:

• Very safe - I've spent a lot of my time in Brazil looking over my shoulder. Aruba is an extremely safe place. Hell, there was one mysterious disappearance and it made headlines for weeks.
• Unspoiled beaches. Turquise water and white sand everywhere. Absolutely gorgeous. Even better if you put blinders on and ignore all the fat, loud, pasty people around you (I don't fall into this demographic because I'm not loud).
• Beautiful weather - damn hot, but it's always windy so it doesn't feel crazy hot. Bring sunscreen if you're a paleface like me.
  
• Fresh fish - if you can find it.
• Really good drinking water. All of it comes from a desalination plant, which means that it's basically seawater that's turned into steam, re condensed, then filtered. Very, very clean.
  
• Balashi beer - local beer from Aruba, made with the same water. Surprisingly good (and I'm a beer snob).
• Casinos - if that's your thing. Of course, it's nothing like Vegas, but the blackjack's pretty good - $5 minimums and nobody seemed to give a shit about me counting cards (of course, that could also be because I lost anyway).
• Friendly locals, most of whom speak English. The few who didn't speak English spoke Spanish (and my guess is that they're generally immigrants from Venezuela or Ecuador), so we were never unable to communicate. Everyone who you need to interact with (cab drivers, waiters, etc) speaks English.
• Although the Radisson definitely wasn't worth it, the Spa is very, very good. Clau and I got massages and it really felt like a first-class kind of Spa (or course, it also wasn't cheap - more than $200 for a "couple's massage", but it's the only thing in the Radisson that's really worth the money).
  

So, overall, it was just what we wanted but there's a myriad of reasons why we won't go back.
Lots going on at Company_A, I'll write all about that soon.