Travel plans

We've been trying to work out travel plans for a little while and I think we're finally set. We're heading to Zurich this weekend for Fabienne's wedding - it's just a quick trip, leaving Thursday evening and coming back on Monday afternoon. Still, I'm looking forward to the wedding, and at least there should be good chocolate. Too bad the dollar is doing so poorly now, since it means I'll be paying a lot more this time around than the last.
We've been debating what to do for Thanksgiving - last year we went to Aruba, and we've decided to follow in that same vein this year - having two free days and employers that will generally give you a freebie day or two for TG is just too good an opportunity for vacation to pass up.
So, this year, we're heading to Grand Turk island in the Turks and Caicos - the island is 6 square miles and it's reputed to have fantastic diving (and not much else). It's also considerably less expensive than we initially thought it would be - overall it's probably gonna run about three grand for a week of diving and beach solitude, which is about standard for a week-long vacation these days. We wanted to drag Sam and Matt with us, but they're trying to save up for an apartment so they'll probably be responsible and stay in NYC. Claudia is jumping up and down in anticipation and I'm getting pretty excited, too.
For Christmas / New Year's we'll be in Brazil - it's been at least two years since we were there for the holidays and we're definitely due to spend them with her family (I can't for the life of me remember what we did last Xmas - I think we stayed in NYC but it's all blurry - hey, I suppose I can check my blog later and find out!). We'll be in Rio / SP for Xmas, then head up to Joao Pessoa for the New Years - another break of nothing but beach and beer - man, life is good!

--Nate

I have seen the light! Now what?

Well, the big project finally finished. In the interest of not drawing any attention to myself or the company for which I work, I won't get into details. Suffice it to say that I worked harder than I ever have in my life, and if not for the fact that I barely got to see my wife, or the beautiful NYC summer, I would have loved it. As it is, I enjoyed it.
So now what? We've basically gotten everything out the door and we're going through some validation. I will probably go to LA sometime later in the month to do a formal handoff of the SysAdmin duties and say goodbye to all the people I've met and worked with, and after that I'm pretty much done w/ it. I'm also assisting another team with another thing, but that's more of a 40-50% time job, so overall life is looking pretty good.
I had a meeting with HR yesterday, and they said they'll be presenting me with a few options in a week or so. We'll see what the future holds!

--Nate

rude people and life lately

This morning was like almost every other morning - I hit the snooze button on my alarm for about an hour (when will I learn? Either wake up or set your alarm for an hour later - sleeping in a 9-minute cycle benefits nobody!), showered, got on the subway, and went to the Starbucks for my wakeup. The Starbucks right by my work is pretty good - they know their client base is working fools like me who need a wakeup and not hipsters who want to hang out, so it's efficient. Even so, the line can sometimes get really long, and as an additional speedup measure they will occasionally ask you what you want while you're still about 6 people away from the register - they get started on the drink, you pay, you pick up the drink, you leave - everyone's happy.
So, this morning was busy - I'm still waking up, I've got my mp3 player going full blast and I'm reaching for it to turn it off. I see a Starbucks employee talk to a woman, then she casually wanders off to the pickup area (in the opposite direction from the registers).
I thought to myself "did she just do what I thought she just did?" Meaning, did she just ask for her drink, then walk to pick it up without paying for it? She was really attractive and very well dressed - she didn't look like she couldn't afford a cup of coffee. I really wanted to yell at her and make a scene, but I just wasn't _completely_ sure that she had just done what I thought she had done. She picked up her coffee drink and walked off like nothing was the matter.
I suppose that some people would have made a scene anyway - after all, I'm pretty sure, just not 100% sure. Maybe I would have under different circumstances, but two times in recent memory, someone has made a scene about my doing something that I didn't do (and I'm not counting the American Airlines horror story). A few months ago at the gym a woman misinterpreted the timer on my cardio machine and told me I had to get off - I told her I'd get off when my time was up and then her boyfriend started yelling at me. I quickly told him my time was up and ignored him afterwardf - he kept yelling until the woman next to me started screaming at him about she had only been there twenty minutes and I started after her, and eventually the guy shut up.
Recently at the Oakland airport, I was in line for the security check - at some point the line forked into two lines (to show boarding pass and ID, not for the X-ray machine), with one line having about 10 people in it and the other one empty. I opted for the empty line, and later on a woman tapped me and started yelling about how rude I was to cut in front of people. Her husband (or whatever he was) spent the entire time apologizing for her. Boy, did I feel for that guy, but I don't know how he hasn't learned the important lesson by now: when your S.O. makes a scene, you always have her back, even when she's wrong.
But I digress - the point being that I won't make a scene unless I'm 100% sure that the person has done wrong, and I wasn't 100% sure. But you can bet that if I see that woman at Starbuck's again I'll be watching her like a hawk.

So, news in our lives - I've been working like crazy but the light is there at the end of the tunnel. Clau's been traveling for her job a lot, and unfortunately her travel started right after mine finished, so we haven't been able to spend much time together. She just got back from Memphis last Thursday and had her impacted wisdom tooth taken out on Friday, so we spent the entire weekend being painfully bored in the apartment. Last weekend also happened to be the first really beautiful weekend weather-wise in a long time, and we were shuttered in the apartment. Hopefully she'll be up and running by next weekend and we can have some fun.

In work news, I've been poking at a whole bunch of things - my bosses recently put me on a task to take a tab-delimited text file, a csv, and a series of XML files and do some tasks with the information therein. Obviously this is a job for Perl, and it pains me how much my skills have deteriorated. I was never a l33t Perl hacker but my current lack of ability makes me sad. Hopefully this task will sharpen me up a bit.
Also, the new company I've been helping out will soon have a name - I can't say I'm crazy about it, but in the words of the folks who gave me the name "it grows on you". It has yet to grow on me but time will tell. Soon enough I'll be able to talk about what I'm working on, which will also be nice...

--Nate

Books

It's been a good week for books - read the last Harry Potter book, and I have pretty much the same opinion as everyone else - I really liked it but I thought the ending was a cop-out.
Just finished a book called the Kite Runner last night. That is one fucked-up story, but it's beautifully written; I'm really looking forward to reading his next one.
Work is, as usual, very busy, but I can see the light at the far end of the tunnel...

The vi editor

Matt's getting into using the vi editor and it got me reminiscing. Honestly it's my unix editor of choice. Back in the good old days of QAD I had to work on every mainstream Unix flavor, and vi was the one editor that would be installed on all of them. Even now that I only tend to work on Linux it remains my editor of choice. And I have confidence that if I ever have to dig into an ancient HP-UX system I'll know exactly how to edit stuff. It's also handy if you have to work on a very strange keyboard, since you can do everything with only the a-z keys (plus escape).
Besides being ubiuitous, vi is so feature-packed that I doubt that any single person knows every single feature. I'm still learning stuff by watching colleagues - they'll do something cool and then I'll ask "whoa - how did you do that?'. A couple of fun examples:
1) substitution - just like sed - something like ':s/foo/bar' will replace the first instance of 'foo' on the current line with 'bar'. ':/foo/bar/g' will replace all instances on the current line, and ':%s/foo/bar/g' will replace within the whole file.
2) You can break into a shell w/ vi and do cool stuff with it - so for example if you are writing a message and want to give your network info, just do ':r !ifconfig' or ':r !ipconfig' if you're in windows. Voila, the output appears. Awesome. Note: the shell ability is just one reason why vi should _not_ be a sudo command - it's far too powerful in the wrong hands.
3) The period - repeats the last thing you did. Handy if I'm commenting two or three lines.
4) All kinds of little features - for example, the tilde will change the case of the highlighted character from upper to lower and vice-versa. Handy if you realize you mistyped the variable or were typing head-down with the caps lock on.

I've been using the vi editor for about 10 years now (wow!) and I'm still basically using the same functionality it's had the whole time - I'm not even getting into anything fancy yet, and at this rate I never will.

--Nate

Huzzah! (almost)

The new CEO of Company_C (the child company of my employer and a similar company) made some major org changes - the good news is that:
1) My scope of official responsibility has shrunk dramatically, and
2) I get to go back to NYC!

I had already made plans to visit my folks this weekend so I'm going to carry through with it, plus I'd like to see the data center project done before I go. But, as soon as the D.C. is finished, I'm getting on the next plane home. Clau and I are very happy.

Building the D.C. has been incredibly hard, stressful, confusing, and awesome. Yesterday was about the most fun I've had since I joined Company_B; it was an absolute nuthouse and I felt like a general (well, maybe a colonel) giving orders and making the whole thing go smoothly. I wouldn't necessarily want to do it again but it's been a blast - if I hadn't had all kinds of other stuff bogging me down then I probably would have loved it.
However, it's like a lot of other things - doing it once was a fantastic experience, but I wouldn't want to make a career out of it. Fortunately the guy who was heading up the D.C. part is about the best hardware / D.C. guy I've ever seen - if I was a colonel, then he was the general. Furthermore, even he was impressed with what we've accomplished in a very short time.

So, overall that's good news - got the D.C. hoisted, and I get to go home when it's done (and catch up on the work for my new role in the project). However, since my workload will probably shrink to a more manageable level, I might actually get to enjoy the rest of the summer. Callooh! Callay!

No time!

Wow life is busy right now. In LA last week, spent the weekend in NYC, back in LA today, off to Oakland to visit the family next weekend, then back to LA, then back to NYC, then maybe back to LA - but hopefully not.
The snowball is definitely picking up speed - I shudder to think of what life will be like in a month...

--Nate

The hammer has dropped

Oh my sweet lord am I busy. I'm so wiped out that I can't even focus anymore. There's an endless stream of crap that's gotta get done, a hard immovable launch date, and bosses all the way to the top with no sympathy for my wanting to have a life (at least not for the next few months). Ill probably end up spending 50% of the next few months in L.A. until it's done, and the amount of crap to crank out is just getting ridiculous. Thankfully everyone's really sharp and assiduous, so at least I'm definitely not carrying all the weight - if anything I'm pulling everyone else down - definitely a different feeling for me.
I heard that one of my old coworkers from Company_A is leaving. I'm happy for him that he's moving along in the world, but I feel bad for Company_A. In retrospect they weren't all _that_ bad, and the only thing that was really reprehensible was making me pick up and finish the search project while my little brother was in town.
So, unless I win the lottery, I'm going to be a slave for the next couple of months. After we launch in late Sept I'll be able to have a life again.
Incidentally, it's all JetBlue from now on. Although theoretically with the amount of cross-country flying I'll be doing, I could end up with an impressive number of American miles...but it's not worth it.

Cozumel write-up and my new old addiction

I was doing so good - I was on the wagon for about 4 years, but I saw the Starcraft 2 demo and something inside me just snapped. I've now commandeered my wife's laptop and I've been playing SC in bed until the wee hours after she goes to sleep. I have to go to a party for work tonight and I'm trying to think of ways to tastefully blow it off so I can have more Starcraft time. I need help.
That's why I never even installed W.O.W. I know my weakness and I'd rather have a life.
Incidentally, the Cozumel trip was awesome - we went diving most days and one night. I can really see the appeal. We saw corals, tons of cool tropical fish, big sea turtles, eels, giant lobsters and crabs (the crabs gave me the heebie-jeebies - man they were big!), and photoplankton that lights up when you agitate it (so cool!). I thought I would have problems w/ my sinuses but everything was hunky-dory the whole time. We found some good spots for fresh fish and consumed a ton of alcohol. On the day of our night dive we rented scooters and drove around the island. Claudia's determined to move there and open a tequila bar. As my dad said, "I can't image a more fun way to go broke than opening a tequila bar in Mexico."
We also had a great time w/ Sam and Matt. They're a pleasure to travel with - when they're sick of us or want time by themselves, they just say so - Clau and I are happy to go it alone as well, so nobody's feelings get hurt and we don't get too sick of each other. There was a lot of pool and beach time with booze - I complained way too much about the AA experience (it's out of my system now, especially after reading this), but overall I think we all had a great time. Plus Claudia speaks Spanish so we didn't get too lost or screwed.
Work is very busy - I'll give details when I can. Suffice it to say, however, that things went from a standstill to full throttle very quickly, so don't be offended if I'm not corresponding much.

AA final reply

Got the final reply from American Airlines - another form letter. However, to their credit, this time I got the "we're so sorry that you were unhappy with our customer service and we'll try to do better next time" form letter as opposed to the "bad weather is a damn shame and you're SOL" form letter. I'll spare everyone the posting of it.
Apparantly, there's no form letter for "we're sorry our system / personnel screwed up your reservation", so that has still yet to be mentioned, even in passing. My guess is that they think I'm lying. Oh well, fuck 'em.
I've officially given up. American is no longer my preferred airline, it's now just another option when JetBlue isn't available. Now I just need to figure out how to reduce my need to fly around and I'll be set.

--Nate

Cute + funny

I find lolcats to be a guilty pleasure. What creeps me out a little is how it seems to be popular among the geeks, even going so far as to inspire the lolcode and various interpreters.

This image amused me much, found it at icanhascheezburger.com. Again, the high number of ratings on it surprised me, since the joke's pretty geeky...



--Nate

Giving it one last shot

I discussed this ad nauseum with Matt and Sam in Cozumel (more about that later!), Matt suggested I take a slightly different tactic for my next reply, if I chose to do so. I'm giving it one more shot, really just because I want to see if a human is going to read it.
Incidentally, we flew AA to Cozumel, and to be honest it wasn't that great. They're kinda going the same direction as everyone else (i.e. downward), and since JetBlue has recently added JFK to Burbank flights, I'll probably go that direction until JB burns me, too. After which I will probably refuse to fly until the anger wears off.
Anyway, here's the final installment. Incidentally, my dad said he would bet me $100 that my reply will in fact include the phrase "bad weather". Since I am not a fool, I did not take the bet.

I've already filed a complaint about this, which was assigned file number I2007/06-02104-00008-001. The response I received indicated a bit of a misunderstanding. I will write this one clarification and then I will leave this issue alone:
My complaint was unrelated to my flight being canceled on account of bad weather. I understand that you do not control the weather, nor is it your responsibility to "make it up" to customers inconvenienced by bad weather. In the event of bad weather, I agree with the decision to delay or cancel flights in the interest of safety, inconvenient though it may be for everyone. My complaint is with my receiving a confirmation on another flight, then, due to a glitch or human error (by the phone representative's own admission), losing my booking on that flight. My complaint is also with the poor treatment I received from your ticketing agent and particularly the supervisor, Stephanie Mateus, at the SFO check-in counter. I also wished to praise the AA phone reservation agents with whom I spoke. Assuming that your system has any log of my calls to them, please pass my gratitude on to them.
If you do deign to reply to this, please do not include the phrase "bad weather"; we are all in agreement as to AA's responsibilities WRT bad weather.
Again, you can read the whole, unadulterated story at http://staunchtech.blogspot.com/2007/06/customer-relations-letter-to-american.html if anything is unclear.

Sincerely,
Nate XXXXXXX

AA responds!

Can you feel the love? More importantly, can you tell what's wrong with the response?

June 8, 2007

Dear Mr. XXXXXXX:

Thank you for contacting American Airlines Customer Relations.

You trusted us with your valuable time on June 1 and you were understandably
disappointed when we didn't get you to New York as planned. There's clearly nothing
more frustrating for everyone -- customers and employees alike -- than having to
endure the difficulties associated with air travel when bad weather impacts our
flights. From the details you provided, it certainly sounds as if the circumstances
surrounding your flight were made even more frustrating by the lack of assistance you
received.

When bad weather happens, in the interest of safety, we don't have too many options to
get you to where you are going as planned. What we can do, however, is display a
friendly attitude to help make the situation a little less trying and I'm sorry we
didn't do so on this occasion. At the same time, we are glad that you took the time
to share the details of your experience. Your comments enable us to see things from
our customers' perspective and help us to improve.

Bad weather is not something we can overcome and the direct impact on our flight
schedules is unavoidable. Accordingly, it is not our policy to reimburse our
customers' out-of-pocket expenses, make up for lost time, or offer compensation when
we don't operate our flights as planned. I am sorry. Nevertheless, you have my
assurance that we will continue to focus on the on time departure of our flights and
our customer service standards.

Mr. Aiman Smith, we are eager for another chance to serve you -- we will do our very
best to get you to your destination as scheduled and provide you with the kind of
service you deserve.

This is an "outgoing only" email address. If you 'reply' to this message by simply
selecting the reply button, we will not receive your additional comments. Please
assist us in providing you with a timely response to any feedback you have for us by
always sending us your email messages via AA.com at
http://www.aa.com/customerrelations.

Sincerely,

Robin M. Smith
Customer Relations
American Airlines

Customer relations letter to American Airlines

Since the AA customer relations form only accepts a limited number of characters, I figured I'd put the whole complaint here. Spread the word.

Dear sir or madam,
First off, let me apologize if this narrative is overly detailed. I want to make sure I don't miss anything. I wrote the bulk of this letter in the Atlanta airport while the incident was still fresh in my mind.
I live in New York, and I had to go to a California on business during the week of May 28-June 1. Unfortunately, June 1 is my fifth wedding anniversary, and my presence was required in San Francisco to present at a conference. My wife was understandably unhappy about it, but I promised her that I would be there when she woke up the next morning, and we could celebrate the day after our anniversary. I booked flight AA 18 for May 31. My flights into and within California were fine, and I worked like crazy for that week with almost no sleep.
On the night of May 31, I received a telephone call from an AA rep informing me that due to a weather warning in New York, my flight had been cancelled. She offered to book me on the 8am flight from SFO. I explained the anniversary situation and begged her to find me a way to get home the next morning, and after a lot of searching around (she was very helpful) she booked me on flight AA 150 to Boston (it was already delayed and scheduled to depart at midnight), and then another flight from Boston to LaGuardia. I wasn’t happy, but there was nothing I could do, and at least American had taken the initiative to have a real live agent call me, rather than letting me discover for myself at the airport that the flight had been cancelled. I went out for a final dinner and drinks with some coworkers to celebrate a job well done. The service in the restaurant was so poor that after an hour in the restaurant we still had no food, so my dinner ended up being two cocktails. Lack of food, lack of sleep, and two drinks made for a very tired customer stumbling into SFO. I arrived at about 10pm (we planned for traffic and there was none), and figured that since I had two hours and no checked baggage, I could at least eat something in the airport.
Now, here’s where the tale goes downhill. I checked in at the self-service kiosk, and as I was leaving to meet a coworker for a quick bite at the Delta terminal, I noticed that my boarding pass was for AA 16 the next day, arriving at about 8pm. Uh-oh.
I called the AA reservations number and gave the agent my AAdvantage number. She looked it up and told me that I was in fact confirmed for AA 150 to Boston that night, and was just as confused as I was. After some more checking, she found an anomaly in which my name in the reservation was appearing as a completely different name (but with my AAdvantage number). She told me that, sadly, I would have to wait in the line to talk to an AA agent, and she advised me that if the agent at the counter was unable to help, I should request to speak with the manager on duty. Unfortunately, she said, there was nothing that she could do, but since it was obviously an error on AA’s part, the agent at the counter would be extra motivated to help me out.
The line was quite long and it took about 30-40 minutes to finally speak with an agent. I started explaining my dilemma, and he told me that I was booked on flight AA16 (the direct flight the next day), and that there was no record of any calls, conversations, or reservations made after my original flight had been cancelled. Per the very nice phone agent’s instructions, I asked to speak with the manager on duty.
The acting manager came over (her name was Stephanie Mateus) and confirmed the agent’s story. I asked if there was another place where she might find records of my confirmation on flight AA 150, and she said that there was no indication in the system that I had ever called or that any reservations had been made, although she said she believed my story. She said that there were a lot of people who were displaced by the cancellation, there were only three flights of any destination left that night out of SFO, and I could try to go standby on any of them, but my odds were pretty low given the situation. I begged, I pleaded, she said that every seat was taken on every flight and then some. She said I simply had no other options and there was nothing she could do. Remembering that my coworker’s flight was still active, I asked if she could get me on the Delta flight to New York. The ticket agent called Delta and the New York flight was full, but Delta still had ample room on an upcoming flight to Atlanta. The agent got me on the flight to Atlanta and then a seat on flight AA 2370. It was almost three hours in Atlanta, but it was certainly better than the previously offered alternatives.
I thanked the agent and the manager and the agent printed my receipt to show at the Delta counter, along with a boarding pass for flight AA 2370. Considering how tired I was, I didn’t even want to imagine how I was going to feel when I finally arrived in New York. It occurred to me to ask Stephanie for an upgrade on flight AA 2370, in hopes that I might be able to actually get an hour or two of sleep (I’m a relatively tall guy, and sleeping in economy class is near-impossible). She said that the cancellation of the flight was due to weather, and AA’s policy was to not give upgrades for weather-related incidents. I pointed out the extra trouble I had with my disappearing confirmation for flight AA 150, and she repeated that there was no record of that (translation: as far as she’s concerned, it didn’t happen). At this point I got exasperated and said “just so we’re clear, by ‘it’s not our policy’, do you mean that you cannot do it, or that you – Stephanie – are refusing to do it?’? After a lot of “it’s the policy”, she said “yes, I could upgrade you, but I’m not going to, because then we would have to do it for everyone”. I said “fine”, not in a nice tone, and the agent (who up to that point had been pretty nice, considering) said in a raised voice (so everyone could hear) “a flight was canceled! There are more than a hundred people in the same boat as you! If we gave you an upgrade, we’d have to give one to everyone! We’ve done all we can for you!”
Personally, I disagree with that statement, since I doubt that all passengers rescheduled and confirmed seats on flight AA 150 to Boston, only to have the confirmation disappear. However, it wasn’t worth arguing for the upgrade.
Truthfully, it wasn’t about the upgrade. I wanted to feel like somebody cared. I know that bad weather happens, but the whole situation with my disappearing flight confirmation (coupled with the implication by Stephanie that I was either lying or crazy) was, in my opinion, a very unfortunate incident that was either the result of a computer malfunction or human error on AA’s part. In light of this, I was willing to accept an upgrade on flight AA2370, in hopes that I might actually be able to get an hour or two of sleep before finally coming home to my patient and understanding wife, who will most definitely not still be sleeping when I arrive. I personally think that an upgrade would have been a convenient solution: it would have been of little or no cost to the airline, and would have at least done something to reduce my inconvenience and discomfort that was a result of AA’s error. Stephanie, however, stuck to the weather “policy”, and the agent saw fit to loudly make an example of me for anyone else in the line who might be looking to get a free upgrade.

So, to summarize my experience:

GOOD:
--Called me (twice! I actually had a voicemail from another AA agent who had called before – my phone didn’t ring for whatever reason) to let me know that the flight was canceled. Agent on the phone was very patient, especially considering that she probably had a big list of similar calls that she had to make.
--Got me onto a flight on another carrier when there were no viable AA options. Admittedly, this only happened after I thought of it and specifically requested it – Stephanie had already said there was simply nothing more she could do. But, in the end, AA did come through with a flight that was heading east and would get me to New York before the next evening.

BAD:
--Canceled the flight. Incidentally, there was no weather trouble in New York. According to my wife, not a single drop of rain fell on the city. Also, as anyone who lives in New York can tell you, weather prediction in NY beyond a window of about 30 minutes is extremely unreliable. However, I’m going to give AA the benefit of the doubt here, since I’m sure that canceling a flight is quite expensive and inconvenient for AA, and therefore not something that you do lightly. Also to AA’s credit it’s the first AA flight that I’ve ever had canceled on me.
--Lost my confirmation. Even more frustrating was the implication by Stephanie and the ticket agent that I was somehow at fault or lying.
--Wouldn’t give upgrade, based on “policy”, indicating that bad weather (and not AA’s mistake) was at fault for my situation.
--Yelled (well, that’s too strong a word – let’s say he used his “announcement voice”) at me that I was not better than anyone else who had their flight canceled, and it was unreasonable for me to ask for an upgrade (I thought that my situation was particularly unfortunate and unusual – I wasn’t asking for an upgrade on the basis that my flight had been canceled, but of course the “audience” didn’t know that). Needless to say, that was pretty embarrassing, and I recognized the look in everyone’s eyes (since I so often giving it to “squeaky wheel” customers myself). You know the look – the “what makes you think you’re better than me and you can waste the agent’s time by asking for special treatment?” look. This was, as my wife often says, “the cherry on the cake”. I want to reiterate that it was the ticket agent who added this final flourish to my horrible experience. I wish I could remember his name, but my exhausted brain only had room for one, and I decided that Stephanie’s name might be more helpful, since she’s probably the one who is supposed to instill and enforce customer service in the first place.

I really don’t know what to do about this. The only other time I’ve had a similar experience was once with Continental three years ago, and I have not flown on Continental since that happened. I haven’t missed it much, since I never really liked Continental, but I do like American. It’s the one airline that hasn’t crammed in so many rows that my knees are squished the entire flight (the Delta flight to Atlanta served as a great reminder of that). Basically, due to my height, my most comfortable options are usually American and Jetblue, and Jetblue doesn’t go to all the places I need to go. I want to remain a customer, but I want to feel like somebody cares. I want to be a customer of an airline for whom incidents like mine are unacceptable, and when there’s a genuine error on the airline’s part, that airline makes it up to the customer. I’m not a millionaire or a million-mile customer; I’m just a normal guy – I fly about 10-15 times per year to various destinations, mostly in the U.S. Where possible, I have tried to steer those 10-15 flights toward American Airlines – as an example, my wife and I are going a vacation to Cozumel this coming week in celebration of our anniversary, and we’re flying American.
I’m hoping you can find a way to make this up to me.

Sincerely,
Nate XXXXXXXXX

Starcraft 2!

I was such a Starcraft junkie back in the day - the folks at QAD were a bit Half-Life obsessed for a while, but we always came back to SC. Ah, the epic battles that were waged! I must have burned through a cumulative few months of time devoted just to playing Starcraft, and now finally after almost 10 years, Starcraft 2 is coming! Behold the developer demo and feel the first pangs of anticipation! I am so ready for this, I'm even thinking about dusting off my old SC CDs and installing it for my trip to CA, just to get back into the mood.

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.

Bruce Schneier is my hero

This guy is so cool - I've always been interested in cryptography and security, and he's one of the biggest guys in the field. Check out his essays and op-eds here - anything you click on will be absolutely worth reading. He recently did an interview on Sirius with RU Sirius and he's just awesome. You can listen here (click on the mp3 link - Bruce's interview starts at about 10 minutes in) or read the transcript here. The guy's just frigging awesome - I feel about him like a neocon feels about Bill or Rush - everything he says is gospel, and if what he says is wrong, I don't wanna be right.
And if you want to know what to get me for my next occasion, consider this T-shirt.

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.

TV Shows that should have survived

I wrote a post a while ago about TV shows that should have survived longer - I just read a post about the same thing, looks like we were all on the same wavelength (except for Kingpin, but I stand by that one).

My gym injuries finally healed (around Saturday) - Clau has left for Venezuela, I'm trying to not stress about her safety. She'll be gone until next Wednesday so I'm trying to diet and exercise in the meantime!

Work is...work. Some interesting stuff coming down the line but at the moment it's generally drudgery. Just gotta hang on until the exciting stuff happens.

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.

Updates

Well, apparently I succeeded in turning my family onto this, because I got a few emails / calls from family and friends saying "Hey, no updates? How's the new job?" Well, I've been avoiding writing about it for a few reasons, mostly because I know that first impressions often end up being incorrect, and I don't want to give an incorrect assessment just to look back on it later on in embarrassment. But, so far, here's the gist: I don't have a heck of a lot to do, and I'm constantly double- and triple-checking my email to make sure that there isn't some looming action item that I've managed to forget about. So far I seem to have everything in hand. This is, of course, a big change from having work casually tossed onto my plate all the time, so much that there's really no time to organize everything. So, that's big adjustment #1. My wife tells me that this is normal for a job and that the workload will increase soon. I hope so, because at the moment I'm feeling significantly underutilized.
The other big, big difference between Company_A and Company_B is the acknowledgment factor. At Company_A, I worked my fanny off all the time and it was just sort of expected. The people who I did things for were generally grateful, but on the other hand it was my job, and many times I managed to think way outside of the box and make something work that really should have been inviable. Not that I expected praise for this; it was, after all, my job, and I was good at it. At Company_B, it's the exact opposite - I get asked to make something work in a relatively standard fashion, and most times I just end up delegating it to someone else. For the rare time where I have to do something even slightly non-standard (i.e. write some kind of Perl filter or a hook for one application to another), I crank it out and receive endless praise for it. Keep in mind that these are not particularly convoluted things, and the best part is that I can say "no, we're not going to do that because that will create problems in the future", and WE DON"T DO IT! If I'm asked to do something really wacky, I can just say "no". If a developer writes himself into a corner and there's no way I can help him without introducing more problems down the line (i.e. a band-aid that I know will haunt us forever), I can simply tell him that he's got to go back and start over again. How sweet is that?!?
On a personal note, last Saturday we spent the day with our friend Aki. Aki is a Japanese Carioca who lived in NYC for about 10 years, and she loves food. She's introduced us to countless wonderful, reasonably-priced restaurants, and she absolutely outdid herself on Saturday - we went to a Japanese restaurant on Saturday night and had just about the best fish I've ever had. Grilled yellowtail with almost no seasoning or oil, just absolutely delicious fish. Fish stewed in sweet miso that was almost like a desert. Grilled toro, cooked just right, with the consistency of a rib eye steak. Sashimi that was like butter - I'm not a big sashimi fan but I gotta admit it was really, really good. For three people the bill came out to $100 - pretty damn good. Can't remember the name of the place but we'll for sure be taking our friends there when we get a chance.
Anyway, got to get back to work - going to quadruple-check and make sure I'm caught up...

--Nate

Oops

Well, apparantly the word of my blog somehow made its way to Company_A - even though I'm pretty sure I haven't said anything that would get my into legal trouble, it's an indication that this is far from a private blog, so I'd better watch myself. Therefore, I've removed my last post that had stuff about my new employer and a few bits of my personal dirty laundry at Company_A, and I'll be sure to not mention my new place by name. I think from now on I'll refer to it as Company_B.
One last day at - I've got a project that I've been working on for the last couple of days, and unfortunately I think there's been some miscommunication between the developer and me - I think I assumed that he was briefed better on the requirements. Thankfully, he's a speedy coder so he's been able to get my fixes done quickly, and I hope he'll have everything fixed by tomorrow morning. After that, I can leave with a clean conscience.
Brass Monkey tomorrow, then getting on a plane Sat morning - I can almost taste the freedom!

--Nate

Incidentally

The MacBook rocks. It's been a really neat experience to play with it - I can't remember the last time I felt like such a newbie with a computer. But, of course, I can still do my Unix commands if I need to. And, with a working JRE, C compiler, and dev libraries, I can compile most of my apps if I need to. But, I so rarely need to - so far I've found an app to do everything I've wanted to do. It is awesome.

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!

For love or money

I've noticed that I'm not very good at being a "company man". I have my own life and generally I expect a good work/life balance from my job. When a crunch comes, I expect that I'll be working some long days (or weeks), and I'm OK with that. When I have a situation in my personal life, I expect it the company to be able to bend the other way and allow me the extra time I need to get it dealt with. When the two come at the same time, I expect the company to respect that - I suppose that the compromise would be to work normal hours with maybe a tiny bit extra thrown in where possible.
So, I'm in a situation where I have stuff going on at home - I had my family's annual Xmas party last weekend, and my little brother is visiting me for a week here; he's really stepped up and improved his grades, and when asked what he might like for a reward, the only thing he wanted was to come visit me in NYC. On the work side, I've been handed some very high-profile projects that were already ridiculously late with the task of saving them and getting them out the door by the end of the year. As a result, I've been working until midnight most nights, and needless to say I haven't gotten a lot of time with my brother. I also got a big ration of shit for taking off at 3pm on Friday to make the plane, and for not being around on the weekend. And the thing that amazes me about this is that nobody seems to care.
Which got me thinking - I'm not getting anything out of all this overtime. I'm not going to get a big bonus, I'm not going to get a raise, I'm not up for a promotion - so why am I doing it? Which made me wonder, why is everyone else doing it? I can only guess that my managers have some sort of monetary incentive if everything goes out on time, whereas I'm just told to work longer and harder. Many of my coworkers are working crazy hours and don't seem to be complaining, but I think they're "company men", whereas I'm really not. I fancy myself as more of a mercenary: I do it for the plunder, and I do it well. If you want to really piss me off, make me work a lot more for no extra benefit. For bonus angry points, wait until around the holidays when I (just like everyone else) have a bunch of shit going on; family, shopping, vacation, etc. There's nothing like that combo to make an employee start calling headhunters.
I guess it comes down to (for me, at least) a simple reciprocal relationship: as my employer, if you treat me with respect, then I'll do the same. If you treat me like a "resource" (a word that, when used as a euphemism for "person", never fails to grate on my nerves), then that's how I'll act. At the very least my boss could offer me something, but I know he won't, because there's nothing in it for him.
Personally, I think that treating your employees that way is bad in the long run, because it eliminates all sense of loyalty. A lot of people stick around in their jobs because they worry that the company will suffer without them (even though they're usually mistaken about that), or out of some sense of loyalty. When the company makes it clear that they don't care about the employees, the employees usually go somewhere else.
This wasn't written very well, mostly because I wanted to post something and I wanted to write about this in particular, but for the reasons mentioned above I don't have much time to do it. But, hopefully, I got my message out.

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...

Techie career planning

I'm going to state a fact that (almost) every techie like me has to come to grips with: you can't have a career as a techie.
Sure, you can spend 10-20 years doing what I'm doing and enjoying it, but eventually it'll be time to meet your techie maker. This is a young man's game; it demands fast thinking in a high-pressure environment, knowledge and familiarity with emerging technologies, and an above-average dedication to the job. Eventually you simply get too old to do it.
So, how do most people work around this? Some go into the managerial track, which actually has a career path and some semblance of stability once you pass the age of 35 or so. Some go for higher and higher levels of specialization and salary, in hopes that they'll have enough to retire on when they become dinosaurs. I've been leaning towards the second option, since management has never held much appeal for me, but to be honest I've been trying not to think about it. Fortunately, I have a backup plan in my wife, who loves corporate life and will become a great success by the time I need to be put out to pasture.
I was talking with Matt last weekend, and he presented a third, interesting option: take the entrepreneurial track. Work on independent projects in your spare time and see where they go. Some may end up being just another untouched open-source project, but some may turn into the kind of thing that lots of people would want to work on and try out. You may even hit the jackpot and discover that you've created a product or service that lots of companies want and are willing to pay for (or, alternately, that a similar company views as competition and wants to purchase).
So, Matt and I got into a long conversation about it. He recently noticed that Prosper has opened up a lot of their data and will be creating an API (basically a bunch of pre-configured ways to talk to prosper.com and do things without using the website). Matt wants to write some apps to help us decide on the best loans to bid on, and maybe release it to the general public if it works well for us. Also Matt considered writing a sniping tool, which would be cool. This one probably wouldn't ever become a profitable item, but it would a nice trial run.

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.

Almost forgot I had this

Of course, I really wasn't writing anything since nobody was reading it. But, I may as well keep updating this with big developments.
OK, here's the big things:

• I applied to Google and almost made it.

• I got handed a video project, very cool stuff. Unfortunately some consultants ended up taking way too long and effectively screwing me, since now I have to work double-hard to catch up after waiting for them for so long.

• A Trader Joe's opened in Manhattan, around Union Square. For those not in the know, TJ's is about the best food store ever - good stuff, really cheap, nice people working there. It is a bit of a madhouse, though, seeing as apparently I'm not the only transplant to NYC who remembers just how awesome TJs is.

• My dad and Ania had a baby girl in August, named Cora (not actually sure of the last name). I don't think we've spoken since she was born. I'm not happy about it (not speaking to him, that is) but that's sort of just how it's worked out.
  

• My brother's doing much better, I can tell just from the few brief conversations we've had in the last couple of months. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned there for my future parent self - maybe discipline's not such a bad thing if it's couple with attention and support.

• I have a new client, she's about the nicest person you could hope to meet. She's pretty clueless about computer stuff but obviously sharp and educated about many other things. Plus, she never haggles over the bill or anything, which is good.

• We bought a new car. After having the old one break down once every couple of months, we realized it was better to just get a new one. Buying a new car is so much fun on the east coast - I though that the California car sales places were sleazy, but NY and NJ are way worse. Nonetheless we ended up with the car that she wanted at a price we could live with.

So overall life's OK. Clau and I are going out a bit less (trying to save money) and making weekly pilgrimages to TJs for dinner for the coming week. Between that and the Kraft store we're definitely spending more on Saturday night than the rest of the week combined. Dunno if that's a good thing or a bad thing. We're limiting ourselves to two nights out per week, and shooting for one (going to a friend's party and stuff like that doesn't count).
Oh, and I almost forgot another point - Sam got a job at Company_A and will probably be joining me soon. She probably won't stay all that long but it'll be nice to have her nearby for a little bit.

Web link:
"Peanuts" by Group X. I love these guys

Updates

So what's up lately:
Just when Clau and I were starting to get our finances under control, we've decided to go and splurge on all kinds of shit, this time for me. She bought me an xbox 360 for our anniversary and it's awesome. My computer has been dying lately, I think it's the RAM but I can't be sure, and so I must replace it with another. This could, however, be a good thing, since I want to replace it with a Mac Mini. I have one of the original (PPC processor) minis, and I'm using it to display my video etc. It's working fine (I put Linux on it) but it's neither pretty nor user friendly, and since Apple has the sweet Front Row application (in addition to all those others), I'd just as soon use that for everything. But, I'll probably try to replace the RAM in my box first. I just wish I knew exactly what I needed to replace it with.

Clau's going to Milwaukee tomorrow through Thursday, so I'm going to try to entertain myself during that time. I think I'll seriously try to fix the damn computer we have so that I don't have to convince her that we need another one.

Also, we've gone out with Sam and/or Matt a few times now and we're totally enamored with them - those guys are so much fun to hang around.

My little brother's become a prisoner in my dad and stepmother's house. They "caught" him smoking pot (in that they asked him and he told them) and he's been on house arrest ever since. Or at least that's what I get from talking to him. I don't know how to broach the subject with my dad. The last time I talked w/ my little brother I was fuming and Clau made me calm down before calling anyone. But, I need to call my dad before my brother's summer vacation vanishes before his eyes (or worse, he gets the thrill of spending it helping my stepmother care for the new baby). I guess my big beef is that he's such a good kid, and they're treating him like a criminal. Especially since I know that compared to me at that age he's an angel. Then again, he's only 15 - maybe they're saving him from a life of crime. I dunno. It's tough to try to figure out what the best thing is when you're so far away, both in terms of distance and perspective. I can't really understand what it's like for either party, but I can't see how what my father is doing is OK. You can see why I haven't called him yet...

Quick update

Obviously it's a bit late to be writing my blog - Clau's asleep already and I should be, too.
Attila and Reka visited last weekend and brought their boy Shoeldt (I'm sure I'm spelling it wrong, I'll look it up later), he is adorable but I can see that children are a lot of work. Clau and I have decided to wait just a bit longer, I made her promise that we won't wait beyond the point where it's safe.
I just found out that one of my high school classmates became a filmmaker - kind of a tiny world considering how few people were in my high school class. Her name is (or was) Miranda Grossinger - she's now going by "Miranda July", probably one of the reasons I didn't notice earlier. She made a movie called "You, Me, and Everyone We Know", which I read a lot about in Time Out and such, but didn't see. I will of course put the DVD in my Netflix queue now, hopefully she gets some money out of that. Not that she and I were friends or anything - I just remember her being very very spacey most of the time, and she also sparked what was probably the biggest broohaha (how do you spell that word?) during my four years of high school; as I recall, some girl had poured chinese food on top of a guy's car. The guy was extremely extroverted - actually, I can't really think of a good word to describe him...cocky? cocksure? Well, you get the idea, to the point of being frequently obnoxious - if high school were a corporate workplace, he surely would have been fired for sexual harassment. I actually liked him because, besides occasionally being an asshole, he was very smart and funny - we played together in a band for a little while and I had gotten to sort of know him.
So, to get back to the story, after this girl pours chinese food on his car, he makes an announcement at a school assembly asking people to please respect his car. He said something to the effect of "if you have a problem with me, talk to me; don't take it out on my car." Soon after that, we arrive to school to be greeted by a huge banner reading: "You say 'respect my car.' We say 'respect our bodies.' Signed, CPS Women" It sparked a huge debate throughout the school, everybody arguing both sides of it. I wish that, at that time, I could have realized just what a wonderful place that school was. I often refer to that story when I try to explain what my school was like.
Anyway, as far as my personal interaction with Miranda goes, I don't think we ever said anything to each other, but I recall her being nice (but, like I said, spacey). I think, though, that I'd like to have coffee or something with her if I got the chance - I feel like I missed out on knowing someone really interesting in high school. After I realized that she was Miranda July, I took a quick look at her blog (hey, just b/c nobody reads mine doesn't mean that I won't read anyone else's) and there's some really great writing in there - I remember when I used to be able to write like that. Somewhere in my life, between living and breathing Unix and learning Portuguese, my ability to write like that slowly faded away. Maybe I could get it back if I practiced more.
Anyway, enough self-pity - I'm going to update flickr soon, got lots of pictures of last weekend's visitors, and this weekend we're going to CA to see Sean and Tess, as well as meet Sean's new wife, so I'm sure there will be lots of pictures of that. I think, with a lot of practice, I could eventually take a decent photograph...