Personal
Happy Birthday, from Gillette
Three days before my 18th birthday, I received a package from Gillette. It said “Happy 18th Birthday!”, and it turned out to be a Gillette Sensor razor. All stalking aside, I was always impressed with this bit of marketing. Even more-so because I’ve been using this same razor for more than 11 years, buying refills along the way. A very effective mailing.
Today in the mail I received another package from Gillette, this time a Mach 3 Turbo razor. How stupid is that name by the way? About as ugly as the design, it turns out. Anyway, it didn’t coincide with my birthday, but I bet I’ll end up using it anyway.
This technique of giving the core product away, with the hope of covering the cost with the consumer buying refills is old hat. From the recent past, ink jet printers and Polaroid cameras spring to mind. The difference of course, is giving away the core product for free or for cheap. In this example, free wins out. I will probably never buy a razor in my life, but Gillette will have a lifetime worth of revenue from the blades.
I will never buy a cheap Polaroid or Ink Jet, because I don’t place enough the value on them to pay out even that small amount. But, if Poloroid wants to ship me a free camera or two, they may pick up another customer.
Pimpin’
On the way home from work this Halloween, the hordes of people in costumes walking the streets inspired me. Luckily, I had saved one from college for such a “costume emergency”.
I lacked the necessary accessories, but thankfully though out the night people supplied them for me.
Fortunately for you, and unfortunately for me, Bridget was there with a camera: Photo 1 and Photo 2.
The key node in my personal network
Rachel Cline, a good friend of mine’s book, What to Keep: A Novel, is now available for pre-order from Amazon. Get it!
She’s definitely one of my more famous friends, with a page on IMDb and now at Amazon.
“Will you marry me?”
… to which Jeni responded, “Yes!”. I am the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life. I am so lucky.
Stop the wretchedness
Just out of idle curiosity—and there’s no reason I’m asking this, I swear—why hasn’t anyone formulated a beverage designed explicitly for hangovers?
Fiction imitating life
Phil, Ruler of Heck. How did Scott Adams know? Me? Devil’s advocate? Sarcastic? Never. [Thanks, Brendan]
Everything must go
Anybody want a Super Nintendo or a Mini-Disc player?
Deja vu all over again
Uh… a younger version of me? Scary. As an aside, if I were a kid today, would I be a fan of the real slim shady?
Yum
I had one of the best meals of my life last night—Jeni took me to Nobu. We had the over-the-top “omakase” (chef’s choice) menu. All the dishes were great, though the Kobe beef was straight-up spectacular. I felt like I was on an episode of the Iron Chef (though sadly, Morimoto Masaharu, aka Iron Chef Japan has since retired from Nobu).
Plus we had the obligatory celebrity sighting. Jerry Sienfeld was sitting four tables down from us.
I want a Vespa!
I’ve wanted a Vespa for a while, but now my obsession has gone to the next level.
I went to Vespa Soho yesterday and looked at the ET2 and ET4. While not as stylish/cool as the classic Vespas of the ‘50s through the ‘80s, they seem to be a little more practical, less expensive to maintain, better for the environment, more fuel efficient, and bigger. The last is important because I worry about looking like a clown on a mini-bicycle.
There are (of course) quite a few resources on the Web: I Scoot NY and their FAQ, alt.scooter and their FAQ, Vespa Obsession, and ScooterWorks.
The trials of the disconnected continue…
After four visits by Verizon, my phone line is back. The upside is that my TiVo works again. The downside, in all the shuffle my DSL is dead. No big deal, I’ll just call Earthlink and everything will get better, right? Wrong.
I was treated to the worst customer service I have ever experienced. He was spectacularly unhelpful, his manner was rude, and the message was bitter: 1) Sign up for new service. $100 setup and a one year contract, or 2) Get Verizon to fax over documentation that my phone was out and that it was their fault.
#1 was clearly not an option. #2? Well, I am paying Earthlink for precisely one reason only—to never have to deal with Verizon. After a fair amount of arguing, I threaten to take my business elsewhere. His responded in such a sweet manner, “That is fine, is there anything else I can help you with?”. What an ass.
I hang up and call Time Warner. Three hours later I’m up and running on a cable modem which is faster, my cable TV now includes some new premium channels, and all for the same price as my previous setup of DSL + Cable TV. Good riddance Earthlink. Go to Hell.
Blackout
This was written on 31 Dec 2002:
I write this knowing that I won’t be able to post this for a while.
Three events have occurred at the same time that have deprived me of almost all communication.
- My phone line goes down. This wouldn’t be much of a problem, except it has taken down my DSL connection with it. I hadn’t realized how dependent I was on Verizon. Big mistake.
- My nearest T-mobile cell tower has gone south. Sort of. I kind of get service, enough to send and receive SMSs, but the connection won’t last long enough to make or receive a call. I walk a block west everything works fine, which brings me to…
- My back goes out making a movement difficult, let along climbing stairs and walking a block. Arrgh.
One of these things happening would have been surmountable. As it is, I can’t really communicate with anyone. Back to passive entertainment, after all, cable TV still works!
Mental note: switch to a cable modem so that I am never again completely reliant on the phone company for net access (dialup/DSL). Hedging my bets by betting on two different monopolies is the way to go.
Free at last
Yesterday was the final day of my first project under the name of ?Moment?. I only had a one week break between leaving Sapient and starting this project, so now I?m looking forward to a real break. Apparently, my body agrees because last night I slept for 14 hours.
I have some grand plans for my time off. An update to this site (no tables, XHTML/CSS, accessible, and powered by MovableType), begin researching a book idea I?ve had for a couple of years, and, above all, get my creative mojo back.
Jumping into the pool
Despite being an active ?net user for eight years, now is my first time selling something on eBay.
To some extent I can not believe how successful eBay is with such a horrendous design. Buying and selling is tolerable, but registering to sell? Ridiculous. The ?process? isn?t much of a process at all. It isn?t integrated, there is no clear indication of what to do next, and you have no idea when you are done. Plus, I had to enter my bank information twice, and enter two different credit cards (eBay accepts Amex, but Billpoint does not). In short, it is a pain.
Coupled with the fact that my stuff will probably fetch nothing, it almost doesn?t seem worth the effort. After all, in NYC I can just leave it on the sidewalk and it’ll be gone in 60 seconds. Much easier.
Anyone want a Motorola Timeport for Sprint or a DSL modem?
Hmm… big
My new TV is ludicrous. I think it is eating my apartment. Fantastic.
Free at last
Today was my last day at Sapient. What a great day.
Reaching for props
Microsoft has a case study on the New York Times project that I worked on. The UI requirements for the BizTalk implementation were minimal, but I did work on it, and it is good to get some props. So I’m vain, what’s wrong with that?
Shit
I found out the day before I left for Brazil that a good friend from college was killed while hiking in the mountains of Peru. Here’s a New York Times article explaining what happened.
I can’t even put into words how I feel about this. Even with almost two weeks to reflect, I am still neither eloquent or poetic enough to capture Court Demas or how I feel about his death, but here are some random thoughts.
After I found out I found myself going over the academic (and therefore, useless) exercise of trying to guess why he was murdered. Bandits? Shining Path? By focusing on these ultimately irrelevant questions, I avoided the loss. I’m still avoiding it.
In college we were pretty good friends, but we didn’t keep in touch much afterwards. The Court I remember was one of the warmest and most brilliant people I have ever met.
The story I always told about him was how in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, he would always turn in his assignments late, but they would do twice what was called for. His professors were so impressed that they failed him and he was ultimately kicked out. But, the punchline is that the Computer Science department hired him. So instead of paying to take classes, now he was getting paid.
The other thing I will remember is his dumb laugh. It was so filled with joy and and an almost innocence… “Ha ha ha, no way!”
I miss you Court.
Surprise, liquid and electronics don’t mix
Finally, my computer is fixed. All for the low price of $268.00. Let’s see how long I can be diligent about keeping beverages away from my computer.
Oh, and AirPort rocks. It took all of three minutes to set it up. Setting Jeni’s PC to access it was another matter entirely. I’m still amazed at how poorly designed Windows is. I’m not talking about the eye candy or even basic interface design. I’m talking about function. Plug and play is still a joke in the PC world. So sad.
Never trust the phone company
Finally, my DSL is working.
Special effects are not enough
I saw Episode II last night. The short review is that it isn’t very good, but it is better than Episode I and perhaps even Jedi. However, that doesn’t say much.
The action scenes are pretty good (Yoda rocks!), but the dialog, oh the dialog. It is beyond awful. The “romance” scences are absolutely hideous. To call it a cliché would be an understatement. It was worse than any soap opera. The audience was laughing. Never a good sign. I usually hate the idea of showing a movie to a preview audience, but this would have been a good time to change the movie based on audience reaction. Sigh…
Lucas will still make his millions, of course. How much incentive is there to do good work, when you know, I mean know, that it is going to be wildly successful no matter what you do?
George Lucas is a bad writer and a bad director. If Episode I didn’t prove it, this one certainly does. Stick to special effects, George. That’s what you’re best at.
Broadband remains in the future
Well, it has been two weeks and still no DSL. I think I’m officially pissed.
What is my time worth?
I am on the phone with Earthlink. I have been for, let?s see, one hour and ten minutes. I remember praising Earthlink?s customer service. I was part of their beta program of DSL rollout in NYC and it was hell getting it working. Of course, it was all Verizon’s fault, but Earthlink persevered, and more importantly, I didn’t have to speak to a single person from Verizon.
But now I’m not nearly so pleased with Earthlink. Here’s the story.
I had DSL working for months when all of a sudden, nothing. So what do I do? I call customer service. The first person was nice enough, and actually knew something about Mac OS X. She concluded that it was the line and transferred me to someone else to get it take care of. Well, unfortunately, that person turned out to be a dialup support guy. He knew nothing. He transferred me to someone else, who also is nice enough and knows a little about OS X (though I’m wiser now, they’re reading off a screen). She tells me to go through all of the same tricks as the first person, but adds a few new ones (like unplugging other phones, rebooting, moving to another phone jack, etc.
She won’t give up, she still thinks it’s a software issue. This is NYC, I’m positive someone ran over something with a ditch digger or the morons at Verizon decided to unplug something for fun.
Accept it. Now I’m late for drinks. Arrgh.
Well, it took one hour and forty five minutes before she finally accepted that it was a line problem. Now how long do you think it’ll take before they actually fix it?
The Big Easy
I was in New Orleans for Jazz Fest for the past few days and I’m having a little trouble getting back into the swing of things.
Surprise, the government is slow
The New York State DMV can not give you a photo license the same day. How weird is that? How hard is it to get a laminator? Instead, I have to wait 4 weeks to get my license in the mail. I guess, progress comes slowly. For the longest time, New York didn’t even have photos on licenses at all.
Too late
This is the quote I should have used when I finally boarded the plane:
“Farewell, Australia! you are a rising child, and doubtless some day will reign a great princess in the South: but you are too great and ambitious for affection, yet not great enough for respect. I leave your shores without sorrow or regret.”
—Charles Darwin
The end of privacy
This whole personal Web site thing is amusing. Now I have a co-worker browsing my Amazon wishlist and making fun of my choices. Hmm… I guess they call it “personal” for a reason.
Pouring out a 40…
Ah, the post layoff drinking extravaganza at a Ace Bar. Bittersweet. There must have been 50 past or present Sapient people there tonight. On the one hand, it felt… joyous. It was great to be surrounded by so many great people. It is unfortunate, that it takes such an event to get all these great people together.
But on the other hand, it felt like being a senior in high school. Remember when you struggle to come up with something to say in the yearbook? There’s only so many times you can say “I wish we could’ve worked together” or “I don’t understand what they were thinking”.
That in no way detracts from the gravity of the situation, it just reflects my inability to adequately express my emotions. It is futile to try to express any heartfelt sentiment when you’re someone that didn’t get laid off. It sounds hollow in my ear, I can only imagine what they heard.
Just in case it isn’t clear, let me stress that we lost a ton of great user experience people today. People that have newborns, work visas, etc. People that are unbelievably talented. People that are a joy to work with. My day to day work life is going to suffer.
Ramdom note. New York City is a small world. I ran into a neighbor from my apartment that I had never met at the bar. Despite it all, I love this city. It is ridiculous that with all that is going on, such a mundane thing strikes me as wonderful.
The bright side
I’ve had a few hours to collect myself after this morning’s layoff at my company. The silver lining in all of this is that my girlfriend, who is on a work visa, doesn’t have to leave the country.
The rest, pretty much sucks. Lots of really good co-workers were “affected”. All I can say is bring back the fucking bubble! It was a lot more fun.
