If you schedule a 2 1/2 hour meeting with a very long agenda…. make sure that that’s the LAST meeting you have to schedule for a while. Don’t cover point #1 in your agenda, and then note that we’ll need to have ongoing meetings to discuss the others. I, uh, suddenly have dentist appointments every week JUST at the time when your regular meeting would be held. To help me feel less guilty, perhaps I’ll abstain from Novocaine… it would still be less painful.
1 comment July 9th, 2007
A thank you to my friend, Ken, for reminding me about the Freakonomics blog… A quick peek over there today brought me to a theory positing why retirees build such big houses. After all, rationally, most need less space, and have no real need to restart a mortgage. Worse, as my grandmother is finding out, dealing with a big house when your arthritis is acting up and your afraid of breaking a hip if you fall off of a ladder is no fun at all.
I’ll toss my theory into the ring, though, that a house is not a rational purchase. We don’t buy homes to fulfill our need for housing. We buy homes to fulfill our dreams of what our life could be like, in a particular area, or with a home that’s decorated a particular way or that has a certain kitchen layout. We dream of things that we COULD do in a particular space, not of what we will do with our own particular sloppy habits or lack of time.
The homes that are going up in our area are massive. The signs used to say things like “starting in the low 400s”. I can’t say as I’ve seen one of those in a while, unless it’s associated with a townhouse: the numbers have definitely gone up. This, in what is widely listed as a housing downturn.
We debate about buying a new home, or upgrading our own, for a combination of rational and dream lifestyle reasons. We haven’t yet pinned down where the boundary between those lay, and what rationality versus dreams is worth to us. The rational side says that when our kids get bigger, our house will need a bit more elbow room to handle those growing elbows. I want a bigger seating area near the kitchen, so that we can have people over for dinner and not be pinned up against the glass sliding door. And hey, if we’re going to expand out the back of the house (assuming we did an expansion), I’ve always dreamed of a bigger master bedroom with a nice master bathroom to boot. What’s a little more renovation when you’re only dreaming of the tab?
A few years ago now we had our basement renovated. We quickly discovered that tabs run up: we upgraded the lighting system downstairs, and then realized we needed to upgrade the electrical capacity in our home, and then discovered that to meet the new code we needed to install smoke alarms that were hooked into the electrical system upstairs, and THEN decided that since the electricians needed to run wiring up into the ceilings anyway, we’d have them install wiring for ceiling fans in each of the bedrooms. Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. And that was just for the basement. Imagine rearranging a load bearing wall on the back of the house, adding the plumbing and installations to support a true master bathroom rather than our half bath, dealing with moving cabinets and lighting in the kitchen, and then matching things like siding (oh, we want to replace the siding, anyway: might as well throw it in the mix).
All of this to fulfill some dreams of what we MIGHT do in the house. Note that none of my proposed renovations there really does anything to add too much more elbow room to the kids’ living area… we sort of figure them having small rooms will just encourage them to be more involved with the family. 
Add comment June 24th, 2007
So, I think I’ve mentioned I started a new job a few weeks ago. Thought I’d mention an interesting culture shift I’ve seen… I’ve mentioned that I’m running at lunch now. Most of my office does some sort of exercise at lunchtime. For most of them, bicycling is the sweat-dripper of choice. These guys go out for 16 mile rides, and then come back and sling code with the best of ‘em.
At my previous gig, lunchtime meant walking to a great restaurant in Bethesda and having interesting conversations. Here, it means dripping with sweat and comparing stories as to great hills conquered or sports jelly beans (I want to get me some of those!). Gotta admit, this way is cheaper, and might even lose me a few pounds in the meantime.
Add comment June 12th, 2007
A sign that I work in a male-dominated field: the ranking guy at my new office had to send out an e-mail to the guys in the office. He told them that that since their newest hire is female, the gents would no longer be able to commandeer the ladies’ room to use the shower there after their lunchtime bike rides. Sheesh…. I’m used to being in the minority, but this is amusingly out there.
Add comment May 30th, 2007
Interesting perks of my job of late:
- seeing us on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network in banner ads, and part of the SpongeBob Friend or Foe episode sponsorship.
- knowing that we’re in Best Buy (search ‘kajeet’ on BestBuy.com) and LimitedToo (again, search ‘kajeet’ on LimitedToo.com)
- We were in the WashingtonPost: my boss is the guy holding the cellphone
- We were on CBS News (!) tonight. See clips ‘Eye to Eye: Kids Go Mobile‘ and ‘Marketing Cellphones to Kids‘ (note that we’re the good guys at the end of this clip looking at all the bad things that happen in the market of selling cellphones to kids).
All very cool, and nowhere near anything I’ve had at previous jobs. I’ve been there a bit over a year, and seen us grow (sniff, sniff) from an idea / architecture to an operational system. My part in it? Based on some stats run against our code-base, approximately 28% of the code, or some 125,000 lines of code. (Note that I didn’t run the stat tool and count the numbers highly suspicious. That said, I’m holding onto the email that says ‘She is personally responsible for more than 125,000 lines of custom kajeet code, all written while leading a team of engineers, managing collaboration with Marketing and Product Development/Management, and interacting with half a dozen vendors.’ )
The sad part is that I’m leaving kajeet for pastures closer to home. The commute is killing me (running about an hour and a quarter each way for me in Beltway traffic, since I don’t live that close to Bethesda). That said, that leaves a wonderful opportunity for someone to come and fill my shoes. (No pressure here, looking at those stats above.) Cool job: Java technologies, interesting frameworks, agile development, smart team members, and a focus on building stuff that’s really going to get used. There’s no shelf-ware here: something you build today will hit the production system and be used by customers within a matter of weeks. Those Best Buy customers will be using YOUR stuff. Those CBS news viewers will be checking out YOUR stuff.
Check a job posting for a software engineer at kajeet. Multiple positions being hired, on a variety of skill levels. But it’s a good snapshot of the technologies and platforms in use.
Add comment May 16th, 2007
Reading up a bit on the Wii, the new gaming system set to be released by Nintendo just in time for the Christmas rush. Have to admit, even though I wouldn’t consider myself a gamer, this thing sounds appealing. Its price point appeals to me (cheaper by far than the XBox or the PSP3), the fact that you can download “old” games for $5 or $10 bucks to its console appeals to me (hey, I racked up a lot of time on Frogger, Pitfall, and SeaQuest as a kid), and the new controller REALLY appeals to me. The idea of someone rethinking how to interact with a game, beyond the traditional joystick: now that’s the kind of thing that sounds exciting. Wave my hand, and the game responds: I can’t wait to see the magic wand princess game for my girls. I’ll just lead you here to Fast Company’s blog posting, and definitely here, to Nintendo’s site for the Wii.
Oooooh, browsing through Nintendo’s site, found the Mii channel: check out the video of the caricatures you can create, and the thought they put into being able to adjust your caricature/character/avatar. Looking for the announcements that lets me (1) extend the set of caricature features: more facial expressions, ability to add clothing, jewelry, accessory items…, (2) share that caricature with my game-playing friends, (3) personalize the movements of the caricature, and (4) export it in some form that lets me use it on my webpage, cellphone, etc….
1 comment September 14th, 2006
I’m impressed by Napster of late. They recently announced that users can now listen to every track in their catalog for free, up to five times. After five times, if you want to listen to it again, you need to either buy the track, or subscribe to one of Napster’s monthly services. In the meantime, as you’re listening to your free tracks online, you’re being exposed to various ads, whose revenue is then apparently shared with the music industry as its payment for the use of the free music. (Napster’s FAQ on its free music model is here.)
This seems to me to be a brilliant music model: the few second snippets offered in other music libraries are not enticing enough to cause me to browse to find new music which I might purchase from their stores. Napster, through use of this ability to listen for free, as well as its playlists, encourages me and makes it enjoyable to browse for those songs I would be willing to buy. No longer am I consciously shopping: I’m browsing, and impulse buying.
I wonder if the 5 listen limit is too high, actually. New songs only stay in popularity a short while. And there’s quite a breadth of material on Napster. Seems I could always be listening to new and interesting things, without ever really hitting the 5 song limit. Now, I’d need to be perpetually connected to an Internet connection, else I might want that song in my portable player. But I generally AM perpetually connected to an Internet connection… my portable player serves me at the gym, but not many other places. Napster might consider lowering that limit to 3… if I’m willing to listen to a song more than 3 times, I probably oughta pay for it…
Add comment May 3rd, 2006
Watch Out, Kids: With GPS Phones, Big Mother Is Watching
Rob Pegoraro notes a certain discomfort with WaveMarket’s location-based service that “enables enterprises and fleet managers to manage mobile assets”. There’s nothing new here, except perhaps a cost savings for the fleet managers. We were putting GPS receivers in trucks in 1994 for this very purpose. I was a lowly intern building out the functionality, but got to drive around in my oil-leaking Pontiac Phoenix with a GPS disc thingy attached to the top of my car and a mobile transmitter that would then transmit my coordinates as well as receive communications from the central system.
I well agree with Rob’s point, though, that “The whole idea of tracking your family in this manner is weird and alarming on some levels. So is the notion that we’re all so deathly afraid for our kids that there’s even a market for this.”. That’s the reality in our society, though, as alarming as it is. We worry about government spying on us, ostensibly to help keep us safer, and then pay to spy on each other in the same name of safety.
1 comment April 19th, 2006
Monday will be my first day with my new company. Few details here, for reasons of NDAs and just generally enjoying waiting to see this thing hit the scene. But it’s an exciting, unexpected jump to a startup. A chance to refresh my Java skills, build a very scalable site, be associated with something I expect will get household name recognition (as opposed to my current contract management system for the federal gov’t project) and help sheperd a new product to a successful launch. The first ad that I see in a big box circular, I’ll link in here. Heck, I’ll be hawking it here, snagging beta-testers, and folks to add some buzz. If you’ve got kids, specifically in the realm of, say, 8-12, keep an eye out here.
1 comment March 6th, 2006
My Grandma’s birthday is coming up, and, apparently like all Grandmas, mine’s notoriously hard to purchase buy a gift for. But I saw an ad for something called a Scooba: it’s a robot that washes your floors. Hmmmmm…. a bit pricey. But it’s older brother*, the Roomba, has been out for a while, and surely Grandma would even more appreciate a vacuuming robot. [Sorry, Grandma, still out of my price range.]
Like lots of consumers, I did my price-checking on Amazon. A search for ‘iRobot’ included these gems: Roor the Tiger, and Mooba the Cow. They’re costumes for your Roomba, both put out by a company called myRoombud. There’re also frog, pig, zebra, and leopard costumes available.
From the features description of Mooba:
If you own a Roomba, you know what I am talking about. Have you ever:
1) named your Roomba? 2) talked to your Roomba?
3) spent more time watching your Roomba than it would take you to vacuum the room(ba)?
4) bought a second Roomba so your first would not be lonely?
If you answered yes to any of the above, you are a prime candidate for an original RoomBud Roomba costume!
If you answered yes to any of the above, you’re a prime candidate for your own room with padded walls. Note that your Roomba will successfully navigate said room, and keep you company while keeping your floors clean.
Add comment February 14th, 2006
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