Category Archives: Work

That thing I do during the week that keeps the lights on and the bills paid.

Commercial Flight Suckage

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Again today I had to take a flight somewhere for just the day, then return home.  And again the wonderful TSA had to find a way to make it miserable.  In San Jose they have so few checkpoints that the line to get into the waiting area was out the door.  They also had only small paper signs telling people what could or couldn’t be taken on planes, so of course many people missed those signs and then got combatitive at the checkpoints.

On the way back, in Burbank’s airport, for an unknown reason all TSA checkpoints were shut down for at least 30 mins.  The national guard was on hand to randomly pick people for extra searches.  No explanation was given, but eventually the lines moved again, but not soon enough for a group of people to completly miss their flights to Phoenix, then get angry at the gate agent.

Thanks again TSA!  You’re the reason why we’ll all be traveling by bus in the not so distant future.

Why Adding More Features Doesn't Work

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and again):  adding lots of features to a product because your competitors do isn’t a smart strategy.  You end up being a follower all the time and you don’t have a good, rational argument for adding the feature (did the customer tell you they wanted it???).

But don’t take my word for it, go read this story that makes it clear (again) that adding features for features (or competitors) sake is just a dead-end deal.  Nice graphs on the subject there too.

Dis-Connect-ed

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Today is day one of being off the Sony corporate gravy train. I’m both sad and relieved to be no longer employed by the electronics giant, but mostly I’m sad. The way in which I left was sub-optimal and I really miss the people I worked directly with, mainly because I’ve worked with so many of them before. In short, it sucks to have left this job.

That said, it wasn’t a healthy environment for me. I was coming into work each day with the knowledge that I was not wanted there any longer, and it isn’t a good thing to have that type of pressure on you for months. I do hope the guys I worked with find something to do that Sony supports, but I tend to doubt that it will come to pass. That’s too bad, because the team I left does something well that is badly needed there: software. It will be a loss to the company to lose their talents and ultimately the consumer will lose out as well.

You Just Never Know Who Knows You

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I had an interesting talk today with someone I’d never met, but had worked in the same industry with for the last 10 or so years. Without having talked to me before, and based solely on where I had been and what I had said in the public eye this person recommended me to others. I just sat there stunned.

It seems that whenever I need a reminder of the old rule “don’t burn your bridges” one comes along to remind me. This occasion offered just such a reminder and I’m greatful that, thus far, I haven’t managed to make all that many technology people mad at me over the years. Customers, well, they are a different story :P

The Long, Dark Road

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I don’t normally write about work, but things have been getting a bit rough these days.  After spending some serious time over the last year getting a product built and shipped (even though I didn’t approve of shipping it) the public reception left a lot to be desired.  And that is putting it mildly.

Now there is a full-on, wholesale re-org coming and where things end up no one is quite sure yet.  The engineering team isn’t in the best of spirits, and I can’t say that I blame them, given this situation.  My only hope at this point is that we can salvage some learning out of the process and vow never to be pushed into doing what was done again.

Back from CES

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I have just returned from CES, that large consumer electronics and computer show in Las Vegas, and I am just beat.  Why people must insist on smoking so much I will never know, but I now have the smell to remind me of the time spent there this past week.

It was 4 days of meetings, endless walking, dinners, drinking, and for some (not yours truly) gambling.  2006 will be the year of both big screen (hi-def) and small screen (portable video) given what I saw there.  Plenty of reasons to go out and buy that HDTV or new phone / PDA / portable device you’ve been swearing off.

There were also some of the most amazing looking women on the planet there too, but precious few of them are in the industry.  I managed to miss the high-wattage star power in attendance as well: Robin Williams, Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Kevin Federline, Britney Spears, Tom Hanks, Bill Gates, just to name a few. 

I did see Lazlow, and hear that he’s continuing to rock on with his other jobs, despite his weekly radio experiment being over.  One can only hope that it rises from the ashes to help shake us from the lameness that is today’s free radio experience.

Tired and Out of Sorts

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I’ve entered month two of very little to no sleep during the week, thanks to a grueling and completely unrealistic product shipment schedule. In a move I will forever regret, I volunteered my services to be both product manager and UI/layout developer, ensuring that I work the same crazy hours I normally assign to the engineering team.

I have to say now that I don’t know how the tech folks live like this, because on weekends all I do is get up around noon, watch a little TV, do a little more work, then head back to sleep. I really hope this project ends soon, as I can’t imagine what a third month of this zombie state would be like.

Upgrade/Downgrade: Tokyo Travel Edition

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For those of you who have seen the VH1 show Best Week Ever this will be familiar to you. For those who haven’t, there is a segment in the show about good things happening to someone meaning “upgrade” and bad things happening meaning “downgrade.” I now present my own version: the Tokyo trip edition.

  • Got to fly out of the local airport directly to Tokyo: Upgrade
  • Had flight delayed by nearly two hours: Downgrade
  • Magically received bump from business to first: Upgrade
  • Ran out of water 1/2 way through flight: Downgrade
  • Was second person off plane, breezed through customs: Upgrade
  • Had to wait for an hour for luggage: Downgrade
  • Long wait caused a missed train, and another hour wait: Downgrade
  • Paid for train pass, got on nearly empty car: Upgrade
  • Found out I was in the wrong car, had to sit in the vestibule: Downgrade
  • Negotiated way out of train station: Upgrade
  • Had to walk for 20 minutes to the hotel: Downgrade
  • Sweat like a pig thanks to 80 F weather: Downgrade
  • Wake up every morning at 4am: Downgrade

For those keeping score at home, that is 5 upgrades vs. 8 downgrades. I’m only half way through this trip (which continues for another 6 days) and the downs are already winning. It isn’t looking good for upgrades, but then it wouldn’t be me if it did.

Flights, Frights, and Long Painful Nights

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Another week, another trip to LA. This week brought the following interesting and weird happenings to bear…

  • I walked across the street for lunch and saw Robert Blake. TV really does make people look fat, because this guy is a straw in real life.
  • For a change, I stayed at the LAX Westin. It was a comfortable bed but I got very little sleep. There is evidently a kennel or pound within 100 feet of the hotel and dogs were yelping from 3am on.
  • My boss purchased a Ducati motorcycle. She is coordinated enough to have dropped it twice in less than a week. And it wasn’t even moving. I’ve started a hospital vigil for her now.
  • The flight back was eventful. I had no seat assignment, the flight prior to mine had been canceled, and the ground crew had no idea how many people were on the plane, how many seats remained, and how much weight they could take.

That, in a nutshell, was my end of week trip. I think that LA may need to modify their visitor message to be…

Welcome to LA. It’s like a whole other planet.

Smart Playlists, Voting, and Discovery

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An interesting phenomenon is occurring in my music library and I wonder if I’m alone in this behavior. I find that if I make smart playlists in my music and media player of the moment, then vote on the songs that appear in that playlist, then begin to weed out the songs I don’t really like all that much, that I am in fact listening to only about 10% or so of my total music library.

This gets me wondering: is the majority of music that I (and others) have actually crap or is there just no good way to relate the songs I like to the ones I haven’t heard or found yet? I am working on a project dealing with this very issue at work at the moment, but I am fiddling around with my library on my own time. I wonder if others have the same sorts of experience with their libraries?