Category: Haightlife

General news and thinking about living in the Alderete-McCune household.

Where the Promo Parties Went, Part 2

When Rochelle proposed we go out Thursday, I asked her, given she is planning a summer picnic for 100 people and has a school assignment due, both on Saturday, if she should be going out drinking. She said it was OK, but we absolutely could not go anywhere else after. So of course, when the guy sitting on the bar stool next to me told us about The Glenlivet party that was starting in 30 minutes, we decided to crash that one, too.

When Rochelle proposed we go out Thursday, I asked her, given she is planning a summer picnic for 100 people and has a school assignment due, both on Saturday, if she should be going out drinking. She said it was OK, but we absolutely could not go anywhere else after.

So of course, when the guy sitting on the bar stool next to me told us about The Glenlivet party that was starting in 30 minutes, we decided to crash that one, too. (Thank god I decided to bathe yesterday!)

We finished our drinks, paid our tab, and zipped across town. Finding a parking space was remarkably easy, but in spite of that, we were still 20 minutes late.

No problem! The program has already started, just go in and find yourselves seats. We won’t hold you up here with any registration crap, since then you’d miss the wonderful information our speaker is imparting! Woohoo!

The program was actually a vertical tasting of four Glenlivet Scotches, very cool. It was clearly a promotional program for The Glenlivet. I’m sure they’re doing dozens of these around the country, hoping to raise awareness for Scotch and The Glenlivet.

Rochelle and I have been to a few of these kinds of parties (a few times we were even invited). Done well, people leave feeling like they learned something cool, that they can now be the expert on this subject in their social circle. Ideally, they turn into enthusiasts and evangelists for the product. (God knows we have on the subject of tequila, so we know this does work.)

In other words, there is both thought and purpose behinds these kinds of promotional events — unlike so many of the dot.bomb parties that were thrown. People are still getting drunk on Marketing’s dollar, but Marketing can explain clearly what they plan to get out of it, and in all likelihood, can point to improved regional numbers afterwards.

Now we just need to figure out how to learn about these types of parties in a predictable, repeatable way, instead of by randomly talking to strangers in bars.

Where the Promo Parties Went, Part 1

Yesterday at 3pm Rochelle asked me if I wanted to go out, to a party she had seen posted on Chowhound.com, at a local bar, Butter. The Food Network was going to be there, shooting footage of Butter’s unique approach to bar food, and there would be free food samples and giveaway goodies. Most importantly, there would be 25¢ pints of beer, and $2 cosmos. I was in like Flint, as they say.

Yesterday at 3pm Rochelle asked me if I wanted to go out, to a party she had seen posted on Chowhound.com, at a local bar, Butter. She included the description of the event, which explained that the Food Network was going to be there, shooting footage of Butter’s unique approach to bar food, and there would be free food samples and giveaway goodies. Most importantly, there would be 25¢ pints of beer, and $2 cosmos. I was in like Flint, as they say.

I got there before Rochelle, and watched the Food Network crew of three methodically lighting and shooting individual servings of Butter’s food, which Butter calls “White Trash Bistro cuisine.” I.e., Spaghetti-O’s, corn dogs, Frito pie, Tater Tots. That sort of thing.

Now, Rochelle and I both have a high appreciation for the possibilities of that kind of food. In the right hands, re-imagined, it could be amazing. Indeed, one of our favorite dishes at Memphis Minnie’s is the Frito pie, because it’s Bob’s own chili on the Fritos, and Bob’s chili is amazingly good.

Alas, Butter is literally opening cans of Spaghetti-O’s, and canned chili, and bags of Tater Tots, etc., and heating ’em up before serving. Worse, they’re mostly using a microwave to heat them up. Microwaved Tater Tots are not good. Only the corn dogs were decent, and even those would have been better if they’d been deep fried, the way god intended.

Fortunately, you have enough 25¢ beers and you stop worrying about the food. The beer was Pabst, but at 25¢, it’s hard to complain. And the bartenders were all friendly and fun, we had a good time talking to Frank in particular.

The best part, to us, was the giveaways. We each got a baseball cap with the bar logo on it. Truly, I have reached the pinnacle of head attire, now that I have a hat that says “butter” on it. Everything’s better with butter, so I plan to wear the cap everywhere.

Trying Thunderbird

Today I set up Mozilla Thunderbird, the new e-mail client that’s coming out of the Mozilla project. I wanted to give it a whirl, because I’m looking for a new e-mail client for Rochelle. She’s been using Netscape 4.7 to manage her e-mail, and it’s becoming more and more inadequate.

Today I set up Mozilla Thunderbird, the new e-mail client that’s coming out of the Mozilla project. I wanted to give it a whirl, because I’m looking for a new e-mail client for Rochelle. She’s been using Netscape 4.7 to manage her e-mail, and that application is getting old, and has a number of issues, mostly having to do with the fact that it’s now completely unsupported software. Also, Thunderbird has best-in-class spam controls, which is very important, since Rochelle is beginning to receive more and more spam.

Problem is, I haven’t found a better e-mail client than Netscape. Outlook and Outlook Express are out of the question. They are deeply insecure applications, and the number one vector for spreading computer viruses. (Mark my words, in the next 12 months there will be a malignant virus that will wipe Outlook users’ hard disks clean. It’s just a matter of time.) They are also spam-friendly applications (though an Open Source project, SpamBayes, gives Outlook robust anti-spam tools). People who voluntarily use Outlook or Outlook Express are stupid. IM!HO.

I actually bought Eudora Pro for Windows for Rochelle’s computer, on the basis of my experience using Eudora on the Mac for the last decade. But Eudora for Windows uses the obsolete Windows MDI interface paradigm, where all of the windows are contained in one “parent” window. It’s maddening, and a relic from the late 80s. The application has a number of other quirks, differences from the Mac version, to the point where I found it unusable.

So I’m evaluating Thunderbird, to see if it’s ready for Rochelle. I plan to use it regularly over the next few weeks, configured to manage one of my less-used e-mail accounts.

It’s a good thing it’s a less-used e-mail account, because already in my first 15 minutes, it’s clear that Thunderbird is still pretty raw (giving double meaning to the “trying” in this post’s title). Basic e-mail functionality is there, and the application seems solid (no crashing). This is the result of Thunderbird’s gestation as part of the Mozilla Suite. You can use, and even rely on Thunderbird. But there are a lot of fit-and-finish issues, which seem like small things, but add up to making it unsuitable — unenjoyable — for daily use.

Some examples:

  1. The first thing I want to do when setting up an e-mail client is turn off automatic downloading of HTML images. (Loading images in a spam message can tell the spammer your e-mail address is valid, resulting in a lot more spam.) There is a control for this in Thunderbird’s preferences, hidden a little too deeply (Advanced -> Privacy -> Block loading of remote images), but easily checked once you find it. So far so good.

    The problem is when you get messages with graphics from valid senders. The graphics don’t display, as per the general preference, but there’s no way to override that for the one valid message. This renders some messages unreadable.

    Solution: a toolbar button in the message window to download that message’s graphics.

  2. The default font settings render many messages a blur, with the text far too small to be legible. (This is on Mac OS X, it might be better on Windows or Linux.) The “minimum size” preference seems to do nothing, and the View -> Text Zoom menu option does not appear to be a global setting. I finally solved the issue by changing my Serif font setting to Lucida Grande, a sans serif font that is highly readable, even at small sizes. But all in all, there are far too many settings and options that affect text size and font choice, and it’s not at all clear what does what, how they interact, or how to accomplish specific goals with regard to text rendering.

    It reminds me of Don Norman’s description of refrigerator / freezer settings in The Design of Everyday Things. In most home refrigerators the freezer and refrigerator compartments share a single compressor, the key component of the cooling system. Because it’s shared, making changes to the freezer setting, e.g., setting it lower, can affect the refrigerator setting, making it lower too. So you turn up the refrigerator knob to keep your lettuce from freezing, but that makes the freezer less cold, and your ice cream oozes out of the carton. You have to fiddle and fuss to finally get to a balance you can live with.

    It’s a ridiculous thing for an end-user to have to deal with, and it happens because the designers give you controls that affect the system’s internals directly, instead of letting you choose a goal state (e.g., a specific temperature for each compartment), and have the system figure out how to achieve it. Product designers and programmers do this because it’s easy to build, and because they don’t see anything wrong with it. The problem is that users don’t think like programmers, and have trouble figuring things out.

    Thunderbird is supposed to be a simplified, easy-to-figure-out e-mail client, vs. the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink e-mail client in the Mozilla Suite. They have a ways to go with the text settings.

  3. Thunderbird makes some assumptions about my e-mail reading workflow that are wrong. If I open a message, read it, and then delete it, Thunderbird automatically opens the next message, in a window sized and positioned exactly like the first message.

    First of all, while this straight-through workflow may work for some people, it’s deeply distracting to me. I pick and choose my e-mails, working via priority order (or whim), not on the order the messages arrived. I suspect most sophisticated e-mail users do this. Auto-opening a message I would prefer to defer looking at just means I have to close it, and then right-click to mark the message as Unread. Pain in the ass. There appears to be no way to affect this behavior.

    The second issue with this is that Thunderbird’s screen redraws are extremely efficient. There is zero flicker when one message disappears and the other appears. Because the new message appears in the same place and is the same size, only the text changes. If you’re looking at a new message that is visually similar to the previous one — say, two text messages — you might not notice it was new, and think that you didn’t hit delete at all. Guess what you’d do then.

These are three examples, but I’ve seen many other issues. I can hold my nose and manage this low-priority e-mail account, but it’s clear that Thunderbird has a few more months of development in front of it before I’ll give it to Rochelle.

OK, Enough Goofing Off

Ok, it’s been two weeks of sleeping in and doing nothing (much) more than web surfing in my underwear. I should start doing some real work. So today I’m putting together a weekly schedule for myself.

Ok, it’s been two weeks of sleeping in and doing nothing (much) more than web surfing in my underwear. I suppose I should start doing some real work.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been unemployed. Rochelle and I both left our jobs about two and a half years ago. It was a coincidence, Rochelle taking a planned leave of absence to find her dream job (which she’s now doing), and my dot.bomb suddenly going under. That time we spent our days together, doing cheap stuff around San Francisco, and taking cat-sponsored naps every afternoon. For three months we basically spent all of our time together, and had terrific fun.

This time Rochelle is still employed, thank god. It’s not possible to stay afloat in SF on unemployment insurance payments, which are $370 a week, before taxes. (Yes, you pay taxes on unemployment. Tax cuts on stock dividends, paid for by the unemployed. That’s an economic plan that makes sense!) With Rochelle in a good job, we can tread water almost indefinitely.

Getting laid off is “winning the time lottery.” All of a sudden, I have time to work on the literally dozens of projects that have been building up around me. But in two weeks, I’ve accomplished nothing on any of them. Everything I’ve read or heard about being unemployed in today’s economy says that you have to come up with a routine, something to keep you on track, driving forward to the next job, or at least keeping busy and not frittering the time away. Certainly, when I took the job at Persistence after three months with Rochelle, I looked back and decided I hadn’t accomplished much with that time beyond improving my relationship with my wife. No small thing, that, but still…

I need this time to be different, in no small measure because I don’t want to do marketing in my next job. I’m planning to go back to hands-on technical work, probably software development, and that means rebuilding a number of skills that have gone fallow, as well as acquiring skills for the technologies that matter today. I have a lot of work to do!

So today I’m starting to put together a weekly schedule for myself. I need dedicated, scheduled slots for networking, job hunting, exercise, e-mail, socializing outside my house, technical development, home clean-up, blogging, bathing, naps, reading for both pleasure and research, web surfing, cat petting, going to the movies (matinees only), etc.

Some of these need to be done every day, but it’s impossible to do all of them in a single day. So I need a weekly, or even a bi-weekly schedule of activities. I’m sure I won’t get it right the first time, but with the economy the way it is in SF, I’m sure I’ll have time to perfect things. In any case, look for my first schedule draft on Monday.

Ninja!

Rochelle is closing in on her Ninja degree in tequila, which is the optional degree that comes after the Ph.D. The Ninja degree is when you (a) have your Ph.D., and then (b) drink (yet another) 35 tequilas, neat — i.e., in a snifter, straight, not in a margarita or other cocktail. You don’t need a Ninja to become a Demigod, and indeed, fewer than a dozen people have achieved all four levels.

Rochelle is closing in on her Ninja degree in tequila, which is the optional degree that comes after the Ph.D. The Ninja degree is when you (a) have your Ph.D., and then (b) drink (yet another) 35 tequilas, neat — i.e., in a snifter, straight, not in a margarita or other cocktail. You don’t need to be a Ninja to become a Demigod, and indeed, fewer than a dozen people have achieved all four levels.

While we both got our Ph.D.s at the same time, Rochelle’s Ninja degree is coming about a year before mine will, as I just can’t drink more than one in a sitting. I have bad memories of bad tequila from my early 20s, that there’s just no doing away with.

At any rate, Rochelle will be graduating this Sunday. With our planned trip to Tequila, Mexico in late October, Rochelle is slated to become the latest person to achieve all four levels in the Tommy’s Blue Agave Club.

Woohoo! I’m proud of my baby!

All Good Things…

Today was my last day at work; I was laid off, along with a few other folks. I worked at Persistence for 27 months, all told, at a time when many people were struggling to find work. It was a good job, with good people, and I’ll miss it.

Today was my last day at work; I was laid off, along with a few other folks, in what I hope is the last downsizing needed to get back on track. I worked at Persistence for 27 months, all told, at a time when many people were struggling to find work. It was a good job, with good people, and I’ll miss it.

I know folks who have been out of work for more than a year. Scary thought. In spite of that, I’m looking forward to the time off while I look for work, to re-sharpen technical skills I haven’t used much in the last two years. I don’t want to take on another marketing job, at least not right now. I’ve been wanting to go back to technical work, and make the transition from web developer to full-time software developer.

So I have a long list of technical projects for the coming weeks or months. Rochelle has a long list for me, too, which starts with “clean the house” and continues with dinner ready for her when she gets home from work. At least for the next couple weeks, she’ll be lucky if I’m out of bed and dressed when she gets home, as I intend to “pay down” my sleep deficit.

At any rate, I’ll be signing up for unemployment tomorrow. Updating the resume. Visiting the various online job sites. Etc. There’s a lot of work to do, for being out of work!

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Rochelle’s a big fan of the makeover show “What Not To Wear”, down to playing the same game with Hilda, our upstairs neighbor. They’ve been spending a couple hours on multiple weekends, going through each other’s closets, trying things on, nixing some, swapping some, and putting the rejects in the Goodwill pile. Now comes a great new show, for men, called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Rochelle’s a big fan of the makeover show “What Not To Wear”, down to playing the same game with Hilda, our upstairs neighbor. They’ve been spending a couple hours on multiple weekends, going through each other’s closets, trying things on, nixing some, swapping some, and putting the rejects in the Goodwill pile. Overall, about 5 bags of clothing and shoes have left the house.

Now comes a great new show, for men, called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. You may have read about it recently, but the simple concept is, five makeover gurus show up, run a helpless slob through the gauntlet, and in the end, he’s prince charming. The hook is, the five gurus are gay, the slob is straight.

It’s a lot of fun. If you get Bravo on your cable or satellite service, you should give it a whirl. Unlike most makeover shows, this one is 60 minutes, instead of just 30, which gives a lot more time to the different aspects of the makeover.

I doubt if any of this will rub off on my personal sense of style — or lack thereof. But the show’s funny enough, I’ll keep watching anyway.

Reloaded three times

I just went to see The Matrix Reloaded for the third time last night, which will seem like a lot of times, especially to those folks who didn’t like it, or the previous movie. But this is entirely defensible.

I just went to see The Matrix Reloaded for the third time last night, which will seem like a lot of times, especially to those folks who didn’t like it, or the previous movie. But this is entirely defensible.

The first time was the first time. Needed to see it in the theater, had a great time.

The second time was actually free, Rochelle and I just walked into it on a Sunday afternoon, because it started 2 minutes after The Italian Job finished, and we decided to get our money’s worth out of our tickets.

The third time was different. It was amazing. It was in IMAX.

If you haven’t seen The Matrix Reloaded yet, and if it’s playing on an IMAX screen near you, I recommend kicking in the extra $5. Even if you’ve seen the movie already, it’s worth going again. It’s a whole new experience, totally worth the extra money. There’s just way more detail up on the screen, and it makes the movie that much more “real.”

I may need to Reload again.

Costa Rica, LA Photos Online

Photos of our trips to Costa Rica (end of May) and Los Angeles (last weekend) are now online.

Photos of our trips to Costa Rica (end of May) and Los Angeles (last weekend) are now online. There’s commentary along with the photos, or at least a few of them. Rochelle is writing more, to be published very soon.

A word about loading the photos. It’s slow, because there are no thumbnails, so each page loads every photo at full size, and because it’s all loading over my DSL line, which runs at 192Kbps for uploads. But once the page loads, clicking on individual photos should be very quick, almost instantaneous.

Quotation of the year candidate

From the ever quotable JLG: “The Tax Code: the statement of our true values.”

From the ever-quotable JLG:

“The Tax Code: the statement of our true values.”

Especially apropos with the permanent repeal of the inheritance tax currently on the legislative agenda. (This is the bill that will let the wealthiest 2% keep the all money in the family when they die, instead of just most of it.)