Thank you, Mr. CalJohnSmith...whoever you are

Okay, so it doesn't have quite the same ring as the Jimmy Durante original, but it is sincerely meant.

For (navel-gazing) context, I'd been struggling the past two evenings with an Ubuntu Linux upgrade that I probably made worse by opting for the simple (meaning brute-force) solutions. None of these made any real difference, and the info. that actually solved my immediate problem was very much a needle and haystack proposition.

Mercifully, a poster going by the handle of "caljohnsmith" on the Ubuntu "Absolute Beginner" forums handily provided a magnet. And now the less frustrating--if slightly more painstaking--work of restoring my applications and settings and data begins.

The problem with communication is that too many people overrate their own ability at it. Rather like nearly everyone considers her/himself an "above average" driver. Because, hey, *I* know what I meant...you must not be listening right! I only have to go back to a deskside conversation yesterday that was like a verbal moebius strip: It could have been Monty Python skit...that is, if it had actually been funny.

So someone who can pack that much useful information into three sentences deserves some serious kudos. Thank you, thank you, thank you Mr. CJS. Tomorrow when I restore my email and am able to get to my new Ubuntu Forums account info., I'll tell you personally. But for now, I hope that the public shout-out will do.

Data leaves the personal computing "nest"?

One very minor epiphany to come from the exercise of backing up my PC of the last two years before a brute-force upgrade to Ubuntu (the "Jaunty Jackelope" flavor), mainly because the process may very well trash the already borked installation.

The last time I had to do this sort of thing in any serious form, the term "cloud computing" had barely hit my radar, and then only in a hand-wavy, pie-in-the-sky-a-la-mode kind of sense. I'm still waiting to be convinced that it will be half of what its proponents claim, but it only now occurs to me what a sea-change it would represent. Currently, my backup "process" is still more or less glorified sneakernetting with flash drives and the kludgey misuse of an external hard drive that clearly resents the Linux cooties with which I'm infecting--or innoculating, depending on your point of view--it. But, saving file sizes, it's no different from the boxes of floppies that are (almost impossibly) holding out like Hiroo Onoda under the bed in the "guest room" that doubles as my office.

But to me, the whole point of treating the "cloud" as one giant data-attic is not so much that whatever bytes you consider important--or at least did when you uploaded them--as it is a matter of making the hardware more irrelevant. In other words, the semantic link between your computer and what it holds is severed.

For an old-schooler like me, at least, that's quite a reversal. At one time--namely the tail of the 1980s and 1990s--my digital life could fit on a couple of 5.25" floppies. Like other aspects of post-college life, however, it became to easy to leave that collegiate (cough) "nomadism" behind and settle down. This is when personal computers were still quite an investment...particularly for a distinctly unemployable Liberal Arts major. And even floppies weren't exactly disposable back in the day. Thus the hardware and the data were basically synonymous. If your computer was whacked, you were pretty much out of luck.

That, I believe, led to a certain fetishization of PCs, particularly during the early to early-middle part of the PC era. While I doubt that we'll ever see the renaissance of the "thin client," I do think that we'll see the hardware become less relevant to computing in the generic sense. (Specialized gadgets will probably be chased into obsolesence even more quickly, which might offset the extra commoditization for chip manufacturers--although I'm guessing it won't be by that much.)

But our attitude toward computers--meaning the ones we actively use in our workaday lives--will definitely never be the same.

No post tonight

I'm trying to rescue an Ubuntu installation from an "upgrade" (Gutsy Gibbon -> Hardy Heron, in case it matters to anyone) that seemed to go swimmingly right up until it came time to restart the system. Then the warnings (from the "bearded ones" in the Linux User's Group) about how "painful" that can be were suddenly made manifest.

Dealing with that is guaranteed to chew up the rest of the evening...and probably then some. I'll spare my gentle reader the blow-by-blow, however.

Hope that your evening is going better than mine.

Another side of marketing "storytelling"

The Rochester, MN home wine-makers--"The Purple Foot Club"--apparently have a strong enough community that the Von Klopp Brew Shop can broker the sale of hundreds of pounds of California wine grapes. These are trucked to his store where folks pick them up and have the option of running them through Wally's de-stemming machine that also does the initial crushing. (Trust me, the very nominal fee will cost you less than the pants and shirt you'll replace after crushing them the retro way.)

But the experience does tend to quash any romantic images of sun-,drenched French villagers at the grape harvest, chateaux in the background, bottles of previous vintages waiting by the rustic lunches on tables under the trees, etc. Particularly when you're trying to keep the umbrella over your husband as well as yourself (wondering how close that lightening actually is) while waiting your turn at the roaring machine that will start your grapes (which really look more like blueberries) on their way to being wine.

But then someone opens the back of his truck, tunes the radio to the football game, fires up the grill, and starts a tailgate party of sorts. Then the rain slacks off, and someone else wanders through the line, offering samples of the Petite Syrah he made with last year's grapes. And a new story, far better grounded in reality, takes the place of the old. It's not the story that will move wine off the liquor store shelves. But Midwesterners into this hobby--and unaccustomed to the landscapes of Sideways and Bottle Shock--will certainly recognize it as authentic. Which is probably why Wally seemed rather miffed with himself for forgetting to replace the batteries in his camera--thus missing the chance to remind people next year of this year's purple-spattered festivities.

Marketers--even the ones I respect--seem to use the term "story-telling" monolithically. It seems to me, though, that sometimes two sets of "stories" are needed. One, of course, has to start from the "Once upon a time..." point and run all the way through the "And they lived happily ever after." That's for those currently on the outside. The story told to insiders doesn't need that structure. It has to do, I think, with pointing out the details and surprises that the first telling had to skip in the interest of time. Sometimes it must even find more story after the Princess and her Prince have settled into their castle and made more little royalty.

In a way, I think that telling the second kind of story is healthier for the story-teller, namely because s/he isn't merely reciting organizational legend...which, of course, always reads better than it was lived anyway. And it keeps the focus on the existing clients (and their part in the story) rather than forever chasing new ones with the same schtick. Because, as the saying goes, "we all know the end of that story..."

How to lose your most important salesperson: The customer

While cleaning out old papers a few weekends back, I came across a hand-me-down paperback that had idled in my filing cabinet for far, far too long: Harvey Mackay's Swim with the Sharks (without being eaten alive). The names dropped in the anecdotes are dated enough that they actually made me feel a little old when I thumbed my way through the "lessons."

Sure, a lot of the "rules" of marketing have changed, thanks to the constant evolution of the internet and related technologies. But certain human fundamentals don't. One of them--the very first in the Mackay book--was being quite flagrantly violated tonight when my husband and I stopped into Barnes & Noble. To quote:

Marketing is not the art of selling. It's not the simple business of convincing someone to buy. It is the art of creating conditions by which the buyer convinces himself.

Understand that when I walk into a bookstore, a sale is already half-made. I'm just a sucker that way. But when the music is blaring so loud that I can't concentrate on the chapter I'm trying to skim to get a feel for a book, I can't convince myself to buy it. When we walked out of the store, my husband remarked, "It's like walking out of a bar."

Now, I realize that bricks-and-mortar bookstores are under fierce competition from Amazon.com and probably their own online incarnations as well. They can only be expected to make up so much of that in overpriced coffee and pastries. But real-world bookstores let you browse a book before deciding to buy, something their virtual counterparts very often don't. That's a huge advantage, and turning a bookstore into something that feels more like a club completely negates it.

It's possible that I'm just missing something, namely the next evolution of the trade that began with Gutenberg and Manutius and the like--one that might be a no-brainer to those who put ink on paper for a living. It's not a romantic business, however much bibliophiles--such as my unabashed self--tend to idealize it. But to say that blogging and self-publishing are responsible for the death of the bookstore ignores part of the equation.

Simply put: A book is a more tangible connection with information than a website that may or may not be there tomorrow. Having that information in dead-tree format is an insurance policy against that information being scattered to the winds or lost entirely. But, unlike "free" information on the internet, books cost money. This requires us to make a buy vs. pass decision that cannot be made (first hand, anyway) without viewing a sample of the work to determine whether we can make a connection with it.

A bookstore--at its most elemental--exists to make that initial connection. Having coffee with that book while the connection is being made is a nice option to have, but is not central to the experience. And when the bookstore's attempt at "ambiance" completely subverts the match-making, the whole point of having books at what's essentially a coffee-bar is lost on me.

Frivolous Friday, 09.25.2009: Cheesy movie metaphor

I mentioned publicly that I had spent part of last evening listening to a presentation on the LISP programming language, and someone who's a PHP (language) cowboy snarkily remarked, "I didn't think that people still programmed with a LISP."

Sigh. Language snobs. Just because a language is older than you are doesn't make it obsolete.

But what popped into my head immediately after that was the idea that the programming world is like Skull Island in the 1933 version of "King Kong." A place where time stood stone-still for dinosaurs like T-Rex and other museum celebrities. Yet, somehow, later reptiles (such as snakes) and even mammals (like our leading man) could evolve in chronological tandem with the rest of the world...although evolution was clearly prejudiced in favor of the "too darned big to eat" gene. (Presumably, Skull Island's human population were parvenus, although that doesn't explain why a culture technologically advanced enough to build a wall high enough to keep the critters out couldn't just as easily build a fleet of boats and get the heck out of there.)

So, from now on, I think that will be my stock explanation for the young-uns who can't grok how 50 year-old languages like COBOL can power back-end accounting systems in an age when every month seems to find a new language wriggling in the primordial goo of the internet. Or, more aptly, in the gooey "building blocks of life" that the internet provides: Code repositories, free editing tools, mirror servers. And, of course, a ready supply of fierce competition. Yep, Skull Island. Definitely.

What's taken so long? And when are we going to do this?

I just don't see how a law like this could be even remotely controversial: Warning: this unrealistic image has been PhotoShopped.

I mean, what part of truth in advertising can you argue with? If the fast-food chain's ad agency PhotoShops the quarter-pound burger to make it look two inches thick to sell more burgers, that's fraud. If the athletic gear company's ad firm PhotoShops Tom Brady's head onto a more-ripped-than-Mr.-Universe body to sell more shoes, that's fraud. And when "Redbook" PhotoShops oh, about forty pounds and twenty years off Faith Hill to move more magazines, it's fraud. The worst part is that magazines like "Redbook" try to pass themselves off as part of "the media." Which--when you think about it--raises the question, "If you can't get past the cover without being lied to, why would you trust anything beyond that? Sheesh.

Good grief, I remember when we Americans scoffed at the Soviets' egregious photo-doctoring for propaganda purposes. And now now we "capitalist swine" can't keep our hands off the mouse.

But, while I think that the French law is a highly overdue no-brainer, I'm sure that there will be pushback from those affected. You know: Meddling nanny state and blah-blah-blah. But here's the deal: You can't call it capitalism when the consumer can't make an informed decision. Period. Granted, you can make the case that Coca-Cola has been fraudulently named for the last 80 years. But, under the circumstances, I think we can live with that...

Keeping the customer by losing the sale

A household with odd hobbies spawns equally odd traditions, and one of them here is the "Carve Pumpkins and watch Army of Darkness" party. After having gyros for dinner last night, it was formally decided that this year's munchies would have a Greek theme. So I thought that the more adventurous guests might like to sample a Greek specialty, "retsina," which is a wine flavored with pine resin.

Retsina can be an acquired taste, which probably explains why I've so far only seen it at the People's Food Co-op. But it wasn't on the shelves the last time I was in, so I called to ask whether it was back in stock. The lady in the wine department knew exactly which bottle I was talking about, but explained that the store couldn't buy it, at least for the present. She noted that they still had a retsina in stock, but then surprised the heck out of me by noting, "It isn't as good, but it's all we can get at the moment."

Wow. That's customer service. The Food Co-op (possibly) lost the sale of a bottle of wine with that phone call. But they also established a reputation as a retailer whose front-line employees have some knowledge of the products they're selling. For all I know, my question may have been a fluke, and the wine dept. lady just happens to have a taste for the stuff. But that's still one heck of a first impression to make on a customer.

Contrast that to the wine store I called a minute later who didn't recognize the term, and when I said, "It's a Greek wine..." the conversation immediately detoured into the lady who answered advising me to check with Woodman's or Festival Foods. Which was decent of her, if not particularly helpful: The big-box approach to wine-selling typically doesn't play to niche curiosities.

But the big ups for customer service definitely go to the Co-op here. It's always fun browsing their wine section (very much like browsing the books at the library) anyway, but I'll definitely linger a little longer next time, to see what other interesting things are tucked away on the shelves.

More reasons to love small businesses

From a software vendor's perspective:

• Small businesses typically don't make decisions by committee.
• Small businesses typically are delighted to let you work with the people who will ultimately use the software you write for them.
• Small businesses know that they don't have the luxury of maintaining a procurement department that wastes more money than it saves looking for ways to justify its continued existence when there's not so much money to spend.
• Small businesses understand that they're paying by the hour for legal services, so they try to avoid the extra friction--and sometimes ill-will--caused by contracts that waste more paper defining terms than they do specifying any quid pro quo significant enough to justify legal counsel.
• Small businesses will typically let you know in no uncertain terms when something doesn't work, because they can't afford to shelve your solution and start over.
• Small businesses seem to be more comfortable doing business with other small businesses because (IMO) they don't expect you to waste money pretending to be a big noise--they prefer the lower fees and the fact that someone they know takes their calls.
• Small businesses often cannot afford to spend money on things that don't matter. This simplifies things more than I can express.
  

In short, small businesses live in the Real World. When you write software for them, they're happy that it does what they expected it to do. That's incentive enough to give them a something extra, something that will delight. Contrast that with working with a mega-corporation that can usually be counted on to waste the time you could be coding in meetings convened to give one or more Somebodies the impression that they were a part of the process. Or the time wasted in explaining to the right hand what the left was responsible for telling it. Or any number of grating nuisances that come from working with any monolithic and inflexible organization.

In the end, it doesn't matter how well you get along with "your" team on the client side. If you're doing anything that could be construed as useful, you can count on someone with more rank than clue to step in to "supervise." I'm sure that any number of software products aren't viable outside the Fortune 1000 country club. But after spending an hour or so today wondering what planet in which alternate universe spawned the people who write contracts for mega-corporation Legal departments, I'm losing my ability to understand why anyone would want to venture outside the small business market.

One for the documentation Rogues' Gallery

There are so many ways that the above software quote-unquote "information" box is just plain baaaaad. But before I itemize its sins, allow me to offer a quick primer on what the software is supposed to accomplish. After all, I don't want to perpetrate its wrongs on my gentle reader.

Programmers are as capable of messing up computer files as anyone, partly because they're more dangerous to begin with. So the concept of "source control" was invented. Source control allows you to store previous versions of code (or other files) for safekeeping. If the programmer messes something up beyond all recognition s/he can simply roll the file--or, more likely, files--back to a not-messed-up version.

Different species of source control software have different methods of saving/retrieving files. One requires that the source control program be started before files can be checked in and out. Another works through the Windows Explorer you're probably used to. In this case, the programmer merely opens the folder that contains the file(s) in question, and the source control program's options become available when s/he right-clicks the files/folders in question.

Normally, I'm used to working with the first species, and normally get into trouble if I try to use anything other than the most basic functions of the second. But this morning, I needed to do something that wasn't basic, something that had more to do with setting properties of the software itself. (I wasn't too worried about mistakes b/c I knew I'd have the option of blowing away the consequences of any misunderstandings.) So I made my first mistake of going through the Windows "Start" menu. That triggered the message. As used as I've become to bad documentation, that one managed to find a chink in my armor.

Let's take it sentence-by-sentence:

"TortoiseSVN is a shell extension." Good for it. Here's a cookie. But it's running on Windows, which means that novice programmers--who probably need source control more than any other kind--might just not know what that means. That cardinal rule of writing, "Know Thy Audience?" FAIL. And the little joke baked into the product name--Tortoise...shell...get it?--isn't worth wasting precious space or the damage done to the first impression of the product.

"This means that it is integrated into the Windows explorer." Leaving aside the condescending tone of "This means..," this sentence is more likely to send the new user to the Windows "Start" menu to launch Windows Explorer and spelunking the menus for "TortoiseSVN" options that don't exist. The "Write so that you can not possibly be misunderstood" rule took a bruising here. (Oh, and btw: Windows Explorer is a trademarked product name, and should be marked as such, just to stay on the good side of the Legal Dept.)

"To use TortoiseSVN please open the explorer and right-click on any folder you like to bring up the context menu where you will find all TortoiseSVN commands." Now, we've finally been told something useful. The problem is that it should have been the first thing a new user reads. The "Put the most important information at the beginning of the paragraph" rule was likewise clobbered here.A hyperlink to the manual is useless if clicking it doesn't open it in the user's web browser. Windows dialog boxes don't even allow you to copy text--a real limitation when you're a programmer trying to debug error messages--much less launch your web browser.

"And read the manual!" So...where is it? TortoiseSVN doesn't act like a "normal" computer program--that's just been demonstrated. Ergo, there's no "Help" menu. If the user just now downloaded and installed the program, s/he would very likely still have the browser window open and would just search the website for documentation. But any programming dept. that requires source control will insure that it's used by pre-installing the software. That leaves the user with the extra step of Googling for the documentation...something that should be placed at the first user's fingertips. Particularly if it's important enough for an exclamation point and underlining.

Rather impressive, the amount of documentation rule-breaking that was packed into just a few square inches. But my point is not to traduce the efforts of someone who probably spends most of her/his time writing code rather than documentation. My point is that you don't even have to be a professional writer to create something useful for the people who use your software/widgets/whatever. If you can look at your handiwork through the eyes of someone who's never before seen it, you are already ahead of the proverbial pack. Draw up a list of the absolute minimum amount of information those (intelligent but under-informed) folks need to know to be effective. Then prioritize it (in order of importance to them), and write. Everything else is merely spell-checking and proof-reading for grammar.

No one expects literary merit of any technical documentation. Heck, one of the most revered works in the software profession is written in a style that makes me grind my teeth. Understanding precisely who your user is and making it nearly impossible for her/him to screw up will make up for any number of stylistic sins. Trust me on this.

Best "lunch & learn" *ever*

One of the downsides of deciding to step away from an extracurricular organization (with which I'd been involved for many years) is that I miss out on having lunch at the annual Labor Day event. That lunch is traditionally served by T-Bones of La Crosse. If I absolutely must choose between the two, I'd go for the Northern Exposure sandwich, but the Garlic & Rosemary one is a very close second. Oh, and I normally don't care for baked beans, but T-Bones' version is nearly a meal unto itself, so a hearty scoop always goes onto the plate.

Fortunately, the office's family picnic has been having him supply lunch for the past several years, so I didn't have to worry about never again having that choice to make. And today I didn't even have to worry about making that choice. (Whew!)

But lunch is never complete without a chat with the T-Bones' proprietor, fondly known as "T." Because when you're talking to T, you're talking to someone who A.) clearly takes pride in his handiwork, and B.) genuinely loves working with people. And the man has lived and worked long enough to have something to share with anyone willing to shoot the breeze.

Today was no exception. My husband and I pulled into Myrick Park (where the picnic was held), and couldn't help but notice that the T-Bones trailer was larger--and possibly spiffier--than last year. T dropped by our table during lunch, and during the conversation he mentioned that his wife was a bit queasy about the investment at a time when, as he put it, "restaurants are closing their doors left and right." But he's apparently been a contrarian that way since he worked on his family's farm in the 1960s.

T told the story of how the 1960s saw a precipitous drop in beef cattle prices, and many farmers preferred to take the loss of rapping any bull calf on the head with a hammer than raise it to slaughtering age. T's father made him an offer: He would pay for the feed for any neighbors' bull calves that they would otherwise have culled if T would do all the work of raising them, and T would collect the "paycheck" at the end. T knew exactly how much work that would take, but he also knew he'd be a fool to say "no." So he drove the truck and trailer around the area and talked to neighboring farmers.

Enough were rattled by the market trend that he shortly had fifty head of cattle to tend. But by the time that the steers had grown large enough for slaughter, the market had rebounded (and then some), and the proceeds paid for his college education. And the business lesson of his father's brainstorm has clearly stuck with him since then. There's something more than ironic in the idea of learning how to buck "herd mentality" from cattle, but I didn't think to tease T about it just then. He would have liked that.

So, although my sandwiches and sides are long gone, I'm happy to share a bit of T's wisdom. But don't ever let that stop you from picking up a smoked pork sandwich (or two) and chatting with him if you're lucky enough to have the chance. It's money and time well spent.

Gears aren't self-greasing

I'm not positive that I haven't talked about this before, but it doesn't matter, because this probably won't be the last time I harp on the idea of reducing friction in the process of achieving a goal.

Sounds good in principle, right? But, then, so does flossing your teeth, calling your Mom regularly, brushing the cat, and so forth. So let's stick to tangible instances of that basic idea. Maybe that will covert the usual nodding and smiling into action somewhere.

Today's mail included something invoice-ish looking from the DMV. It's about the time of year that my license plate stickers would come due, so at first I thought that someone had had the brilliant idea of slipping in organ donor stickers with that invoice. It wasn't until a couple minutes later--after I'd written out a check and filled out one side of the form--that I realized that this was actually for the renewal of my drivers' license itself. Which basically means that the DMV is counting on me to remember to bring the little orange stickers along with the rest of the relatively easy-to-lose pieces of paper relevant to the transaction. Friction.

But, lest I seem like I'm dogging on the public sector, there are any number of instances in private industry. Here comes one of them.

Both the People's Food Co-op and Festival Foods North (in La Crosse) take donations for a local food pantry. In principle, it's a great idea. The Food Co-op maintains a bin for non-perishable items, whereas Festival has "stunt" grocery bags of $5 and $10 amounts (for people food), as well $5 "stunt" bags for the animal shelter. The upside of the Co-op's method is that it offers far more discretion of the part of the donor. But the problem is that the donation bin is on the "Oops--too late, you've already checked out" side of the cash registers. And, the last time I checked, tacking a "whoops--forgot again--my bad" donation onto your bill wasn't an option. There's that pesky friction again. Festival, by contrast, places the animal shelter bags in the pet supply aisle, and the food pantry bags at the register. For what it's worth, I did mention that to the Co-op employee who checked me out the last time I was there. Hopefully that will make donating easier for perennially distracted folks. Such as your faithful blogger, for instance.

Frivolous Friday, 09.18.2009: A banana boat song for programmers

[With sincere hat-tip to the multi-faceted Harry Belafonte and his hard-working Jamaican forebears...]

Deadline, Deh-eh-ehd-line
Deadline come and me wan' go home
Day, it's D-Day, it's D-Day, it's D-Day
It's D-Day, me say Deh-eh-ehd-line
Deadline come and me wan' go home

Code all night on a cupp'a joe
Deadline come and me wan' go home
Stalkin' gremlin, compiler so slow
Deadline come and me wan' go home

Come, Mister QA man, test out me revision
Deadline come and me wan' go home
Come, Mister QA man, test out me revision
Deadline come and me wan' go home

It's six file, seven file, eight file PATCH!
Deadline come and me wan' go home
Six file, seven file, eight file PATCH!
Deadline come and me wan' go home

Dead, me say Deh-eh-ehd-line
Deadline come and me wan' go home
Day, it's D-day, it's D-day, it's D-day
Deadline come and me wan' go home

The unit-test that look alright
Deadline come and me wan' go home
Hide the bug I fix tomorrow night
Deadline come and me wan' go home

It's six file, seven file, eight file PATCH!
Deadline come and me wan' go home
Six file, seven file, eight file PATCH!
Deadline come and me wan' go home

Dead, me say Deh-eh-ehd-line
Deadline come and me wan' go home
Day, it' D-Day, it's D-Day, it's D-Day
Deadline come and me wan' go home

Come, Mister QA man, test out me revision
Deadline come and me wan' go home
Come, Mister QA man, test out me revision
Deadline come and me wan' go home

Deadline, Deh-eh-ehd-line
Deadline come and me wan' go home
Day, it' D-Day, it's D-Day, it's D-Day
It's D-Day, me say Deh-eh-ehd-line
Deadline come and me wan' go home

The flip-side of "Pimp My Website"

After tonight's Linux User's Group broke up, one of the regulars--specifically the one who plans to augment the group website beyond its current Google Groups incarnation--asked whether I would want to contribute anything to the website. It was not the first time that I've been asked that question, so I actually was worldly-wise enough to respond with another question, namely something along the lines of, "Well, what are you looking for?"

As usual, there was no concrete answer.

What jumps into mind during those times when I'm leaving molar-prints in my tongue is the Dibert Sunday comic which has Alice meeting with a customer. The customer won't sign off on the project until Alice can assure him that the software's design will meet requirements...but, of course, he won't spell out what the requirements are. Alice--by now visibly restraining her trademark Fist of Death--explains that she can design the software do anything the requirements specify. To which the customer responds: "Can you design it to tell me my requirements?"

But--to ape Arlo Guthrie--that's not what I came to blog about.

That particular cartoon was taped to my overhead credenza at work for quite awhile...roughly the time it took for my primary client and me to learn each other's languages. For giggles, I tried Googling it tonight and came up largely skunked.

For those who don't pay too much attention to what goes on behind web pages, the content has to be in text form (or precisely and meaningfully labeled) for search engines like Google and Bing to list it in their results. Images--which cartoons ultimately are--don't do that. And as much as I owe so much to Dilbert's creator (Scott Adams) for the novocaine for the sometimes painful reality of corporate life, he doesn't make that easy--too busy selling ad space and moving the merch. on the franchise, apparently.

But that largely illustrates a problem waiting to happen when either Marketing decides that the front page of the website isn't blingy enough...or (in fairness) web programmers become antsy to branch out into the more visually gratifying space comprised by Adobe's Flash, Microsoft's Silverlight, or Sun's JavaFX. When you encapsulate your website's message into those formats, they completely drop off the radar, so far as search engines are concerned. That means that if you want your website to be at or near the top of the list when a potential customer Googles a word or phrase, you're out of luck if it's part of the flashy animated bits. There are ways to work around that, but they require a certain amount of cross-pollination. Basically, Marketing has to be aware of the downsides to shiny-new technologies, and Programming has to understand that the information has to be made visible--and not (I repeat, NOT) be penalized for the extra work/time that such redundancy requires.

But most importantly, the use of blingy website features should have a rock-solid business case. (Did I mention that the "rock" in question is a diamond? Yeah, that solid.) That's Management's responsibility. Which more or less brings us--proverbial full circle--to the question of defining requirements. For which an understanding of objectives is not quite enough; an understanding of the limitations is also requisite. As is an understanding of the fact that the afore-mentioned technologies are merely today's incarnation of the eternal tug-of-war between what you want to do and the tools available to do it.

An oblique compliment for Facebook's designers

Even with technologies that make web pages act more like applications, many apps. still act like old-fashioned web pages, namely in that they rely on loading a new page (or reloading the same one) to update data. That's changing, of course. Naturally, some programmers/designers over-rely on the glittery new tools, which can have annoying side effects when done poorly. Particularly when the programmers/designers in question don't bother to stress-test their work or test it on multiple web browsers, operating systems, etc.

So, sadly, I still find myself surprised when it works so well that the web application behaves more like a program running on my desktop than it does a web page. The case in point is the bottom bar that Facebook uses for widgets like chat, notifications and its own version of the Windows Start menu. (Sorry for the analogy, Linux folks!) The Facebook "Start" menu in particular is done so well that I've found myself clicking it rather than the Linux taskbar when I need to launch a desktop--i.e. non web--program. Which would be only mildly annoying if I didn't do it again and again and again.

But if the menu widget is that convincing, I really can't consider it anything but a backhanded compliment to Facebook's user interface designers every time I'm punk'd. Good job, folks. [mumblegrumblemumblegrumble...]

Too many preachers, not enough parishoners

Gaaaaggggh. I don't know what it is about I/T that seems to bring out the "One True Wayism" in the people who do it for a living. Maybe the professions w/in I/T sort of select for that. Dunno. And really don't care. Except, naturally, when I have to break up a dog-fight in my metaphorical backyard...or actually am one of the dogs in that fight.

The bottom line is that if you're asking people to abandon current processes systems, they have absolutely no inherent reason whatsoever to believe that making your way their way will be worth the switching costs. There's a prophet on every street-corner for this language or that methodology or the other platform. They can't all be right all the time. Which all tends to breed a more than robust skepticism in anyone who's been in the trade for more than a few years. And when the prophet in question is already known to be prone to One True Wayism, making converts will be that much more difficult.

Kathy Sierra sums it up better and more pithily than I could when she talks about focusing on "making your users more awesome." And I think that's precisely the focus that anyone selling their peers on The One True Way should take. Don't tell me that the old way sucks. For all I know, that very well might be true. But don't tell me that anyway. Don't even tell me how awesome the new way is. My defenses against hard-sell hype make Cold War bomb-bunkers look like a cardboard boxes. Tell me how the new way's guaranteed to make me awesome. Scratch that. Awesomer. ;-)

Because if you can explain how the new way will make my life easier, that means you've actually taken the time to understand the old way. I don't think it's possible to overstate the breakthrough that represents. It's analogous ministering in a foreign country and being able to converse in the native language. You more than probably won't have the nuances, slang, etc., and you might even make a few embarassing gaffes. But you will no longer be just another God-botherer, brandishing a thick book and gibbering. Until then, it doesn't matter how many wells you can dig or schools you can build or people you can innoculate. Or whatever. You might as well stay at home and talk to yourself and save yourself the plane fare.

It's probably stretching the metaphor a tad to talk of dropping the "preacher" mindset in favor of a more "missionary" outlook. But I think that the difference is significant. Because, in the end, making your peers (more) awesome means that you hang with awesome(r) people and do awesome things more awesomely. And, seriously, how awesome is that?

Two species of trolls

Yes, I'll admit that it's pretty low-rent on my part, but a few pages of People of WalMart made me laugh so hard that my eyes are still stinging from the tears. (Disclaimer: Some photos are definitely not safe for work; many are kind of painful, actually.) I worked in retail during and immediately following college, and thus occasionally saw a less flattering side of humanity--and that even before WalMart had made it this far north. So there's a certain cathartic schadenfreude in it for me.

But the point of "sharing" that site is not to indulge any sense of elitism. For all I know, some of the fashion choices may have been the only choices folks had. On the other hand, letting your kid play with a plastic back over her/his head while you wheel your cart through the aisles is just plain messed-up. No excuses. Anyone who calls that "elitist" needs a serious head-check. So when WalMart (or any other business) deliberately cultivates a lowest common denominator mentality, they deserve every last bit of ridicule they get. In spades.

So I have to wonder about what whether other WalMart customers--those who don't willfully ignore baseline hygiene or social norms--actually think twice before coming back. But the notion doesn't strictly apply to brick-and-mortar retail. A post on the Startup Lessons Learned blog from a few days ago ("The Cardinal Sin of Community Management") made an interesting point about the expectations of the community that a business can build. In the online world, one of the functions of a community manager is to protect the community at large from the damage done by trolls--i.e. the web's equivalent of the slob sporting a "No fat chicks" t-shirt outside the ladies' changing room.

Obviously, the business model of Big Box retail need not concern itself with any notion of community. Then again, anyone can snap Failblog-calibre photos with a cellphone before any clerk or manager is the wiser. That's not so much a hazard for online venues, mainly because screenshots of text posts aren't usually so entertaining. Usually. But a single troll can do so much more damage in an online venue because the interactivity creates a whole different web of transactions (monetized or not). Plus, the online species likes to linger at the scene of the carnage to savor the damage--or, like car bombers, wait for a crowd to gather before detonating the next round.

Thus I think that there's something instructive in the notion behind the of People of Walmart site, even if you don't ever plan to visit it. If anything, troll-control is an exercise in Integrated Pest Management, which requires a detailed understanding of where the community segments fall on the twin axes of freedom of speech and ability to absorb the damage of anti-social behavior. Not to mention an accurate accounting of the costs--direct and indirect--of prevention vs. damage control.

Of paper tigers

I had to go spelunking amongst old boxes for something. And as any self-respecting pack-rat who's moved even a few times knows, a lot of "stuff" surfaces during that process. I won't say that the years are making me less sentimental; I'll just say that the sentimentality is becoming more selective. And--surprisingly--more organized. But the "waste not. want not" ethos is still as strong as ever, which means that certain folks will shortly be the lucky beneficiaries of certain "stuff," all of it in paper form.

Which brings me around to musing at the power--today I would call it tyranny--of paper. Even in this digital age, it still (under certain circumstances) commands behavior that is nothing short of fetishistic. Seriously, think about this for a second: If a friend or relative sent you a holiday eCard in lieu of a paper one, wouldn't you feel cheated? If you were given a "formal" present (e.g. for your birthday), wouldn't you find it cheesy if it wasn't wrapped? If your birth certificate doesn't bear the embossed seal, is it officially "official?"

Digital isn't exactly an apples-to-apples proposition, really. After all, it's not like you can buy a refrigerator with LCD displays on the doors for your kids' artwork. And the local polling station--for good reason--will certainly never let you text your vote.

That's not to say that things haven't changed quite fundamentally. In my scrounging among dusty boxes, for instance, I encountered a stash of watermarked bond paper, left over from the days when mere copier-quality stock just would not do for a resume and cover letter. Now that seems almost laughably quaint.

For all that, I think that the notion of a paperless office--much less world--will never quite happen. For one thing, the mediums change too fast for the pack-rats of this world. It wasn't that long ago that the luck of knowing someone still using old hardware was the only thing that let me rescue twenty year-old data from 5.25" floppy disks without paying through the nose for the service.

The upshot is that there will be plenty of incentive for years and years to come for insisting on recycled paper. Now, if we just could find a way the penalize the gits who repeatedly clog our mailboxes with paper spam, it would be a better world.

Sharing a bit of cynicism

[First off, a disclaimer: The firm for which I work is on this list of top "green" design firms, and I have the highly dubious distinction of being the only programmer in the office to be LEED-certified. (Stupid me, letting myself be talked into that...)]

Anyhoo, I'm certainly not knocking the whole idea of "green" building--if nothing else, because I'm hard-wired to look for efficiencies. But what I think is lost in the political wrangling over green jobs and how much of your gas tank is financing terrorists is the fact that the greenest option of all is to not use stuff in the first place.

To hear the firm elders tell the story, the Golden Age of their careers was the 1960s and 1970s when, quote, "Companies built monuments to themselves." In 2009, commercial real estate is going begging for buyers/renters to the point where the economic talking heads are making loud rumblings about a second foreclosure meltdown. Yet, as the linked TPM statistic indicates, the green design trade is seeing a huge uptick in business. If the frugality enforced by a glut in commercial real estate puts paid to hubris writ in steel and brick, I have a difficult time seeing how it would be a bad thing. Or even if strip malls (and their parking lots) are finally built the smart way (i.e. more than one story) in lieu of paving over more of the planet.

The essential block to "green" building is, I suspect, twofold: First, there's an upfront cost to the builder, particularly because when you can build an office complex or strip mall just like you built the last dozen, economies of scale encourage McBuilding. Second, of course, is the basic human tendency to repeat what's already known, even in the face of change. However, the long-term costs of decreased energy/water/etc. efficiencies are passed on to the buyers/tenants. A seller's market gives no incentive to change. Except now it's become a buyer's market, and likely will be for years to come. Buyers/Renters in a down economy would much rather invest in their business' growth than pay for wasted energy or eat the cost of extra sick days because an open building was subdivided without the HVAC system being upgraded to compensate for the lost "natural" circulation.

I'm certainly not hoping for a second foreclosure crisis--don't get me wrong. I am hoping that the laws of supply and demand plus a greater awareness of the alternatives will inject some intelligence and longer-range thinking into the building process. Because as Will Rogers said, "They're making more people every day, but they aren't making any more dirt." The same can be said for the sources of energy that we're mining or pumping from the ground every day.

Frivolous Friday, 09.11.2009: An intersection of two nerdy passions

[Disclaimer: If there's the slightest chance that you'll be bored by me banging on (yet again) about either wine or history, please feel more than welcome to stop reading now.]

I've been a little shy of wines from Chile and Argentina lately, mainly because the last few samples I've had have been over-the-top for the oak taste that aging in barrels gives them. (To say that I could have had the effect from licking the inside of the barrels is not overstating the case by all that much. Seriously.)

But while browsing the shelf at Festival North tonight, I flipped to the back label of a Los Vascos bottle because the front label didn't say what kind of grapes had gone into the wine. After reading it, I still had no clue as to the grapes themselves, but I did find something equally interesting. To wit:

Los Vascos, one of Chile's oldest wine estate, is controlled by the Domaines Barons de Rothchild (Lafite), who began a comprehensive modernization and investment program in 1988. The 500-hectare vineyard is located in the Canetan valley of the Colchagua province, which offers a healthy microclimate for its ungrafted pre-phylloxera Bordeaux rootstock...

If the last sentence made you think, "ungrafted pre-whaaaaht?," hang with me for a second or twelve. This is where the history nerdiness kicks in. After a bit of botany, anyway. What we consider "classic" (a.k.a. European) wines are made from subspecies of vitis vinifera. (Yes, I know: It sounds like a spell straight out of "Harry Potter," but I'm not making this up.) North America boasts a different native species, vitis labrusca, whose most famous sub-species ("Concord") gives us the grape juice we know from breakfast. It also tries to eat my mother's clothesline every year, but that's another story...

Vinis labrusca doesn't do so well as wine--wine made from the Niagara subspecies is sometimes described as "musky," which probably accounts for the species' nick-name of "fox grapes." But it is undeniably hardy. Thus, unsurprisingly, someone in the middle 1800s apparently had the bright idea of bringing this tough vine from America to Europe, presumably for hybridizing.

Trouble was, they also brought with the vines a parasitic louse known as phylloxera vastatrix. Vitis labrusca had, over the millennia, developed resistance to the louse. But its distant vinifera cousins didn't, and the results were absolutely devastating. The wine industry was ravaged for at least 20 years, and some vinifera subspecies considered commercially unimportant became extinct as efforts were put into preserving the more prized varietals.

Labrusca's curse, however, became a blessing. Branches of vinifera vines that had survived the destruction were grafted onto hybridized labrusca rootstock, checking the effects of the parasite. Even in 2009--nearly a century and a half later--an estimated 85% of all wine grape vines throughout the world are vitis labrusca at their roots. (Talk about Yankee colonialism at its finest!)

But apparently this wasn't true of the grapes that found their way into that bottle. Shady marketing aside--the label clearly wants you to confuse the vintners with their much, much tonier kin in Bordeaux whose 2006 vintage will set you back somewhere around $700 a bottle--I thought that $12 was worth the price of admission (for two) to taste a bit of history.True, it could completely suck, but humoring the Inner History Nerd is something I rarely regret doing.

Okay, so maybe this isn't the last post from Firefox

Just a quick update on the switch-over. One big complication, due to the fact that I post the same blog content on both Blogger and Tumblr, is the fact that Tumblr's "new text" page--i.e. the one for a written blog entry--didn't want to render on the desktop (which I've been too lazy to update from the Gutsy Gibbon flavor of Ubuntu Linux). Kind of a deal-breaker, that.

A few other things about Opera that I don't like so much:

• Adding an icon to the system tray. That's just presumptuous. The system tray's for operating system stuff, not applications.
• Imported Firefox bookmarks shunted off to the side in another folder, like they're the red-headed step-children of URL favorites.
• For all its friendliness, it makes the same mistake of IE 7 and Firefox 3+ in wasting vertical space with a tab for a single web page. (Something I never understood and think that those responsible for that design should be forced to browse the web with Eees until such negligence is rectified.
• Similar to Firefox, the Google toolbar is baked in by default. But I have a bigger beef with that on Firefox, of course--open source is supposed to be about control, after all.
  
• Bookmarks (Amazon, eBay, Ask.com, etc.) that can't be deleted (or at least rearranged), presumably because they were paid for.

Okay, so that last gripe's just whiny. So's the Google toolbar, really. Opera's gotta keep the lights on somehow, after all.

But for anything to do with A/V or Java applets? Opera's the go-to browser, hands down. I mean, it'll play .WMV files like they're running in Windows. I've downloaded a bunch of software for Linux--standalone players, not inside the web browser--and that's never, ever worked for me. Under Opera, it's just plain magic.

Which all makes for yet another anecdotal illustration of why there's no such thing as One True Way for problem-solving. And software, ultimately, is made to solve problems.

A more "wholistic" approach to eco-tourism

The friend who crashed (figuratively only) at our place Sunday on his annual bike tour wanted to try the backwater eco-tour offered through Mississippi Explorer Cruises (actually based in Lansing, IA). One thing that surprised me about the outing, however, was the fact that the economics of the river were fully integrated into the information. Ditto the engineering (e.g. the dredging and lock and dam system) that goes into keeping the river navigable for shipping traffic. Definitely a change of pace from the usual exercise of pointing out critters to gawp at. I rather liked that--it felt considerably more complete than what normally--in my limited experience--amounts to a trip to a floating zoo.

When you add popcorn, soda and jujubees onto the price of a ticket, the price of a movie comes out even with the cost of two hours on a pimped-out pontoon boat. Not a bad deal, when you consider that you're pretty much guaranteed to come out of the tour more informed about the world around us. Offhand, I can't think of very many movies that will do that.

A (mostly) local example of permission-based marketing

I'm fairly certain that Wally von Klopp of Pine Cheese Mart (a.k.a. Von Klopp Brew Shop) is not related to Seth Godin, the Elvis (minus the rhinestone jumpsuits, naturally) of Permission-based Marketing. But they do have certain important things in common. They're both dry-witted, gracious to the point of courtly, insanely knowledgeable about their business, and they both make their gelt selling things to people who don't feel in the least bit hustled when the transaction's done. Whether the transaction is in person, over the phone or via email is completely irrelevant.

So it's more than a bit ironic that the email Wally sent to my husband about this year's California Grape Crush languished in the spam trap until almost too late to RSVP. Why? Because neither of us would give a retail outfit anything but a Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail type email address. But over the years, the place we stopped for an ice cream cone en route to somewhere other than Pine Island became the go-to place for home winemaking supplies. It's been very gratifying to see Wally open a second location at the north end of Rochester. The second shop represents years of being a consultant rather than a shopkeeper, and I respect the living daylights out of that.

Niche retail outside of a metropolis is hardly the short road to riches--and I heartily doubt that the road is much shortened by setting up shop in a metropolis. Making a living for yourself and others working in a field you enjoy, however, eliminates much of the pressure to be all things to all people, to forever chase every newest new thing. Maybe some people would rather take the shortcuts and retire to their yacht and beach house as soon as possible. That's their preference. Me, I'd rather do business with someone I can both look up to and learn from.

No post Sunday or Monday

Company's due in on Sunday, and of course Monday is Labor Day. Have an excellent rest-of-the-weekend, all, and thanks for reading.

A requiem of sorts

I won't mention any names, partly out of respect for (work)days gone by, and partly because I didn't have the guts to dig for proof positive of my superficial impressions and cynical assumptions.

The back-story is that I needed to look up contact info. for a former employer this week--the one that offered me my first "real" I/T job, in fact. On the day of my interviews, I'd managed to lock my car in my garage, and ended up having to put a brick through the garage door window to make it there on time. It was worth it and then some: They were good to work for, even for a place that rented bodies during the dot-com boom. I jumped ship mainly because I knew that my options with the client would be either being laid off or doing the work of multiple people for a single worker's paycheck.

I'd kept in and out of touch with a few folks from those days ever since moving to La Crosse, but somehow gossip about the company itself never reached my little twig on the grapevine. Dispelling that ignorance was a depressing experience. For tasters, my branch office has ceased to exist. And when I called the corporate HQ number listed on the website, I wasn't even shunted into the usual touch-tone labyrinth: A somewhat British-sounding female voice instructed me to leave the usual name, number and brief message. That was yesterday early afternoon. I didn't hear anything for the rest of the day. Nor to I expect to hear anything, ever, if that's how the world--client, staff, media, etc. is greeted.

In one sense, I shouldn't be surprised. The business model of renting technically-trained brains to clients has been deeply affected to the proverbial race to the bottom. The bean-counters of the corporate world still fool themselves (actively abetted by the likes of WiPro, InfoSys, and any number of "American" firms like IBM) that they can buy Tiffany's quality/service at Wal-Mart prices. But I wonder at the wisdom of following the crowd into outsourcing--meaning bringing development work into company facilities rather than place people on the client site--while trying to maintain the illusion of higher-level services as the differentiator.

This next isn't my idea, actually. A blogger whose identity I cannot recall suggested years ago that Sun Microsystems might have served its shareholders better by simply liquidating while the company had deep cash reserves, and giving the shareholders their money to spend on other things. That didn't happen, of course. But given how there will be less carcass for Oracle to pick each day before it takes the keys, the idea seems tragically prescient. The case with my previous employer was slightly different. Although they were conservatively managed (i.e. no debt), they didn't have the treasure chest of patents that Sun could boast. Liquidating what we jokingly called "a body shop" would have yielded considerably less cash for the stakeholders.

For all that, I'm not convinced that it wouldn't have been the worst thing that could have happened--assuming, of course that it was done professionally and (for the soon-to-be-unemployed staff) humanely. The shell lives on; the "cut above" ethos that gave the company its soul is quite obviously gone. Perhaps someday I'll have to decide whether surviving into the next quarter, fiscal year, etc. trumps losing all or part of the company culture and standards. I honestly don't know how I'll react. But I do know that I won't consider a "business plan" complete without the corporate equivalent of a living will.

Frivolous Friday, 09.04.2009: Why do we root for the bad guy?

The latest DVD in our NetFlix queue, "The Good Thief," has been languishing for a bit, so it was time to give it its turn and send it back.  I'm not a huge Nick Nolte fan, although I give him big kudos for not getting by on his looks--or his voice, for that matter.  (If it hadn't been for the strong performances by Nolte/Sacchi/Paltrow in "Jefferson in Paris," I would have been throwing things at the screen for its dreckish screenplay and even more wretched grasp of history.)

Now, I never saw the original (French) version that "The Good Thief" covers; I'm only speaking to the relationship between money--as in great wads of cash--and morality that intertwine as confusingly (yet as prettily) as Celtic knot-work in the plot and subtext.  

Apparently, it's "okay" to rob a casino because, hey, we all know that the odds are always stacked in favor of the house.  And it's also "okay" to steal art from the Japanese who bought it (at inflated prices) because they're "cheating" by hoarding it in a private vault and flaunting impeccable fakes on the casino walls.  Mostly, though, I think we're more or less set up to root for Bob because he's tilting at the windmill that is the soul-less underbelly of a money-obsessed culture (in this case the Riviera).  I think, though, it's the honor among thieves is what suckers us in.  The underage junkie-prostitute Anne understands Bob well enough to say, "He doesn't want money; he wants what money can't buy." 

Hopefully, there's at least a little of that in all of us.  

Last post from Firefox?

Well, I might be crossing over to the Dark Side. Or perhaps, back to the Dark Side. Still staying with Linux, you understand, because the ability to watch Windows viruses bounce off the Teflon of UNIX--jeering all the while--is just waaaaay too much fun. Since I pretty much have to maintain a Windows computer for cross-platform testing anyway, it's just as easy to throw iTunes there for the weekly podcast synchronization.

But I have to say that I'm rather impressed with Opera 10's ability to play well with both the open- and close-source teams. Normally, I prefer to install software from the Ubuntu command-line because it's so much cleaner than downloading packages and running the included installer. Unfortunately, in this case, the "help" on the Ubuntu site was completely worthless. But, because I actually trust Opera's programmers to be competent, I rolled the bones with the download. Guess what? It hooked straight into the installer and I was up and running in minutes.

Opera was my browser of choice for several years: Even then, when you had to pay for a banner-ad-free version, it was totally worth it. Heck, Opera offered tabbed browsing in 2000, if not before. (I remember Internet Explorer 6 coming out and being absolutely gob-smacked flabbergasted that they still hadn't gotten the memo about tabs--like people were somehow grateful to chew up the taskbar with a multiplicity of IE tabs for the privilege of looking at more than one web page at a time.) Then, too, there was a certain contrarian satisfaction to walking The Third Way when the entire Web seemed to be living in a Cold War mindset dominated by the Netscape and IE superpowers. (Seriously, you'd visit a website that was doing all the browser detection b/c IE JavaScript and Netscape JavaScript were like apples-and-kumquats, and some websites would kind of freak out. It'd be like walking into the middle of a rumble between "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" partisans wearing a "Firefly" t-shirt...)

But here's what's sealed the deal for me. Several minutes ago, I tried tracking a package on FedEx's website. Firefox's Flash plug-in freaked out, so I had to use an alternate FedEx page. So, for giggles, I checked it out in Opera. Not a problem. Near-giddy with that outcome, I bopped over to java.sun.com to check out applets. And WAAH-HOO! No blank grey square when an applet was supposed to be. Why didn't I think of this when I was taking that Java Games Programming class at WTC this spring? [insert forehead smack]

Please understand that the point of this post is actually not to bash Firefox, which has any number of things to recommend it. Nor is it actually to laud a for-profit company (which is now apparently paying the bills by going upscale with "enterprise" software offerings, and more power to them). But an organization that can straddle the two worlds of open and closed source is definitely something to cheer on. And to make it so painless for someone who is still such a big-time poser when it comes to *nix operating systems? Wow. Just freakin' Wow. After Googling "opera browser Linux," the only thing I had to think about was whether or not my version of Ubuntu was Gutsy Gibbon or something more recent. After that, I was auto-magically directed to a download for the AMD-64 architecture, and it was off to the proverbial races.

Yes, it's awesome to be able to pull things apart and fix them--I was born in the hospital where my Dad worked in maintenance, a job he held until he retired, so it's sort of in my upbringing, if not actual DNA.

Yet even as a strong advocate of having an open source option, somethings I'm not interested in tweaking. The browser is one of those things. Why? Because I write a lot of stuff for the browser. Pulling it apart to make it work better with my software would be rather silly, as I can't expect the rest of the world to install my customized version. Not to mention that I'd then have to maintain my flavor of the browser as well as the software running inside it. You might be able to do that sort of thing inside a large corporations whose paranoia about cooties (in this case from unclean outside software) rivals that of Howard Hughes. Not bloody likely that I'll be nailing down a contract like that anytime soon. And by "soon," I mean "before I retire."

So, again, kudos to Opera for providing a polished product that doesn't treat an unfashionable (i.e. non-Windows/non-Mac) platform on an unfashionable set of hardware (i.e. 64-bit AMD) like a third-class citizen. Which makes me almost wish that they were still charging for the product, because I'd be more than happy to throw a few Jacksons at them for that.

An expanded tweet

Just thought I should probably nail down what I meant by a tweet earlier today, which was "Nothing seems to get results like being the kind of client someone wants to work with." In my vocabulary, at least, there's a distinction between "customer" and "client." Sure, they can overlap, particularly in the early stages of a client-vendor relationship. But, overall, the difference hinges on the longer-term relationship.

We like to think that the customer is always right, despite more than ample evidence to the contrary. In practice, everything hinges on the level of pain your displeasure can cause the organization. In smaller organizations, that level of pain will be more keenly felt, because those on the front lines (generally) have more pull. For organizations that peddle services, rather than tangible products, that's typically even more true. But at Wal-Mart? McDonalds? Not so much. And just try telling the prima-donna designers as Apple that sharp edged on a laptop case--in the vicinity of your wrists, even--is a mind-blowingly stooooopid idea. Lemme know how that works out for you.

But that's merely one side of the proverbial coin. The other side is understanding your value as a client. When you keep your ego--and especially the "The customer is always right" sense of entitlement that we Americans are raised believe is our birthright--out of it, some interesting things can happen.

Now, I'm not arguing that anyone should accept a shoddy product or a shoddy service. Not in the least. (Although if you pay for a MacBook with sharp edges and convince yourself that carpal tunnel syndrome is fashionable, you pretty much deserve what you get, IMO.) But when you look at yourself as an equal partner in making things right, it (again, in my opinion/experience) seems to resolve the problem much more quickly than making someone's natural defense mechanisms kick into high gear by screaming at them. Don't get me wrong: Sometimes there's a time and place for a well-timed, tactically-deployed hissy-fit. But it's almost always better aimed at a manager, rather than a flunkie.

The crucial part is explaining what you wanted and contrasting it with what was actually delivered. And that may take a bit of self-reflection. That just the way it works. If you can't take the time and effort to do that part right, you'll ultimately waste more time while the person being screamed at is trying to read your mind. Bad plan. Why? Because it's counter-productive in both the short- and long-terms. If you're a long-term client (as opposed to a short-term customer), you want the vendor to anticipate your wants/needs. Not--I repeat NOT--merely work to avoid being screamed at.

Now, that's what I call an upgrade path

First, big ups to @arstechnica for the link: Microsoft doubles food donations for IE6 to IE8 updates.

Technically, Microsoft is "doubling" the per-download donation, while continuing to cap the total donations at $1 million, so the title is somewhat misleading. But, hey, that's a million bones that food pantries didn't have before. And it's certainly more constructive--in premise as well as result--than 2005's ill-fated attempt by Opera CEO von Tetzchner's to swim across the Atlantic to "ante up" for one million downloads of the browser.

All the same, I couldn't help but be reminded of the email chain-letters I received in the late 90s, claiming that Bill Gates would donate $1 every time the email was forwarded. And I also can't help but wonder whether that memory would--in some small part--sabotage Microsoft's attempts to put IE 6 out to pasture.

It's an interesting concept, though, all the more interesting in that it has plenty of room for tweaking. 'S'matter of fact, I'll be upgrading on the rebuilt XP box before the evening's out.