A Voice in the Dark

Culturally, in America, you are what you do.

In a very real sense, that means when you’re unemployed, you’re nobody.

Even though I know, intellectually, this was just a circumstantial mismatch… there’s a part of me still trying to figure out what I did wrong.

Filed under: Business, Philosophy
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I woke up this morning at 2 AM to work on the stuff I’m doing for the EU protocol documentation effort. Around 7:30 I managed to get a big obstacle handled, so I could make real forward progress for the first time since the middle of last week.

And at 8 AM, I found out my employer - RDA Corporation - is terminating my employment.

It’s really one of those things that mystifies me. I came on board to do a specific job, and I was summarily pushed out of the project by a Microsoft FTE who didn’t like my methods. The projects since then had been a bad fit in oh, so many ways… fundamentally, I’m a shirt-and-tie go-to-the-office kind of person. RDA’s Redmond office is largely a virtual team environment, where your work day starts when you wake up and ends when you go to bed and in between you don’t really see anyone or collaborate in any real sense.

I don’t work well that way. I told them I don’t work well that way, from day one. And in my latest position, the state of the infrastructure was very, very immature… large swaths of support materials didn’t really exist, and “features” of the software I was using simply didn’t work. It looked like it would work, so I made estimates accordingly… and then I ended up past deadline because when it came down to the wire, the foundation was mud.

What surprises me is that this is precisely what I said at the beginning of the contract: that I was concerned about scope creep if the infrastructure wasn’t what we expected, and the language of the SOW was not specific enough for my taste.

They’re a great company. We didn’t fit well together, but honestly, I’d go back to them in a second given the right opportunity. It’s just that the right opportunity never quite materialised, and I guess they ran out of patience before I did.

I’m kind of lost now. Yesterday, on the way to work, my car just blew up. It’s unsalvageable. I spent four and a half hours on the side of the road with a dead cell phone. It really sucked. And things just keep getting worse.

Momentum being what it is, and since I’m a problem solver at heart, I’m going to finish up the stuff I was working on and send it to my PM anyway. I’ve spent four days trying to get over this hurdle, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to drop everything just because I don’t get paid for it. I’m not really in this field for the money, anyway.

Filed under: Business, Economics, Philosophy
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Every once in a while, I’m reminded that people get creeped out if someone can figure out where they were on a given date and time.

But why does that bother people? After all, if you go anywhere at all and encounter someone you know, that person knows where you were and can tell anyone he likes. Theoretically, you could tell this person not to tell anybody he saw you, but that would just make it worse. And if you didn’t see him, but he saw you, it’s every bit as bad.

I thought of this today because I turned on my Zune to squirt somebody a copy of Black Tide’s single “Black Abyss”, and there on my “Social” tab I saw a gamer tag I knew from XBox Live. Given the range of the Zune’s wireless receiver, that means I know this person (or at least, his Zune) was in building 34 on the Microsoft Redmond campus at 2:30 this afternoon, while he knows absolutely nothing of this.

My personal opinion is that if you’re not up to anything illicit, you shouldn’t care who knows where you were and when. So I should be able to walk up to him and say “hey, I saw you were in building 34 earlier” and he should say “yeah, I was”. But what really happens in these cases is that people act suspicious and say “who told you that, then?” while furtively glancing about. They want to know who told me they were there - because that will tell them who they can’t trust. If I say I saw the Zune listed as nearby, he’ll probably just turn off his Zune’s wireless and then I won’t see him next time.

I get really tired of people being so antisocial. I like to go out and see people I know. I like to run into them days later and say “hey, saw you at the concert last week”. And it really annoys me when they get cagey and say things like “what concert, I didn’t see any concert” and then you realise they blew off their SO to go see it. It’s like everybody I know is lying to the rest of the world about who they are and what they like and where they go. God forbid I see someone coming out of a gay bar.

“What? The uh, the Madison’s uh, a gay bar? Why, I uh, never knew.”

Well, gee, it sure looked like the guy hanging all over you knew. But I won’t say that, because I know what you really mean: “nobody knows I’m gay”. Everybody sort of grasps the idea that appearance is reality, but nobody wants to alter the reality to match their desired appearance. If you don’t want to be caught going out to gay bars - don’t go! Then you can’t be caught. If you want to go out to gay bars, then accept up front that you will be caught, and when you get caught… just draw yourself up and say “why, yes, I was out looking for hot young college dick last weekend; and I found it, too”.

Privacy is a polite fiction we maintain by mutual consensus. That’s all it is. It’s not a right. Expect that people will always know the truth if they care enough to look for it, and it just makes your life so much easier. You don’t have to hide or lie or make stuff up. Just tell the truth. Isn’t that easy?

Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy, Security
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McDonald’s has done an interesting thing with the $1 value menu, in that they’ve completely hosed the value proposition of more = cheaper. Here are the three sizes of chicken nuggets on the regular menu.

Six chicken nuggets: $2.49, or 41.5 cents each.

Ten chicken nuggets: $3.89, or 38.9 cents each.

Twenty chicken nuggets: $6.29, or 31.45 cents each.

Turning to the value menu, we find four chicken nuggets for $1. That’s 25 cents each.

To maintain the pattern, it should be TWO chicken nuggets for $1. Trouble is, nobody will pay $1 for just two chicken nuggets. So what you end up with is luxury pricing: prices which inherently assume you will order what you want without regard to the price, while simultaneously ignoring discounted options.

The notion that McDonald’s practices luxury pricing is rather counterintuitive, isn’t it?

 

Filed under: Business, Economics
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This band rocks.

I saw them at El Corazon in Seattle last night, and this is one hell of a band. What strikes me more than anything is the modesty of the lead singer, Gabriel Garcia; the spotlight was on Zach, the bass player, most of the night. But then, Zach flubbed the audience participation at the beginning of the concert by asking how we were doing… Portland.

Unlike other bands I’ve seen, he was completely nonchalant about it when Gabriel whispered in his ear that they were in Seattle. He simply said “Oh, this is Seattle? Sorry.” Smooth as can be. Then he proceeded to say Portland was a great audience, and we’d really have to be something if we wanted to top them. Great recovery. Not self conscious at all.

Some random chick band was the opening act, followed by local boys Neon Knights. Both were pretty “meh”. Neon Knights not as much as the chick band… which seemed to be trading exclusively on “we have tits” rather than “we can play”.

Black Tide, however, stayed true to the modern aesthetic by opening with “Black Abyss” - the hit song off the CD which a lesser band would have saved for the close. During the show, I managed to drop the t-shirts I bought before the show, so I had to buy more after the show. Somebody got free t-shirts. Enjoy them, whoever you are; I have certainly picked up my share of free t-shirts at concerts over the years, so I’m not going to piss and moan about being on the other side of that experience now.

After the show, I managed to get Gabriel and Zach to sign my CD, although Steve and Alex weren’t about. Not that it matters, since Gabriel and Zach are the important members… but it would have been nice to get all four. I was standing around with them for about twenty minutes trying not to be a douche. There’s always that moron who hangs out after the show and acts like the band are his friends, you know? I didn’t want to be that guy.

Badass band, badass show. If they’re in your neighborhood, go see them. They’re on their first tour for their first album, and mark my words, years down the line you’ll be able to say “I saw them when they were just getting started” - and it will mean something. This band is definitely going somewhere.

 

Filed under: Music
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Have you ever had one of those days?

Multiply it by three.

First, on the way to work, I realise I’m almost out of gas. I pull into the gas station, get out of my car, and discover I have forgotten my wallet. Luckily, I have eight bucks in my pocket, which is just barely enough to get my tank filled to the point that I can get to work and back.

Second, I note that my car is making an occasional grinding noise and giving off a smell of hot metal. Great. I just got the damn thing fixed two weeks ago, to the tune of $1200, and now something else is happening.

Third, I get to work and sit down in my office. I crack open my briefcase to hook my laptop to the network and get started, and guess what? No laptop. I was up late working on some problematic netmon parsers, and while I could swear I put the laptop back in the briefcase, apparently I did not. Cascade failure: I have an 11:00 meeting, but now I have to drive an hour and a half back to Puyallup from Redmond so I can get my laptop. I won’t even get there until almost 11. Then it will take me two hours to get back (lunch rush), but I’ll have to leave an hour later to get my car to the mechanic in time for him to look at it. Looking at the reality of driving five hours for one hour of work, I conclude that the best thing to do is reschedule the meeting for tomorrow, so I go to my manager’s office to arrange it. He’s not there, so I have to go talk to the project manager about the situation. Not having access to email without my laptop, and needing to inform my manager of the situation before the meeting, I ask her to email him and let him know what’s going on. I leave for home, arriving a few minutes ago, and I can’t find the laptop.

Now I’m facing the very real possibility that I’ve just plain lost a corporate laptop with sensitive confidential work on it.

Yeah. My day’s going great. How about yours?

 

Filed under: Business, Microsoft
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Last week, I saw a LiveJournal post about a young lady’s problems getting her broken Zune fixed.

If you don’t want to read the whole massive thing, here’s the gist of it: Canadian has a brown Zune which breaks, and now cannot get a brown Zune. Microsoft support cannot help her because there is no Zune technical support in Canada just yet. She finds this simply insane, and insists she is going to go and buy a damn iPod.

Confidentiality prevents me from mentioning details, but here on the Redmond campus, we’ve been up in arms over this. We’re Microsoft. We can’t find a brown Zune and send it to Canada?

Well, officially, no. We can’t. (It’s an international commerce thing. Talk to a lawyer if you need details.) But some altruistic helpful soul could do that, if he wanted.

You guessed it; I was the first helpful soul to open my mouth and say “I’ll do it!” via comments on the blog post. Several other people have verified with me that I meant it and would follow through.

This afternoon, I verified that she understood the conditions: she mails me the broken brown Zune, I mail her a working brown Zune. The working one will be a different Zune (probably purchased off Ebay; they’re running about $135 over there), so none of her content will be on it. I’ll then get the broken one repaired (being on the Microsoft campus, there’s a solid chance I can get it fixed at no or low cost) - and end result, we both have a brown Zune and everyone is happy. 

If you’re outside the Puget Sound area, you don’t see this much, but Microsoft employees and contractors do this all the time. We see someone using a Microsoft product, and we’re proud of that. We see them having trouble, and we get personally involved in the problem. And if there’s one thing we like to do at Microsoft, it’s solve the damn problem no matter what it takes.

It seems odd, because you don’t get it anywhere else. But Microsoft is honestly full of people who honestly want to make things right for every user of a Microsoft product, and all you have to do is be having a problem at the moment one of us is looking in your direction. Microsoft won’t give me a dime toward making this happen, but I don’t care; I want it fixed, I want it made right, and I want the customer to walk away ecstatically happy about the experience.

And that’s why, if you try to compete with them, Microsoft pwns j00. You don’t have a small army of people fixing the problems you can’t fix at their own expense. We do. And I’m proud to be in the front ranks of that army, contractor or not.

Filed under: Business, Economics, Microsoft
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In response to my last post, I’ve received email taking issue with it.

Specifically, taking issue with how I had Bob and Joe “hump each other in the butt”.

See, whenever I talk about gay people, some gay person reads it and decides to complain that I’ve made an inaccurate portrayal of gay culture. (Because, you know, I’m not part of it.) And as I’ve been reminded many, many times over the years: gay guys mostly just blow each other. There’s not that much butt humping going on; sure, there’s some, but it’s not what gay men primarily do. I mean, once it’s been there, who wants to put it in his mouth? Eww. Yeah, some people do, but… eww.

The fact is, I remind people of butt humping because it is funny. Imagine the Burger King meets Ronald McDonald at a singles bar. That’s sort of amusing. Now imagine the King bringing Ronald flowers and candy; that’s slightly more amusing. Picture them frolicking through a flowery meadow, and you’ll probably giggle a little.

Now imagine the King humping Ronald in the butt.

Come on. It just doesn’t get funnier than that. Oral sex isn’t as funny, because you can’t see both faces. And it’s important to say something funny, because straight people - which, lest we forget, are almost all of the people - are uncomfortable with the subject of homosexuality. Just like the openly gay frequently adopt a humorous and flamboyant persona to defuse the apparent threat they represent to a man’s masculinity, not because it’s accurate, but simply because… well, you just can’t be angry at them. The sort of guy who has a problem with gays is usually the same sort of guy who won’t hit a girl, and when you’re even more girly than most girls, he simply can’t beat you up. That used to be rather important.

Face it, gay people are just funny by nature. It’s hysterical to think about how the first gay men got started; I mean, how uncomfortable was that conversation? Even if gaydar already existed, you had no clue what it was detecting. “There’s something about Larry.”

Homosexuality is still pretty new, as an open component of American culture. Give it time. It’s not like Europe, where gay is a word like tall: everyone’s a little tall, even the short ones… the question is how tall.

We’ll accept it in the end. We just have to relax, and take it slow.

Okay, that’s my last butt humping joke today. I have work to do.

 

Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy
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By now, everyone who cares has heard that Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern thinks homosexuals are a bigger threat to the nation than terrorists.

Well, the trouble is, she’s right. We have had one successful attack by terrorists on the World Trade Center, and a whole slew of successful attacks by homosexuals on state legislatures. If you consider gay marriage comparable to death - and in christian theology, gay equals sin and sin equals hell and hell equals death - every gay marriage is two deaths. In 9/11, there were about three thousand actual deaths (but, one would assume, no gay marriages). Between May of 2004 and May of 2005, over six thousand gay marriages were performed in the state of Massachusetts. That’s twelve thousand deaths, four times the toll of 9/11, in one state over the course of one year.

Bear in mind, you have to first accept the premise that open practice of homosexuality is equivalent to death. If you don’t accept that, and you believe the only thing comparable to death is… oh, I don’t know, death?… then the statement is ludicrous. Who cares if Joe and Bob are gay and hump each other in the butt? It’s not killing anybody.

But from Sally Kern’s perspective, it is. It’s killing Joe and Bob, they just don’t know it. And as long as Joe and Bob are running around saying “it’s okay to do this”, they’re effectively promoting suicide. So she feels it’s her duty to speak out about it, and to do something about it, and to enact laws that prevent it.

The problem is not that her perspective is wrong (even though it is). The problem is not that her perspective is offensive (even though it is). The problem is that her perspective is a religious perspective, and therefore has no place in American government. It is her duty as a representative of the American people to present a professional image and avoid the appearance of impropriety, but frothing at the mouth about gays certainly isn’t professional. It looks like she’s dangerously insane, even though she clearly isn’t - she just feels strongly about the subject.

I also feel strongly about the subject. I don’t agree with Sally Kern. Indeed, even though I understand her position, I disagree with just about everything she said; the introduction of homosexual topics to preschool classes isn’t intended to make preschoolers gay, it’s intended to ease the social interactions of the many children who have been adopted by gay couples. You can certainly have a problem with the idea that Joe and Bob are talking to your five year old about their sex lives, but if Joe and Bob have a five year old themselves, isn’t your child going to wonder why his classmate doesn’t have a mommy?

And, most importantly, shouldn’t any reasonably qualified parent understand this concept? What happens when the first black child joins a class? The first Asian child? The first non-English speaking child? The situation needs to be explained, and the conditions monitored, until the child is accepted as part of the group. Nobody complains that you’re trying to make the other children black, or Asian, or Spanish-speaking… except dangerously insane people.

How would Sally Kern explain it? “Little Timmy is the poor innocent victim of two evil sinful people who are going to HELL, and they’re raising him to be a Godless heathen sinner who will burn in hell himself. You should bring him to Jesus!”

Absolutely unacceptable in a public servant. Get that bitch out of office.

Filed under: Gay Rights, Parenting, Politics, Religion
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Late February: I’m at the AT&T Wireless store, where they offer an unlimited data plan for internet usage. I ask the very pretty young salesgirl why, if they can give me unlimited data, they can’t give me unlimited minutes. She says they’re different. I say no, they’re not; voice over IP works because fundamentally, voice is just data. There’s no reason why I couldn’t just buy an unlimited data plan and download a Skype client, which would allow me to use AT&T’s network to send and receive all the voice data I wanted. So why doesn’t AT&T Wireless offer me an unlimited voice AND data plan for the same price? She admits she doesn’t know.

March 3rd: I see the first commercial advertising Verizon’s unlimited calling plan. I look at my wife and say “now everyone else will do it, too”.

March 6th: T-Mobile advertises free nationwide long distance on your home phone. I say “they’re trying to compete with Verizon’s unlimited wireless, but it won’t work”.

March 10th: I see a Sprint commercial advertising unlimited calling. I say “T-Mobile will be next”.

March 11th: I see a T-Mobile commercial advertising unlimited calling.

March 12th: I see an AT&T Wireless commercial advertising unlimited calling.

I wonder if the salesgirl thinks I had something to do with this. Maybe if I went back to the store, I could get her number.

 

Filed under: Business, Economics
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