Friday, July 28, 2006

Just came across this

Oh well, it seems that the video I linked to originally has been removed from YouTube. The video was a "Daily Show" style interview with Soma (S. Somasegar, a VP in Windows) about the MS Intern program. One funny scene: Ed Helms sitting on a bench on the Microsoft campus, surrounded by empty soda cans, laughing uproariously as he takes advantage of our free soda benefit.

Sorry you missed it.

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Ed Helms exposes the inner workings of Microsoft in this funny video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVCkP8fSmCk

What's also great are the outtakes at the end. Kinda gives you an idea about how they cut the video they actually show on the Daily Show to make the people they talk to seem really wierd.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

one million. one at a time.

Commemorating One Million Calls for Help

RAINN is one of my favorite charitable organizations. They have taken one million calls in the 12 years they've been operating, and soon they will be launching a national Online Hotline. My family has been supporting them ever since Toad the Wet Sprocket did a benefit show for them back at the very beginning (Santa Barbara Polo Grounds, woot!)

I'm sad that there are so many victims of violence and sexual assualt. I'm sad that so many people never get the help they need. I'm glad RAINN is there to provide that vital support that can make a difference to someone who has been victimized. Keep up the great work Scott and the thousands of staff and volunteers who have helped to answer those one million calls. We're sorry that we need you, but glad you are there.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

How Forward Thinking

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003152467_webdoma26.html

I challenge anyone to point to a time in history when we made a decision restricting the rights of a whole class of people and we were glad we did it 20 years down the road.

Twenty years from now, this will be just one more thing we'll be embarrased about.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

What is your kid wearing?

I was sitting in the food court in the Orlando airport, enjoying a Chick-Fil-A sandwich (yum!) and watching the people go by. I see a young girl, maybe six or so years old, walking with her family. She's wearing a shirt that says:
  1. I see something I want
  2. You buy it for me
  3. Any questions?

First, I think to myself that the shirt she's wearing probably never satisfied condition #1. Some adult bought that shirt for her, probably thinking it was funny. I found it sad. Hester Prynne was ashamed to be forced to wear the scarlet letter, but this girl's family had no shame in her wearing a shirt that essentially advertised: I am a spoiled brat.

I also see a young boy with his family; he's probably about eight. He's wearing a shirt that reads: SPELING CHAMP. Again, I don't see him actually choosing the shirt of his own accord. Some adult bought that for him, thinking it was funny. It's not funny to make your kid wear a shirt that says "I am an idiot". It's deplorable.

Now I'm sure that there is no thought given to the very subtle background hum that must only slightly register in these poor kids' psyches when they are given these shirts and wear them around in public. But I'm also sure that it does register and it does have an effect. Kids live up to the expectations their families and friends set for them. If you're a parent and you tell your kid he's an idiot to his face, or you put him in a shirt that says "I'm an idiot", they are two means to the same end; your kid will live up to the expectation. And in reality, the plot is more sinister than that because noone is saying it blatantly. It's all subtext and innuendo. Believe me, the message is not lost even though the delivery is masked.

Have high expectations for your kid (and for yourself). Hold them to those standards. They won't live up to them all of the time, but those times are opportunities for learning. At least they will have something to aspire to tomorrow that is better than today. Reward them and praise them when they do well. Make them understand that you still love them even when they disappoint you. You will be surprised when they outshine your expectations and accomplish more than you ever dreamed.

Stupid isn't funny. It's a waste of amazing human potential.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Cattle Cars in the Sky

So I'm in the Minneapolis airport the other day, on a layover on my way home to Seattle. There are two flights posted to Seattle (8:10pm and 9:40pm). I was on the later one, but wanted to get home earlier so I tried to get on the earlier one on Standby. No dice. Turns out they were paying off people (free roundtrips!) to volunteer to take the later flight (a difference of 1.5 hours!) because the earlier one was overbooked. Air travel just makes no sense.

Clearly we have the technology to do a much better job of matching supply and demand in the air transportation system. Why are the routes and schedules all fixed, when demand can fluctuate so wildly? I was in Orlando for a conference, and tens of thousands of people were flying into there over a few days from all over the world. You couldn't find a ticket on a convenient itinerary if you waited until 2 weeks before the event to book. Tickets were going for $900 or more. All the while I'm sure there were planes flying with lots of empty seats on other routes.

I think two weeks in advance is plenty of time for 80% of travelers to have a firm itinerary. I also think two weeks is plenty of time for an airline to run an optimization scenario and get all of the people who want to fly from points A(n) to points B(n) routed correctly to maximize efficiency in the system, minimize cost and travel time, and still provide a decent level of service. If you had to book travel in this way, I think you would end up with a much better experience overall.

Let's say I want to go to Orlando from Seattle on July 19th and return home on July 22nd. I need to be in Orlando by noon on the 19th. I want to be home before midnight on the 22nd. I want to make at most one stop in each direction. I don't want to pay through the nose for a middle seat on a flight where I can't get my bag into the overhead bin, the flight attendants are angry at everyone, and I get a thimblefull of water to go with my invisible bag of salty peanuts so that my chances of dehydration are maximized. So... I file my intentions with Optima Airlines at least two weeks in advance of my departure date. I pay a fixed rate per mile, not based on travel distance but based on direct distance between my start/end points. One week in advance, they email me my itinerary. I need to be somewhat flexible, but I'm guaranteed not to get bumped or miss a connection, and I'm going to get some good service. The routing is created based on the known demand for the total system on my travel dates. I buy the ticket just like buying a ticket to a concert - I can resell it or trade it with another traveler, but I can't get a refund and I can't change it.

Of course there's still a need for last-minute travel, but that can probably be handled as a 20% exception to the general system. Optima Airlines knows they can receive a profit booking 80% of their capacity at their rate per mile. If I need to fly from Seattle to Kansas City in two days, I can try to find an unbooked seat on some existing routing between here and there. My choices are probably much more limited, and I'll pay more, but at least I'm not offsetting some operating loss that the airline is incurring because they need to issue free tickets to some other yay-hoo, or because they are flying some 20% full 767 from Seattle to DC that day.

For some reason, we tolerate this world of air travel where you never know how much you're going to have to pay, you never know if you're going to get where you want to go when you want to go, and you never know if you're going to have a good experience or a bad one. It always feels like we're paying too much for what we get, so we keep looking for better deals. This causes the airlines to pack the planes fuller and take away services. We get more unhappy about what we're getting, so we want to pay less, and the cycle continues. How much does it really cost to get me from Seattle to Orlando? What exactly am I paying for?