Tralfaz

Category: blog

  • Taxi driver observations

    As a product manager, I get to travel the world, and unless I need the mobility afforded by a rental car, I usually rely on taxi services. They know the territory, they are (usually) a reasonable price, and you don’t have to worry about parking (a concern in big cities).

    However, I often have white knuckle cab rides.

    • Boston Apparently cabs in Boston don’t have turn signals. I have been in dozens of cabs here and can’t recall once seeing the driver indicate either a turn or a lane change. Amazingly, even in heavy traffic, they can make amazing time.
    • Seoul Legendary traffic, poorly marked streets and addresses, I have been involved with many wildly illegal U turns, quick wrong way trips in traffic (when oncoming traffic was queued at a light) and some amazing navigation to avoid long delays.
    • Tokyo Probably the most reasonable cab fares in the world (compared to local prices). Their drivers are courteous to a fault, almost never speak English, but always get you to where you are going. Pro-tip: If you are out drinking in Tokyo past the stop time of the trains, a cab driver will usually take whatever cash you have ($50 – $60) to get you back to your hotel, even if it would be a $150 fare. Really good guys!
    • Dubai Probably the cleanest cab I have ever been in. New, un-abused, and a pretty friendly driver. But one oddity is that there is a cab service with only women drivers. Seems to be a cultural thing.
    • India Wow. Traffic. Lots and LOTS of traffic. Try to not pay attention to the antics of your driver. It is all normal. Also, don’t be surprised if it takes 20 minutes to go 2 blocks. You really don’t want to get out and walk.
    • Singapore Since they drive on the wrong side of the road there, I always cab it. Fortunately, they have a very efficient cab service. Grab a card with the phone number to call for a cab, and you are one quick handy phone call away from a ride.
    • London Probably the most expensive taxi rides I have ever taken were in London and the surrounding areas. 2 – 3 miles with a bill of £18 (about $32 on my last visit). And the drivers expect a healthy tip. <cough, cough>. I often will work with the local office to hire a car and driver for lengthy trips in country. Far more cost effective.

    There are more, but in general I enjoy using the local cab services, and seeing what they bring to the table.

  • Back on Spotify

    A couple months ago, I took the plunge. I canceled my Spotify premium account, and was grooving on the Apple iRadio option on iTunes. While I missed the “on demand” library, I thought that the radio stations on iTunes radio were great, with a very good algorithm at grouping songs in genre’s and subgenre’s.

    But a couple weeks ago I reactivated my Spotify premium membership. It was an easy decision, as with the launch of iTunes 11.0.3, the version that brought the radio, it also brought a version that was a buggy piece of crap.

    It used to be that the Windows version if iTunes sucked, but the Mac version was pretty solid. But this changed that equation for the worse. Instead of fixing the windows version, now the Mac version is garbage. It crashes, it hangs (I have force quit that program more times than I can count), it uses huge amounts of processor time (often pegging one processor), and in general it just sucks.

    Yes, the radio stations on Spotify are less awesome, but at least their software doesn’t make my machine whimper and crash.

    I will continue to listen to iRadio, but Spotify will remain a monthly charge. And I get all their on demand music that I don’t get on iTunes.

  • Caffeine free 1 Month

    Hi, I am a coffee-aholic, and it has been 4 weeks since my last date with the evil bean. I have a love hate relationship with coffee. I didn’t start drinking the evil brew until my 3rd year of university. Since then, I have been on and off the bean, often going several months before I break down and tuck into a mug of jo’.

    Like any true addict, as the effect begins to wane, I crank up the quantity that I consume until it adversely affects my sleep patterns. Then I need to go cold turkey.

    I am now 1 month into a caffeine free period, and I just made it through an intense week of sales meetings and training, usually the highest stress, least sleep week for me. And I survived it without resorting to the bean (but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t mightily tempted).

    I know that it is a matter of time until I fall off the wagon, but until then, I will be living coffee free.

  • Drive thru culture goes too far

    This is America, the place where the drive through was invented, and perfected. We expect to get our food instantly, coffee and donuts at any time without having to leave our cars.

    However, I have noticed some people who are slavish to the drive through culture.

    When cycling, on the weekend mornings, I ride by a Starbucks with a drive through. There are often 15 or 20 cars in line at the drive through. So, assuming 90 seconds per car, you are looking at 15 – 20 minutes minimum to get your coffee. Why on earth would you not just park and walk in? I don’t think I ever waited more than 5 minutes in line at even the busiest Starbuck’s I have been in.

    I occasionally will stop and grab a donut on the way into the office (Yeah, I know, they are bad for me). They have a drive through, and it usually takes about 30 seconds from ordering to driving away with my satchel of fat pills. Last Friday, I had a hankering, and got stuck behind a behemoth SUV who was ordering 3 dozen donuts, picking them out individually, and then they finally paid with a credit card. Really? Just park your damn SUV and walk in for that. Sheesh.

    But I often see people idling in queue, waiting on their takeout order.

  • Why I rarely use car washes

    When I bought my Stewie, I made the commitment to keep it clean. I washed it every week, waxed it typically once a month (give or take) and polished/sealed the paint every year. I have all the gear, and all the chemicals to do this, and I actually enjoy it.

    However, lately I have been pretty busy, and my schedule has slipped. I have gotten lazy, and there is a pretty decent hand wash place nearby. My time is valuable enough that it is worth the $15 to get my car cleaned. They do a good job, and take pretty good care of the finish. Not as good as my three bucket wash, but it is a good compromise.

    But it reminds me of what I hate about commercial car wash places. They have a “greeter” who keeps trying to up-sell you. Are you sure you don’t want the VIP wash for $12 more? “no”. But it comes with a free exterior wash in a week. “no”. How about a hand wax/detail? “no”. You can bring it back for it later if you are in a hurry… “no”.

    Now, I get that they are comped on how much they sell, and I appreciate the effort. But, the third time I decline, GIVE UP THE GHOST and move on.

    And then there are the vultures who want to repair your windshield. For the record, I have several repaired dings in my windshield (hey, I live in Arizona, the capital of cracked windshields), and it never fails that they zero in on me to offer their services. They are almost worse than the greeters.

    At least the team of finishers do a great job, and are appreciative of the few bucks I toss at them as a tip.

    It is time to get back in the habit of washing my cars myself. I need to lay in some supplies, but that is cheap.

  • F*cking Marketers

    Somewhere, I coughed up my email address. It could have been to access a report, or a datasheet, or something. I used to be naive and think that they wouldn’t spam the shit out of me.

    But I was wrong.

    I get a constant stream. People looking to sell me mailing lists for “decision makers in IT software”, “SAP users”, “Oracle Users”, etc. I get 2 to 3 a day, and I always look for the “opt out” or unsubscribe option.

    About 2/3 of the time, the “opt out” or “unsubscribe” messages bounce. Those people get reported as spammers immediately. Alas, whoever harvested my email address continues to resell that.

    I hope there is a special ring of hell for people who do that.

    As a marketer myself, I know the temptation to use harvested emails for all sorts of usage. But I have a simple test. Would I personally like to get this message? If the answer is no, then I don’t use it. Seems simple.

    Alas, the world is full of scumbags.

  • Arthritis sucks

    Not sure where it came from. Perhaps it was playing too much guitar, or all the motorcycle/bicycle riding I have done over the years. Or it is just bad luck, but the arthritis in my left thumb sucks.

    I started noticing it a few months ago. When I started cycling again seriously (more than once a month 😉 ) I noticed that my left thumb was sore afterwards. It has gotten progressively worse, until in early September I went to my doctor. X-Rays showed a deterioration of the cartilage in my left thumb (boo) and a bone spur. Put me in a spica splint, told me to take 800mg of vitamin I twice a day, and if it didn’t get noticeably better in two week, to go to a specialist.

    Needless to say, it didn’t magically improve, so off to a specialist I go.

    There I get more x-rays, and a really shitty piece of news. There is virtually NO cartilage left in my left thumb, there are multiple bone spurs, and while the bone spurs will likely wear down (and thus the discomfort will reduce somewhat), my thumb will never be good again. This time I get a custom make spica splint for my thumb to wear while sleeping, and I still take shedloads of vitamin I.

    After that first appointment with the specialist, I will admit that I had to sit in my car and cry. My thumb (and by extension hand) will NEVER be good again. I go back in 6 weeks to check on it, and if it isn’t better (and the Dr. said that was a stretch), it would be time for cortisone shots. That should control the discomfort. But the cartilage is gone for good.

    Today, I tried playing guitar. Good news/bad news. I have done enough practicing in the last few months that some of my speed and chops were coming back. Bad news is that the thumb pain is pretty bad while playing. I fear it is just a matter of time until I will have to put my axes in the case and give up playing.

    I am too damn young for this shit.

  • Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks – re-learning linux

    One of the reasons that I have contemplated often the jump to a VPS for my web hosting was the freedom to do what I wanted. That was always balanced by a bit of fear that I might f*ck up my VPS linux installation.

    I had played with linux often, in the past, but never seriously. It ran a firewall on my home network back when I had an ISDN line, and I had built some inside the firewall file servers with old RedHat linux. But that was child’s play. Going VPS means I am out there on the internet, and I am responsible to not mess it up.

    Gulp.

    I have been up and running for a month now, and nothing serious has happened. Fortunately, the VM is pretty well configured out of the box. I haven’t had any real issues with the box (apart from needing to restart Apache a couple of times). And I am enjoying “remembering/relearning” how to do the basic things again. I still am fearful that I will blow it in a big way, but by and large, as long as I keep it patched, and keep all the software I am running up to date I feel confident that I will be OK.

    I still worry about a SHTF event, and I will be instituting a backup process on a weekly basis. But, so far, it has been a positive experience.

  • Getting Spoilt – MacBook Air edition

    In July, I splurged and bought a Mac Book Air. My MacBook pro was a little aged, and I wanted to go for a smaller, lighter laptop, yet I didn’t want to go too small. Plus I am a Mac person.

    I have been using it pretty heavily, and it has been super solid. It has enough storage, it is fast enough, and while I would like the retina display, I am really grooving on the 12+ hours of battery life I am getting on it.

    My macbook pro is semi-permanently attached to a sweet 24″ monitor, and my Drobo for backups, and the Mac Book Air is my walking around computer.

    This last weekend, I was moving websites to my new hosting account (see ‘A Bad Day – Webhosting“) , so I unplugged the MBP and relocated to the couch. Oh. My. God. That thing is friggin HUGE compared to the Air. Yes, it is a 15″, and it is from the generation before the Retina display, but compared to the Air, it is heavy, huge, and cumbersome (it also has a quadcore processor, 16G ram, and a terabyte of disc).

    It honestly felt how I thought a 17” laptop felt. Too big.

    Nope, I don’t think I will be going back to that monstrosity. It will remain my stationary system until it dies, then I will probably replace it with a Mini.

  • Memories of my Mother – Malt-o-meal

    One of the memories I have of growing up was eating Malt-o-meal. For those who are unaware, it is a hot farina of wheat cereal. We didn’t eat it often, but what I “liked” about it was the lumps. They were like finding nuggets of chewy goodness in every bowl.

    Malt-o-mealEvery time my mother made malt-o-meal, it had lumps. Sometimes they were small, sometimes they were large, but they were always present. I just assumed that malt-o-meal had lumps in it.

    Then I moved out, and years later started making it myself. Surprise, there weren’t any lumps. No matter how I made it, as long as I followed the directions, I had creamy, smooth hot cereal. No lumps.

    I began experimenting with it, and it turns out that while stirring is important, the secret to lump free malt-o-meal is to slowly add it to the boiling water, while stirring the water. You pretty much have to just dump it all in at once to get lump formation.

    What a strange memory of my Mother, lumpy Malt-o-meal.