Tralfaz

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  • Travel Foibles: Part 3 (of many) – Rental car agencies

    You know how hard it is to get a compact or ecnomony car?  

    First, the travel agent seems to guide me into a midsize.  It is the “Corporate Standard”.  Really?  We have a standard class for rentals?

    Next, the jockey working at the counter says “An economy car.  Are you sure?”  

    After I say Yes, they then say “Well, for $5.00 a day, I can upgrade you to a fullsize, or an SUV”  #FAIL.  To me, an upgrage is a Posrche GT3, or a Bugatti Veryon.  Maybe a Bentley.  It isn’t a hunk of american steel in too big of a body size.

    I really am just doing a few 10 mile trips, and back to the airport.  Yes, I will fill the tank (and not pay the $8.00 a gallon “convenience” fee).  Just give me the base econobox.  Really, it will be OK.

    • Exception.  When I am in Texas, I always upgrade to the sedab with a V8.  You gotta get up to speed on the freeway PRONTO.

  • Travel Foibles: Part 2 of (many) – in room amenities

    I love the little boutique soaps, shampoos and other niceties that they lay out in most decent business hotels.

    The Iron and Ironing board is also de riguer.  Needed for those with small carry on’s.

    You know what I often don’t have, and could really use?  Toothpaste.  Those little .5 oz toothpaste tubes.  I forget toothpaste more than any other toiletry.  Yet, when I arrive in a city after 11:00PM, the last thing I want to do is realize that I need to get dressed and head out to a 24 hour Walmart or a Walgreens drug store for a travel size. 

    Because you don’t want to buy a full size tube.  The TSA will just take that away from you, and the next week you are in the same boat again.

    Yep, I could buy them by the dozen.  Yep, I could keep 3-4 in my travel plastic quart sized bag.  But I don’t.  

     

  • File under:Not Fooling Anyone – Smoking in Public Restrooms

    How often do you walk into a public restroom in a venue that is non-smoking (restaurant, office, sporting venue, airport), and you get hit with a blast of cigarette smoke.

    I just rolled off the plane here in MSP, walked into the bathroom and BLAM.  A face full.  Really, you are not fooling anyone.  

     

  • Travel Foibles Part 1 of (many)

    As I approach a million miles on United airlines, and lately have struggled to earn even premier status on their Milage Plus program, I am accorded the benefit of “Unlimited Domestic Upgrades”.  This is a nice touch.  But I have yet to receive this “benefit” in the last 2+ years that they have offered it.

    Why is this bullshit, you might ask?  Well, today, I was dutifully waitlisted for the “free” upgrade.  I was # 23 in the queue.  There were 12 seats.  So, even if First Class checked in empty, I am not going to get an upgrade.  Pretty scummy, eh?

    I prefer the days when I had coupons, and I could exchange them on long enough flights.  This new mechanism is really just wishful thinking.  

    And they wishfully think that I will remain loyal?  Ha!

  • NYT – Your special deal for $0.13 a week still blows

    Twice in the last week I have received emails from the NY Times advertising a special 80 weeks all access for $0.99.  That is roughly 13 cents a week.  Sounds like a good deal.  But, after the 8 weeks, ir will rise to the $30+ per month.

    Your digital deliver options are too expensive.  I would probably pay $2.50 a week ($10 a month or $120 a year) for your iPad and browser all access.  I do want to pay you for the information you provide, it is just that at near home delivery prices for the dead tree version, you are expecting too much.  

    I am sure that the low uptake rate on the full access version of the digital offering is due to your pricing structure.  If you ever decide to get realistic in your pricing, let me know and I will likely subscribe. 

  • I miss my real blog – rambling about product management, and my sad state.

    Summary:  A few weeks ago, a sales engineer was being disruptive in our iteration demo meeting.  I sent a (non appropriate) message to my scrum master to get this individual to stop trying to turn it into a design review.  The message was mistakenly displayed on the main screen (I may have used the acronym STFU for shut the F__k up).

    I blogged about it.  About the proper purpose for the meeting, the type of feedback that was appropriate, and outside members are in “listen only” mode.  

    The SE whose feeling were hurt found the blog, and I was told to remove it. 

    Now I am sad.  My blog was where I shared some of the inside story on my life as a product manager.  14 years and you build a thick skin, a set of rules that work, and a string of successes.  I enjoyed sharing them.  Now.  They are gone.

    Product Management is not a career that is great.  It is a thankless job.  It is the bucket that all the other groups dump the shitty tasks that they would prefer to not do.  You are part customer support.  Part sales engineer.  Part sales manager.  Part senior leader.  Part marketing.  I am envious of all the people who stand there and say that they live the Pragmatic Marketing system.  Or the Blackblot system.  I call bullshit.  I have been at many different places, and product management is always a messed up, ill defined, master of all trades role.  

    I am tired of it.  I hate it.  I want off the rollercoaster.  This is not fun anymore. Sadly, I happen to be good at product management, so I will probably continue to gravitate to it.  I just want it to end.  

    I sit here typing this as I await my 8:45PM update call with our India team.

  • Opt out marketing mail messages

    We all get a lot of spam.  I have int he past, used one of my mail accounts to register for something or other.  Don’t know what it was, but it seemed to bring a few offers of “XYZ market report” or “Reach KLM decision makers in solar technology”.  Or some such similar twaddle.  Always addressed to me.  Always crafted to avoid the spam filters.

    It was a minor annoyance.  Really, just a couple seconds, and I deleted them unread.  Then one day I opened one of them up, and saw a link to unsubscribe.  Well, these seemed like legitimate offers, I was just not interested.  So I clicked the link and unregistered my email.

    Big mistake.

    That appears to have validated that I exist.  Now I get 3 – 5 of these offers a day.  A range of market data and reports on: 

    • Heavy Industry
    • Mining Technology
    • Minerals Extraction
    • Petroleum engineering
    • Photovoltaic production
    • LED for Lighting applications
    • Photovoltaic installers
    • SAP
    • Sharepoint
    • …

     

    I think you can see the trend.  Alas, I am afraid to try to opt out again.  The signal to noise ratio in my inbox is trashed.

    Sigh.  Scummy, semi-legitimate spammers.

  • Why is it that sales’s first reaction to something new is to give it away?

    I know that I can’t be unique here.  We develop a really cool new feature/module/functionality.  Early validation and customer feedback is hugely positive.  Phrases like “game changing”  “revolutionary” “must have at any cost” are bantered about.

    Then comes time for mainstream release, and without question, the sales organization demurs that it should be “bundled” in.  Or offered “gratis”.  Or become part of the main product.  This happens time and time again, and really frustrates the marketing side of my persona.  We just developed something that is a huge value add differentiator, and we have an opportunity to increase our market visiblity and share by a period of exclusivity.  And the stakeholders who can take this and run with it uniformly believe that we should give it away.

    They want to turn it into a checkbox in the presales evaluation process.  Huh?  Really?

    Sigh.  If the work I do to find differentiation generating features nets to no increased value, and the work of our development team truly does nothing more than fill out a checklist for a presales evaluation, then why bother.

    The lowpoint of product management.

  • Ever read something that made you feel dumb(er)? #ui #ux #consistency

    I saw a quip on Slashdot about a Google researcher who found that ~90% of his subjects (aka people) that he was observing didn’t know that the keyboard shortcut ctrl+f would bring up a dialog to find the desired phrase/word in the current document.

    Amusing in itself, but not too surprising.

    The real interesting thread happened in the comments.  (http://goo.gl/Oor9X for the page and the related comments, BTW)

    There was a reasonably long thread about why the menu for find was invariably in the “edit” pull down menu.  Lots of odd justifications, and postulates (think: find + replace is an editing function etc).

    As a product manager, and one who grew up during the computer revolution, the answer is boneheaded simple.  Back in 1984 (or perhaps 1985) when Apple introduced the original Mac computers.  They also published design guidelines.  There woudl be a mnimum set of pull down menus (file, edit, help) and that certain functions MUST be in the same place if they are used.  This allowed for a consistent user paradigm.  it was an early attempt (quite effective too) to enforce celar and consistent styles and user interactions.   

    Compare that to the types of programs used for editing text (non windowed environments.).  You had Wordperfect control commands, Emacs key comands.  In fact each word processor had its own set of codes.  No standardization, no consistency, huge sunk cost to move to a new platform.  

    Now, we look back and wonder why this happened, but the truth is that it was good, and we all benefit.

  • Wrong Turns in Life

    Last week, I was chatting with a colleague, and I made an off the cuff comment that the day my life began to fall apart was the first day that I took a Product Management job.  I was only half joking, and this week has given evidence to support the conjecture.

    However, about 25 years ago, a golden opportunity arose, and I foolishly didn’t take advantage of it.  A little known fact is that I worked my way through college as a chef.  At that time, I was a sous chef at a country club, and I rather enjoyed my work.  Challenging, rewarding, exciting, and a great outlet for creative impulses.

    Somehow, I caught the eye of a member who owned a few resorts, and lo and behold, I was granted an offer to move to Hawaii for 6 months (under contract) to work at one of his resorts.  Room and board taken care of (I would have a room provided during my stay), spending money, and 6 months to prove myself (which would have been a breeze).  Alas, I was in a (bad) relationship, and I turned down the opportunity.

    To this day, I wonder what might have been.  Would I still be there?  Would I have stayed in Hawaii?

    Ah, introspective at its finest, as I slog through another round of OEM licensing agreements.