This week’s Radio Lab started out simple, but ended with a bang. The entire point of the show was to investigate deception, lies, liars and scientific findings that are closely tied to them.
But in the last two minutes of the program, they present an observation that rings so profoundly true (in my experience), that I was blown away. I won’t give it away, but I highly recommend you listen to the show from start to finish.
Yep, he’s gone. Boss got rid of him. I think he chickened out and told the FNG that we were running low on work, so we’re not sure when we’d be able to give him more to do, etc, etc. I don’t think he set the strong expectation that we’d be calling him, but the inkling was there. Oh well, so much for a clean break. Well, at least yesterday he sat the kid down for a heart-to-heart about the things he’s screwed up. If the guy can’t figure out why he’s not coming back, I’d be surprised.
I just took a look around the office to see if he’d left anything behind (books, mug, electric fly-swatter (don’t ask)), as can often happen. Like an ex-girlfriend, who “oopsie” left a pair of underwear in a random nook at your place, either to give her an excuse to come back, or to unsettle the next girlfriend.
I hear that can happen.
Ask anyone with a 1999-2004 Jetta (or Golf, I don’t think it matters) if they smell melted crayons when they get into their cars, and their eyes will widen in exasperated recognition. They’ll know exactly what you’re talking about, especially if their car is a little older in that range.
The reason is the foam that’s used inside the center console and under the carpeting. It’s made of a particular type of stuff that will, over time, break down and out-gas in a certain way that smells like crayons. It’s caused people to sell their cars, and it’s probably driven more than a few people crazy.
My Trader Joe’s peanut butter chewy coated & drizzled granola bar smells like that smell.
Just so you know.
Yesterday, when talking about the FNG and how to deal with him, he said “Sean and I are gonna have a ‘come to jesus’ with him.” That struck me as hilarious. He says little shit like that all the time, and we generally have some good back-and-forth. It ain’t the greatest job in the world, but bosses like this are hard to come by.
Today, after telling us he was gonna let the FNG go (thank god), he said he kinda had an epiphany about re-organizing how the business is run. So, from now on he’s not going to freak out about making sure I’ve got enough clients and projects…he’s gonna try to keep the business small, with a relatively small list of clients, but also allowing time and resources for developing new tools, templates, and other stuff to just make us a more attractive shop. Experimentation in the downtime, stuff like that. I couldn’t be happier with that. Dead time in between projects is exactly when the most fun stuff gets done, and sometimes the most interesting stuff in terms of expanding the business. Plus, I’ve got a handful of books on coding techniques and other things I’d just really like to learn, and I’ve barely cracked open the books at all.
This should be good.
Yeah, so this is me. Or my feet, anyway. And that line where the snow stops and you see trees? Yeah, that’s a nice steep dropoff. This is essentially my second time on a snowboard, and somehow I found myself on the wrong ski lift, headed for the black diamonds. Lucky me, eh? Fuckers apparently don’t put any indication on their lifts, as to what awaits you at the top.
I knew enough NOT to get on the lift called “The Wall.” Especially since they had this sign posted at the entry point.
And for your enjoyment, here is the song I was listening to while peering over the edge. To be honest, this was the best possible music to listen to in this situation. I got down the mountain under my own power, and with a minimum of bruised pride.
I’ve been a Nine Inch Nails fan since Broken. An alternative music video for Wish (not the one you’ll find on YouTube) was what got me. Then, of course, I went back and acquainted myself with his earlier stuff. When I heard Burn on the radio one night at the movie theater (while I was working), my jaw dropped and I immediately had to find out what album it was on (Natural Born Killers soundtrack). I was a little fanatical for a while. But I didn’t wear black lipstick.
Anyway, when The Fragile was released, I didn’t pay much mind for about a year. Then I bought it, and was floored. It was amazing. Who knew two full-length discs could be so packed, floor-to-ceiling, with awesome tracks? But still, as the years went on, I paid less and less attention to Trent and the ever-changing gang. I haven’t even heard more than a song or two from the last few albums. I heard he released Garage Band files of his last album, so people could re-mix under Creative Commons…and I thought that was great, but I still never bothered to check it out.
Anyway, as I’m sure you’ve heard, NIN just released a direct-to-the-consumer album (à la Radiohead), comprised of 36 tracks and a bunch of different of methods for acquiring it. Special edition box sets, über-ultra-cool editions, free sub-sets of tracks, or (my favorite) the basic digital download of all tracks, a PDF booklet, and a bunch of nice extras. For five beans.
Now, I really dug the Radiohead In Rainbows release, and its “pay what you think it’s worth” model. I think it was a good catalyst for paradigm shift, but it was also a little too easy for cheapskates to get something valuable for free. I don’t think they should have done it any other way, since it really took some big brass balls to put their goods out there and trust the masses. But now that they’ve paved the way, I’m glad as hell that Trent has gone with a meager $5.00 charge for his FOUR-ALBUM release. I think it’s been proven that he can keep his shirt with a sale price like that, but it’s still amazing.
And for that five bucks, you get more than music. The photography in the PDF is absolutely stunning, and each individual track has its own high-quality album artwork…and apparently, the concept of the album is that each song is an instrumental narrative for a visual scene, presumably the scene depicted in the track artwork. I’m listening on my iPhone, and the screen fills up with the new artwork each time a new track starts. Nice way to manipulate the delivery method to further your art.
Oh, and the digital download was available in three really-high-quality formats: 320kbps MP3, Apple Lossless, or FLAC Lossless. No skimpy 128kbps tracks here.
I spent five bucks today. I like what I got in return.
So I had a plan today. It sorta went well, but not as expected.
I finished putting my motorcycle back together last weekend, took it for a test drive, and promptly realized that the battery wasn’t holding a charge. Tried trickle-charging it for six hours, but to no avail. Need a new battery.
The plan today, was to jump-start the bike off my car battery, and ride it over to the dealer in Mountain View to get a new battery. This in itself is a little harrowing, since, every time I came to a stop in traffic or at a stop sign, I had to turn on the choke to keep the revs up, so the bike wouldn’t stall. Not a huge deal, but it’s one more thing to concentrate on every time I’m preparing to slow down.
I got the bike to the dealer, and left it idling (with the choke on…REEEEE!!!!) in the parking lot while I went in to make sure they had the right battery. Once I made sure, I went out and turned the bike off to stop it from screaming. Came back in to pay for the battery, and realized I had left my wallet at home. FUUUCK.
So I went back to the service department to get a jump start so I could go home. As I was gearing up, one of the sales guys came up to me, and asked if I’d gotten what I needed, so I told him what was up. He said “oh, well here, let me just loan you the money for the battery, that way you’ve got one less thing to worry about on your way home, and you can come on back to repay me.” I was astounded. This guy doesn’t know me from Adam, he’s seen me in the shop twice, but we hadn’t really said more than a polite hello to each other. And he had already pulled out his wallet and was holding out more money than I’d care to admit the battery cost. Did I mention I was astounded?
I hesitantly accepted his generous offer, and assured him I’d be right back to repay him. Went in to purchase the battery, and he followed me in and said “and if you haven’t got cash, you could just bring a checkbook, that’d be fine too.” And, of course, I slapped my forehead and started rummaging through my bag to see if I had my checkbook. Which I did. So, I very sheepishly returned the cash to the nice gentleman, and paid for my battery (and valve cover gasket, and brake light switch) with a check. It’s been so long since I’ve needed to write a check, I’d almost forgotten about the whole concept.
So, I went out to the parking lot, took the seat and side panels off my bike, and replaced the battery right there. Started up like a champ, cranked nice and strong. Put on my helmet and gear, and rode home extremely conservatively to get my wallet and (also-forgotten) EZ-Pass. Then headed to work, arriving 1.5 hours late. Thankfully, I had notified the boss early that I’d be delayed. Like a good little boy.
Did a few things right today. Did a few things wrong today.
So there’s this FNG who started a few weeks ago (that’s Fuckin’ New Guy, for the uninitiated). He’s a dweeby asian kid who refers to all CSS hacks by their “official names,” as if the rest of us would have a clue which of the 10,000 existing hacks he’s talking about. He might have them all memorized. Which, you would think, would make him an invaluable asset to the team. You would think that, wouldn’t you?
• In his first week on the job, he was chronically late.
• In his first week on the job, he screwed up an update to a client’s site, failed to make a backup of the files he was replacing, and forced me to re-do all the work that had been done in the several weeks since the files’ last backup.
• In his first week on the job, he told me he’d “prefer not to” work on a particular task I had for him, because the files contained ugly code that required some cleanup.
• In his first week on the job, he sent the following message to a client:
I’ll have it done before 4pm when I get to it.
I would like to request that change requests get complied [sic] into more
substantial bundles rather than a bunch of tiny little urgent changes
demanding immediate attention; a lot of scattered urgent small changes
disrupts my workflow, is more error prone and thus takes longer to do
quality control on, and the barrage of e-mails pulls my attention away
from other projects; switching back and forth between these tasks
takes time and effort.Thanks.
…now, in his defense, he was spot on. Completely right. However, this is one of our largest clients, one of our most temperamental clients, and the sort of client who will bring their business elsewhere if they don’t like where things are heading. You approach such requests with the utmost diplomacy, or you shoot yourself in the foot. To speak so bluntly, out of turn, within your first week on the job…is a colossal client-relations nightmare. I didn’t want to do it, but I reported him to the boss.
In three weeks, he hasn’t figured out how to adhere to a consistent schedule. I’d like to bring to your attention the fact that I am making this observation. Me. The guy who can’t get out of bed the same time every day. The guy who’s allergic to alarms, deadlines, structure, etc. I’m unreliable. But this guy, clean-cut and upstanding is he seems, is just no good at this “day job” thing.
Today, the boss mentioned that the FNG was coming in early, around 10 (he usually comes in for an afternoon shift). He came in at 1:15. He left at 3:15. My project manager enlightened me to the fact that the boss had called him and woken him up at about noon. My PM was like “yeah, if you work in a drop-dead-casual web design shop, and your co-workers are saying ‘damn,’ you might want to admit there’s a problem.”
I don’t think this guy’ll be around much longer.
Just FYI, these are the vehicles in the garage of the dude down the street.
Porsche 997 twin-turbo
Aston Martin Vanquish
1964.5 Mustang Convertible (picture isn’t accurate, but it’s close)
Norton Commando
Plus…three-bay garage. In Silicon Valley. The land on which said garage is built is worth more than a million dollars, not to mention the rest of the house.
My brother sent me a link this morning, to this dude who re-crafted his Mac Mini in the Steampunk style. I didn’t realize a name for the genre existed, but I’d always hoped to find that name.
For those of you who have watched the movie Wild Wild West (yes, it was a crappy movie, but it wasn’t a total loss), and thought those steam-powered contraptions were totally genius and creative, well, now you know. Brass fittings, knobs, tubes, wood, etc. Basically, imagine what a computer would look like if it were invented by someone in Western America in 1850. I’ve seen similar items in Back to the Future Part III, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Time Machine, and various others. I love it.
Anyway, once the site above has recovered from the Digg Effect, check it out. The care and craftsmanship are awesome.
There’s another genre that’s always intrigued me, but I don’t think there’s a name for it. If you’ve ever seen Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, you’ll know what I mean. Picture fly-boys in their modified Spitfires, lots of zeppelins and floating cities with huge engines/propellers keeping them afloat in the clouds. It’s the type of thing that imaginative 1940s kids would dream up in class, and doodle in their notebooks, because that’s what they thought the future held. But in the case of Sky Captain it’s a story written and told in 2004, from the exaggerated point of view of someone in 1940. And filmed/produced with today’s production values. I love that shit, and I wish they’d make more creative movies like that. Hell, even Dark City had a bit of a “post-retro” feel to it, what with the automat and all.
Rambling. But intrigued.