I'm not feeling lucky

A couple of months after I moved to the Valley They Call Silicon, I realized that applying to Google was a complete non-starter. Even before you got to the interview stage, where they’re famous for demanding that you explain why manhole covers are round or calculate how many ping-pong balls it would take to fill up a school bus.

This is because the Don’t Be Evil crowd designed the process to conform to the principles of NHI. No Human Involvement. Use their applicant tracking system (ATS—which, to be fair, does have a better interface than Taleo), do not attempt to find someone there to intervene.

I understand why they do that—they’re Google; anyone with dreams of tech-hood aspires to be a Googler. They get bazillions of applications every day, and they can choose to speak with only those few whom their algorithm identifies as thinking exactly the way they do. They don’t want no stinkin’ diverse cuckoos in their nest, and they can ensure that they don’t get any.

So I don’t know what possessed me to bother, because cuckoo-ness aside, I’m really an enterprise, not a consumer, girl. But I applied for a position within Google Maps. I actually use and like that particular app, so why not? It was the usual ATS experience and I have no expectation that my details will make it past the machine. But I did get rather a kick out of their this-transaction-is-concluded pop-up:

Oh, the humanity! The faux humanity!

Check it out

I’ve mentioned before that the Santa Clara Library District (SCCLD) revamped its online system, and I initially wasn’t massively impressed with the new interface.

Well, there’s more. And I’m gonna give you a for-instance:

My objections?

Point No. 1: The screen capture was taken after I’d clicked the Submit button to place Re: Jane on hold. The “in progress” loop just goes and goes every time I request a book, so they don’t appear to have optimized for Firefox. (I haven’t tested it with IE or Chrome, but if they can’t make it work properly with Firefox they just aren’t trying.) Meaning, it just hangs there until I close out the pop-up window.

I only know that the request has gone through by trying to submit a second time, whereupon I get a snippy error message telling me that I’ve already requested it.

This is bad design and apparently non-existant testing. And I’ve encountered this every time I’ve requested a hold since they brought the new system up.

So, I guess at least it’s consistent. Bad, but consistent.

Point No. 2: Yeah, okay—technically, Re: Jane is indeed a “previous” result, although it’s actually the result I’m in the process of requesting, so I’m not sure what this bit of information does.

(Point No. 2.5: I’m guessing that at some point in the past I’ve looked up Major Crimes in the SCCLD, but that wouldn’t have been in the last several months, so it’s kind of creepy that it’s showing up here. Like Target spitting out coupons for things I’ve purchased in the past that they only know about because they’re tracking my credit card. Ever since librarians told the Feds to get stuffed when they came snooping for patrons’ reading habits, I’d thought that records of what I borrow from the library get expunged the instant I check something back into the system. Well, if so, that obviously doesn’t apply to my online activities and I find this troubling.)

Point No. 3: Why is their algorithm set to suggest that I might want to borrow…the exact same book I’m in the process of looking at/requesting? Not once, but twice? Is this a feature catering for patrons with multiple personalities?

I know it’s very “customer-centric” and all Amazony to suggest other purchase ideas, but to make this feature actually a useful benefit, you’d have to program your system with other choices that are somehow related to the current option. Without being, you know, the same thing I already have in my basket.

For books, this would require entering some sort of synopsis, with keywords, and I’d have thought that out of scope for libraries on tight budgets. So this is kind of an empty flourish.

And my initial response to the new system is confirmed. I’m thinking you should have had a product manager or two involved.

To Xfinity and beyond

Thirty minutes of my life that I’ll never get back were spent on the line (mobile, since being a Triple Threat Xfinity customer meant I had no phone, as well as Internet or TV service) yesterday with Comcast.

First of all trying to find out why the hell I had no phone, Internet or TV service. (According to Charles, some piece of equipment blew and hundreds of residences in the area were in the same sad, leaky boat with me.)

Then, after I told Charles that the instant I had connectivity I would be looking up satellite and U-Verse options to their crappy service, because I just then opened my cable bill to find they’d raised it $30 for no discernable reason. (As in: no added services.)

Well, after he told me that they were “sending some guy out to replace this equipment”, and that they wouldn’t commit to an ETA for resumption of service, he asked if I wanted to talk with someone in Customer Loyalty about my account. What the hell—not like I could watch reruns of Law & Order: SVU or check whether that Minnesota dentist who shot Cecil the lion illegally has been sighted anywhere in or out of the crosshairs.

The upshot of my call is that Comcast is graciously condescending to offer me the same rate I was paying for the last year (“That was a special offer, for one year only.”), but which now includes “premium” (not really) channels I’d been paying an extra $10/month for, and they’re sending me a new DVR which is presumably better than the five-year-old one I have. And it’s $10 less per month.

So, basically, because I called them on their greedy monopolistic arrogance, they’re being the good guys because they’re not screwing me as much as their business model calls for. But I’m sure they’ll make up for it by screwing someone else; probably 40 someone elses.

(As an aside, I was somewhat surprised but not a little pleased to discover that one of my neighbors not only has an unsecured "guest" Wi-Fi network, but that they're also clearly not using Comcast as their ISP. So I was able to follow the tweets about that lion-murdering bastard after all.)

But that’s not really why I’m writing this. My all-too-typical conversation with Comcast reminded me of something I saw a couple of weeks ago around Sunnyvale:

I see plenty of security service notices in the yards of million-dollar houses here in the Valley They Call Silicon. But this is the first one I’ve ever come across from Comcast. And my first thought when it registered in my brain was, “Wow—who’d contract with the company with the crappiest customer service record ever to provide a critical, time-sensitive response service? Who?”

(This is precisely what I wonder every time I see a TV commercial for Comcast home protection services.)

Plus—if these people’s alarm system is connected to the cable infrastructure, it was kaput along with everyone else’s phone, TV and Internet.

Capital campaigning

You know, the ways of non-profit fund raisers are just amazing.

I don’t know how my grad school tracked me down, but I get the alumni magazine now, along with various solicitations periodically. (I’ve managed to elude my undergrad crowd.)

And of course, there was that incident when Wake Tech Community College reached out after a couple of decades to invite me to contribute to their endowment, on the basis of a single programming class I took there.

But now it’s the culture vultures.

Back in the 90s, I was a member of the Phillips Collection’s Contemporaries supporters. I like their museum, the membership didn’t cost a whole lot, and it got you into many great events—openings, parties, Thursday evening nibbles and culture mingling. (One of the stand-outs was their 75^th anniversary celebration held at the French Ambassador’s residence. Honestly, I felt like Eliza Doolittle when I got back from that one.)

Well, it’s been almost 20 years since I was known to them, but blow me if a couple of weeks ago there didn’t appear in my queue this come-on from their development department, inviting me to give them boatloads of money.

It’s entirely conceivable—well, it’s obvious—that I used that email account at some point in communicating with them. But I assure you that, if so, it hasn’t been for a good eight years. So what’s just amazing is that all of a sudden they’ve done some harrowing of their once-and-future supporters and come up with moi and bunged this over to me.

Sadly, it’s going to have the same outcome as the billet-doux from Wake Tech, although for different reasons. But at least they’ve only expended a few electrons in the attempt.

Gallant effort, though.

Gratitude Monday: Fashion awareness

I heard this story on NPR Saturday morning while on my first walk of the day. And it just made me light up: clothing that’s both functional and fashionable being designed for people with various disabilities.

I loved the process involving Air Force vet Anna Smith and Fashion Institute of Technology student Erika Morales—how Morales’s first effort fell short of Smith’s notion of style, and how it evolved from a poncho into something the reporter on air describes as being like origami.

Damn—I’d like to wear something that looks like origami.

Factoring in such things as the different measurements that come from someone seated in a wheelchair (as opposed to standing up), coverage for various degrees of amputation and textiles—this to me is the most magnificent melding of applying technology and design to solve a human problem. And in the process of solving it—of creating something beautiful that confers dignity on the wearer—everyone involved is connected in a new way.

This is indeed something to be grateful for, and I am.

If these yards could talk

I pretty much never go anywhere without my point-and-shoot camera. Because you just never know what you’re going to run across that no one will believe without photographic documentation.

In particular, I get a bit of a kick out of how people express themselves via their front yards. Around here, it’s not like anyone’s using their front yard to, you know, play in. They’re driving their young-uns to soccer practice and tae-kwon-do classes, not letting them chase each other around the lawn.

No, yards are just another medium for folks to project an image to the neighborhood. Like this handmade statement on a garage in Cupertino:

This sign, however, tells an entirely different story:

Evidently this is enough of an issue everywhere that the sign is available (for $16.95) on eBay. It’s advertised as a “dog lovers [sic] gift”, but I’m thinking that the people who buy it and display it aren’t at all wild about dogs, and even less happy with their owners.

Search-suggestion Bingo

Okay, since yesterday I had a go at Google’s auto-complete algorithm, I thought it only fair to do likewise with Bing. Interesting differences.

For What, Google first gave a techie suggestion—“what is my IP”. Bing cuts directly to the bottom line.

Evidently a lot of people on both search sites are feeling a little peaky, and for Why Bing must feel it’s especially important to suggest a search for those who are really too tired to complete their thought.

It’s interesting to me that When brings a whole thing about Father’s Day on both search engines. Are people seriously so vague about when this holiday hits (even though it’s the same third Sunday in June every year) that they’re asking this question year round?

I’m also a little concerned for those who are asking about Father’s Day 2014. Still.

How brings some of the most varied suggestions—perhaps because by the time you get around to asking about methodologies, you’re all set to go. I could spend a lot of time fleshing out the stories for the How queries. Madonna? Belly fat? Ebola? Dunno about Howard’s Appliances, though.

Where gets us to a more existential place, as you might expect. I wonder a little about Bing giving pride of place to not only suggesting a tax-related query, but straight out coughing up the URL to the IRS refund page. Lotta stories there, I’m betting.

I expect the confederate flag query is fairly recent. I’m afraid to seek out wheresgeorge.com in case it turns out to be a porn site. And I have no idea who the host of The Amazing Race is, so I don’t care where he was born.

I’m very disappointed that Bing doesn’t seem to care about who let the dogs out. But I can see how knowing who invented the toilet would be high on the let-us-help-with-your-query list.

P.S. The tallest trees in the world are just up the road from me, in Redwood National and State Parks. You’re welcome.

Gaming Google

Sometimes I just like to poke things. I refrained this morning from poking the bumble bee that was exploring squash flowers in someone’s garden, but I thought I’d have a go at Google.

Because it’s fun to see what those crazy algorithms come up with as you’re searching for things. I mean, I love auto-complete; it's the online version of getting so stuck on various words in the dictionary that you forget what it was you went there to look up.

Today I thought I’d try those stalwarts of journalistic inquiry, the six honest serving-men of Kipling (from one of my favorite stories, “The Elephant’s Child”).

I keep six honest serving-men

  (They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

  And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,

  I send them east and west;

But after they have worked for me,

  I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five,

  For I am busy then,

As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,

  For they are hungry men.

But different folk have different views.

  I know a person small-

She keeps ten million serving-men,

  Who get no rest at all!

She sends'em abroad on her own affairs,

  From the second she opens her eyes-

One million Hows, two million Wheres,

  And seven million Whys!

So here’s what Google auto-complete suggested for me, when I typed in just the word in each case:

What stories could we make up about these suggestions? For example, is the fox's poop green? Why or why not? Do you measure Madonna's age in human or dog years? What's all the concern about Father's Day, especially a month after the event? Where does hope grow, and do you have to fertilize it?

And, the ultimate question: who did let the dag-blamed dogs out?

Business modeling

Here’s an interesting thing about Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)— you’re not buying a permanent license to use it; you’re paying a monthly (or yearly) subscription to have access to it. The approaching-senility set may recall, in the dim-dark past, subscribing to things called “magazines” (or even “newspapers”), which arrived at their doorsteps either by delivery or mail. Back when mail actually got delivered.

SaaS is like that, only it’s an application showing up on your computing device.

There are a number of attractions to SaaS in the enterprise world: you don’t have upfront costs of buying a huge license at an even huger price, and you don’t have to have the hardware and platform infrastructure (also expensive) to run the application, since SaaS is most often hosted at an independent data center somewhere. Also—new releases just propagate themselves in the ether, and tech support for users is generally handled directly by the software vendor, not the client company.

Basically, SaaS means that companies don’t have to have IT staff to install, maintain, upgrade or support these sometimes very complex software systems. In return, the client company pays subscription fees—usually based on the number of users licensed to access the application—on a monthly or yearly basis.

To lure consumers and small businesses into their software capabilities, some SaaS companies give free access to basic versions of an app with limited capabilities. Kind of like drug dealers hanging out by a schoolyard and handing out little tastes of crack. You get accustomed to the functionality. Then—if you want more—you gotta pay.

Well, I’ve been working with someone who really likes Evernote as a collaboration tool—note taking, document sharing, that sort of thing. So I signed up for a free account using my junk email address. (That’s the one I use for Meetup, Dice, email lists and everything else that I don’t want cluttering up my blog, personal or job-seeker email accounts.) Yeah, it looked fine.

Then my friend sent me something through Evernote using my personal email account, so I had to log in using that one instead of my junk mail account.

Both of those activities were about a month ago.

Last week I got two come-ons from Evernote, offering a special deal if I buy a year’s subscription. But notice the difference in how much they want me to sign up.

The offer to the junk mail account—which I opened, played with for 30 minutes and then never accessed again—is six months free with a one-year subscription:

In the offer to the account associated with actual exchange of information with a paying subscriber I only get an extra month with a one-year subscription.

Now this is something I find very interesting—and I see it throughout the business world. They’re so busy trying to woo a new customer, they basically blow off the one who’s already using their product or service. What I find interesting is that they don’t really bother to disguise that at all.

Gratitude Monday: Feral parrots

Sometimes a girl just needs to step away from the mean streets and take a walk in the clouds. I did that recently when I got a film from the library that my BFF recommended, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.

As you know, I tend to treat TV as a talking lamp—I’m usually multi-tasking when there’s something on, and I just connect the dots however I feel like it. If the plot isn’t gripping, I’m not sticking.

But Wild Parrots kept me glued to the screen the entire time. My friend really appreciated the colors—and they’re indeed brilliant. What reached out to me was the gentleness: a guy finds purpose in life from being a neighbor to a flock of wild parrots in San Francisco.

Mark Bittner does not anthropomorphize the birds, or make them his pets. Yes—he gives them all names, he feeds them, and he looks after the ones that are ill. But otherwise he appreciates them and respects them. It’s just beautiful.

Even when it’s time for him to move away from them (and I have to say that the thought of the market rent of that house he was living in is enough to lay me flat), he advocates for them to the City Council. Let them live as they are—don’t exterminate them, don’t put them in the zoo for their own protection, just let them carry on.

I felt so much better about the world after watching this documentary, so I recommend it highly to you. And on Gratitude Monday, I’m very grateful that I got a couple of hours of beautiful enchantment in my life.