Advancing...

I had an interview yesterday for a job I’d really love, one that would make excellent use of my liberal arts bent and my communications background. It was a panel of six, although since I’d already spoken on the phone with the hiring manager and the HR manager, only four of them really asked me questions.

They were every one of them smart, articulate and deeply committed to their organization and the success of this new program. There was not one twenty-something hotshot engineer-master-of-the-universe convinced that he alone will be responsible for the next [Google, Uber, Facebook, whatever].

So I was not sitting at the Cool Kids Table, trying to maintain the attention of ADHD sufferers who find their mobile phones more compelling than what I have to say. They asked good questions and seemed to appreciate my answers. And now I’m waiting to hear about next steps.

Here’s how much I want this job: I wrote thank-you notes. On note paper. And delivered them to the guard at the organization’s front desk.

Foreshadowings of the silver future

About twelve years ago I did an images research project for a consortium that was opposing the D.C. Metrorail project to build the Silver Line as an elevated train going through Tyson’s Corner, eventually to Dulles Airport and beyond.

My job was to find images of elevated rail transit in various settings. Naturally, the idea was to find pictures that looked awful, because the clients were supporting the idea of sending the Silver Line underground instead of above. But the thing was—it was hard to find anything that didn’t look nasty and ugly, because that’s what elevated rail lines look like when imposed on existing urban settings.

Yesterday, en route from Dulles Airport to downtown D.C., the section around Tyson’s was every bit as repulsive as those photos I gathered all those years ago. Damn. I mean—for a total of less than $12 I saved myself a $70+ cab fare, but what a complete blight on the landscape.

Really sorry that happened. But there you go—you get what you pay for.

Not much of a Yahoo

I’m on a couple of Meetups that use Yahoo Groups to communicate, so every few months I have to fish out my Yahoo account password and log in so I can download files that have been shared.

Every time I do I recall one of the many reasons why I long ago stopped using it. Including this collection of spam, which (whatever you might think about Google), I never see in my Gmail queue:

Seriously—what sort of sad, sad individual would even click on those things? I need to be hosed down with disinfectant just for looking at them.

The mean streets

As you know, I often wonder about the stories behind things I observe here in the Valley They Call Silicon.

And there’s so much to observe.

Although I don’t see it as often as I did in Seattle, I do run across the odd bit of stuff pushed out onto the sidewalk in front of someone’s house that the residents are hoping someone will take away. Sometimes they put a sign on it:

Sometimes not.

Either way, not much of a story to construct, really.

But this one—a surgical mask and a pair of tighty-whities…

I’m having rather a good time with that one.

Gratitude Monday: Passion personified

It’s such a career-management cliché these days to talk about “your passion”. (Around here in the Valley They Call Silicon, “passion” is starting to be replaced by “superpowers”, as in “tell us about your superpowers”, instead of “what’s your passion?” But it’s still the same kind of buzzwordery.) And you get overwhelmed at networking events by people beetling around jamming business cards into your hands and babbling about being passionate about [insert cool tech du jour here].

It really starts to wear one out.

But listening yesterday morning to Marsha Barnes tell NPR’s Rachel Martin about buying a school bus so she could take her expertise on personal financial management to wherever it’s needed (in the greater Charlotte, N.C., area), I was infused with joy. Not only because she’s giving people information crucial to their ability to live independently and well, but also because she so clearly loves what she’s doing.

I loved the part about her having to learn to drive the bus…after she bought it. I love that she created a mobile office so that her clients interact with her in a professional and private environment that customers of the investment banks in downtown Charlotte would recognize. I love that she can see this as a scalable model for any place where you can park a bus.

The woman is not telling us about her passion, she’s living it, which is thoroughly evident in the energy, enthusiasm and joy that fills her voice. And I’m grateful that this week in particular started out with the inspiration of Marsha Barnes.

Shoe news

This notice appears about every other month in my condo association’s monthly newsletter.

I find it rather interesting because clearly telling folks that HOA rules prohibit parking their family’s shoes by the front door is having no effect whatsoever. Obviously they keep on doing it. Equally obviously, their neighbors are ratting them out to the management.

I have an idea that might solve the problem. Just send someone through the complex one night with a large bin bag and take away all the shoes that are on common/public property.

If that doesn’t work immediately, repeat as necessary. I’m thinking people will pay attention to that.

And More!

This is apparently a chain of restaurants.

There are outlets around the Valley They Call Silicon, as well as…Torrance.

From their website, it looks a little like they’re the Chipotle of the sea.

When I saw the first one, in Cupertino, I thought it must be some one-off place that hired someone’s nephew in high school to come up with the name and branding. But no, it’s a chain. They probably paid some concept-restaurant consulting company to do it all.

It’s clear, however, that “it all” doesn’t include understanding of the difference between plural and possessive. And that tooth-aching apostrophe is going to keep me out of their stores forever. Because I'm too busy asking, "Fish's Wild What?" to eat anything.

Is it "Fish Grill & More!"? As in "Fish's Wild Fish Grill & More!"? Because, if so, why would it be "Fish's Wild Fish Grill"? To distinguish it from "Fish's Wild Goat Grill"? No, I just don't get it.

All systems...not so go

I needed to book cross-country flights the other day, and since I always loved flying Virgin Atlantic, I thought I’d give Virgin America a chance. For one thing, they’re about the only carrier that seems to feature non-stop flights; all the others want you to pay extra for the privilege of changing planes in Dallas, Chicago or New York.

Well, it did not begin well, because the Virgin America flight booking site has about the kludgiest user interface I’ve come across in an industry that expects you to shell out several hundred dollars at a whack. I’m flying out of SFO and into Washington DC, which has two airports. The airline’s site did not sort them out, and it marched you through a mindless commitment to an outward flight (including all passenger information) before it would show you the return flights.

It was ghastly—especially when it came to choosing seats. What would it have cost them in design and engineering input to give you some more interactive options?

Well, I soldiered through, getting more and more anxious because it wasn’t clear to me what I was actually committing to. And when I got to the point where I clicked the button saying, “Yes, I’m going to give you $900+, go ahead”—it just froze. No confirmation screen, no confirmation email, even though it had that information. (And we’ll return to that later.)

So I called their customer service line to find out if they’d made the reservation or not. According to Avery, they hadn’t—he couldn’t find me anywhere in their system, so we had to begin all over. And it took him more than 20 minutes to sort through the options, actually make the booking and then take my money.

Two things: He helped me pick my seats, confirmed that they were “express seats”, but did not include the “express” fees in the original quote. He had to come back (having already been given my credit card details) to tell me they cost extra, and so would I approve the extra charge. (I knew that because that info, at least, had been on their site; I just assumed that he did, too, and that the price he told me included those fees.) Why would that not have appeared in the price he first gave me, which included all the sixteen kinds of taxes?

Also, between the time that I thought I’d pulled the trigger and Avery’s final booking, the fare had increased several hundred dollars. I thought that was a kind of sleazy way to operate, and unworthy of a Richard Branson company. Come on—that’s the way United works.

Well, but I’m confirmed, I have a confirmation code and it arrived by email.

As did three prompts from Virgin America pointing out that I hadn’t completed my attempted booking, and urging me to do so. The first on Friday afternoon, right after I got the confirmation email.

The second about twelve hours later:

And the third twelve hours after that.

The subject lines were different, but the body text was the same. They all wanted me to go back online, into their maze of an application and continue the self-torture.

Now, I understand that they came from a different computer system than the confirmation email from my transaction with Avery. But still.

I also wonder how did it not retain any of my passenger info, when it clearly had my email address and the details of the flights I had chosen?

Someone really needs to run some usability tests and rethink the workflows. And get some feedback from real humans—people who aren’t engineers or who have been living in a web-deprived world and have no notion of what 21^st Century user experience should be like.

'Tis the season?

You know, I get that Target and Costco have had Christmas merchandise out for at least a month. Because that’s the way they roll.

But I was in Neiman-Marcus at Stanford Shopping Center last week, and look:

A friend of mine assured me that “They do that for the tourists, because only tourists shop at Stanford Mall.” Which didn’t entirely make sense, as not only was I there in search of something particular, but there was a queue of fanboys about halfway down the mall waiting for the iPhone 6s at the Apple Store.

So I have no explanation and I see no excuse for this sort of pushing the season from N-M. But there it is.

Gratitude Monday: Fire in the skies

Saturday a friend and I went into The City to see a performance that was part of the SF Fringe Festival. It was really interesting, and we had a nice meal at a Louisiana-style restaurant and a very entertaining walk through the Tenderloin.

But what I’m really grateful for was the sunset that was flaming across the sky just as we returned to Sunnyvale:

It started as we were entering Santa Clara County.

And it just kept going.

Until it filled the sky.

I mean—how can you not just stop in your tracks and marvel?