What I've been up to

As many friends have reminded me, I haven’t blogged for a while.

Here’s a refresher on what I wrote a while back about why I blog.

And here are a few reasons why I haven’t been blogging for a while:

• Scrubbing
  I had to prepare my apartment for a parental visit. ‘nuff said.
  
  
• Traveling
  I visited Seattle, Ottawa, and Toronto… which involved preparing presentations, doing my first-ever TV interview, filing expense reports, escalating/acting upon tons of awesome webmaster feedback, recovering from staying in a tiny room above a Mexican restaurant (which cost nearly $150 a night!), helping a friend break up, and beforehand personally booking plane rides, train rides, hotel rooms, and more.  Trips are a lot of work, especially those that combine business and pleasure.
  
  
• Recovering
  I spent time recovering from having many bits of glass fly into my head.  This was associated with an accident involving me, my parents, my new car, and a very, very stupid and/or suicidal skateboarder who ignored a stop sign at a busy intersection and collided at high velocity with my slowly-moving vehicle.  While my parents and I are thankfully all healed up, I’m still dealing with financial and legal ramifications… and my car is still in the shop.  Upside:  I’ve been getting lots more exercise from walking and jogging and have lost two pounds of fat :-D.
  
  
• Practicing and performing
  I recently performed on stage at the huge Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California.  What a scary and exhilarating experience!!!  I hope to have a recording that I can post here in the near future.
  
  
• And yet more travel-planning
  I’m planning trips in the remainder of this year to Dublin, Seville, Louisville, Los Angeles, Chicago or Las Vegas, Viernheim, Mannheim, and Caracas.  I’m excited but stressed about this, as you can imagine.
  
  
• Working
  I’m heading up two major events at Google, taking on new responsibilities, attending Search Engine Strategies San Jose in August, and much more.
  
  
• Apartment searching
  Though this has been temporarily put on hold while I’m carless, I have been scouting out a new place to call my own closer to the Googleplex to eliminate the generally-comfy-but-time-consuming daily commute from San Francisco to Mountain View.
  
  
• Facebooking
  Facebook has both taken time away from my blogging and has dried up much of my drive to blog.  With Facebook, I’ve been able to share what’s going on in my life with friends, highlight interesting articles, ask questions and get answers, show off music and photos, and learn what’s going on in my communities, in my friends’ lives, and so on.  Still, though, Facebook isn’t (yet) a complete replacement for self-hosted blogging as I see it, so don’t count on me shuttering BLADAM just yet :-D.
  
  *  *  *
  
  I always have tons of stuff I want to share… continually have blog drafts bouncing around in my noggin.  But now you understand why those have remained mental drafts for the last months.
  
  So… no promises that I’ll blog more often—sorry.  But be assured that I’m not just belching in front of the T.V. :-D
  
  

Free hugs and the beauty of human touch

I just learned from BLADAM member Flathead in the Netherlands that there’s a worldwide movement involving Free Hugs.  I just watched a few snippets, and this just totally made my day! :-D

It also brings to mind some thoughts I shared in an early blog entry (”Non-sexual Healin’” )

[...] It was then that I realized how much the whole concept of touch means to me and likely many of my Lindy Hop crazy friends. There’s such a comfort and warmth in—if you’ll forgive the modified Moulin Rouge reference—holding someone and being held in return.

At least in my case (and I suspect, for most others as well), this is all not really about sex or even necessarily flirting. As a heterosexual fella, I still enjoy hugging my friends regardless of their gender, and I likewise appreciate being a follower in Lindy Hop, even with guys.

Sure, there’s sometimes an underlying sensuality in dancing, especially when blues-dancing with someone you are attracted to from the way they look or the way they dance, and so on. But I still think that the overall non-sexual pleasure of touch is one of the leading factors that contributes to folks’ joy in dancing, and this also highlights just how much closeness our American society often lacks.

In much of Europe and Latin America, for instance, there seems to be less perceived overlap between friendly touching and sexual overtures, and I really like and respect that. When I lived in Europe, I found that I was encouraged to give and receive friendly hugs or even snuggle with others without ulterior motives or expectations.

Anyway, thanks, Flathead, for the neat link and good feelings :-D.

Provincial half-wits okay, but no Goddamned atheists!

In the marvelous The Week magazine (March 2007 edition quoting a USA Today / Gallup poll), it was disclosed that 53% of Americans wouldn’t vote for an atheist for U.S. President (and, unsurprisingly but just as sadly, 43% said they wouldn’t vote for a homosexual, either).  Barring a horribly worded poll question—which, I concede, isn’t out of the question—I’m guessing the real percentage of Americans who are prejudiced against atheists is even higher; assuming the poll was done by phone or in person, I can imagine some people thinking to themselves “Well, darned if I’d ever support one of them goin’-to-hell types, but I gotta sound enlightened here and not admit it!”

You know, I don’t care what people believe in: the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Boogie Man, or—my personal favorite and Savior—The Flying Spaghetti Monster... nor do I care whom they sleep with (men, women, or even The Flying Spaghetti Monster Himself, though I admit that could get messy), as long as no one gets hurt.  For instance, a pediatrician saying, “I’m sorry, son, I can’t see you today unless you pledge allegiance to Harvey, my invisible rabbit”... that would be wrong.  And weird… though (IMACANSHO) not a jot weirder than lots of other belief systems out there. 

Personally, I’d actually be happy to elect anyone as President—regardless of his or her religion or sexual habits—if he or she would fulfill just some very basic criteria:

- Has visited at least four countries in three continents.  And not just on business.

- Can read—and speak—at higher than a sixth grade level.

- Is respected by more than half a dozen world leaders.  And not the machete-wielding ones, either!

- Has publicly admitted to being wrong… and apologized!

- Has an innate sense of curiosity about the world… including people, science, the arts, etc.

And, most importantly…

- Views the world LOGICALLY.  Doesn’t make decisions to appease some invisible being or out of “faith” or whatever… because all of us, dammit, are likely to see *different* invisible beings depending upon what we’ve ingested recently… and frankly, it makes a hell of a lot more long term sense to have faith in science and scientists (who haven’t been muzzled by bureaucrats, but that’s another story).  A candidate who avoids run-on sentences would be even a better man than I! :-P

And, a helpful example:

WRONG:  “I’m signing this bill because the Flying Spaghetti Monster told me that it’s the right thing to do.”

RIGHT:  “I’m signing this bill because all independent research consistently shows it’s the logical choice based upon a thorough assessment of risks, opportunities, and benefits.”

*  *  *

So, zigging back to the original issue, I really don’t get why people would care about the belief system of their President.  Then again, I also don’t get why many people elected our last one because—and, as Dave Barry would say, I swear I am not making this up—they could really themselves see chuggin’ a beer with him.  Look, I know lots of guys who are amiable and often quite entertaining (and frequent) bar dwellers.  However, I sure as hell wouldn’t want them as my neurosurgeon.  Or life advisor.  Or Leader of the Free World.

No, I’d like to have someone who is insanely smart and sober and thoughtful.  Even a total nerd.  Sure, it’d be nice if he were social enough to not bungle through pleasantries with other heads of state, but I bet even the most socially awkward nerd wouldn’t be runnin’ around giving unsolicited shoulder massages.  Honest.  And wouldn’t that be a delightful improvement right there? :-D

*  *  *

In the meantime, it really saddens me that so many folks harbor such a prejudice against atheists, homosexuals, and, indeed, probably anyone who “threatens” their intellect, sexuality, or overall belief structure.  How is it that so many people—especially (I’m also sad to say) Americans—are so damn insecure? 

Look, I think ABBA wrote delightful music.  I get teary-eyed at many Sondheim musicals.  If you don’t feel the same way,

you have lousy taste

hey that’s hunky dory.  As long as you don’t get elected as President and say… okay, due to my undying love for ABBA and Sondheim, I am going to put 42% of our budget into ABBA and Sondheim museums in every city.  In the world!  We’re going to take over Funkistan and put museums there for the ABBA- and Sondheim-less heathens! 

Fine, fine, I’m getting a bit silly.  Belief in invisible beings is, I suppose, more profound than my tastes in music and theatre.  And, you might argue, someone’s belief system might guide them in their executive decisions.  Wars in the name of spaghetti sauces.  Tax policies to favor yellow marshmallow peep production.  And that, my friend, would be wrong.  Very wrong.

Logic transcends all of this.  If only so many folks weren’t quite so busy forcing beliefs on others.  Maybe if we had just had better logic and statistics teachers in school?  Hmm….

Second Life doesn't want me as a member

A while back, I tried Second Life and wrote about it.

Many months went by, and—after getting a new graphics card—I figured, hey, why not try Second Life again?

I actually remembered my old SL name though wasn’t sure of the password.  Guessed a couple of times, wasn’t able to log in, so I clicked on the Forgot Password link.  Ah ha… I knew the answer to that secret question, got a link to reset my password, and figured I was all good to go.

Except that I still couldn’t log in.  I waited a few hours and tried again, but still no-go.

This, indeed, was just the beginning of my ridiculous adventure.

As any responsible consumer would do, I scoured the SL wiki and help docs.  Nothing pertaining to my situation.

Ah ha!  A forum!  I’ll go on there and look for info, perhaps even post a plea.  But, of course, I wasn’t allowed to even read the forum without logging in… and since I couldn’t log in (duh!), well, no forum for me.

So at this point, it was clear that I had done all I could on my end and it was time for me to e-mail support.  No e-mail address (understandable), but I saw there was a way to file a ticket for help.  Just sign in and… aaaaaaaaaagh!

Persistent bugger that I am, I actually registered a SECOND Second Life account (does that make it a Third Life?  Nevermind), just so I could file a ticket, asking for my first account to be unlocked or whatever.  It was a pain-in-the-ass process (no, I do NOT want to decorate another avatar!), but I finally managed to log in and fill out a help ticket.

Three days later (in fairness, it was over the long weekend), I got a response:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Second Life customer relations. In order to assist you with your request, I will need some more information about the [account-name] account.?

[secret question removed] (the security question you selected)

When you have verified this information, I will be able to reset your password so you can log in.

Regards,

Rowan Linden

*  *  *

YAY!  This was clearly the home stretch!  All I had to do was reply back with my answer and… oh, wait a minute: “THIS IS AN AUTOMATED RESPONSE, PLEASE DO NOT DIRECTLY REPLY TO THIS EMAIL.”  In all caps, no less. 

I clicked on the link to update the ticket, which—surprise surprise—brought me to a login screen.  Which, for whatever reason, I was not able to login with my Third Life credentials, so I had no way of replying to the customer service person.

But lo and behold, what’s this?  A 1-800 number on the login page!  Dog had mercy on my soul… and I dialed the digits eagerly.  Yep, “Welcome to Second Life…”

“...Please note that we have discontinued phone support.  Please go to http://www.secondlife.com…”

I give up.  I really don’t need any more distractions in my First Life anyway.

Would "Required Donation" work?

I am an avid fan—and financial supporter—of KQED, the Bay Area’s public radio station.  And once again, I’ve been massively annoyed by the most recent (and seemingly monthly) pledge drive.

A few thoughts have sprung up into my head:

• Damn, this sucks.
  
• I already donated; why do I have to continue to listen to this?!
  
• Wouldn’t it be awesome if somehow those people who donated got to hear actual programming, not the pledge drives?
  
• I hope those regular listeners who can afford to donate but haven’t end up with a flock of bloated pigeons presenting a large splattery “gift” on their cars.  Daily.

As I continued to think about this situation—independent of the actual technical constraints associated with limiting the broadcast to only paying members—I felt a bit guilty… recognizing that not everyone could afford to be a member at even the basic $40-a-year level.

But what if…

 

What if KQED—again, ignoring the technical constraints—could somehow be made to be broadcast only to members… but people could become members for as little as a penny a year.

That’s right.  In order to become a member and hear the broadcast, you’d have to do this every year:

- Fill out a form (online or on paper)

- Pay something.  Anything.  Even a penny.

Perhaps the station could propose membership tiers or a “suggested” donation; how about, for instance, 1/10th of 1% (1/1000th) of your household’s pre-tax annual income.  Single folks making $80,000 a year, for instance, would pay $80/year—or less than 22 cents a day.

Or maybe the station’d just leave payment completely up to each individual’s discretion, like this coffee shop in Seattle. (incidentally, I’m pretty sure I thought of this “required donation” idea before I read about Terra Bite, but no doubt it placed a reminder in my head :-P)

*  *  *

While this idea is technically infeasible for standard over-the-air broadcasts, I’m wondering if it has ever been tried for software or Web site tools or content libraries.  Oh, sure, I’ve seen lots of “donationware” (“Please… if you use this, consider donating something”).  But I have never seen any service or product require a payment but not require a specific amount.

My questions for you:

1. Have you ever seen this tried?  If so, did you actually pay for the service or product? 
   
2. Do you think the implementation of this idea by people or companies would result in them making more money or less… compared to either A) Giving away the product, but requesting a donation   and   B) Charging a fixed amount?
   
3. Think of your favorite content-based Web site (besides this one)... a blog, an online zine, etc.  If they required payment (with even a penny qualifying), would you become a member?  Why or why not?
   
4. Think of a favorite software program or online tool that you currently do not pay for.  Would you pay for it under this sort of “donation required” plan?  Why or why not?

Embedding a chat room with Meebo... just testing.

Intriguing.  I’m attempting to embed a Meebo chat room below.  I’ll keep this window open for a while, and will make sure to be here at 7pm PST (10pm EST) today, Sunday.

Katamari Damacy - Why is the music so hard to find?!

This morning at work I was chatting with a colleague about my morning commute, and I don’t know what got into me… but for some odd reason I confided that I wished to be a big katamari ball, rolling my way to work and grabbing everything in my path.

Then, adding to the strangeness and freaking out my poor katamari-less colleague, I started singing “Na NAAAAAAAAA na na na NA na na na, na Na na na-na naaaaaaaaaaa!”

*  *  *

What… you aren’t familiar with Katamari Damacy, the psychedelically funky and happy video game in which you, Little Prince, must help out your hungover King of the Cosmos dad by rolling up everything on Earth to make stars that your daddy accidentally splatted during his previous nights’ bender?  If you have a PS2, *go out and get this game now!*  You won’t be sorry, except perhaps for the temporary loss of productivity and your embarrassment from singing jazzy goofy charming jazz/j-pop tunes to all your friends.

And, indeed, the musical score is that great.  Listening to it is just bound to cheer anyone up.

Unfortunately, trying to actually buy the soundtrack is not nearly so pleasant.  Amazon?  Nope (they’ve only got a misleadingly-labeled CD that’s inspired by the Katamari tunes… it doesn’t actually contain the songs!).  iTunes?  Nope.  Yahoo Music? Sorry.  Rhapsody?  Sadly, no.

So far, I’ve only seen it via Play Asia... >$30 for the CD + shipping :-(.  I’m actually willing to pay that much, but not very pleased about the idea.

Anyone know:

1) Other places to get this CD for less money?

2) WHY such a charming, beloved score is not available via an American label?

3) Why Amazon.com and other American retailers would carry the game, but not the soundtrack?

UPDATE on May 24, 2008

I ended up buying the CD from PlayAsia (for, indeed, $30… ouch!)... but now you can all enjoy the music, too! :-D

All "friends" aren't created equal! (why we need better relationship marking in social networks)

I’m planning on quitting twitter.  Flickr—at least as a social site—is getting frustratingly unwieldly.  You know why?  Because pretty much all social sites like this treat all my friends, co-workers, acquaintances, online buddies the same, and it’s a big, stupid, completely off-putting mess!

Sure, these services want to reduce complexity… they know that many folks may not want to take the time to put friends into groups.  And eventually, some really smart service is going to actually do it automatically for me (“Hmm… Adam only looks at Fred’s pictures once in a while, but he looks at Mary’s photos minutes after he’s notified of her updates…”).

Look, I’m not an insanely popular guy.  But I have over 600 people in my personal contacts folder.  I regularly interact with tons people at work, and sincerely care (personally) about at least a dozen or two of ‘em (to the point where I want to see their travel photos, want to know when they’re excited or depressed, etc.).  But when people have “friended” me on Twitter or Flickr, I’ve often unselectively reciprocated… and now I’m just getting overloaded.  Too much info.  Too much info I do not care about.

And this is where nearly all social services seem to get things wrong.  At risk of being callous, I could pretty much care less if a distant acquaintance is having an off day or just uploaded photos of his Aunt Elda’s wedding.  But I sure as hell want to know if my office mate is about to arrive at work grouchy or an awesome friend in a different timezone is having a rough week, and so on.  To the extent that social services of all types can eventually alert us to events and feelings that mean a lot to us, that’s a huge win.

Flickr lets me mark someone as a contact, friend, or family.  That’s somewhat useful, but I’d say that these distinctions barely scratch the surface in helping me manage photostreams or viewing permissions.

Facebook lets me mark someone as a “limited friend” (is that like “single serving friends” from Fight Club? :-P), but—again—that’s not all that helpful. 

Why can’t I rank my contacts’ importance on a scale from 1-10… 10 being I want to know their every feeling and action and 1 being I don’t want to be bugged by any notifications ‘bout them unless they’re getting married… and to a hot celebrity.  Or in addition to / instead of degrees of that sort, why can’t I indicate that I want monthly digests of most my contacts, weekly digests of a few, and daily or even as-it-happens updates on my select group of best-friends?

*  *  *

And it’s not just what I want to know, it’s also about what I want to share.  There are very different things I want to share with my Mom, my recent-ex-girlfriend, most of my colleagues, my closest friends, my roommate, and so on.  I should be able to put my contacts into “share groups”—with easily check-box-able overriding options per shared item—and then quickly and powerfully indicate which groups I want receiving which update or types of updates.

And, again, to the extent to which my preferences and habits can be algorithmically determined (albeit manually overridable) and designed to streamline my sharing and discovery choices, that’s super!  Facebook’s gotta know whose wall I post on most often, who I tag in most of my photos, and so on.  Surely it can make educated guesses on the strength of our ties.

Oh, and just to make things more complicated… it’s not all about only the strength of ties… it’s about context.  Many of my colleagues and friends get excited about news about new geek toys or web sites.  Other friends are in my lindy hop (swing dancing) group, and many of them couldn’t care less about the newest Web 2.0 doodad.

So I may want to share tech stuff with some friends, arts stuff with others, personal musings and rants with close buddies, and so on.  Complicated, yes, and likely with no absolute/easy answers.  But at least the social networking/sharing services could try a bit harder! :-D

*  *  *

So probably this week is when I’m gonna uninstall twitteroo and give up on both reading and posting occasional updates.  It’s not just a matter of signal vs. noise, which I lamented earlier, but the complete lack of any sort of targeting, grouping, etc.  There are days in which I really do want to read the blatherings of my fellow SEO/SEM/Search-engine geeks.  But some days I just want to know if a good friend is happy or sad.  Or if another friend finally bought her airplane tickets to come back to the States.  Right now, I can neither selectively broadcast nor read notes sorted/filtered by strength or type of ties.  And that’s jarring, frustrating, distracting, and whole ton of other negative adjectives.

I’m not going to delete my Twitter account just yet.  In case it’s not clear, I think there are some compelling cases for this sort of thing… and I’m hoping that eventually the service will help me share and glean what my friends and I are “doing now” with greater granularity and thoughtfulness.

And indeed, I hope other services eventually wise-up, too.  MySpace may be the most popular social network, but it is so (I’m confidently sure) only because of the obnoxiously strong power of the network effect, not because it really supports social sharing and discovery in an effective way.  The sooner other services learn that not all relationships are equal, the sooner the online world will truly help us manage and improve our (real, offline) relationships.

*  *  *

Updated on June 18, 2007:

I don’t always agree with Robert Scoble’s take on communications and networking and I’m frankly displeased that he’s invoked “nazis” for something far from evil, but I nonetheless think he makes some excellent points (related to my rant above) in his blog entry “Social networks as “friend” Nazi (design flaws in Facebook, Jaiku, Twitter).”

This is an occasion. Let's toast it! (The cover of Life Magazine!)

They say the meek shall inherit… and I’m hep to the jive!

So, yes, Terry, I did have to go ahead and blog this ;-) (it’s one of the damn coolest birthday cards I’ve gotten… thanks!)

[e-card below, via Plaxo’s neato ecard offerings]

How to pick an apartment (with the help of a damn cool Google Spreadsheet "wiki")

I’m in apartment-hunting mode, and have amassed a set of criteria for my search that I thought you might benefit from… and be able to easily add to!

With the new release of Google Docs and Spreadsheets (horrid name, super product), I can now do all sorts of cool stuff!  For instance, I’ve embedded the spreadsheet below for you to read… but I’ve also included links at the bottom for you to:

• EDIT ONLINE:  Load up the spreadsheet online in edit mode!  Your changes will be reflected within five minutes on the document AND this page, so please be both thoughtful and nice (I can revert as necessary, of course).
  
• EDIT OFFLINE:  Download the CSV and load it up in Excel or Excel imitator :-P.
  
• VIEW: ...as PDF, HTML, TXT, and in other formats as well.
  
• SUBSCRIBE:... view Atom or RSS

Pretty neat, eh?  And now, on with the show!

• EDIT:  View and edit online (general Google Account required; add lines as needed by right-clicking cells and selecting INSERT… or you can highlight several rows and select INSERT [n] ROWS ABOVE/BELOW)
  Aw, bummer!  As described in the comments below, I hadn’t realized that the usernames (and, thus, gmail e-mail addresses) of collaborators would be listed in this doc, so I’m un-sharing the doc until and unless this no longer happens.  Thanks, Rockya, for the discovery.
  
• DOWNLOAD / VIEW:  CSV, XLS (Excel format—new link for this entry), PDF, TXT, HTML, ODS
  
• SUBSCRIBE (1st page): Atom, RSS

I welcome your comments below…

- On the actual criteria I’ve listed (or has been added)

- On this use of Google Docs and Spreadsheets

- On anything else related to this entry :-D

Zap ridiculous disclaimers, reform CEO pay in one fell swoop

Stupid disclaimers.  You know ‘em, and you probably either ignore them or laugh at them.  Slightly enhanced samples that are either spoken at 420 words a minute or that take up a bazillion lines of tiny tiny text on the back of ads in news magazines.

• “Warning: Stunt driver on stunt track in stunt car.  Do not drive like this [except in Rome]”
  
• “Warning: Medication may cause sniffling, itching, numbness in extremities, permanent paralysis, or death. [+ 31415928 more lines that no one bothers to read]
  
• “Remember, drink responsibly!  [Also, be nice to your mom.  Put up the toilet seat.  Don’t be prejudiced.  Love a geek today.]
  
• “Results not typical.  Your results may vary. [Let’s face it… 99.9999% of people on this diet don’t lose an ounce.  We just managed to find the one freak who had liposuction after taking our product.]

Completely useless, aren’t they?  Somehow I don’t think we’re gonna hear stuff like this from beer-bongin’ frat boys:

“Hey Sarah, I’m concerned about you!  I mean, Mr. Jose Cuervo insists that we drink responsibly, and I just don’t think you are!  Can I get you an orange juice instead?”

“Whoa, dude!  Didn’t you listen to that ad?  It said DON’T drive like this!  Come on, pull it back to 55 man!”

*  *  *

And then there’s the seemingly unrelated issue of corporate compensation.

Forbes magazine lists some of the worst (most unproductive) CEOs and notes their compensation, including:

- Richard M Kovacevich, Wells Fargo, $72.04 million

- Edward E Whitacre Jr , AT&T, $49.01 million

and, brace yourself:

- Barry Diller, IAC/InterActiveCorp, $295.14 million (over half a BILLION dollars in the last 5 years, and ranked as one of the 15 most unproductive CEOs in the entire survey)

Which raises some questions:

 

1. If compensation is intended to reward good performance, why are so many outstanding leaders (in the public and private) sector making five figure salaries while many total losers and ruthless-jerk CEOs are making more than 100x their salary?
   
2. If we also assume that compensation is intended to incent good performance, shouldn’t we ask: do any humans really *need* $xx millions per year to get out of bed and work hard for the day?  Given that there are, absolutely without a doubt, an enormous number of extremely intelligent and hardworking and respectable folks who would do wonders for a company at $x milion or even $xxx thousand per year, well… WTF?!

Admittedly, I’ve kind of stacked the deck in my above examples a bit:  I mean, really, who loves their bank?  Or their phone company?  Personally, I find AT&T to be one of the most unpleasant, irresponsible, and customer-non-centric companies out there, but then hey, maybe that’s just me ;-).

*  *  *

Never fear, I have the answer to both problems… a way to get rid of moronic speed-read or 1pt font disclaimers while effectively shaming the grossly overpaid CEOs who perform worse than would Paris Hilton in a dramatic Shakespearean theatre role.

In another article, Forbes complains that trying to do anything about CEO compensation is likely to either be unsuccessful or backfire, perhaps resulting in a further crapification and obfuscation in shareholder reports.  But my idea wouldn’t have that problem.

Ready for it?  Replace the disclaimers with two required placements of Consumer and Stockholder Truth:

• On every TV, radio, and print advertisement, the following must be sanely presented: “Last year, the [company-name] CEO made $78 million, median [company-name] worker: $11,000.  Stock has decreased 17%.”
  
• On every stockholder quarterly / annual report, the company must present a “Compensation and Performance Summary” in one page, in normal font.  It’d include exactly what the CEO and other key executives took home, how the company did (particularly in its sector), and so on.  No forward-looking B.S., no big long charts.  Just a one page, ideally-bulleted summary.  I mean, hell, I don’t have time to read 50+ page shareholder reports, do you?  Didn’t think so.

Okay, so I’m kidding a bit with the first part of the idea.  But seriously… don’t you think that there’d be some hell to pay for CEOs who were (effectively) publicly outed as greedy and incompetent asses?  And, in an ideal world, also some come-uppance for the lazy or thoughtless jerks who approved their compensation structure?  My favorite is when *especially* bad CEOs are finally shown the door… and then they get a $100 million dollar severance package or the like.  Often times, this happens around the same time that free coffee is eliminated from break rooms and lots of minimum wage folks are let go with two weeks pay.

*  *  *

Having seen what I perceive to be more sane and more humane economic structures and practices in place in Europe and Australia, I admit that if I could wave a magic wand and force exec pay to be no more than 10x worker bee pay, I’d do it.  But yeah, that’s never going to happen here in America.  So instead, I’d love to see executive losers simply get tomato’d in the public eye and forced to resign in shame.  Can you imagine, for instance, an “American CEO Idol” combined with a “CEO Gong Show” and “CEO Survivor” where CEOs have to defend their performance and keep others happy or get voted out of the cushy work world?  Not quite sure how instructive it’d be, but it’d sure be entertaining :-D.

*  *  *

Related BLADAM entries:

- The Free (and Stupid) Market

Stop being a twit on twitter!

Don’t get the wrong idea.  Despite having a cold and ironically being hot in an apartment with no airconditioning, I’m not unhappy with my life.  True, I’m a bit cranky again, but I’m not deeply bummed.  Just ornery and snotty.

Today, it was just a little thing that triggered my annoyance:  For perhaps one of the last times, I read yet another asinine tweet on Twitter.  In an effort to not call out a specific (normally nice and sensible) fellow, I’ll slightly obscure it thusly: “Going to the bathroom.”

Going to the bathroom.  We all do it.  We all know we do it.  It’s not particularly exciting—at least typically—and it’s hardly the thing a normal person would announce unless there’s some particular need-to-know (roomies in a one bedroom apartment, little kids asking to be excused from a class, etc.).  But make it Web 2.0 and, wheee, suddenly people believe that they need to share such crap with others… or that others have even a faint interest in reading such banal nonsense.

So, Adam, I imagine you retorting, chill out and just unsubscribe from those people that tweet lamely.  I would, except every once in a while, these same folks refreshingly tweet something interesting or useful… or even a note or question directed specifically @me.

It’s like how your Aunt Frida (hopefully no longer) sends you teeth-gnashingly stupid forwards.  Bill Gates is gonna give you a million bucks.  P&G supports satan worship.

Frida is a good person, a well-meaning lady, but sometimes she just doesn’t THINK before she hits “send.”  And, clearly, you don’t want to filter her notes into your junk mail because at least one out of every ten notes she sends is something you really *do* want to read… a happy-birthday wish, a sad revelation about her health, or even just a simple cute “I’m thinking about you :-D.”

Thankfully, nearly all of my friends and relatives have gotten smarter about e-mail etiquette.  When are (normally quite intelligent and thoughtful) people gonna wise up about Twitter?

At risk of being told, “Dude, who the bleep do you think you are to tell us what to do?” I’m going to, well, suggest what I think is optimal Twitter usage.  You sure as heck don’t have to conform to my personal views on Good Twittering, but I’m more likely to read / less likely to unsubscribe from your tweets if you do :-D.

I believe that the following things make sense to post on Twitter:

• MOOD:  How you’re feeling (“Kind of sick; apologies if I take longer than usual to reply to e-mails.”)
  
• QUEST:  What you’re looking for or struggling with (“Dang, no matter how hard I try, I can’t find Hanuta in Bay Area stores.  If you don’t know the joys of Hanuta… Google it! :D”)
  
• ACTION:  What you’re doing (“Struggling with a blog post.  Hate sounding so holier-than-thou, but sometimes a good rant is needed, you know?”)
  
• ANTICIPATION:  What you’re looking forward to (“Planning a trip to Seattle, Montreal and Toronto… can’t wait!  Anyone got tips?  E-mail me!”)
  
• FILTERING:  What you find interesting (“Fascinating article on…”)

The following ought to result in you getting slapped with a wet e-noodle and subjected to watching hours of old Jerry Springer videos with the sound real loud:

• CHEESE SANDWICH:  What you’re doing that is totally boring / regular / etc. (“Having lunch” or “Reading my e-mail”...)
  
• BORINGLY PERSONAL:  What you’re writing is positively of interest to only one person (“Hey Fred… please don’t forget to return that book!” or “@Mary, thanks!”)  Try e-mail.  Or IM.  Or (gasp) the phone!
  
• BLOGVERTISING:  What you’re blogging.  Each and every time.  For the love of RSS, if I wanted to be notified of your *every* post, I’d subscribe to your feed. 

*  *  *

Look, I haven’t said anything sooner ‘cause I worred about offending people… folks that I like and respect.  And there’s been plenty of Twitter-hate already.  But I don’t hate Twitter… I am just deeply frustrated by what I perceive as the wasting of its potential.  It’d be so neat to have a quick window into friends’ and colleagues life.  I care when my friends are tired.  I’m curious to know when my colleagues are traveling to a conference.  Even something as seemingly boring as “Filling up junky ‘92 Sentra en route to Chicago.  Why didn’t I fly?!” tells me what kind of car you have, that you’re on a trip, that you’re frustrated, and you’re going to Chicago.  Contrast that with the absolutely useless waste of space: “At the gas station.”  Blegh!

So I implore you, before I feel compelled to uninstall Twitteroo and delete my account—think just a brief moment before you tweet.  Ask yourself:

• Will more than one or two people in the world care about this?
  
• Can I add even a smidgen more detail to make this informative or entertaining?

Please… and thank you!

 

[Blippet] The Case of the Changed Chairs

I work in a small office with three other Googlers.  That’s pretty typical around here; I don’t know of a single person that has their own office, though we’re always free to roam to a quieter place with our laptops and ubiquitous wireless access.

It’s also a delightfully multicultural office:

- One Croatian fellow.

- One Chinese guy.

- A Bulgarian guy.

- And me, the boring American.

We often will break up the day with little chats about cultural issues… food, linguistic confusion, traditions, etc.  Today, though, our heads-down work was interrupted when P came in, sat down, and looked a bit concerned.

P:  Something is wrong with my chair.

[silence]

P:  Did someone change it?  Something’s off.

Y: [taking notice]  Hmm… my chair’s kind of funny today, too.  Maybe someone took both our chairs?

P:  It’s too low.  This is strange. [pauses, looks out the door of the office, as if to catch the chair thief / chair transmogrifier]

Y:  Mine’s kinda high.  Doesn’t feel right.

Me: [finally paying attention] Um, guys.  Maybe you just got each other’s chair?

[P looks at Y.  Y looks at P.  They swap chairs.]

[contented brief silence]

Y: Ah, mine’s the black one.  That’s right!

P: Yeah, that’s better!

[shaking head]

Looks like I got a case of the Mondays. But why?

Today is a bad day.  A particularly consistent bad day.  Not an awful day, mind you, but just bad enough to be laughably annoying.  And this got me to thinking…

Why is it that bad luck seems to come in strings… chains… in groups… whatever?

My example today:

- Had bathroom conflicts with roomie and her guest.

- Left in a hurry, forgot both cell phone and Google security card.

- Shuttle on the way to work was cramped, couldn’t work effectively on laptop.

- Due to bridge being damaged *and* another accident, I was late to work and had to push back a 10am meeting.

- Pulling laptop out of backpack at work, I accidentally broke off the antenna on my broadband wireless card.

- Allergies are acting up.  Blech :(.

- There were no communal coffee mugs left this morning.

- In a rush to grab my coffee-comfort (thank goodness for paper cups!), I spilled coffee grounds on myself.

Okay, so none of that is earth shattering.  My dog didn’t die, my wife didn’t run away with my pickup truck and shotgun, and I didn’t get beer spilled on me (admittedly, not having a dog, a wife, a pickup truck, a shotgun, or an affinity for beer makes this example somewhat inapt, but no matter).  Anyway, it’s still enough even-minorly-bad-stuff in a row (and by noon!) to make one wonder…

What is it about Mondays that causes so much misery?  Why do so many bad things seem to happen in a row?

Perception

Maybe we’re made cranky by the first bad thing, and thus are more attuned to subsequent annoyances.  Or, we subconsciously / culturally correlate Mondays with Trouble in our mind, and thus when bad things happen, this perception is simply reinforced.

Causation

Unpleasant incidences tend to directly cause other icky happenings (e.g., being late in the morning causes you to rush and be less careful and attentive, thus leading to forgetting important objects or procedures and/or causing you to move carelessly and stub various body parts).  Or unhappy moments make one more stressed or preoccupied in such a way as to be mentally or physically unprepared for typical challenges and obstacles, thus causing subsequent mishaps.

Any other theories?

And how is your Monday going so far?

Where is Adam (online)? My participation in and thoughts about various presence/sharing services

In case you're interested in stalking me and/or knowing what my thoughts are on
various online presence / networking / bookmarking sites I have tried, here's a
(completely unscientific, wholly biased, unabashedly uncomprehensive, and
generally of questionable use) list :-D



FYI, I'm findable via my full name on the services below unless noted
otherwise.  And sites owned/operated by Google are indicated by [g], as a
brief disclaimer/reminder since I work for Google (but not on any of the
products or product-types below).

Social networking

• 
  Facebook
  - a social networking site which used
  to be used primarily by college students (perhaps still is) and is gaining
  fame and respect in new quarters
  
  It's my favorite social networking service by far. I belong to the
  Google, San Francisco, Indiana University, and Northwestern University
  groups, and generally only add friends, co-workers, professional
  acquaintances I know decently well from meeting in person, and so on.
  I've actually found this to be useful not for making
  new friends, but rather for catching
  interesting info and fun tidbits and insights into my current friends'
  lives. I am impressed with nearly all aspects of this site: the strong
  configurability of privacy options, the reasonably-clean and standardized
  views*, decent navigability, and overall utility. I haven't really
  gotten into the groups, though, which mostly seem like exercises in humor
  and/or vanity.
  
  *This just in: According to Eliot on Wired,
  Facebook
  may be opening up its profile pages to widgets. Given the smart
  people I know that have recently been hired to work at Facebook, I can only
  hope that the service won't be horrifically MySpaced (uglified to hell and
  made practically unusable). But hey, if things turn south, I'll at least
  have people I can poke about it!
  
  
  
  


• 
  Friendster
  - one of the first social networking
  sites, now apparently a haven for lonely Filipinos.
  
  I have an account here, but almost never log in. Some nice
  integration, I suppose, but nothing that really interests me. The
  brash obnoxious ads are a turnoff. And regarding the demographic reference... it's more a puzzled commentary on how various services (Orkut, Friendster, probably others) end up becoming so particularly popular in a handful of countries. I suppose much of this could be explained by the network effect (e.g., some popular Filipinos became active on Friendster, invited their friends...), but I can't help but wonder if UI / User Experience interlaces in interesting way with cultural preferences and expectations. Put more pedestrianly... I wonder what it is about, say, Friendster that causes it to appeal so much to Filipinos? (and Orkut to Brazillians, etc.) I bet someone has studied this. Paging danah...? :-D
  
  
  
  


• 
  Orkut
  - a quirky social networking
  experiment by a Google engineer, now noted for its loyal userbase outside of
  the USA.
  
  Ah, not much to say about the service at this point. I no longer use
  it, but hey, many many millions of people around the world love it.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Multiply
  - What's a total of seventeen users
  times practically zero awareness? Join this service to find
  out!
  
  Seemed interesting initially, but it was hobbled by a confusing interface and an
  anemic adoption rate. I think maybe two of my friends at most use this
  service nowadays.
  
  
  
  


• 
  MySpace
  - Just like what you'd get if
  you had a spastic monkey doing design, an evil genius devising navigation (how
  many ad views per simple action?), and a bunch of lemmings for
  fans.
  
  Aaaaagh! Make it stop. Make it stop! At least make it stop
  blinking-spazzing-playing-seven-clips-simultaneously and generally serving
  as an affront to aesthetics, art, common sense, and humanity. To
  preserve what's left of my sanity, I prefer to view the success of this
  monstrosity as due purely to the network effect (it was an early entrant,
  everyones' friends were on MySpace, yadda yadda). Anything else is
  just too depressing. And yes, I have an account here only so my
  surprisingly-less-enlightened friends will quit bugging me to establish one,
  so I suppose that makes me mildly hypocritical.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Tribe
  - Want to meet artsy, hippie, burning-man
  types? This is your scene :-D
  
  I like the threadedness of the message forums, but the site feels a bit
  cluttered and unfocused. Plus... again, sorry to bring up the network
  effect, but... most of my friends outside of the Bay Area are elsewhere online.
  
  

Professional networking

• 
  Ecademy
  - The professional networking site
  that's the non-American version of LinkedIn. But more
  expensive.
  
  Tried it once. Was annoyed at the apparent lack of any free level of
  service, so that was the end of that. I didn't see anything about this
  service worth paying for that I couldn't find via other online or offline
  means.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Ryze
  - "Hi, I'm a stay-at-home
  marketer. Would you like to join the most amazing wealth creation
  scheme that combines hot dogs, Buddhist monks, and..."
  
  Used to use this professional networking service quite a bit, but now it
  feels relatively empty and multi-level-marketing focused.
  
  
  
  


• 
  LinkedIn
  - Like any other powerful tool online
  or offline; great if you use it wisely, potentially painful if you
  don't.
  
  I like this service overall. I've not used it much for my own
  networking, but I have definitely been pleased to help others... pass along
  legitimate requests, and so on. The key is not treating it like
  MySpace (adding everyone who requests you to add them), but rather
  judiciously linking to people you trust and who trust you... ideally, folks
  you have professional ties with or
  can similarly vouch for.
  
  

Resource sharing / reviewing / bookmarking

• 
  CitySearch
  - Big, colorful, commercial, and
  overstuffed site that features user-submitted reviews on restaurants,
  hairdressers, etc.
  
  Used to use this, but have moved over to Yelp, which seems -- if not more
  accurate -- at least more interesting, more entertaining, and slightly-less
  cluttered and commercial.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Del.icio.us
  - Lamely named social bookmarking
  site that's been (sort of) superceded by more robust and feature-rich
  offerings and is now owned by Yahoo
  
  The geek "Web 2.0" (ack, I feel dirty already) crowd latched onto this early
  on, and I never quite got the appeal. Other services have offered
  considerably more features... of particular note, the ability to take a
  searchable "snapshot" of the page when it's bookmarked for easier retrieval
  later. On the flip side, this site had (and still has) an admirably
  spartan feel to it. No ads (that I can see), and no clutter. For
  those who crave APIs, minimalist feature sets, and simple bookmark sharing,
  del.icio.us could still be a reasonably good pick.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Digg
  - Watch out, here comes the highly-opinionated and non-buying mobs! (is so! is not! yeah, well, your
  mamma was an SEO! LOLZ!!!!!!!1)
  
  Okay, so perhaps that's a bit unfair. Digg was an interesting
  idea and still continues to surface some noteworthy or at least entertaining
  sites. But, as with many fine ideas, it's been creaking at the seams
  due to its mass adoption and resultant oft-moblike/groupthink feel.
  Anyway, I no longer check this site with any regularity... not enough time,
  too poor signal/noise ratio.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Google
  Reader -
  An outstanding feed-reader that's easy and
  fun to use
  
  Sure, I'm biased, but after an unsuccessful first version, the Reader
  team's got their groove goin' on. Nifty keyboard shortcuts (hit
  ? to see 'em!), a pleasant UI, and
  the capability (which I sadly haven't used yet) to make any of your
  tags/folders publicly-viewable. Now if they'd just combine this with a
  public-version of Google Bookmarks... :-D [g]
  
  
  


• 
  StumbleUpon
  - A serendipitous and often wondrous
  way to surf the Web and discover cool stuff
  
  I shied away from this service for ages; I don't have time to
  aimlessly "stumble" around the Web! But I've been slowly using it
  more, and finding it has useful features and unearths cool sites for me :-D.
  [My
  Stumbleupon page]
  
  
  
  


• 
  Yelp
  - Irreverent, sometimes painfully hip, but
  typically entertaining and often useful
  
  Want consistently unbiased and deeply thoughtful reviews of restaurants and
  other local places? Then Yelp may or may not be your cup of tea.
  But if you're patient and have a good sense of humor, you can often glean
  quite a bit of helpful info about various places around town. The
  conversations in the Talk section can be surprisingly cathartic, friendly,
  and even useful.
  [My reviews]
  
  
  
  

Photo sharing

• 
  Flickr
  - The most active and diverse photo sharing
  site I've ever seen, with a doggedly committed community-oriented
  management
  
  Sure, they've gotten a lot of flack after getting absorbed by Yahoo.
  Yes, like on any user-generated-content-site, there's bound to be crap,
  controversy, jerk-offs, and so on. But that aside, Flickr undeniably
  has an astounding number of gorgeous, hilarious, and downright captivating
  photos taken by talented photographers as active members. And speaking
  of active members... the Flickr crowd is hugely loyal, passionate, and not
  shy :-D.
  [My
  photos]
  
  
  
  


• 
  Fotki
  - The skinnable and surprisingly easy-to-use
  popular photo site you've never heard of
  
  Sets within sets! While Flickrites are
  still begging for this, Fotki's had
  it for ages. It also has journals and a bunch of other doodads that
  are done better elsewhere, but thankfully that stuff doesn't clutter up the
  simple-yet-powerful photo interface. $30/year gets you unlimited storage and
  very cheap (and good!) prints.
  [My
  photos]
  
  
  
  


• 
  PicasaWeb
  - Jarringly basic and spartan for geeks,
  surprisingly easy-to-use for normal people (who just want to easily share
  their photos with their family)
  
  Want to join a feature-rich photo site with great sense of community?
  This ain't it. But it's reliable and -- as a very nice bonus -- you
  can upload your videos to be displayed within your galleries (Google Video
  style). Best hidden feature: use the right and left arrow keys to zoom
  through galleries and enjoy the pre-caching and the
  perfect-fit-to-your-display views.
  [My
  Photos] [g]
  
  
  
  


• 
  Honorary mention:
  Smugmug
  - I've never used it, but really like the attitude of its CEO and the
  intense, friendly customer-focus he has pushed throughout his company.
  
  
  

Instant messaging

• 
  Trillian
  (my choice at home) - Offered in both a free
  and more-powerful $25/year version, Trillian is mostly reliable and
  amazingly handy
  
  No matter how much I try to convince all my friends to use Google Talk
  ("GTalk"), a ton of 'em still insist on sticking with Yahoo! Messenger, AIM,
  or -- dog forbid -- MSN Messenger! A few of them even still use their
  AOL accounts for e-mail; I've disowned those folks... but hey, I digress
  those other apps at the same time and having my computer grind to a halt, I
  use Trillian at home, which automatically logs me into all the networks and
  displays my buddies in a totally customizable and wonderfully compact
  single-column view. Downside? Sometimes connectivity to
  different networks is flakey. And though they promise a Web-based
  version Real Soon Now (tm), it's seemingly impossible at present to easily
  sync one's Trillian account across computers, so your chat history gets
  split between your desktop and laptop and so on. But hey, one app to
  rule them all? Pretty damn useful!
  
  
  
  


• 
  Google
  Talk (my choice away from home) -
  Simple, great voice quality, usefully
  integrated into Gmail (and elsewhere).
  
  It's lightweight, fast, and just
  works. I really like how chats are (optionally) archived in my
  Gmail account, so I don't have to remember whether I e-mailed a friend or
  chatted with her about an upcoming party... I can do one search and know for
  sure that I forgot to invite her! [g]
  
  
  
  

Other

• 
  Plaxo
  - "I'm updating my addressbook..."
  aaaaagh! Thankfully, Plaxo is much, much more than this.
  
  This is one of those sites despised by many geeks and, in fairness,
  journalists and other popular peeps who at least previously got deluged by
  the perfect storm created by clueless n00bs and a suboptimal viral approach
  pushed by Plaxo in the early days. With an improved emphasis on
  improving the existing network rather than wildly expanding it, Plaxo is now
  increasingly loved by millions of folks (like me!) who appreciate the
  service's (mostly free) offerings. The core feature which I use and
  find invaluable is the sync'ing of my friends' contact info into my various
  addressbooks. Plaxo has recently announced that their upcoming 3.0
  version (ah, gotta love engineers' creative naming skills) will also support
  Gmail addressbooks. w00t!!! Disclaimer: I was a contractor
  with Plaxo a couple of years ago.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Twitter
  - Look, I'm having a cheese
  sandwich! I just burped. I tat i taw a putty kat! i'm a
  twit therefore i am. Just got my cell phone bill, lemme open it up
  and... AAAAAAAGH!
  
  Twitter -- the oft-stultifyingly boring but
  oh-so-Web-2.0-utility
  that lets you, uh, share "what are you doing now?" ("I'm picking my nose,
  but it's really hard to do while typing...") Maybe it'd be more
  interesting if I had more friends on it. Feel free to twit (?) me at
  http://www.twitter.com/thatadamguy.
  

Getting hired by Google

I recently noticed that a fellow Googler posted some thoughtful tips about interviewing at Google, and -- now that I'm a bit more comfortable blogging about Work -- I figured I'd contribute to the conversation a bit by offering my own, unofficial tips.



Note the unofficial part. I work in Search Quality; aside from occasionally being asked to interview candidates (like most Googlers) -- I have nothing to do with our recruiting, recruiters, etc., nor do I pretend to speak for the HR folks. The stuff below is based on my own observations and opinions.



* * *



Application and interview tips



Broadly: be interesting, be humble, demonstrate outstanding
competence in your direct area, briefly highlight your well-roundedness
(academically, workwise, and personally), and clarify how you are an excellent
fit with both the position you're applying for and Google overall. 



Admittedly, with an insane number of applications a year, it
is a bit of a numbers game.  Some
outstanding people get rejected.  And, though I haven't witnessed this
personally, I'm sure some jerks get offers.  Luckily, Google's been
overhauling its hiring processes, and I'm optimistic that particularly the
percentage of great people getting overlooked (in relation to the number of
apps) will decrease.



Some specific tips and notes:

• 
  Write a decent cover letter
  




• 
  Write with a tone that's professional yet warm... not stiff or dry.  Your (discernible) voice should come
  through.
  
  


• 
  Keep it to one page (max!) or less.  Maybe even a lot less.
  


• 
  Convince Google of the fits described above -- that's critical!!!
  




• 
  Your resume can be in PDF, Word, HTML, or text formats (unless otherwise requested, of course!)
  
  




• 
  But note that it will be ultimately
  printed out.  This means that reasonable pagination can be helpful
  and also suggests that a comprehensive 20 page document is perhaps not a
  great idea.  When you want your recruiter and interviewers to know
  more about your background & interests, links are your friends.
  




• 
  Respectful persistence can be appropriate
  




• 
  If you genuinely have another offer on the table, let your recruiter know!
  


• 
  If the recruiter promised to get back with you in [x] days, and in [x+1 or
  x+2] days you haven't heard back, politely e-mail them.
  




• 
  If you have a friend at Google who can articulately and sincerely vouch for
  you, that can work in your favor.
  




• 
  Your association / relationship with that person matters.  They'll be
  asked how they know you and
  how well they know you (and your
  skills).
  
  




• 
  Passion matters and is skillfully perceived.  You're probably wasting
  your time unless you really are
  excited about a particular position.
  


• 
  Getting turned down for one Google position does not mean you're ineligible
  to apply for another position down the road.
  


• 
  General interview advice that probably applies for pretty much any company:
  




• 
  Ask thoughtful questions.
  


• 
  Allow time for traffic and parking and finding the right building. 
  Google -- at least the Mountain View campus -- is a big place!
  


• 
  Dress one or two steps better than you expect your interviewers to
  be.  Less than that, and people may wonder about your judgment. 
  More than that, and people may think you're clueless or arrogant.
  




• 
  The "right" dress at Google probably varies by department. 
  Engineering folks tend to be more informally dressed than sales
  folks.  If you're interviewing for a senior management position,
  I'd probably dress a bit more formally than you would for an intern
  interview.  But the official advice also really makes sense
  here:  dress comfortably.  If you feel comfortable and
  confident, it'll show.
  




• 
  Get a good night's sleep the two
  nights before.  Sleep deficits are cumulative.  If you have a
  morning interview, make sure you're getting up early the two or three
  mornings before to get yourself ready to be mentally and physically alert
  during your interview time.  On a similar health note, drink and eat
  smartly the day of your interview.  Hunger pangs are distracting.
  


• 
  Invest in a good pen to take to interviews.  The heft and reliability
  can be a real-even-if-small confidence booster.  Taking occasional
  notes can help you remember info or questions for later, and also might
  indicate a sense of thoughtfulness and interest to your interviewer.
  


• 
  On the whole, think of interviews kind of like first dates.  You
  don't want to do all or even most of the talking.  You're there to
  impress, to learn, to help determine whether there's a good potential for
  a relationship.  First impressions are important.  Show you are
  caring and thoughtful by asking good questions.  Avoid having spinach
  in your teeth (floss beforehand!).
  
  

Possibly-little-known factoid:

No Googler -- not even Larry or Sergey -- can singlehandedly extend an
employment offer to anyone.  While candidates don't have to go through as
many interviews nowadays, most candidates -- regardless of level -- typically
interview with quite a few peers; team-fit is critical!



* * *


I expect to offer some more Google-thoughts in the future, but -- as a reminder -- this is my personal blog, and as such, I expect to generally blather on about anything I feel like discussing, ranting, dissecting, punning, lamenting, etc... which is more likely than not to be boring to the impatient sort.


Oh, and one last thing: please keep comments on-topic as a courtesy not only to me, but to the cool folks reading my blog. Thanks!




* * *


Related entries:

- A blunt note to HR folks and interviewers

- How to evaluate your current job & career... and thoughtfully consider future options



and lastly, for a blast-from-the-past... some perspective & a bit of cranky ranting...



- What do you do? (self = job?) And how are you?

How much would YOU pay not to be obligated to tip?

I’ve had it with tipping.  The more traveling I do—for business or pleasure—the more I despise the uncertainty, the uncomfortableness, the need to have petty cash on hand.  When will someone—an influential someone—say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH?!

Tip too little, and you risk imperiling the quality of service you receive in the future from that person… plus you may look like an idiot or a miser in front of friends and business acquaintances.

Tip too much, and you look like a chump… and your wallet is made thinner (sometimes much thinner).  And you feel like a moron for being taken advantage of.  Heck, in some countries, you risk really offending someone!

This is one of the many reasons why I love Europe: you typically round up to the nearest euro when you eat out, and that’s that.  Adding to the coolness… for takeout food and pretty much else, what you see on the billboard or pricetag is what you pay.  15EUR?  You pay 15EUR; taxes, fees, etc., all included.

Now, back to the insanity that we endure in the States… Here’s just a sampling of recommended tips from a recent AAA (Automobile Association of America) article:

$2-$3 to your shuttle driver, $2 per suitcase to the skycap, 15-20% for the taxi driver, $2-$3 for a shoeshine, up to $5/night to your hotel maid, $5/day to a pool attendant (?!), up to $3 per round to the bartender and $20 (!) to your sommelier.

Sick yet?  I am.  After all, where’s the $5 we should be giving to our professor after a fine lecture, the $3 to the garbage man when he picks up our smelly refuse, $5 to the guy who trims our garden, $4 to the busboy in your work cafeteria, and $10 for your colleague after he helps you draft a memo.

But that’s ridiculous, you note.  Isn’t the colleague already getting a salary?  Why should you be responsible for bribing him to do a job that he’s already supposed to be doing?

And you may further argue, hey, but the waiter is getting a crap salary… if it weren’t for our tips, he’d practically starve.  But, I’d retort, why the hell is it OUR (awkward) responsibility to make up for employers’ cheapness?  And who the hell picks 1) who gets tips and 2) how much a “proper” tip is by profession and location?

Don’t get me wrong:  I think that everyone deserves a living, decent wage.  And I’d be quite pleased to have 15% or whatever automatically tacked on to my restaurant bill… so that the cost of my meal actually covered an appropriate salary for all involved with the occasion.  What about crappy service?  I’d do what I do when I encounter crappy service or products anywhere else:

- Firmly yet politely complain to the right people.

- If the matter remained unresolved, simply refuse to patronize the establishment again and warn my friends.

...and, of course, the opposite for good service (yes, I *do* write “thank you for the outstanding service” letters, sometimes by hand… and I wish more people did this).

Frankly, I doubt most folks are primarily motivated by money in their jobs anyway.  Does giving the waitress an extra $1 cancel out the urgent and occasionally rude demands we sometimes inflict upon her?  Not to her, I’d bet.  In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d rather we stuffed the dollar back in our wallet and treated her with respect and patience.

By extension, one could even see tips as demeaning… suggesting that “those kind” of people are only apt to do a good job if they’re thrown fish (dollars) like trained seals.  You don’t see people giving tips to lawyers and doctors, and no, it’s not purely a pay thing.  Frankly, I’m betting my bartender friends make quite a bit more per hour than most of my lawyer friends… honestly.

Of course, with all this said, I’m not only angry, but also rather resigned and un-optimistic about the crappy tip-required culture of ours ever being reformed.  I mean, what would it take?  If Our Goddess Angelina stopped tipping tomorrow, she’d just be vilified in the Enquirer and nothing would change.  If Bush didn’t tip next week, people would just (probably correctly) assume that he was unable to compute the tip even using a calculator.  No, I think it’d take an act of God, or maybe a good-looking denizen from outer space.  Until then, I guess I better just remember to keep a lot of ones in my wallet and just grit my teeth when I say “thank you.”

How I blew off Google... and more pre-Google career tidbits

Happy Googleversary!



As I was getting ready to board the Google Shuttle home recently, a colleague
(who started at Google on the same day I did) poked me and jokingly wished me a
"Happy Googleversary!"  Right then it hit me that, yeah, I had been at
Google for a full year.  Wow!



Also in the last few weeks, coincidentally I presume, many
folks -- particularly fellow alums -- have been e-mailing me to ask about what it's like
at Google, how they can get a job there, etc.  I will be e-mailing all of
them back (sorry for the delay!), but in the meantime it's prompted me to do
something I've been planning to do for a while:  write a few (okay, maybe
more than a few) words on how I ended up at Google and what my thoughts are
about working there.





How I blew Google off



As many of you likely know, I was fascinated with Google for years before I
started working there.  In fact, in 2000, I featured Google in a department
newsletter I wrote for the then-high-flying high-tech PR firm -- Niehaus Ryan
Wong ("NRW") -- which I worked for as an Interactive Strategist.  In 2001,
my entire department was laid off and so I got to Google for "how can I save my
pride and find a cool new job?"  I ended up using my online communication
skills to keep me sane and mostly in the black doing consultant / contractor
stuff.



I think it was in early 2002 that I made a pretty big mistake, however. 
The conversation went something like this:



Friend:  Hey... I got a job at Google... you know, the search engine...
it's really great!  I think it has some huge potential, you should work
here!  Want me to submit your resume?

Me:  Congrats!  But... it's in, what, Mountain View or
something?  And -- no offense -- how interesting could working on search
really be?  And I'm doing just fine on my own, but thanks!



Yes, I now rank that as one of my most severe and painful bouts with
cluelessness.  I wised up not too long after that and applied for a couple
of jobs at Google; got some interviews and the recruiters ultimately told me
politely and firmly that I had a good attitude, fine credentials blah blah blah,
but wasn't a good fit for the positions.  And looking back, it's clear they
were right.





The good life... and how I grew weary of
it



Over the next few years, I enjoyed working as a consultant / contractor with
some super companies, a bunch of great people, and some understandably demanding
but usually interesting clients.  But despite the cool projects and decent
money and improving professional reputation, I grew weary.  I missed having
a set of regular colleagues I could banter with and learn from
face-to-face.  I missed having a mentor.  I wanted, also, to mentor
others... and not just online.  I got tired of flying back and forth to Los
Angeles for a client; 'twas a nice client, but I hated the city and the traffic
that plagued it.



Most of all, I felt wistful about never having worked for a medium/big company,
never getting to really have a feeling of ownership in a company that provided
products/services internationally.  I wanted to be even a small part of
something big but not faceless, have an impact, have significant room for growth
careerwise and otherwise.



As you'll see below, I am thankful to have found this in Google.  It's not
a utopia; there are things about the company that greatly frustrate me, there
are days in which I feel overwhelmed and stressed.  But these days are few
in number and gratifyingly dwarfed by the days in which I am very, very happy to
be surrounded by people I respect, doing things I see as valuable, for a company
that excites me and treats me ridiculously well.





A few words about companies I worked with or even
just interviewed with pre-Google



Before I talk more about Google, I thought I'd share with you a few quick
personal thoughts about some companies.



Some companies I worked with before Google:

• 
  Plaxo: Very smart
  people. Collegial office conveniently served by a shuttle from
  Caltrain. Fascinating problems to solve. And their core product
  is hugely useful, increasingly well-designed, and truly has no equals.
  No need to send out "update my info please" notes; just enjoy the network
  effect of having lots of addressbook info updated. My interviews here
  were friendly, hands-on ("Okay, show me how you'd do this..."), and
  challenging.
  
  


• 
  Intrapromote:
  Friendly, hard-working, supportive folks who've been doing SEO for quite
  some time... and who happen to have one of the more concise, unpretentious,
  and underrated
  SEO blogs
  around. Through Intrapromote, I got to work on some pretty huge online
  campaigns with major Fortune 500 companies and the experience opened my eyes
  to a lot of tough issues that large sites face every day. The
  interview process with Intrapromote was refreshing: very open, informal, and
  sensible (no lame questions, no useless under-pressure crap).
  
  


• 
  Virgin Digital: I'm saddened by how this service flamed out in the
  U.S. The execs I worked with here were admiringly passionate about
  music and about enabling people to share their love of and insights about
  music with each other. They were motivated by the right ideas but --
  given that the service didn't survive -- unfortunately hobbled by either a
  lack of resources, bad luck, poor execution or all of the above. My
  interviews were... well, not really interviews. This was a case of,
  hey, Adam, we know your work, we've had some good chats, when can you start
  on this project? That's not to say that Virgin's consultant/contractor
  hiring was haphazard or careless, but rather that the President (who hired
  me directly) was pragmatic, efficient, and no-nonsense... operating on an
  intuitive (and, I humbly think, accurate :-P) sense that I was a decent and
  appropriate fellow to work with.
  
  

And companies I interviewed with and received offers from immediately prior to
working for Google:

• 
  Art.com: Classy and
  friendly people, very nice office overlooking the bay, and a damn neat
  product. The recruiter I dealt with was helpful and instantly
  likeable. All of my interviews were comfortable, reasonable, and --
  most importantly -- truly two-way... conversation, not interrogations.
  
  


• 
  Microsoft's
  MSN AdCenter: The MSN AdCenter campus is in beautiful Redmond
  (nice!) near one of my favorite cities (Seattle... yay!) but... located
  adjacent to a shopping mall away from
  the main MS campus (yuck!). Interview questions tended to focus on what I've
  done, and how I might handle client situations. Not terribly
  surprising. Suggestion to the AdCenter team and all other companies,
  for that matter: If you're having a final-stage candidate do a full day of
  interviews, invite him to lunch with some of his potential-future
  colleagues. Giving him a box lunch to eat alone in an office is not
  only a bummer for the candidate, but robs you of the opportunity to see how
  he or she relates to others... and that sort of interaction, IMHO, can be
  quite revealing ;-). On a more positive note, I was relieved and
  pleased at how thoughtful my MS recruiter was throughout the process.
  When I told the guy I had an offer from Google, the fellow didn't throw any
  chairs, but rather was extremely kind and supportive and urged me to take
  the time to make a decision that was best for me.
  

[Music] Instrumental Jazz Soloists - If you can't sing it, don't play it

I’m guessing most of you probably just think of me as an Internet geek, but I used to be a classical pianist geek, choir geek, and jazz pianist geek.  I have performed over 200 times, won a bunch of Bach festivals, and studied under jazz greats Ashley Alexander, Frank Mantooth, and others.  This does not inherently make me a wonderful person, but it does (IMNSHO) give me a right to talk smack about some fellow musicians and a nasty trend which I’ll detail below.

Sadly, though, there’s little proof of my musical history, or at least little proof that I can share; for instance, I recently called the music department of my alma mater (Northwestern University) to get copies of my jazz performances in ‘90-92, and alas, they no longer have the recordings.  Ack! :-(  So you’ll just have to trust ol’ Grumpy Gramps today.

So what’s my cranky rant for today?  Well, I’m sick and tired of jazz musicians ignoring their audience… more than that, downright ignoring the beauty of musicality.  More and more often, I hear jazz performers—young students and adults alike—musically belching through way-overlong solos that—despite oft-impressive technical wizardry (wow, he can play 743 notes a minute!)—bore everyone to tears… perhaps even the solo’ist himself.  And I think back to one of my fabulous jazz teachers at Northwestern who gave me a delightfully straightforward and valuable piece of advice:

“Play less.  Say more.”

And so I did… slowly but surely learning to integrate recognizable and fun bits of TV show themes, adding short and sweet call-and-response phrases, and so on.  My solos began to sing—not just shout “look at me!”—and as part of this, I connected more with my fellow musicians (who could hook on and really play with me) and audience members who’d come up to me afterwards and chuckle, “Hey, I caught that bit of the Muppets in your solo!” or even the more basic, “Your solos are FUN!”

Furthermore, I began to understand why so many of the world’s greatest jazz musicians (particularly in the swing/big-band era) were and for many remain so loved.  Their solos were a conversation, a song in and of themselves with the audience.  Not too much talking, nothing too fancy except for maybe a tiny flash here and there.  When you hear these solos today, you inevitably smile… often because you can sing with them, you know where they’re going, it’s not just a bunch of notes, it’s part of a melody, part of a melody you understand and can relate to and know it was made for you, not for the solo’ist.

*  *  *

A few weeks ago, I was at a benefit concert which featured an award-winning youth jazz band.  It was, even according to my friends who invited me, a cringe-inducing evening.  I looked around while these young men—obviously talented but horribly misdirected—were solo’ing and solo’ing and saying nothing worth listening to.  “Artubation,” I ruefully called it, and one of my friends chuckled and sighed.  I looked around at the large audience:  few were actually looking at the musicians.  People were reading their programs, looking around, looking generally bored and uncomfortable.  For crying out loud, I thought, I can understand that these 16-year-old musicians might not know better, but where the $&#$! is their adult director, and why is he so horrendously clueless?!

Yes, I blame their director 100%.  In his quest to mold musicianship, he’s failed to impress upon his students the necessity and beauty of musicality.  Of connecting with your audience, not to mention your fellow musicians.  Yes, even those kids looked bored up there.  Okay, it’s time for the trumpeter’s solo.  blah blah blah blah… okay, soon it will be my turn.  Quick, think, what am I gonna play this time?...

Unconscionable.  True, I’m not-so-subtlely betraying my contempt for much of modern jazz and indeed, even many famous “jazz musicians” today, but so be it.  But I’m hoping the pendulum swings back (no pun intended)... so musicians are no longer making music for just themselves, showing off, squeezing in as many notes as they can… but rather delighting dancers, listeners, fellow musicians as well as tone-deaf music-appreciators.

So, in closing, I simply wish and urge this…

Soloists:  If you can’t sing it, don’t play it.

Vanessa Fox (nude!) urges me to expose my...

No ands, ifs, or butts—this titilating title and content isn't just a naked attempt to get a leg up on my subscriber numbers.

I normally keep this sort of thing close to my chest, but when Vanessa Fox invited me to bare all my reasons for blogging, I felt bound to oblige.

Ironically, just the day before, I was asking myself the very same thing (no, not why didn't I pick a more sexy blog name... okay, that too!... but primarily, why DO I blog?). Seriously.

And what I came up with at that time was this very-honest list:

1. I don't know.

2. I don't know.

3. I don't know.

4. I don't know.

5. Honestly, I don't really know.

That, of course, may go a long way towards explaining why I seem to average about a whopping post or two a month nowadays :-(.

But, to avoid disappointing Vanessa and all 42 of you others who read my blog, I did some more soul searching and came up with a decidedly more interesting list of reasons why I blog, or at least why I think I do.

I determined that I've had decidedly different motivations to blog before and after working for Google. And -- in contrast with some of the others participating in this meme -- apologies in advance for the more-serious / comparatively-boring nature of my answers.

Key reasons why I blogged before becoming a Googler

1. While working on my own and quite often working from home, blogging was an additional way of "connecting with the world," and especially with like-minded geeks.


2. On a related note, since I was spending very long hours in front of the computer doing client work, it was also a convenient way of blowing off steam.


3. I've been passionate about Google for ages, and figured by being a loudmouth about my Google wishes and gripes and such, I might effect positive change :-D.


4. As a contractor/consultant/online-communications-mercenary, I viewed my blog as a bit of a showcase. In particular, I felt it was important to demonstrate that I had a basic understanding of online communications, possessed information and also opinions (hopefully even interesting ones!) on a variety of geeky and non-geeky topics, and was, frankly, someone that'd not be too terribly boring to work with. Along those lines, I also viewed it as a bit of a filter; anyone who'd turn up their nose at my online-evident eccentricities was likely someone I wouldn't want to work with anyway :-D.

Reasons why I still blog

Well, I'm certainly not looking for any consulting gigs nowadays, and when I have Google ideas or gripes or questions, I just walk down the hall or bug a colleague by e-mail or IM. Still, though, I continue to blog (and enjoy doing so) for other reasons...

1. It entertains and amuses my friends and I guess others as well. I have good friends all over the world, and they've told me that even my lame entries make them smile.


2. I enjoy spotlighting geeky hobbies and passions that others might not know much about and might enjoy getting to know (e.g., Lindy Hop) :-D.


3. I've greatly appreciated what I've learned from others on the net and feel that it's karmic'ly right to share a bit in return (tips, reviews of products and services, and so on)


4. I kinda feel obligated to blog. That doesn't mean I don't find it fun and rewarding, but there's also the negative motivation of sorts: I've built up a brand, however insignificant and badly named, and invested a crapload of time into not only the content but the infrastructure/design/etc. behind this blog as well (don't laugh! just implementing that stupid menu above took forever, not to mention the re-templating + importing after switching from MT to EE. Abandon all that work?!!!!!!!)


5. I'm inspired by many other bloggers, seeing how much they inform and inspire. The generalist nature of my blog means I'm unlikely to ever become a major blogebrity and I'm rather content with that, but I know that even non-A-level-bloggers wield a power to do good through their writing, however cliched that may sound.

* * *

On that note, I'd like to tap five fine female friends of mine to give their top five reasons that they blog (or thwap me with a wet e-noodle for forgetting that they have already disclosed such info on their blog):

- Erica ("Erica's Joys")

- Jen ("Nonsense Verse")

- Meg ("Little Meg Goes to Grad School" -- where I even have a thankfully anonymous guest mention :-P)

- Susan ("Let's Eat")

- Thu ("Of cats and code and random stuff" -- and birthday girl this weekend!)