Monday, May 13, 2013

Just Steal My Freaking Car Already

The law of unintended consequences means a lot of different things to different people.

To me, it means that somewhere in the 'verse a Honda engineer owes me an explanation.

Failing that,  they need their ass beaten. Badly.

The story begins with lunch. At my new gig, the noon hour and parking restrictions coincide to put me in my car looking for something to eat.

This is not a bad thing.

I hit a local food cart and bop back to the car before the meter expires. It's a killer day - all sun and I'm tempted to just sit outside instead of heading back to the cave to work on shell scripts.

At this moment - a horribly loud noise blasts all tranquil thought out of my head.

It's hard to remember exactly, but I think my train of thought went like this:
What the F%&* is that noise?
Holy God, that is annoying!
It's a F%&*-ing car alarm!
Whoever invented those needs to die from an overdose of red-hot pokers…
And so on.

The peculiar thing about car alarms is that they are hard to localize. Something that loud should be easy to isolate, but at a distance the sound seems distorted and up close your mind is too occupied with DEARGODMAKEITSTOP to give a crap about looking for the car with the flashing lights.

I'm at exactly the MAKEITSTOP range and I nearly drop my lunch to cover my ears. My thoughts were something along the lines of:
GODIHATETHATSOUND
ISOEFFINGHATECARALARMS
MAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOP
ITSOLOUD ITS LIKE ITS COMING FROM MY CAR AND-
Okay, don't even act surprised. You know full well it was coming from my car.

And I think everyone's had that experience with their car's alarm.
Annoyance followed by bewilderment. Why is my car honking?

And I am SO at that stage. I have just unlocked my car - WITH my key - and the car alarm is blaring.

WTF??

Beautiful day, blue sky, happy office lunchers out lunching… me standing in front of a car that's at DEFCON-1.

Is now a good time to point out (yet again) that the public reaction to a car alarm is to forcefully ignore it?

No one cares if my car is being stolen - I'm literally a block away from a parked police officer.

Soon as the klaxon sounds, I become the un-person. Everyone wants me gone.

I want me gone, for F%&*'s sake.

Getting into my car is so automatic, I'm seated and putting the key in the ignition and willing the car to shut the hell up before I've fully realized what is going on.

The car starts.

MY CAR IS RUNNING WITH THE KEY IN THE IGNITION - and the alarm keeps going.

Exhibit A to the unknown Honda engineer: What. The actual. F%#*?

I shut off the car. The alarm keeps going.
I turn the key to "On." The alarm keeps going.

At this point, the urgency of the situation begins to limit my imagination. I think I'm justified in not seeing the obvious way out.

------
Sidenote -  Another reason I was confused about what to do:

My key is a valet key. Which means it only unlocks the door and starts the car (I guess car design logic is that a valet wouldn't think to pull the trunk release lever beside them as they're tooling away in your car. I digress). I have a valet key because of the weight of my keyring.

For a good long while, I had every key in my life on a D-ring attached to my car keys. Over time, the weight of this keyring pulled on the keyfob case to the point where it separated.
So, I glued it, and re-glued it - and one day it fell apart and spilled its electronic innards all over the floor.

As anyone with a modern car knows- replacing a key these days is a stupid hassle.

Mind you, I have a economy car.

Yet replacing a single key on my budget compact costs $120 and requires that I bring the car and ALL of its keys to the dealership for recoding.

I have not been eager to take this step as I have better uses for $120 and an entire afternoon during business hours.

All of this is a long winded way of saying: I'm less than confident that my key has the capabilities of its full fledged brethren.
---------

Horn blaring, lights flashing, engine RUNNING - I cannot come up with the obvious solution - so I go for the surefire plan B.

I open the trunk (despite my valet key status, hah!) and get out the toolkit. I pop the hood and using vicegrips (the only essential tool) I disconnect the battery terminal.

Silence. Blessed silence.

At this point. I do what anyone would do. I sit the F%&* down and I eat my F%&*-ing lunch.
And it's a good lunch, too. On a nice day, no longer sullied by angry bullish!t car alarms.

My meter's about done, but I figure the cop who has ignored me thus far will continue to do so.

Guy sets off car alarm, opens the hood, disconnects battery and eats lunch. Nothing odd there...

Lunch done (it was yummy)-  I opened my glovebox to figure out what the F%&* I should do about the F%&*-ing alarm.

I keep the car manual in the glovebox and after five minutes of flipping pages and scanning the index, I find it.

Not under "Alarm" or "Car Alarm" or "Security" (although there's a section on the Radio's security system, which was completely unhelpful) - but under "Features."

Three pages into features, I see a security system reference and find the obvious solution.

You see, my mistake was getting into the car.

Disabling the security system/ear-splitting klaxon requires being outside the car and unlocking the driver's door using a key.

Exhibit B to the unknown Honda engineer: What. The actual. F%#*?

I get why unlocking the driver door would disable the alarm. I do. But why is it the ONLY way to shut off a system that (as we have all seen) is RAMPANT with false starts?

More to the point, where in the manual does it tell me how to shut off the car alarm for good because I hate the damn thing so much?

Because - F%&* it. Steal my Effing car, already. You want to take my car from my driveway? Just don't wake me the F%&* up when you do, 'kay?

I'm insured - and I need my sleep.

Having read the obvious solution - I re-attach the battery cable, shut the hood and get back in to-

HOOOOONNNK! HOOOOONK!!!

I sh!t you not, some vestigial notion of "I'm being stolen" lingered in the car's RAM just long enough to set it off again.

Armed with the obvious solution, I unlock my driver door and the car shuts up for good.

Having ruined everyone's lunch hour silence, I slink off to find a new parking place.

-Only to encounter the second annoying security feature of the day: My radio - having been separated from its power supply for more than 10 seconds - demands I supply a passcode, or else it will refuse to activate the radio and dash clock.

*sigh*

Against all probability, I'm actually ready for this scenario. Honda radios have a passcode on file with the dealership. If you call them, give them your VIN number and radio serial number, they will give you the passcode to access your radio.

A few years ago, I had a dead battery long enough to trigger this scenario. When I called, I didn't have my serial number, just the VIN. The guy on the other end gave me the code anyway.
So, a thief with my car could read the VIN, call for the code, and get it - no questions asked.

I put this code into Evernote, so I could have it for later.

Now is later and I log into Evernote and punch in the code. The radio springs to life and I'm back to normal again.

*sigh*

Even if I still have no idea why my alarm went off.
Even if my alarm does nothing to protect my car.
Even if my radio code does nothing to protect my radio.
Even though the odds are I'll remember none of this the next time my alarm goes off and I'll try (like this time and the time before) to disable the alarm by starting the car.

And then - yet again - I'll be looking for answers from some Honda engineer.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Downtown

I'm entering a third week at the new gig, and there's a lot to adjust to.

The team I work with now is small. Most days, I'm on a team of three or four.
In CorpWorld, you hesitated before doing something out of the ordinary, because the chances are there was a person whose entire job description consisted of performing that task.

At the new gig, you just do things. If nothing breaks, you get to keep doing it.

The boss is brilliant, but utterly overcommitted. Ramping me up is clearly putting a strain on their schedule. Also, there is the difficulty of me being so far behind the curve.

We're a Mac shop - and me speaka da Windows.

Surmountable, surely, but part of the new gig is using a VM to hop between different systems and operating systems - so my Windows brain is constantly trying shortcut keys that mean different things on Linux or the Mac.

And I hate using the mouse. It was a point of pride that I could do damn near everything on a PC without going near the mouse. (ALT-Tab,Tab,Tab. Whoops. ALT-Shift-Tab, ALT-Spc, M, right arrow, hah!). In Mac-land, the shortcut variation is killing me.

E.g. Tab switch in Chrome: Option+Command+Right/LeftArrow

Ok.

But Tab switch in Safari: CTRL+Shift+RightArrow - or at least that's what it says in the menu bar, but what actually works is Shift+CTRL+Command+Right/LeftArrow.

There must be a setting, because that is seriously F-ed up. Apple has draconian control over its world, you'd think standardizing keyboard functions would be on their list of musts.

The boss is patient while I thrash around and ultimately reach for the hated mouse.

This isn't over, mouse. Mark my words.

Aside from the usual new network stuff, the tech side of the new job is pretty straightforward. They have a dinosaur back end and are in the process of making it more modern.

This, I can help them with.

Their current process is - to be polite - brittle. And labor intensive.

It's an open question as to how much automation can be added before a new system rolls in and replaces the old one.

Because a new system is coming - and a big slice of what I will be doing is mapping out what the user group needs and how we can bend the new system to our will.

This should be...exciting.

That's a sick thing to admit, but there's a lot of promise in the air. It's the age old UX trap, before the code is laid down, all things are possible. The fact that this will be a vendor product will crap over most possibilities.

But the existing user base has come to expect a slew of customizations - and while most are surely doomed, some must be saved.

Software change is upfront, visible and expensive.

True.

But human change is long term, largely hidden, and at least as expensive over time.

The trick is to map the ROI of the requested customizations and focus on the ones that pay off the most often.

Like logging in.

A vendor product that requires a log in as opposed to single sign on is going to tax users memories every day. Your tech support staff will have to support them when they lock their account out. You'll have a separate password recovery stream if the app has its own credentials.

Is it worth it? Can you allow a customer database to be always logged in? I dunno, but they should be planned decisions rather than late surprises.

Oh, THAT's how that works. What do we do now?

Should be fun.

I have an office now. It's subterranean, but it's got a lock and everything.

They were passing out Tornado/gunman procedures and the procedure for is basically.

Go to a place exactly like your office and shut the door.

*Slam* Done!

Good times.

Parking is a mess, but I remember this from back before CorpWorld. I used to bounce the car around on street parking and dodge parking enforcement.

They are unbelievably cool about flexible schedules. The Boy is due for another round of doctor appointments and making them would have been a real pain from CorpWorld.

Here? Ain't no thing. The Boss is absolutely fine with it. A load off my mind.

And I can walk to lunch.

Downtown - where a thousand firehoses of culinary sin are aimed right at your head.
Delis, Gyro shops, Indian-freakin'-buffets... God, but I need to get out running. This place will kill me.

I go out for coffee, now. Meet E for lunch on occasion. I've missed the bustle of downtown. Being a pedestrian is still new enough to feel strange. I walk in the rain and grin like a madman.

I'm sure this time next year, I'll be cursing the weather as I march to the car, but for now it's a grand new thing. I can see the water, watch the bikers scream down the trails and feel like a new person.

That reminds me, I think I'll go grab some coffee.

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Three Days Off

I'd been advised by more than a few people to take time off between jobs. I didn't put much stock in that simply because unpaid days are not good for the bottom line.

In preparation for the new job I've already laid out a good amount of cash. A new laptop. New software. The missing manual for each, because RTFM, right?

But it shook out that I would have three days between jobs. The new gig couldn't start me right after my old one started.

Three days! What would I do with myself? I came up with a laundry list of things I never get to do.

Chief among them was hanging out in a coffee shop and killing time over caffeinated beverages. Not big dreams, but something that seemed an unimaginable luxury.

Having time on my hands.

Any other day, there are projects to do, chores to be done, meals to be made or tedium to endure. But I would have three days to myself.

Well, two actually.

Turned out that my kids were out of school the day after Easter and it makes absolutely no sense for us to pay for day care or have E stay home when I'm unemployed and idle.

I make a day with the kids. That's a different kind of luxury. Most weekends will find E and I passed out on a couch somewhere while the kids glaze over the TV. But a weekday free with nothing on the schedule?

I plan to go to the airport restaurant. Not a generic one, but a local place that I've spent most of my exfil sessions lately. Little e loves the idea - so naturally the Boy hates it. Little e is sure that I'll take her side, but the Boy has been in such a foul humor lately that I decide to humor him. He picks the place - a decent one, too, a former gas station converted into a diner.

Little e screams her disapproval the entire way there.

Eventually, she calms down and we have a more or less pleasant meal. For some reason, the kids get to talking on art, and I remember a trip we took to a local art museum. The kids loved it. And - improbably - they like the idea now.

So we go.

Naturally, the museum is closed that day. So, instead of taking two excited kids to the museum, I end up with two crabby kids complaining about the weather and why they aren't at home.

I persevere and schlep them into a local library that is pretty scenic. It distracts them for about ten minutes and then they want to leave. So I seize on a poster advertising an exhibit on the Civil War. History!

It's on the fourth floor. So, we march up four flights of stairs - kids complaining the whole way - and discover the exhibit consists of six photographs on the wall and a poster.

Great.

With that, the kids announce that they want to go home. I still have two errands to run, but the kids have had it and I'm not in a mood to push it at this point. This is supposed to be a fun day and after lunch we'll try to go out again.

Home. Post lunch I'm trying to get the kids out the door and now the Boy's saying his stomach hurts too much to go out.

Seriously? But I have two things I need to do. The Boy has a science project coming up that needs copper wire and I have to mail something to E's sister. My hope that the Boy's project would inspire him to come along dies when the Boy announces that he hates his science project and doesn't want to do it anymore.

Arrgh.

We're doing this anyway. I drag, push, cajole and otherwise tiger-dad the two kids out to the car and each wails about how they just want to stay home.

But we're doing this. So I hit the post office first. The Boy wants to come with, the girl would rather stay in the car. Should be quick, so I'm good with that.

Soon as I hit the door, I see a line of a dozen people ahead of me. This will not be quick. But we wait, because we're here. The Boy is demonstrably in distress. Leaning and flopping over anything he can find. I am sick, SEE? he says without words - over and over.

We're six people from the counter when one of the three cashiers realizes their cash machine doesn't work. The person they're serving only has a debit card, and there is a great deal of delay while they sort out if this is an issue with each and every card this person has.

But no, it's the machine. I only have a debit card, too. So, three cashiers now drops to two for me and (apparently) most of the people in line.

For no apparent reason, the third cashier up and leaves - so now we have a single cashier for debit transactions.

Right when I'm the next person in line, the last machine goes down, too. I have no cash and this is now a wasted trip, but hey - at least I spent all that time in line hoping, right?

The Boy is flopped over a stack of postal forms, so I stand him upright and lead him out, telling everyone on the way out that the place is now cash only.

Back to the car. The Boy really seems in distress now. I'm wondering if he's about to be ill ('cos, y'know - I'm due, right?).

But we press on to the hardware store where both children announce that they will sit in the car while I run in for the copper wire.

Ah, the family outing. Hardware store is inexplicably free of the old guy, and all I need is three feet of wire. The sign on it imperiously warns that you MUST HAVE ASSISTANCE to cut the wire - so I spend ten minutes waiting behind some dork having a lengthy conversation with the lone old guy as if there is no other human being in the universe than them. And wasn't their story about porch lights just oh-so-riveting?

Gah.

I get my wire and catch a break when I remember that I can get cash back from the hardware checkout. The kids won't have to go to the bank before we go back to the post office.

Still, they complain about returning to the post office, because they're tired of being in the car. But I'm getting this done. So it's happening.

Both kids want to wait in the car this time. Little e offers to read Encyclopedia Brown to the Boy. The Boy tells her to shut up - because he knows all the stories already.

I run in and spend half of forever in line behind a stream of people - each of whom needs, REALLY needs to hear a detailed explanation of why the registers aren't accepting credit or debit cards today.

But I get the package paid for and we're done. And I can't get them home fast enough.

*******

That was my first day off.

Second day's morning was soaked up by a visit to the diabetic nurse. I'm behind on my check ins with her. Should have had an appointment last year and didn't. There's a certain amount of reproach in this meeting but I don't care.

About a week ago I was working out with the Penguin and I clearly overdid it. Became dizzy, unable to think and had to sit down. I briefly passed out and came to as the Penguin propped me up.

So I was happy to be at an appointment for once. I wanted answers. The previous week, I had a stress EKG and it came back normal - so I'm wondering if there is something that the diabetic experts could tell me about why I got all screwed up.

When I was all fally-downy at the gym, I assumed I was having a Low- the boogeyman of diabetics. Blood sugar drops below 70 and suddenly your brain decides to start short circuiting. But I tested my levels at the gym and I was high - over 140. So I didn't know what the hell.

The diabetic nurse had no answers for me, though. Everyone's different, she says. She bounces a few questions off me about what else might have contributed to my dizzy spell - but nothing sticks.

She tells me my historical levels are looking good and that I'm doing well in other aspects. She'll schedule a follow up with me for six months and - thanks for checking in.

Day and a half of my three days gone.

The afternoon I've already posted about - how great it was to kick back and play cafe poser - and how the murphy's law tried to screw me.

But day two's afternoon was beyond great.

I want more of that.

*******

Day three starts with the Boy piling into me at three in the morning. He does this most mornings, but usually right before it's time to wake up for the day. But three in the morning means I've got hours of potential sleep and I want them. Having a small person knee me in the back drops my odds something fierce - so I bail out and sleep in his bed.

Musical beds is a thing in our house - having apnea means I should move my CPAP machine to the boy's room to truly sleep - but I'm too tired and crabby to think straight.

Morning rolls around and I'm hoarse from snoring (no CPAP) and I'm groggy as hell. E goes to shower and I loll in bed until I hear the Boy moving around. He's coming up the stairs, having gone down to look for breakfast and struck out - no parents  - so he's back in our bed.

And it's time to get up - dammit. I'm up and fumbling downstairs - E's going to work and the kids are going to school and the least I can be is useful.

I'll get a day of cafe sitting and prepping for my new job - I need to get some paperwork in and get a haircut. What will I do with the other free time? Whoo hoo!

But the Boy is complaining that he is sick. He doesn't have a fever, but he's lolling around like he's dying. He has a way of dramatizing it to the point of parody.

I'm determined to get him moving. I push, pull threaten and berate to the point where it's clear I'm doing this for my benefit.

E's giving me the look - and it's then I know day three is on the ropes.

The Boy is inconsolable that he's too sick for school and for going over to his friend's house later. He's really upset that his dad isn't listening to him. "I want to stay home!"

Day three of leisure is done. I give in and tell him to stay on the couch. I'll sit with you.

As E and little e are heading out, the Boy's irritation with me makes him reverse course. Now he's insisting on going to school. Now he's angry that I won't let him go. "You never listen to me!"

But I am listening. The Boy needs someone to pay attention to him. Now. He's had it up to here with the day and it's past time that somebody noticed.

I let him lean on me and put my arm on his shoulder and just sit with him until he calms down. We fire up a Mythbusters and he tucks under a blanket and relaxes. The boy feels like crap, and he finally feels that his dad notices. His relief is almost audible.

If this was a movie, we'd have a bonding moment that changes the way we think of each other forever, but mostly we just hung out together. I'm out of practice - and it'll be slow work to get our conversations back to conversing instead of "chew with your mouth closed" or "go get dressed."

But it was a good day, nonetheless.

*******

E felt bad that the day off came to this and offered to do the evening with the kids. I went out to eat all excited about lounging around like yesterday - but so far everything has been pantomime.

Not much point in pretending I'm a cafe denizen when I'm not. All the baked goods in this cafe would spike my glucose to the stratosphere. I've translated the essential PC shortcut keys to Mac - and I'm not going to learn Unix in a day. I'm not writing the next great American screenplay on my laptop and my ego can't enduring taking out the Missing Mac manual and reading that next to my spiffy new toy.

So what am I doing in a cafe alone at night, sans family?

I'm writing about how I should be at home.

So I'm going home.

'Night all

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

The Gods of Irony are Swift and Merciless

Not two minutes after I published my last post, I smugly walked out of the cafe to discover my car had a dead battery.

...and I was between two parked cars...
...so my jumper cables could reach no passing motorists...
...and I was late to meet Sensei and the Artist.

But I found a willing helper who was willing to push my car back so I could connect the jumpers....

...but my car refused to come out of park.

-Really, you have to admire the creative sadism of the irony gods.

You thought you'd be happy, but now...

My Samaritan leaves, so my only choice is to find the owner of one of the two cars that bookend me.

It takes canvassing two nearby businesses, but I find the owner of the car on my right.

He agrees to give me the jump and if all goes well, I can still make lunch.

We connect the cables, and nothing.

Not even a turn from my car.

In desperation, we reset the cables again.
Still nothing.

I try calling Sensei. No luck.

My cables have side pull extensions, which make normal connections worse.

I reseat the connections a third time and start thinking about running to lunch. It's about a ten minute run...

And the car starts.

Psyche!

I thank the man and bolt.

Sensei and the Artist are waiting, and lunch is awesome. They are such great people- and we swap stories of CorpWorld like veterans do.

Nice try, Irony- but I beat you this time. Yeah, they needed to jump my car after lunch - and I'm stuck in Sears dropping $100 on a battery, but you can't stop today from being great.

I met with the old gang and my smile is immune to anything else.

Boo yah.

Now I am Become Hipster

When you're looking to make a statement, picking a venue stocked with the self absorbed is probably unwise.

But, y'know - screw it.

Took a long while to get to this point, and the roots go back farther than I realized.

I guess it started with an article on Wired. Something about that Temple bag stuck in my mind - but good. Now granted, I was never going to blow $500 on a stinking bag, but this was all about the idea.

I mean, I work in design. The ass-end, boring side of it to be sure. But there's this idea that if I'm supposed to be making things that are awesome, I should try to surround myself with some of that.

The Temple bag was all the poser crap writ large. You see, they build them out of surplus WWII duffel bags and (if you believe their video) are assembled by male models using a vintage sewing machine in some old loft apartment.

Y'know, because - bullshit.

But If I'm honest, that's where this idea got started. A cool bag, full of technical toys that will be my personal Bat Utility Belt.

Y'know, because I fight crime.

Anyway, ages ago, I got a license to shop on ThinkGeek.com and I stuck a toe in the water. Got me a Bag of Holding because it's a bag I can relate to on several levels. Next birthday, I bought a bluetooth keyboard for my phone, got the BookBook iPhone case from TwelveSouth and had a few trial runs at a local diner.

But it was not the full blown experience. The keyboard fit in my coat pocket, so I really didn't need to bring the bag. And there is a sad truth about wireless keyboard accessories - the sweet spot for use is a lot smaller than you might think.

For a mobile device, most times it's enough to type a quick reply with your thumbs. Unless you plan to write an epic email, getting out the bluetooth keyboard, syncing it up (and dealing the with odd stuck key moment) is a lot of hassle to support the edge case use.

Plus typing on a portable keyboard to support a iPhone sized screen looks (and feels) a bit dorky. I did manage to write some worthy emails to family, but my idealized blogging on my phone was sabotaged by Blogger's crap mobile UI.  I can only write in HTML? and your autosave always tells me my tags aren't closed? F- you Google.

So meh. A failed attempt. But I was never going to get there - I'm not buying a pen sized document scanner anyway. Especially when all the reviews talk about how its construction is so lousy.

But I got an iPad mini and its BookBook case and tried again. A worthy combination, and to any iPad types out there, I totally recommend the iPad BookBook. Solid case, stylish and very functional. If it had a spot to store earbuds it would be even better, but I can deal.

Still not the full blown jet-setting UX poser look I was gunning for.

But now the new gig wants me to work on a Mac, so I've bought the Mac. And it fits in the Bag of Holding, nicely - thank you.

I'm between jobs for today at least, and so I'm in a - gasp - Starbucks, making a full on poser out of myself. I'm re-connecting with Sensei and the Artist, 'cos they're awesome, and nothing to do but...

Whip out the laptop. I think I'll blog a bit - like you do.

A latte? What?

Don't mind if I do.

I might even push up my shades, slap some earbuds in and spool up the iPhone.

"Play Song - 'South Tacoma Way.'"

And there it is.

Blogging in a cafe on my laptop. The caffeine's wailing on my synapses and Neko's crushing it
It's the twilight of our old home...
Yeah, I'm shaved and mostly cleaned up, but I'm about as hip as I am capable of becoming. A look around confirms that nobody else around me knows I'm alive.

I'm part of the ambient cafe vibe.

But if the me of two years ago walked in right now he'd take one look at the now me and think.

I hate you so very very much. How are you sitting here on a weekday? Why don't you get a job?

And they'd have a point, and in a day or so - I will get a job, and go back to being responsible. I'll put all the iToys back in the bag and resume being a person who does useful things and could give a flying F*$% about what vibe they're throwing off.

A month ago I was a desperate wreck of a man.
But today, I get to while away some time in a cafe like some pain in the ass youngster.
We've memories for matinees
And the tears come warm and heavy
And the cross streets bear your name.
Fuckin' brilliant.

I so love today.

Friday, March 29, 2013

One Way Door

I'm utterly without a security badge for the first time in seven years...

-and there it is....

I clear this door, and I'm forever on the outside of CorpWorld.











Feels kinda good.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Walking papers


This is really happening.

I'm having tea, looking out the window at people piling out of an airplane.

I re-read the email. It still means the same thing it meant the first ten times I read it.

I will no longer work for CorpWorld.

*******

This was always going to happen, and I was stupid to think otherwise. When I left a small non-profit for the wilds of corporate contract work, I believed they would hire me as permanent staff. The same starry-eyed idealism that fueled my design instincts convinced me that being hired was simply inevitable.

Despite meeting contractors with ten or more years at CorpWorld - I still thought "any day now, they're going to snap me up."

I've had managers tell me they would - but they weren't allowed. Project managers have marveled "how have we not hired you yet?"

I'd always shrug and say "always a bridesmaid, never a bride."
But the joke got less funny and more sad with each telling. Five years, six - I'm good enough to pay, but not good enough for benefits?

My team was always too big, ridiculously so when I started, so when we started losing people - I'd selfishly thought that once the purge was over, they'd start bringing people aboard.

I'd told myself I was kept on for a reason. Because I was good at my job. Easy to think, hard to know.

And very easy to doubt.

That night N called me to tell me they were part of our UX team's first big layoff - yeah, that had me doubting. N was good at their job, too. And it didn't save them.

The UX team getting smaller no longer felt like a corporate adjustment - it was a trend.  I might be good at my job, but I've come to believe what spared me was less personal: the people who were cut cost more than I did.

I was cheaper.

The relief I felt at staying was somewhat tainted with this new theory, but it was still relief.

I get to stay.

I remember H walking along one of CorpWorld's many skywalks, gesturing to the view of the campus "every day I thank God I work here."

Because CorpWorld is a marvel. They have too much of everything. Multiple cafes and cafeterias. Walking paths through a manicured campus. Where else could a green UX guy get to run remote video testing in a fully stocked U-lab? I had access to resources that I'd no right to.

I had a chair that cost more than I used to pay for a month's rent.

No right whatsoever.

But the moment you start thinking you might have to go -that you should start preparing - that's when the dread starts.

Because CorpWorld pays well. Sure, you get a raise almost never - but the rate is one you'll have a hard time getting outside the wire. Particularly if you don't have a slew of letters after your name.

Me? No letters. I'm all experience. Eight years of doing the work.

On paper, that's worth something. But anyone can say they have experience, try shopping that on the road.

Which is why people have references and portfolios.

CorpWorld does not give references. They will only confirm dates of employment.
And your work product is their work product. Bound by an NDA.

Still, you could shop the fact that you worked in the industry - but there's a non-compete clause in your contract. Anyone in the same industry isn't supposed to hire you.

So you can shop your self to an unrelated industry, using your say so that you did good work.

Odds that you'll get comparable pay with a suitcase of nothing? Not good.

Yeah, you could tell your staffing company to pull you out, but they won't unless you tell CorpWorld you're looking for a job outside. If things don't work out and you want to stay - you've told CorpWorld to put you in the front of the downsize line.

Stay and work - or roll the dice outside?  Not much of a choice. I let my resume go stale and I stayed.

Whatever the reason - I'd been spared - hooray, right?

I was lucky in other ways, too.
My project was a colossus. A multi-year beast, followed by another one even bigger. There was no shortage of work.

My colleagues on smaller projects would gripe about getting Buckets - or getting buy in from clients - not me. My Buckets were full and the clients respected my work. At least I thought so.

The second and third rounds of layoffs took team members who were on smaller projects. They'd been scrabbling for solid work, getting make-work projects where they were an afterthought or worse.
"I'm a stenographer for the clients," one teammate told me.  "They tell me what the UI will be and I document it. If someone tells me the UI has changed, I update the document."

This person had advanced degrees in design and human factors - they were being asked to take notes from a corporate hipshooter. They weren't alone. Some of them fled, selling their credentials on the open market. Others held on until the work dried up and were let go.

Good people, all of them. Until we were down to a core group of nine.

Sensei and I were on the same big project together. Two products getting built in parallel, A and B. B was my product - the less important of the two - and it was getting shelved. Product B's staff was rolled into Sensei's A team to increase velocity - and I was working like mad to make sure they kept me.

And they kept me. Spock, the Machine and I worked along side Sensei's A team. The overall project was overstaffed, but the client was letting it ride - since we'd split off and product B eventually.

Again I was lucky, our client synced well with our team. And Spock and the Machine are rock stars.
Sensei was less fortunate, their A team had difficult clients and two team members who did not get along. Their productivity began to slip. Early on, this didn't matter, but it was noticed.

My team reveled in knocking out the work. You need this in a week? Guess what? It was done yesterday. You're welcome. As the A and B teams were in the same pool of work, we felt some rivalry. Getting attaboys from management made our B team feel special. I know I did. But, it was all in good fun, right? Until CorpWorld announced a big round of layoffs were coming.

I could literally spend hours writing about how sick I felt in retrospect - I tried, actually. Wrote a post I was going to call 'Zero Sum' - but it was crap. There is no way to adequately express how disgusted I am at how clueless I was at how my actions hurt others. I wanted to win. To be seen winning. And I never gave a thought to how that would poison things for others until the day Sensei came to tell me they were planning to leave CorpWorld.

Sensei had letters after their name - and they were no fool. They jumped ship, shortly before the rest of their team got let go or taken off the project.

Sensei bailing out was unthinkable to me. They were the reason I was anywhere in CorpWorld. Brought me into my first projects and made sure I knew enough to get along. Sensei cannot help but help - it's who they are. And to hear the weariness, the dread in their voice as they described why they had to go... It was beyond horrible.

They taught you everything and you're going to just sit there and do nothing in return.

I wished them well, but that's pretty much the same thing.

Being awesome, Sensei has since gone on to far better things, but I won't forget the look of dread in Sensei's face the day  they told me they had to get out.

Sensei had realized something I would willfully deny even after Black Wednesday.

CorpWord was done with the UX group.

*******

Once the UX group was a department. We were a team. Almost thirty.

Then we were 18. Then 15. Then 9. Sensei's departure made us 8.

Black Wednesday made us 4.
Din was let go before the year ended. I hear they're working for a bank in the big city.
Ruby went shortly thereafter.

And Stimpy formally changed departments last week. They get to do real UX work again in the lab - and they'll be free of Smiler.

I'm embarrassed I didn't think to try for the gig Stimpy got - I've been at CorpWorld longer, but Stimpy is more than capable and deserves some real work. Under Smiler, all they've been getting are short term write up gigs and make-work tasks.  Stimpy has had the look I've seen on too many faces these days - the face of somebody afraid for their job.

It's the look I've had for longer than I care to admit.

I couldn't begin to count all the flashes of panic that ripped through the building this past year. And they can come from anything. A client's smirk or a badly phrased email will grip you like vise until you beat it back with logic or indifference.

I'm. Still. Here.

I'd stopped bothering E with these rumors to spare her the yo-yo of "I'm doomed/I'm safe" that I'd put her through the previous few years. Truth is, I'm worried that I've grown numb to it. Something real might come along and I'd miss the signs. That first time I mouthed off to Anjin-san about my hours dropping I had no intention of doing anything. But Anjin-san is about doing things - so they referred me to that job opportunity that went nowhere. It felt good to try, though. Shake the cobwebs out of the resume, talk about things I can do - instead of sit at my desk and wonder what the hell I'm supposed to do.

I'd gotten to contact Ruby, the Artist and Sensei to ask them to be references. I hate asking for things like that, but they all responded so positively it was a wonderful feeling. Ruby even offered to help polish my resume - a task I hate more than just about anything. I'm not much of a networker, but I used to work with some truly great people. It was so great hearing from them.

But that's done. I'd given resumes to three places and the only one to even contact me was Anjin-san's gig. The recruiters strung me out for a while, but ultimately admitted the hiring manager wasn't returning their calls anymore.

I'd surfed for UX positions in town and found old listings for jobs I know are taken - because I know the people who took them. And there are endless recruiters out there that want to pull you into "an exciting three month gig in Boulder, CO."  F*&k that with a bag of dicks, thank you.

But you have to be realistic. Ask yourself how many paychecks you can miss before your standards slip? How many weeks will you make it before serious financial waves start landing on you? I'm no pauper, but like most of America - my income is spoken for. Yeah, I can drop cable and economize - but the big bills will still land and take me under without a comparable salary.

If the only UX job was travel - I might have to do it. Or change careers.

I start wondering about unemployment insurance. Whether I get it if CorpWorld drops me but my staffing company keeps me on the books.

This is the sh!t that keeps you up at night, when you've finally decided that sweating over Buckets is a waste of time.

Another thing? I overheard one of my clients the other day talking to one of our testers. The tester was saying there was a requirement that there be a sign off for the UX standards of the application. The tester wanted to know who would provide the sign off now that there is no formal department for UX. My client - a person I've worked with for years, someone who I believe respects me and my work - told the tester to delete the UX sign off requirement.

Because, y'know. Who's going to care right? They've all left. I could sign off, but nobody would care.

I'm it. F*%-ing Chingachgook. Me.

Smiler's sending me more project work to fill in the gaps. I'm remembering them telling me they were relieved that Stimpy left the group. "Because I don't have enough work for two. Now, I don't have to choose...[which one of you to fire]"

They smiled.

My second to last email from them detailed a list of potential projects I could work on. All of them suck. One of them is literally UX work for a vendor supplied software patch to a vendor product. Nothing to do. Worse, its project manager is Dancing Bear - one of the most useless human beings I've run across in CorpWorld. No one with less to do has ever acted so busy. This person could make checking their watch a billable task. And they are steering the ship of useless that I'm to board next week.

This is fricking insane. I'm downhill on my main project headed for a pile of nothing that's never gonna break my fall.

*******

Outside, the plane is getting towed over to the de-icer.

And my lunch date has arrived.

They'd called me out of the blue a few days ago. It'd been so long, They had to remind me who they were. I made them send me an email so I'd have tangible proof that this meeting would really happen.

I'd been re-reading that email all morning. It said:

"Finally got everything pinned down, and have approval to go ahead with hiring him."

It's from the manager of the job Anjin-san referred me to. Four weeks of total silence, followed by this. The offer is better than I'd asked for.

The recruiters sit down with me.

"Lunch is on us."

Damn right it is. We shake hands and I apply ink to paper.

For two months, I've been counting every Friday as a victory - then living in fear of the next Monday.

I was half into the abyss-and my colleagues reached down and pulled me out. Domo, Anjin-san. Sensei, Ruby and the Artist. No way I get this without you.

More pay, more vacation, less commute & a contract to hire. Unbe-effing-lievable.

The recruiters smile and start talking about airplanes.

I barely notice them.

All I can think of is: somehow, hurtling earthward end over end-

I found the goddamn rip cord.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Bucket Hunting

Can I get a Bucket for..?
    -CorpWorld traditional
In CorpWorld, it’s all about the buckets.

Buckets of time, that is… digital containers with a capacity measured in hours. And not just any hours – hours that have been blessed by accounting types.
Behind this simple integer is all manner of corporate political knavery. Lies were told, blood was shed and careers toppled – but your managers have emerged from the carnage with Buckets.

For now your project has been given life.

By extension – this means that you can be paid.

Sweet, sweet money…Huzzah!

This being CorpWorld, tracking your time and effort requires duplicate entries in four separate systems, but because the Buckets are upstream they are the most important.

Without Buckets, there is no work. This fact is often lost on those who work on multi-year projects. A steady supply of Buckets makes it easy to forget that someone higher up than you earned the sworn vengeance of their rivals to hook you up to the money supply.

This leaves you free to do battle with the second tier of time-tracking in CorpWorld – the task hours. But we don’t care about that, really – because task hours are not truly subordinate and rise and fall without respect to how many hours are in your actual Bucket.

Case in point: For a period of about twenty working days I will log 60 hours of task hours towards my project. Over the same period, I will log 160 hours of Bucket time. How can this be?

In actual fact, I will be at work doing tasks for 160 hours or so, but the additional overhead and hassle of wrangling my task hours to be in line with this level of effort is not worth it for anyone.

As in: I have two pools of task hours – Task A for 40 hours and Task B for 20. In the middle of Day 8, a tester comes to me and says “I think this screen has a bug, would you agree?”

I do. In fact looking at the screen it is clear that not only is this a bug in the design – it is a bug I’ve created by not testing an input string that is stupidly long and composed entirely of capital Ws. A tester, being a tester, does this – and finds my work wanting.

This needs to be done before some code moves, and I know exactly what to fix – so I tell them I’ll get on this right away.

Officially, what I am expected to do is nothing. The tester is supposed to enter the problem, attach screenshots, and assign it to my GroupManager.
Then my GroupManager is supposed to ignore this assignment, because being assigned to the GroupManager is the equivalent of being unassigned. A system designer or tech lead will then review the issue to determine if this is really an issue, verify that it is still occurring and assign it to a developer.

There is a good chance that this item will get assigned to me, but it’s not a sure thing. Once it is assigned to a resource –  that person will analyze the bug and then go to the TeamLeader who will go to the GroupManager and request time to perform the work. As task hours are a hot button issue these days, creating a new task will require managerial sign off. Since this is a bug, the approval is assured, but it will take time.
If I get the bug – there will be no analysis, since I know what the problem is. If someone else gets it, there could be some ramp up time.

At the end of the process, all of these people will have task hours to do this work- but the bug will sit idle for a few days. And there will be some lost time in transferring knowledge about what the bug really is.

And upstream of all of this, I’m 100% funded to work on this project, so nobody on my team gives a crap if I create a two hour task or not. The work will get done and I’ll bill time to the project – since I bill all my time to the project.

As it turns out, the bug is a bigger issue, since the problem will happen anywhere you max out an input with capital Ws. Following the process, I would have revised my estimate from 2 hours to 5 (and still been wrong) and someone would look at a report and see my graph of remaining work as increasing rather than decreasing. This would be true, but it would not be welcome information. “Why are you not making progress?” NewManager would ask, “We have to make our deadline!”
“Yes, but we have to fix this before we go live, and my other tasks don’t affect the deadline. They can wait while I work on this.”

NewManager will stick to their guns, because tasks that wait will appear on their managers reports and cause a ripple of unpleasantness that they will have to explain. They do not want this – no matter what the actual picture is – and they will make the point that assigned tasks will get done within their 20 day allotment. Period.

Group manager and TeamLeader will have to explain this to me. Being sensible types, they will explain it thusly: “Go back to your original estimate and do what you need to do to fix this issue.” What this means is that the tracking software (like all tracking software) only cares about the work that is entered into it. So long as my task graph continues to slope downward – all is sweetness and light.

With this in mind – I do the obvious thing: I keep the bug out of the system and run it to ground. It’s pretty easy to fix, but there are a lot of places this issue will occur so I end up burning about eight hours finding all the locations where this will occur and making sure it will behave across our supported browsers. Bang, done. Deploy the code in time to make the deadline and log the fix against my 40 hour task. Everybody is happy and I’ve saved several people a lot of hassle, including myself.

Again, tracking time in two systems when the only time that matters is being tracked in Buckets that arrive, fully loaded each and every week.

But one week – they don’t.

NewManager calls me into their office to tell me that instead of being 100% on the project, I will be shifted to 50% in the next month or so.
This information must be logged in some system, because shortly thereafter I’m contacted by Smiler, my other manager.

Meeting with Smiler is always a bit of a dance. They are cordial enough, they are nice enough – but there is no professional rapport between us. 

Smiler asks if I am truly going to be 50% on my project going forward. I say I am. Smiler assures me that they will look into my future allocations. I thank them and go back to my desk.

Then I start updating my resume.

Because the truth is, I am afraid of Smiler.

According to CorpWorld’s lattice, Smiler has the most direct responsibility to fire me – yet my only interaction with them is asking them to sign my timesheet. They don’t see my work, understand my work or (seemingly) have any interest in it.

My introduction to them was not encouraging – my former colleagues met in a room to review a new set of policies that were immediately in effect. Their underlying purpose was clear: cut expenses. Smiler stressed this repeatedly to a room full of people who they clearly viewed as expenses. So much so that two of them were let go within a few months.

One of the new policies made it clear that I was I was no longer allowed to work remotely. There was a broadly worded reason for this, yet I knew several people identically situated who continued to work remotely. I questioned this in hopes there was some leeway to keep this work option and was met with a grim look of contempt. The smile was gone, but only long enough to let me know that the conversation was over.

Before their layoff, Ruby told me they’d gone to Smiler about Buckets. Asked what they should to do if there weren’t enough project buckets to make full time hours. Smiler’s response was essentially: “Stay home.” Anyone paying attention to Ruby’s allocation could have seen the looming deficit and taken action – even if it was just to give a warning. Instead Ruby was told the week it started. “Surprise! You’re a part-timer now.”

Prior to this the only one-to-one meeting I’ve had with Smiler was so they could chastise me for using a general Bucket for non-project work (like waiting for tech support to fix your machine). I was never to put more than an hour a week in this Bucket. Period.

And then the smile came back. “You can go.”

Part of the reason Smiler has had little to do with me is that my Buckets have always been full.

Now my Buckets were half empty and Smiler was my best option for more. In my years at CorpWorld, I’ve faced a good amount of corporate death. Panicked phone calls by laid off colleagues, the sudden dismissals of a third of my department, and the subsequent shattering of the unit. There were four survivors.

Now Stimpy and I are the last two. A backhanded compliment, or they just haven’t gotten around to finishing us off.

What the hell am I doing here?

I let fly with some grief to a former colleague – someone who bailed out to get a permanent gig – then watched their new gig go bankrupt right before their start date. They’d landed on their feet after awhile and were clearly on the upswing. They asked me if I needed a job. They were leaving their newest gig – said it wasn’t right for them, but that it might be for me.

“Are you serious?, hell yes..! Send it on.”

So I did a phone interview with a recruiter and the gig sounds great. Money’s decent, better vacation, a permanent gig – oh, and they’re way closer to home. I get to do what I do in a mid-size (less bureaucracy, but still funded). This could be great – but there are a lot of unknowns.  

F#*k it, at least I’ll get my résumé in order and get some interview practice.

My former colleague gives me the setup and I interview. It feels like it goes very well, but I’m trying to keep my hopes contained. No sense getting too built up.

I interview on a Thursday, report back to the recruiter on Friday and wait.

For a week. I refuse to contact the recruiter for fear there is some kind of gamesmanship going on. I’ve represented myself as someone who has a job, thank you very much. I don’t want to come across as too eager. The following Friday, the recruiter emails me to tell me they’ve heard back from the client and that I’ll be “very excited” to hear what they have to say.

They set up a meeting for Monday – and again I try not to get too excited. The recruiter is basically telling me this meeting is a formality and that I should provide references. I’m still thinking the big hurdle is that they will show up on Monday and make an offer that is below my salary requirements. I was deliberately forward about these so that nobody’s time got wasted. The recruiter and the client seemed fine with what I’d said, but I figure nothing is set until there’s a contract.

Monday rolls around, I’m meeting the recruiter face to face for the first time and (per tradition) they’re buying me lunch.
They’re talking up the position like they’re still selling it to me. But I’m already sold.

While the senior recruiter is lapsing into his company’s philosophy I sit back and reflect.

Seven years at CorpWorld. Am I really doing this? Every other time the reaper has missed you. You work with an absolutely kick-ass team. Where are you going to find resources and talent like that? Nowhere.

But then I think of N. Twice gone, the last time by their own choice.
And SR.
KR.
And Y.
And R.
And corporate indifference.
And Happy Friday.
And Sensei...who wisely fled in time to miss Black Wednesday.
And Friday, Apok, Isis, and Murdock... who didn't.
Then Din, and finally Ruby.  Ruby who was so burned out after CorpWorld, they changed career tracks.

Over the recruiter’s shoulder, I’m watching a plane taxi in prep for takeoff.

Yeah, I can do this.

I re-acquire the recruiter’s line of blather and they are still going on about the job being a good fit for me. I agree with them in an attempt to move onto the next subject. The offer. I’m braced for disappointment or some kind of switch up – but the recruiter keeps on with his “this is a great time to join this company” spiel.

I try again to cut them off – to focus on the deal we’re about to close – and then it hits me. They don’t have a deal with them.  

Something is wrong.

I press them on it and they admit that they are still waiting for a final approval from the client. Something has changed since Friday’s breathless email – and now we will have to wait “a few days.” But, the head recruiter assures me, they will “make it clear to the client that we need to know by Wednesday.”

All my energy rolls out of me as I realize this person is selling me a line of crap. You don’t tell clients what to do – because they are your client. They pay you, they call the tune. The recruiter wants me to think that they’ve got some pull with a client who already iced them for a week?  

OhJesusGod…

I try to remain positive, but we shake hands and I roll back to work in a funk. I’d bought into it and now it probably won’t happen. After all that keeping my hopes down – I’d been all set to jump.

***************
Back at the office I get an email from Smiler – telling me to meet with Stimpy and take their old projects over, since they are changing roles. I find I’ve been given another general Bucket to do work for Smiler’s group.

Things are looking up.

I meet with Stimpy to arrange the transfer of files and they rattle off three projects. Three! Whoo-hoo! Four projects should easily fill up my time. They want to transfer them over to me in a week or so – which seems fine. My big project has converted me to half time, but I still have a slew of work for them and they should be able to carry me for a week or so. They’ve asked me to do a number of additional wrap up tasks before we put the project docs in storage.

Stimpy tells me they are taking a job with another part of the Company because they were afraid they wouldn’t have enough to do where they were. It sounds like a great opportunity, since they will be actually doing UX work using the gear that has been lying unused since Black Wednesday. I congratulate them.

Stimpy looks at me sadly for awhile. “My projects are winding down, I needed to make a change. I want to stay. I like it here.” Then they tell me that one of their three projects is done as of next week. So I will be getting only two new projects.

Stimpy looks uncomfortable. “These two projects, they are not very big. You should tell Smiler you are available for additional types of work.”

I’m just happy they haven’t been canned. “Let me worry about that – I’ll still have three projects and I have a general Bucket from Smiler. I’ll be fine.”

We set up a meeting to formally hand over the files and project info in two weeks. I tell Smiler I might be light on hours, and that I would be available to do some detailing work in the interim. They look amused.

I contact my staffing company to ask for their help in case the worst happens. They say they’ll contact Smiler and see what’s what.

It’s been a rough set of days, but I’m beginning to level out.

***************

Monday.

I get an email from my GroupManager about buckets. They’ve sent it to the entire team. “I urge you to review your time allocations as some of you have entered time that exceeds your reserves.” That would be CorpWorld for you billed the project for more time than we can give you.


They’ve attached a spreadsheet. I check my name and see that last week I billed full time to the project (because that’s all I worked on) but I was only allowed around 18 hours.

That bit where I thought my current project could carry me? Not happening. I’ve used two weeks worth of project time in one week. Meaning If I enter no project time this week, I’ll balance out. But I have no other projects and the two new ones I’m getting won’t start until next week at the earliest.

I ping Stimpy and check on those project allocations, that I AM getting them and just HOW big they are. Stimpy tells me that one of the remaining two projects has just been cancelled. The other might amount to 10 hours a month.

F#*k.

I’m headed for Smiler when I find out that Smiler is out of the office and won’t be back for a week or so.

Double. F#*k.

I ping my staffing company and tell them Smiler will be out. Partly so they don’t waste their time leaving a message, but mostly so they are reminded that they need to get back to me.

My account rep replies at the end of the day with “I’ll reach out to Smiled[sic] upon their return. I’ll keep you in the loop!”

I about lose it.

“Do so with all speed. At the end of this week I will need to enter hours I don’t have allocations for.”

The next day my team has a review of the work we’ve completed. At the end of it, an all-star developer, who I’ll call Lion, announces they are leaving CorpWorld to take another job. They’ve been with the company for years and years, but they are punching out. It’s a huge loss to the project team. Lion is perhaps the best person I’ve ever met at distilling complex technical issues into understandable language. They have been a pillar of our development effort. And they are leaving.

The other developers nod grimly and say “What took you so long?” Gallows humor is the hallmark of the coding set. i.e. “You are highly respected, therefore why are you wasting your life on this company?”

And the rest of the meeting devolves into “what are we supposed to do now that we have less hours?”

Because everyone seems to be in the same predicament. My allocation is actually one of the higher ones. I get 18 hours a week, some people are getting 2 – or none. Ace has almost 30, but they will still be short at the end of the week. Resource managers have clearly dropped the ball here. Unless…surely we can’t all be destined for the chopping block…?

The team rumbles back to their desks, equal parts defiance and dread.

Seriously, this group is a killer team – surely there is work for them, for us. For me.

I resolve to continue working on the follow up tasks I’ve been given until more project work shows up. I’ll bill time to what I have and wait for the blowback. I’ve tried to get additional work and my manager’s disappeared. I could go to their backup, but they will only tell me to wait until Smiler gets back.

And my staffing company finally contacts me, offers to take me to lunch.

I meet them in a place that better suited for discussion than food and we get down to business. My nerves are a mess – I’ve been whipsawed through a range of futures and I need them to tell me they will be a plan B. Actually a plan C, since I haven’t told them about the other job opportunity.

They assure me that they have my back – if the worst should happen, they will find something for me. They will speak to CorpWorld and see what project work is available for me.

I’m so relieved I almost forget this is the company that has given me a single raise in seven years. Yet I am grateful. Somebody wants to help me out.

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Assessing the Nest


So it’s been eight months with the new Nest thermostat (version 1.0) and the obvious question is – was it worth the $250 price tag?

The answer – at least for hard dollar savings – is very hard to get.

For the aspects that don’t convert easily to dollars – ease of use, aesthetics, ability to access remotely – it is easy to claim value for the money.

I love accessing the thermostat from my phone. If I wake up early on a cold morning – I lean over to my phone and tell the thermostat to dial up the heat. If we’re headed out of the house on a weekend, I log in to tell it we’ve left. Frequently I find it’s already detected our absence, which is another feature I like.

I love the energy usage reports. I have two stage heating and it’s nice to see that the report differentiates between the two stages. It’s also great to see the patterns in how my house heats up. On a cold day, I can see that we’re hitting stage 1 heat about every half hour or so.


And the milestones have a little detail, as well – mostly enough to identify themselves – but enough to differentiate between a programmed temperature change and an ad hoc adjustment.

I like the leaf symbol and time to temperature – great user feedback to encourage responsible use. If I crank up the Nest because I’m cold and see “72 IN 2+ HR” I’m more likely to dial that back – particularly if I’m leaving/sleeping before the furnace will hit that temperature. My old thermostat would just impassively spool up and generate a bill for heat I wouldn't use or notice.


A 5-degree heat increase in 25 minutes? Lucky you.

I like that the device turns on when I walk by – makes me feel like I’m living in the future. "Oooh, watch me activate the screen by waving my hand!"

Those are the UI wins.

Like all devices, there are UI shortcomings.

A minor issue is that the energy report should store external temperature data for the day. While it’s useful to know that my furnace ran for six hours – knowing that it ran for 6 hours on a day when the temperature was 4 degrees Fahrenheit is a bit more useful. As the energy report only goes back 10 days, Nest probably figures you'll just remember this, but...

-I would like to have long-term access to my energy use and weather data – using the web app. I want more charts and graphs! Data is a drug - you get some, you want more.

The biggest UI failure of the Nest to me almost certainly stems from the best intentions of the Nest folks. Much is made of the accuracy of the Nest’s temperature sensors.
Nest uses multiple temperature sensors to determine the ambient temperature with a high degree of accuracy. Nest's sensors are tuned to be most useful for keeping your home consistently comfortable. We found that responding rapidly to temperature changes gives Nest the most accurate data to work from.
“A high degree of accuracy…” So when the user sees their Nest display something like this, they start to wonder if something is wrong:
Literally, what my Nest was displaying as I typed this.
A temp of 67 degrees while the Nest is set to 68 - and the Nest is not heating.

It is not uncommon to see the Nest display a current temperature that is below the temperature it is supposed to be at.

This does not fit the user’s mental model. “I asked for 68 degrees, and if you are below 68 degrees – I expect the heat to be on.”

Nest's support pages point out the many good reasons why this is so, but to your average homeowner - these are excuses. Our mental model is stuck in reptile brain mode: “Make heat. Now.”

The Nest is doing what most thermostats do, it has a "maintenance band" of about a degree or so that allows for minor variation and keeps the furnace from flicking on every few minutes and wearing it out.

"My old thermostat didn't do this!" Well, my old thermostat didn't light up when I walked by and show me what it was or wasn't up to, either. More interactions = more data = more questions. My previous thermostat offered the same data, but reading its small dark-grey LED text (on a light grey screen) required my eyeballs to be less than a foot away.  Hidden data might as well not exist, so while I might think my old thermostat didn't have this issue – it probably did. I just didn't notice because I almost never read the damn thing.

With a display this accessible, I would think the Nest would add an indicator that showed that it was aware that the temp is below the set temp. Something like "Preparing heat in 10 MIN" or something that lets the user know that their $250 thermostat hasn't forgotten that 67 is less than 68.

Screw the UI. What about the money? Is it worth it?

That's harder to know than you might think. All that nifty data I'm getting from the Nest? It's just telling me how long my Nest was running - not how much natural gas I burned for heat, or how many kWH I used to cool the house.

Did you pay less money this year? Well...
  • In all of 2011, I paid $2,238 for electric and gas.
  • In all of 2012, I paid $1,945 for electric and gas.
Huzzah! $292 in savings!

Well... sorta.

I mean, that's my total utility bill, including things like my gas stove and electric dryer - stuff my Nest is no help at all on.

If I want to carve off the portion of my bill that went to feed my A/C and Furnace, I need more data. Now, if I go with the assumption that my energy bill is like the typical American home energy bill,  then heat will account for 29% of my bill and A/C another 17%.

So, if I assume that I'm typical and 46% of my utility bill was my heating and cooling (29% + 17%), then A/C and heat ran me $1029 in 2011 and $894 in 2012.

Huzzah! $135 in savings!

But... I installed the Nest in May, so really that should be $135  * [8/12], or $90.

Huzzah! $90 in savings!

But that's just the total expense of heating and cooling. Is the difference between those bills accounted for by  2011 having a hotter summer, or a cooler winter?

Well, thankfully, my utility company provides most of the missing pieces. In winter months, my utility tracks how cold the winter months are using something called a heating degree day. The colder the month, the more heating degree days it will have.

My utility only tracks heating degree days during the winter months, so I can only compare 2011 to 2012 using the last three months of each.

They even give you pretty graphs:

Lines are good, but if I need to turn this into dollars, I need the data points.

Here's the data for 2011
Read Date # Days Therms Heating Degree Days Therms/Degree Day $ Amount Cost per Therm
12/16/2011 30 96 900 0.107 $91.61 $0.95
11/16/2011 29 62 601 0.103 $58.55 $0.94
10/18/2011 29 20 231 0.087 $25.79 $1.29


and here's 2012:
Read Date
# Days
Therms
Heating Degree Days
Therms/Degree Day
$ Amount
Cost per Therm
12/17/2012
31
78
847
0.092
$73.79
$0.95
11/16/2012
30
54
646
0.084
$51.31
$0.95
10/17/2012
29
25
399
0.063
$28.99
$1.16

In addition to pointing out that the cost per thermal unit is yet another variable to track, this allows me to factor the weather into my natural gas usage. Here's what I came up with

The average Therms per Degree Day for 2011 was .099.
The average Therms per Degree Day for 2012 was .079.

Which means I used 19% less Therms per day in 2012. While some of that could be due to other causes, I haven't changed my gas water heater and we use our gas stove at a pretty constant rate. 19% is a pretty healthy shift in my bill. If my natural gas costs truly went down that much due to the Nest, I would have saved about $30 over three months of heating.

The data for my electrical bill wasn't quite comparable, but my average kWh/Day usage went down as well. The graph makes it look pretty dramatic, too:

Between May to September of 2011, I used an average of 28.64 kWh/Day.
Over those same months in 2012, I used an average of 24.18 kWh/Day - a drop of a little over 15%.

Again, if I tack the credit for all of that to the Nest, I can claim it saved me up to $97 over those five months. That's probably high though - I don't have equivalent degree days for warmer weather, although the 2012 summer was a drought and 2011's was not rated as unusually warm.

I tend to think I used my dehumidifier less in 2012 than in 2011, so that could be a good chunk of that savings.

But take a reasonably good heating savings estimate of 19% - (averaging about $10 a month), and throw in half of my looser estimate of electrical savings - call it 8% (instead of the 15.57% I came up with) and you end up with an average of about $10 a month.

Roughly eighty bucks saved across eight months. Buy back in about two years - plus more features and control.

Not too shabby.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Forgive us, Rachel Scott



We have failed you.

Again.

It has happened again.

An elementary school, this time.

So far, we have established the 'what.'

The post-massacre pattern is depressingly well-traveled. Photos of stricken family members, eyewitness accounts, and a verified list of the slain.

We demand this, and we get it.

But there is more.

We move on to 'how.'

Timelines are constructed, complete with maps and dotted lines showing the path of the gunmen and icons indicating where the victims were found.

And it is here that we compound our national misery. We love our guns, surely- but far more prevalent than firearms is our pornographic fascination with mass murder.

It is a huge story, surely. Attention must be paid. The public must understand what has happened in order to fashion a response. Yes.

However, I will say something equally obvious: the coverage of these events is part of the problem.

Ask yourself: what do we gain from seeing the picture of the gunman splashed on every newspaper in the country? What insight does a captioned photo of the killer offer a policy maker?

In the case of a live, at-large person - their name is supremely relevant. But do I need to know a dead man's name to damn them for their crimes?

It is beyond fantasy to hope that the gunman's name would never appear in print - but surely there is a point at which we and the media can agree to minimize their celebrity. No photo, no bio, and most definitely no last video message broadcast nationwide. When their death is established, they are the gunman - and nothing else.

We must deny them the infamy they seek.

Nor is there any public value in splashing hi-res images of the weapons used by the gunman. Is our understanding of the crime enhanced by learning a gunman's specific choice of handgun or rifle?
More to the point, if this information is truly essential, how is it we know precisely what weapons were used at Sandy Hook Elementary, yet a professional football player can kill his girlfriend and himself with a pistol that remains nameless?

Is it too much to dream that a question like "What kind of semi-automatic rifle did the gunman use?" would be answered by "Does it really matter?"

Once the deliberate nature of the crime is established (numerous weapons, large reserves of ammunition) anything else is murder-porn.

We should not glorify the tools of mass murder.

Women and children were killed - with guns.

But the most patently offensive and ubiquitous aspect of coverage is the leaderboard.

Any event like this begs for comparison and context. It is the answer to the unspoken "how bad is it?" or "is it the worst ever?"

Our media helpfully supplies this context, so future killers can determine what level of bloodshed will assure them immortality.

I don't pretend that such comparisons will ever stop - but their well-practiced delivery is one of the many things that is wrong with our culture.

These are human beings who have been murdered - they are not points on a scoreboard.

Finally, despite our need to know exactly what happened - the you-are-there narratives supplied by eager journalists serve to supply future gunmen with the training and inspiration they could not otherwise obtain.

A spree killer will almost certainly be a novice. We should not help them prepare by illustrating what security measures they will encounter - or how those measures can be bypassed.

The public will gain from news accounts that detail security gaps and lessons learned - I do not advocate for censorship, only a tactical level of restraint.

As we prepare for the next gunman, we should not ensure that same gunman is forewarned.

There are countless aspects to the larger issue of mass-killings.
We can expect school lockdown drills to become more rigorous. School doors that can be secured against gunfire and forced entry. These things will happen.

And we should re-evaluate the need for private citizens to access high capacity magazines.

But before all this - we should take a good look at how we portray and elevate these events and those who commit them.

Gunmen are nothing - yet we make them famous. The same nation that effortlessly recalls serial and spree killers cannot locate the memory it owes a young woman named Rachel Scott.

We must do better.

Or there will be other schools in other towns that will wish we had.