Yahoo has made me angry

Well, maybe not out-and-out angry, but seriously peeved. They've been periodically threatening me with switching my MyYahoo account to some newfangled ajaxy home page. My experience with it so far is that it's slower and shinier at the expense of just putting the text I want on the page in front of me.

The latest assault of trying to force me to use it happened this morning. I tried to go to the /switch URL that has worked in the past, and that failed. I did go to the 'switch back?' page, but when I clicked on the button to switch back, I still had the new UI. I noticed a link at the bottom of the new home page for switching back, and even when I clicked on that, it still failed and left me with the new home page.

Very Annoying(tm).

It's getting to the point where I'm about to switch everything over to gmail and igoogle. Google's creeping me out a little, lately, though. It's all free to use, but maybe the price is too high <backgroundmusic type='ominous'/>.

New Widget and A Shout Out

The new widget on the left is a thingy that shows where people come from when they come in a look at my ramblings. I found it on Joel Mier's blog, Think For A Moment.

He'd posted a commentary about Netflix's recent reversal on the 'kill profiles' issue. As always, well reasoned and articulately stated commentary. Miss ya, Joel. Hope all's well.

Puppet Sex

I was just watching "Team America: World Police" on the Roku box. Didn't get all the way through it, because the kids came home and that movie is FILTHY! Can't say that I wasn't chuckling along like some kind of adolescent. However, there's a reasonably explict sex scene that had me rolling. You haven't seen anything until you've seen marionettes... er... 'engaged'.

Otherwise, the movie is reasonably entertaining. Not a classic, by any means, but the irreverence, inappropriateness and general bad-boy-ness you'd expect from Parker & Stone is all there in spades.

Ongoing Changes

Minor milestones this morning.

1. Eloise rode without a carseat (she's not > 60 pounds, but she is six, and the shoulder strap doesn't cut into her neck)
2. Talked with the swim class people about how old Isaac needs to be for baby-and-me classes (3 months, get on the waitlist one month ahead)
3. ummm. Had a third one but forgot it (I blame sleep dep)

Anyway, feeling the flow of the currents of life today. Seems like the pace has picked up even as the length of days seems longer (for this I also assign some blame to sleep dep...)

exploring wirelessness

So as you can see on the left, I've been dumping occasional tidbits onto Twitter via my blackberry I have from work.

I'm also writing this post from said blackberry. I guess in addition to a new baby around the house, I'm getting in touch with my inner blogger.

That said, I don't generally see the attraction of leaving behind a constant stream of sound bites. It's been a cool novelty, but I don't think I have a strong enough itch for self-expression to need to scratch it that way.

Twittering a birth

I didn't think I was being particularly clever by jotting notes down about Isaac's birth via twitter. I'd just joined and was messing around.

Now I know I wasn't even being that original. Googling 'twitter pitocin' led me to finding this oldest account of twitlivery of a baby on July 15, 2007. I'm a year late to the party, it seems. Also, she's a bit hard-core. Of the other dozen odd accounts, we were all husbands, and Carmen's account was the only account from the driver's seat, so to speak.

Isaac Lorenzo Gilbert-Fagen

We settled on a middle name: Lorenzo

For those of you not following along at home, that would make the following updated thusly....
Tale of the tape:

• Name: Isaac Lorenzo Gilbert-Fagen


• Born: June 2, 2008 18:37 PDT


• Weight: 7lb 8oz


• Height: 20 1/4"


• Mom & baby: happy & healthy


• Dad: ditto

Netflix Player by Roku

I was really thrilled to hear today that people buying Roku's new set-top box for the Netflix Watch Instantly service is backordered by 10 days. Well, not so thrilled since I just ordered mine, but happy that the device is so popular.

Bacterially Generated Buckytubes

I'm a fan of the concept of a space elevator. I'd love to be able to see this technology envisioned by Arthur Clarke in the 70's become reality some time before I die. One of the biggest obstacles to the creation of the a space elevator is a breakthrough in the material science necessary to build a tether.

There are some promising bits of work being done on carbon fiber and buckytubes, but the last I heard, there were scaling problems. Sure, we can generate a fiber a few millimeters long that's strong enough, but getting from there to 100,000km is still a really big leap.

What if someone genetically engineered a bacteria that had some chlorophyll in it and had a predilection for growing a buckytube tail? Now you stick a vat in the sunlight and start pulling the thread... Voila! space elevator tether!

Did I mention that I was hiring?

I'm currently looking for three different people to fill three different jobs here at Netflix?. The first is a QA engineer for our Instant Viewing on the PC client. The second is a QA Engineer for the Netflix API team. The third is a QA Engineer for the Customer Account team.

While each of those job descriptions has a list of technical requirements, I need someone (three someones) who can understand the why of testing just as much as they understand the how of testing. A particular tool in your toolbox isn't as important as knowing how to select the right tool for the job (or even learn a new one). Likewise, having demonstrated prior experience in knowing where to apply your tools for the greatest effect is more important than any particular bit of prior experience with a particular technology.

I've been toying with a mission statement for my group:

Economically review changes in order to prevent, detect and mitigate impaired customer experiences.

If this somehow speaks to you, I'd love to hear from you what you think it means. I might want you to apply yourself to that mission.

Software Plasticity and Risk: The Search

After writing yesterday's post, I decided that it might be a good idea to take a look and see if anyone else was using plasticity in the sense that I was trying to use it, or if there was an already established notion of plasticity that I'd be swimming upstream against.

Again, my notion of plasticity is: how changeable is the system in question balanced against the cumulative risk to the business of the change itself and the risk to the business of actually making the changes.

I found a couple links via Google. The first was from a paper submitted to a 2004 conference in Hamburg, Germany. It discussed the concept of a new widget type, "the comet", that would adapt its function based on the execution context. Not exactly what I was after. The second was a link to the same paper from a different source. Then, surprisingly, the third entry was my blog post from yesterday.

In the fourth position, was a blog page that was just a click through to the real article which was actually discussing the use of aspect oriented programming (AOP) and the concept of software plasticity. In reviewing it, this appeared to be more of a discussion of how to apply AOP as a debugging tool, rather than how to build and maintain a system in the context of keeping a business running and satisfying customers.

After that it seemed to get a little random, except for a link to a PDF on UI plasticity. The article referenced by the top link continued to show up an awful lot from a bunch of different sources as well. I took a look at Yahoo search and Dogpile. Came up with the same set of stuff.

From this survey, it seems like there hasn't really been a lot of thinking published on the web about the development effects of the plastic nature of software, and especially when evaluating plasticity within the context of business risk.

I guess I'll keep flogging it and see if anything useful comes of it.

Software Plasticity and Risk

I've been toying with the concept of plasticity with respect to software. I've also been thinking about the software development process and how plasticity relates to the risks introduced by making changes to software.

Think about using a scale from 1 to 10 to describe how plastic a software product is. A one (the least plastic software product) would be a consumer electronics device where the software is embedded and it's impossible to update the software. Examples would include a portable DVD player or a digital clock radio. A ten would be something like a website (perhaps like the Netflix website or Instant Viewing PC client -- and I happen to be hiring one or two QA Engineers), where if there are defects discovered, they can be fixed quickly by pushing new code to the servers, and instantly, all users get the new code.

Then, think about the risks you run by making changes. My canonical examples to contrast the risk of changes usually go something like this:

1. We're updating the encryption key that we use to encrypt the credit cards for our members. We test this very thoroughly. The risks to the business are very large if there's a screwup and the benefits of avoiding screwups are equally large. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to invest a lot in testing.

2. We're modifying how we format the pages for different genres of movies so that boxshots are right aligned instead of left aligned. Not a lot of risk for damaging the business there. We may not even do any formal QA and leave it up to the UI engineers to make sure they get that one right.

I haven't worked out the details yet for measuring risk vs. plasticity, but I imagine some kind of matrix with plasticity across the top and different software components down the side. The intersection of each row and column would have some metric that boils down the cost to fix, the cost to deploy, the risk of change and the risk to the business. Then, during the course of normal development, or in the case of an emergency, evaluate the proposed change on those four dimensions to come up the metric for that change and compare to the matrix for where the change lies. If there's a net positive risk/reward, do the change immediately in the case of a fix to production. Likewise, if it's part of the normal development cycle, then if there's a positive risk/reward, allocate the QA resources to fully test. If there's not adequate reward for testing, or the risk to the business is low enough, dedicate the limited QA resources elsewhere in that push cycle.

Comments?

OLPC Laptops Delivered Today

I ordered two of the OLPC via the Give One Get One program. They just got delivered today.

I think that perhaps I'm more excited about them than the girls will be when I give them to them for Christmas.

I'm going to unpack and boot them up after the girls go to bed tonight to... um... make sure they work! Yeah, that's it!

More news as I have it.

----

So now, it's tomorrow morning, and I took a look at the laptops last night. They're pretty cool. They work as expected. They're not quite as peppy as I'd have hoped, but they're certainly not sluggish.

I still have to figure out how to get the wi-fi to connect to our secured WAP. I guess the answer might be in the support forum. Duh.

Well the boxes are wrapped, so I guess I'll play with wi-fi after Christmas Day.

I didn't play too much with the apps. I recorded a short video of myself. I played with the 'measure the distance between two laptops' widget. That last one made a sound that was really annoying to my wife. Might have to restrict usage of that app to outside or downstairs.

The video was kind of grainy, but sort of cool to see.

It will be interesting to see how intuitive the interface is for a relatively computer-naive child.

I guess I'll post those impressions after Eloise (6) and Lucy (4) get ahold of the machines in a couple days.

Give One Get One for "One Laptop Per Child" is in Effect

I just put in my order earlier yesterday for two laptops under the OLPC "Give One Get One" program.

I got one for each of my daughters, and I feel a little warm and fuzzy that two children I'll probably never meet will have an opportunity to explore the digital world.

Providing my own children with that opportunity for discovery made the expenditure of a couple days wages seem like a pretty good deal.

Pokerstars Blogger Tourney

I played in that this afternoon. Got about an hour into it before getting busted. I actually feel that I played fairly well. I was patient until I played my first hand that turned into the nut flush, and I managed to extract 3k where if I'd just jammed with the nuts I don't think I would have gotten the call. I also managed to get away from a hand where I'd semi-bluffed on the flop and followed through on the turn to lay it down to a big re-raise. Final hand was A8o vs A9o who was in the big blind. Couldn't think of a way that I could have gotten away from it, and am kind of surprised the other guy called. He was fond of saying 'donkey', so I expect he's a "hardened professional" and goes looking for marginal hands that he can "get sucked out on" with.

Anyway, I had a good time. Since I busted out so quickly, I was able to substitute for my wife on taking the kids to see "Ratatouille".

Side note. Firefox spell-check thinks I misspelled ratatouille. The suggested correction is "bouillabaisse". Very freaky.

Anyway, Jen was going to take care of the kids so I could play in the tourney, and part of it was to take them to this animated feature (which is her absolute least favorite genre of cinema). Since I busted out, I took the kids instead. We get about 85% of the way through. We see the false happy ending and start heading down into the reversal and Lucy starts crying that she doesn't want to watch any more. I ask Eloise if she's ok to watch the end alone if I take Lucy out into the hall to wait, and she says ok. Big mistake on my part. I take Lucy outside and get her calmed down. We start to go down the hall to the bathroom, and all of a sudden, Eloise comes screaming out of the theatre and down the hall. She's scared, doesn't want to watch any more. She's in full on screaming tears mode. She forgot her water bottle in the theater. I calm her down, everyone uses the bathroom. I go back in the theater to get the water bottle. We head home.

One good thing is that as we walk back towards the car, we discover Beard Papa's Sweet Shop. Verrrrrry tasty cream puffs. I'd heard of them from a parent at a birthday party that Eloise had gone too. Worth the trip.

It's that time of the year again

Pokerstars.com is having their annual blogger's tournament. I might as well give it a try (assuming I can talk Jen into giving me some time at noon on Oct 14).

Here's the verification stuff:

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 6402628

Another Prosper Listing

I haven't plugged anyone on Prosper for a while, but I think this listing deserves some attention. He seems like he's got his plan together and just needs a little help digging out from underneath high interest credit card debt.

As a little reminder, if you sign up through the link above and help fund his loan, both you and I will get $25.

Followup on the July Prosper Listing

So I was beating pretty hard on MWALKER650's Prosper listing. She got funded, but the community finally got so enthusiastic about her loan that I was underbid and didn't get a piece of the action.

What a bummer. I'm glad she got funded though. It was an interesting experience providing advice on how to improve the listing. Just helped out a bit to much, I suppose...

Alright you slackers, cough up the dough

You may have been reading where I've been promoting this loan on prosper.com, and you may be getting sick of reading about it.

Well, one way to stop me from posting over and over and over again would be to:

1. join prosper (you get $25 FOR FREE!)
2. fund this loan
3. enjoy the warm feeling of helping someone get out from under the grinding heel of the consumer debt peddlers.

Do the right thing, peeps.

Something I forgot from yesterday

There's something that I've been telling myself as I've been running (which I didn't do this morning -- website issues got me out of bed at 5:50 and now the kids are up, and I have to get into work).

That thing is:

The body can be trained to do whatever your mind has the will to train it to do.

This seems particularly applicable to the new style of running I've been trying. It's more painful (sometimes much more painful) but it seems to yield better progress overall.

From a strict pain/utility perspective, a slower continuous pace might seem to be optimal, but for a longer term perspective of no slowly degrading performance over time, I think it makes sense to train for the pain. That way I'll always know that I'm pushing things to the practical limit and won't slide down a slippery slope of complacency.

Only by having the will to train through the pain would I get to a better overall solution.

Running, running, running again

I was on a regimen of running 3 miles every other day. I got some new trail running shoes over the weekend. They inspired me, as new footwear often does. This week, I decided to start running every day. Not only did I decide to run every day, but I also decided to change my style of running.

Previously, I'd take off from house at an easy trot up the hill to Rancho San Antonio, and pace myself to keep at least shuffling along in a gait resembling a run the whole time. I'd slow down on the uphills and be out of breath at the top and then kind of coast down hill until I'd caught my breath.

The new plan is to run flat out until I can't run any more, and then walk at a brisk pace until I feel like I can start running again. I actually feel better for it. I think that I'm moving faster overall (but I suppose I could measure that).

I suspect that by training my body to keep moving at all costs, I was opening the door to a complacent pace. It seems that was a slippery slope to slowing down. The new regime will train my body to always be going flat out. While I can feel the lactic acid building up much more with this style (especially on the uphills), it seems like over the course of the week that the recovery period is getting shorter.

I'll keep you posted.

Here's another one

So you may recall that I've been promoting a loan for a young Bay Area woman trying to get herself out of debt. In the course of communicating with the other lenders who were trying to fund a loan for her, I was referred to this listing.

She seems to be a little bit more of a risk, but it's a good story, and the other Prosper member says that she's been a pretty good communicator in their email exchanges. A smart girl in a tough position.

Once again, in the interest of full disclosure, if you sign up through one of the links above, both you and I will get a $25 sign-up bonus.

Trying again

So that gal that I was trying to help out through Prosper.com didn't get that loan funded. She's trying again, with some more information in the listing. If you'd like to help out, click on through

In the interest of full disclosure, if you sign up through the link above, both you and I will get a $25 sign-up bonus.

Someone who could use a little help

Would you like to make $25 while lending someone a helping hand?

Here's a listing from Prosper.com for someone who I think is listed as a 'high risk' borrower but really isn't a high risk.

She appears to have a good head on her shoulders, understands that she's in a bit of a bind, but needs a little help to get out of the bind.

I'd encourage you to sign up and lend to her. I have. If you sign up through the link above and lend to her, you'll get $25 as a sign-up bonus, and so will I.

Looking again

I need to find a QA engineer. Here's a rough draft of the job description:

----------------

Senior Software Engineer in Test -- Customer Service Applications

THE ROLE

We are looking for someone who can own the process of reliably getting the good ideas out of our developers heads onto the desktops of our customer service reps. We are looking for someone familiar with testing enterprise applications built from web services, Oracle, SQL, PL/SQL and telephony integration in the customer service space.

Quality Assurance at Netflix is not about waiting for some code to fly over the wall from development. It's about providing an environment for the development engineers that helps them minimize the number of bugs that make it into the code in the first place. It's also about insuring that what works when we test continues to work as well when we deploy it. Working on our customer call center software, you will help the people that help our members solve their problems.

You will provide your expertise in understanding what to test, as well as how to test. Given a schedule that is always too short and a feature list that is always too long, you'll identify and efficiently evaluate those changes to our software that pose the greatest risk to the smooth and effective operation of the customer service staff.

RESPONSIBILITIES

* Validate and verify the correct operation of the customer service application
* Advocate designs that are usable by the customer service representatives
* Collaborate with customer service management to design a complete system that meets business needs
* Bridge any communication gaps between the development and operational teams supporting the system
* Improve and extend the automated regression test suite and production monitoring tools

QUALIFICATIONS

Must have:
* 5+ years of white box 3-tier application testing, building and deployment
* Deep experience with Oracle and PL/SQL or equivalent database systems
* Experience with Java/jUnit or C#/nUnit development and testing
* Experience with testing high-traffic, highly scaling, multi-threaded software design
* A Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science or equivalent engineering experience

Nice to have:

Familiarity with contact center technology (e.g. CTI, IVR, CRM)
Familiarity with use of .NET Remoting, Web Services, 3rd party .NET controls, TestComplete

----------------

Email me if you're interested.

Fiction writing

You should never see the phrase "I woke up and went through my usual routine" or anything like it in fictional stories. The point of writing the story is to give insight into the character. If the reader doesn't already know what the character's 'usual routine' is, then they will infer that the character's routine is just like their own, which is probably very boring. If your character usually runs out onto the patio to chase away the squirrel at the bird feeder, you should tell your reader.

Real Life on Second Life

I saw a pretty funny movie when I was visiting Valleywag today. It was about what real life would look like if real life were like Second Life.

Prosper

So there's this service out there that hooks up lenders and borrowers and trims out a lot of the fat of more traditional financial institutions by using an auction to set the rate.

There's a button off to the left that you can use to click thru and signup. If you want to be involved in lending money, get a much better rate than a savings account, and maybe help some good folks with a better rate than they'd ever get from a credit card or bank, then you can make $25 at the same time I make $25.

You can also click through just below.

Run for the WSOP 2007

Yesterday was my annual attempt to get a seat in the WSOP at the Oaks Card Club in Emeryville, CA. The format is no-limit holdem, with a $100+25 buy in and a single $100 rebuy. The top twenty were paid both cash and points towards a freeroll in which the top five prizes are WSOP seats ranging from the $10k main event down to a $1500 ducat. First place gets 20 points and 20th place gets 1 point. As of the start of the tourney yesterday, the bubble for the top 75 (who would be those invited to the freeroll) stood at 16 points, or a 5th place finish. That was likely to become 17 points after the day was out and possibly become 18 (but that was unlikely). So I went in to the game looking for 4th place or better.

My results were unspectacular, busting some time in the 2nd round after the rebuy period ended. With QQ I raised to 600 with 100-200 blinds UTG and was put all-in for 1500 more before the flop by AJo in middle position. The ace on the turn ruined my day.

More impressive was my father-in-law Tony's performance. Last year, he took 25th place when 20 places were paid. This year, he managed to make it all the way to 8th place, and probably could have done better had his KK not been vanquished by 55 which turned a set. 8th place paid $1,015 and 14 points. The $1k paid for his entry last year, this year, and now he'll be back again next year. The 14 points wasn't enough to make the freeroll, but he was busy weekend after next anyway.

I'll be back again next year.

Separated at birth: David Foley and Ira Glass

So, we received in the mail a preview DVD of the new collaboration between the Showtime cable network and the Public Radio International show, This American Life. My wife and I watched it, and we got to see Ira Glass for the first time. My first thought was "That's David Foley. This must be a gag." However, once I heard the voice, it was clear that it was our old buddy Ira.

See for yourself (Ira's on the left and David's on the right):


My wife thinks I'm nuts, and that they look absolutely nothing alike.

Star of the Show

This is my daughter Lucy.


She was in the Club Med 'Petite Club' end-of-the-week show. She did a group number,

and then she was the star of a second segment.

Rob on the trapeeze at Ixtapa Club Med

My family went to the Ixtapa Club Med in February 2007, and I took a turn on the flying trapeeze. Excellent experience that I'd recommend to anyone.

2007 SAP Open

At the 2007 SAP Open tennis tournament, I saw a match today with Bjorn Phau. He showed incredible sportsmanship while playing in the first round against Konstantinos Economidis. A ball that Phau hit to Economondis was out, but not called out by the line judge. Economidis returned it, and Phau having seen that his ball was out, let the return go by, giving the point to Economidis. Phau went on to win the match and advance to the second round.

He was graceful, both in his stroke and his approach to the game. Quite refreshing to see someone acting professionally in a professional sport.

Memorial for Grace Alice Gilbert-Fagen

My wife Jennifer and I expected our third child on January 1. Unfortunately, when we went in on Thursday, January 4 to induce labor, they weren't able to find a heartbeat. Jennifer had been in on Tuesday, January 2 for a non-stress test, and the baby was happy and healthy from all indications.

While delivering the baby, we discovered that there had been a cord accident. The cord had wrapped very tightly twice around her neck some time late Tuesday night and become compressed to the point where blood flow was blocked. In every other way, she was a perfect baby.

We decided to call her Grace Alice Gilbert-Fagen.On Saturday, February 3, we had a memorial service for Grace at our home. Family, friends and co-workers showed up to support us in our moment of great sadness. Jennifer and I both said a few words. Jennifer read the following poem:

Emily Dickinson (1830–86).
Complete Poems. 1924.

Part Three: Love

XXXIII

I HELD a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: “’T will keep.”

I woke and chid my honest fingers —
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.

I read something that I had written for the occasion:

Last spring, I wrote a poem.
It was a short poem, only 23 lines long.
Into that poem I put everything that I am:
all of my hopes, all of my dreams, and all of my love for my family.

I gave that poem to Jennifer, and she bound it into a book.
It was a short book, with only 23 pages to start, but plenty of room to grow.
She put into that book everything that she is:
all of her hopes, all of her dreams and all of her love for our family.

We waited patiently, and in the case of Eloise and Lucy not so patiently,
for the author to arrive. We wondered what the story might turn out to be.
We wondered if the author might be an artist, like Eloise.
We wondered if the author might be a gymnast, like Lucy.
We wondered if the author might be a dreamer, like me.
We wondered if the author might be the best of all possible people, like Jennifer.

The cover was beautiful, the spine was strong, and the pages were smooth and blank.
The book was perfect. The pages were ready for the author to write the story.

But in the end, when the book was delivered, the author was missing.
A tragic accident took the author from us before the story could even get started.
Grace Alice Gilbert-Fagen will never have the chance to write her own story.
And so, in her honor, we who love her, gather to write the epilogue.

Senator Tim Johnson Conspiracy Theories

Well, I just checked google, and there aren't any conspiracy theories that have yet surfaced about Senator Johnson. I certainly wish him well, both for his own sake, and for the sake of the country.

Just seems to me that we should check him for any Polonium that George W. Putin, or one of his minions, left lying around.

Employment opportunities redux

Here's an excerpt from an email I sent to a friend who was telling me that she didn't want to commute quite as far as Los Gatos for a job:

Anyway, if you *were* working, and there was anyone that you'd want to have on your team again, let me know who they are. They're not necessarily even traditional QA people. Anyone who is smart, curious and diligent, and who understands how computers work qualifies.

I'm trying to build a different brand of QA. It's the java engineers who are ultimately responsible for the correctness, completeness and scalability of their product -- you can't test in any of those attributes. All QA can do is assess whether those attributes exist and advise the developers on any significant lack.

I'm not looking for someone who knows silktest or loadrunner or even jUnit inside and out. I want someone who can understand the fact that our business is driven by three things: 1. customers can sign up, 2. customers can add movies to their queue, 3. customers get discs shipped to them

Everything else is just syntactic sugar that dresses up our core semantics.

So, as I've mentioned before, I'm looking for a couple of people who are interested in addressing the issue of software quality at Netflix, and I'm NOT looking for a browser-poker or someone who dreams up test cases for an offshore outfit to throw warm bodies at.

If you want to help us run with scissors, apply

Free Blockbuster Rentals for Netflix Customers

On HackingNetflix there is an article about being able to take the address flap from your Netflix rental envelope into a Blockbuster store and getting a free rental. I wonder if BBI is harvesting the addresses for targeted direct mail campaigns? That free movie might not only be costing you the gas to drive there, but it might cost you a bunch of future junk mail, too.

Employment opportunities

Most people think of Netflix as either a movie company, or a logisitics company, because on the surface, we appear to buy DVDs from the studios and just mail a bunch of plastic around the country.

However, the secret sauce to the business is that we're really a software company. We're solving problems in how to scale the website to serve 20 million members (Java, Oracle). We're working on machine learning problems (like the Netflix Prize) and scaling problems with our recommendations engine (C++, mysql). I'm most closely involvd in figuring out how quality fits in to all of these development processes. I'm changing the role of a QA engineer from someone who pokes at a browser to someone who writes software to test software.

Then there's all the stuff that the back end teams do (logisitics, inventory, order generation). Once all the software's figured out, it has to run somewhere, and we need good system admins, DBAs and managers for those people that can plan for growth and install, configure and deploy to that plan.

The key thing is that we aren't doing this with an army of developers like an eBay, Yahoo or Google. We've got a relatively small team of really smart software engineers solving problems in an efficient and clever manner. A very deeply ingrained cultural value here is to only hire very senior people who understand how to solve problems, and then go and solve them. It's how we've been able to scale from just over 1MM customers when I joined 3.5 years ago to nearly 6MM customers today. The team that builds the website hasn't grown by more than 10-15% over that time, and we've added a ton of new stuff to the site. It's all because we don't scale the business by doing what we were doing just with more people; we scale through clever automation.

There's a list of what's open at our jobs page, but if there's something that anyone's specifically interested in, let me know. We're always looking for the right kind of person more than we're looking for a particular technology or skill.

I stuck the equivalent of two dead bodies in the ground today

That would be the six bags of concrete that weighed sixty pounds each. I'm building an emergency shed out in back of the house. This has been a bit of a saga, going on for the better part of eight months. Maybe I'll tell that whole tale some other time. For now, I can share the more 'concrete' part of the story.

If you haven't worked with concrete then you may be underestimating, to a great degree, my latest foe. Six bags of portland cement, sand and small rocks. Each bag is 0.45 cubic feet of concrete. A half a cubic foot sounds pretty small. It is pretty small when you're trying to do a footing around the perimeter of a 8'x10' shed foundation. I did six bags on Sunday and six bags today while waiting for an air conditioning repairman to show up. It only took me an hour to mix and distribute the six bags, but that was the longest stinking hour of my life. Add on top of that the effort to get the 360 pounds (hence, the two dead bodies reference) of dry concrete down from the garage to the shed site, and I didn't have to go running this morning to get a workout. I considered whether to cut down the amount of water I was mixing in, to balance out the amount of sweat dripping off me that was falling into the mixing trough.

I actually have about 4 more bags to go, then I can actually start assembling the shed on the flat, level foundation that I've built. I'll try to snap some pictures so you all can mock my efforts.

You looking for a job? I'm looking for someone to work!

As you may or may not recall, I'm the QA manager for the Netflix website. I've also been given the responsibility to manage our customer service call center application. If you fit the following description and also happen to like the idea of the job, drop me a line or even better, apply directly.

------------------------------

Senior Quality Assurance Engineer — Customer Service Automation

The Position:
Join Netflix and help insure that every member who has a problem gets that problem solved quickly and effectively. Working on our customer call center software, you will help the people that help our members.

You will provide your expertise in understanding what to test, as well as how to test. Given a schedule that is always too short and a feature list that is always too long, you'll identify and efficiently evaluate those changes to our software that pose the greatest risk to the smooth and effective operation of the customer service staff.

We are looking for an experienced engineer with a background testing applications involving .NET, Oracle, SQL, PL/SQL, telephony integration, email and customer service application user interfaces.

Responsibilities:
• Validate and verify the correct operation of the customer service application
• Continuously improve and extend the automated regression test suite

You are:
• An advocate for the customer service representatives with regard to usable system design
• An advocate for customer service management with regard to accuracy and completeness of the system
• A bridge between the development organization and the operational groups supporting the system

Qualifications:
• 5+ years of rich GUI client application testing, building and deployment
• Deep experience with Oracle and PL/SQL or equivalent database systems
• Experience with C# and nUnit development and testing
• Experience with testing high-traffic, highly scaling, multi-threaded software design
• Able to work autonomously and flexible enough to shift priorities based on changing needs of the business
• Familiarity with use of .NET Remoting, Web Services, 3rd party .NET controls, TestComplete, Parasoft .TEST and Tuvox are all plusses
• A Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science or equivalent engineering

Harder's getting easier every day

A few days ago, I wrote about running, and how sometimes it wasn't physically difficult, but mentally difficult to put my body in an active state. I guess sometimes if you can distract the mind, the body will do what it has to.

Case in point, today while running, I was tangling with a statistical problem. There are performance monitoring tools built in to the Netflix website server that keep track of how long it takes to do stuff along the way to presenting a page to a member. We call them tracers. We keep track of the average execution time, how many times it's executed and also buckets for ranges of execution time. For example, we keep track of how many times it took less than 10 milliseconds, and how many times it took 10-50 milliseconds, 50-100 milliseconds, etc. Using them, we can diagnose the health of the system and discover if a recent change is the source of site problems.

I am studying whether we can learn if the system is healthy from comparing the skew of that distribution of buckets. I'd worked out a database query that gave me a value for skew, but I was measuring the skew of the number of hits per bucket, instead of the skew of all the values of all the individual hits (which is what I actually want). For example, if the eight buckets have the values of (10, 14, 100, 20, 3, 0, 0, 0), I would a value based on those eight numbers, with a relatively high positive skew of 2.57, because the 100 is a pretty far outlier to the right, making this distribution of eight numbers 'pointy' on the positive end. What I was really after is the skew of the 147 individual data points with 10 instances of value 1, 14 of value 2, 100 for value 3, etc. This would have a much more neutral skew of -0.56 indicating that it's slightly pointy on the left.

Anyway, while pondering all of this, I was running along and didn't even have time to whine to myself about not wanting to be out there running, and it was over before I knew it. I think I made pretty good time today, too.

It's kind of bugging me that I lost track of another thought that I had running. Something to do with just a little bit of peril. Now I can't recall what it was. I guess maybe I need the inverse of an iPod. Something I can run with and dictate the flotsam that crosses my mind, and be able to play it back later.

Interesting page from ten years ago

I saw an interesting puzzle with a surprising answer while tripping around the net today looking for something else (isn't that always the way)?

The twist to the story entertained me, and the commentary following the twist moved me. Even though the commentary is going on ten years old, most parts are relevant or even more relevant today.

Easy's Getting Harder Every Day

So I run several times a week. Usually every other day. I go running in Rancho San Antonio near my home. Usually just under three miles. Some uphill and some downhill and some flats. Several weeks back, I was running and thought about what it would take to run across America. After all, Interstate 80 runs from San Francisco all the way to New York City. 3000 miles at three miles a day. A thousand days. Just about three years. I could do that, easy. Be kind of hard to only do three miles a day, though. I get through my three miles in 20-30 minutes, usually. I could probably slow down a bit and do 30 miles a day over the course of 10 hours of stops and starts. That gets it down to 100 days. Start in San Francisco in April with nothing but a running outfit and a credit card, then run and walk the whole day. Go to sleep whereever you're at and do it again the next day. Might be able to make it to Manhattan for the Fourth of July.

That seemed doable a few weeks ago (even if a little crazy). Lately, though, it's been harder to get up the hills, and even going down the hills has been awkward and sluggish. Now, running across the country seems not only crazy, but impossible. The hardest part of exercise is willfully putting myself into a state of discomfort. I know that I'll feel good when I'm done, but overcoming that inertia is the biggest obstacle. Once I'm going and I'm away from the house, then it's easier to go, but those first several scores of steps are hard.

I wish I could write

I want to write the perfect paragraph. I want it to enfold the sum of all human desire. I want it to motivate the world to do well by others. I want it to have rhythm and grace. I want it to enrapture all readers and purge them of ill intentions. I want honesty and freedom and the ability for all to reach the pinnacle of who they can be. I want to believe in the best of all possible worlds, and I want to believe that the world we live in is that world.

Googling me

So, I decided to type in my name "Rob Fagen" in the Google search box to see what comes up. Here it is:

The ADB Drinking game (me)
"DBs in Vegas" (me)
Google Groups: rec.gambling.poker (me)
Membership Directory (not me)
About STLAHA (not me)
[PDF] Gambler (me)
Radio Days--and Nights (me)
Council defers appointment to Planning Commission -- Los Altos ... (me)
The First Tee of The Seacoast Home Page (not me)
[PDF] TUESDAY, MEETING DATE (me)


Not bad... only three out of ten misses, and the top three were me. Interesting that the oldest stuff is ranked the highest. Not one mention of this blog, though. I guess maybe after this entry gets indexed that I might see more of me.

But it's good for you, isn't it?

The hardest part for me about running, or any exercise for that matter, is willfully putting myself in a state of discomfort. If there was a magical machine that could stress my muscles for me, then I don't think I'd mind the puffing, sweating and thumping heart pain. It might violate the Geneva Convention, but it would be easier to exercise if I were able to abdicate responsibility for continuing.

I guess that's part of what makes a top-tier athlete: the ability to push past limits and train yourself to go past limits that stop everyone else.

That's probably what makes for a top-tier anything.

Sudoku Combat

The Sudoku Combat blog discusses the change history of a really good online Sudoku challenge game. I like it. A little quirky, but it gets the game on with some competition (which always adds a little spice!).

Well, so much for that.

Hrmph. So I'm sit down to play in the Pokerstars blogger championship. First hand of the tournament, and I get the big blind. First bad sign. I get 83 off-suit. Second bad sign. There are a couple of callers, and I check. Flop comes K83 rainbow. I check. Late position caller makes a pot sized bet, everyone folds between him and me, and I raise to 450. He comes back over the top, all-in. I have him on a King for sure, and anything but an 8 or a 3. However, I'm in for a rude awakening when he turns over K8 off-suit. I somehow managed to not find one of the other two 3's in the deck. I wished him good-luck and went on my way. I guess I may have been overaggressive in calling the all-in. Still sucks.

Maybe another shot at the Big Dance?

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 2521058

That $100 Laptop Again

There is a place where you can pledge to purchase one of the OLPC laptops for $300 if 99,999 other people also pledge to do so by Oct 31, 2006. With that $300 purchase, you'd be getting one of the laptops for yourself and funding two more for the children elsewhere who are the focus of the program.

I'd recommend pledging. It was featured on Slashdot a week or two ago and got a big spike in pledges, but it's tapered back off. Projected pledges by the deadline are about 7,000.

Given Up

So, I've given up on the Full Tilt freeroll series. The play is just too crazy to continue investing the time. For the 27 events I entered, I had a best finish of 134 out of 1800. My worst finish was 1714th. You may recall that a seat plug averaged 269th.

My average finish was 646, with a stdev of 392. My median finish was 581. If my finishes were normally distributed, I should have had a cumulative chance of finishing 36th or better of 5.96%, but I never made good on it.

After the 9th attempt, I started keeping track of my finishing hands. Of the 18 where I kept track, I got my money in with far the best of it 9 times (things like AA cracked by KK, or AA vs AxQc and four clubs came).

They play being uniformly horrendous didn't really help me as much as I thought it might. It kind of worked against me in that no matter how many times I went in with a 2:1 or 3:1 or 14:1 advantage, there's be some nutcase still out there that would draw out on me.

Back in the saddle again

FullTiltPoker is running a promotion consisting of twice daily freerolls of up to 1800 entrants, where the top 36 from each event roll up into a weekly freeroll of about 1000 entrants, of which the top 9 from each week in a given month join frequent players and other good customers of the service in a tourney where the top 20 are given $10k seats for the big dance. They're giving away 20 seats per month for the next five months.

I found the combination of:

1. free
   
2. often
   
3. convenient
   

to be too much to not obsess over.

So, I discussed with my lovely wife whether she would divorce me and/or kick me out of the ouse if I decided that I wanted to try and win a seat through this series. This in mind of the fact that I've already taken my yearly foray at the Oaks, as earlier reported. This in mind of the fact that she and I had previously discussed my annual foray being executed on-line, instead of in a cardroom, and that was roundly rejected as the temptation and availability of playing online for money was too disquieting to her.

In preparation for this discussion, I ran an experiment. I installed the client and registered for one of the daily tourneys and then just left the seat unoccupied to be blinded away, just to see how long it lasts. My hypothesis being that with the insanity of free play, I wanted to see how long it took for the 'real' tourney to begin. Turns out that of the 1800, generally 1300 of them are gone in the first hour. My test subject lasted until 283rd place.

That's a lot of crazy and/or dead money in there, I decided.

Armed with these facts, Jen & I had our discussion, and she actually agreed to a trial run. A big part of it is that they dailys generally start after the kids are in bed and are running when we are usually just watching TV or reading in bed, anyway.

So, I get to play in the dailys until:

1. I win a seat
   
2. I'm too grumpy in the morning to take care of the kids
   

I've played in four of them so far, and have not finished higher than the low 400's. Three of these times I went in with the best of it, and the most recent time was ended with a total brain fart with a double gutter on the flop to which I made the idiot end of a straight. I was actually on my A-game up to that point and had about a 4x average stack. I am not as upset and I could be about the brain fart, as up to that point, I'd identified and avoided stupid situations I'd fallen for in the past, as well as having identified and exploited obvious weaknesses in other players to take pots.

So, for now, I'm in and I'm stoked. I still have faint hopes for the Oaks freeroll, but now I've got a second chance.

I figure that given the competition, I'm about a 500:1 against getting a seat. With each of the three rounds taking about 5 hours from start to finish, it could be as little as 15 hours to get a $10k seat. An additional part of their promotion is if you play on FTP money and get to the final table, you get $50k extra prize money, $100k for top three and $10MM if you win the event. The $10MM is $1MM/year for 10 years as part of an endorsement contract, where you have to play 10 hrs/week on FTP and promise to wear only their t-shirts.

Anyway, hopefully see you at the WSOP :)

I Heart Lemurs

Apparently so does this guy. A rather comprehensive collection of everything you'd ever want to know about lemurs of all types. Also some good pictures of the critters, like rruffed02.jpg and ringtailed07.jpg

Originally, I posted direct links to the pictures, but the host appears to be blocking access from external referrers. Maybe I can cut & post them here...

Not Visiting South Dakota Any Time Soon

I was disheartened to read a story about S.D. passing a law making abortion illegal, even when the mother was raped or if the fetus is endangering her life.

This seems reactionary to the point of irrationality. There were, of course, the required quotes from Operation Rescue. It made me think, how come there isn't an 'Operation Choice.'

Instead of Operation Rescue people blocking access to clinics and acting in an intimidating way towards women choosing to exercise control over their reproductive functions, Operation Choice people would provide emotional support and a calm environment within which a woman could make a considered and informed decision about a very important thing going on in her body.

I didn't mean to be a politician

So I was recently up for consideration to be part of Los Altos, CA's Planning Commission. I actually live in the County of Santa Clara, not within the city limits of Los Altos proper. I do have a Los Altos postal mail address, and do consider Los Altos to be the town I live in. However, this fine distinction became an issue, apparently.

I was in the past involved with the Bernal Heights East Slope Design Review Board when living in San Francisco, and I enjoyed the task of keeping an eye on the neighborhood architecturally, and providing a conduit for compromise between the needs of the existing neighbors and the needs of those wanting to improve their properties. So, when I saw an ad inviting applications for the Los Altos Planning Commission, I tossed my hat in the ring.

The original city council election almost four weeks ago resulted in a couple of congratulatory emails and welcomes to the commission. However, the next day, I heard from the City that there had actually been a tie in the voting that wasn't detected until after the meeting, and that there would be a run-off at the next council meeting. I thought it was no big deal, and raised the question about city vs county at that time. I was told that my address had been cleared through the registrar of voters, so I let the issue slip from my mind.

Between then and the next council meeting, I met with the one city councilperson who wasn't able to be at the original interview, and we seemed to get on quite well regarding the planning commission's job and what my role would be on it. We also discussed in passing where I live. It once again didn't seem to be an issue.

I came to find out that it actually is a very important issue. I guess I'll read the city council minutes when they get published to find out the details, or maybe I'll read the article in the next edition of the Town Crier, since I got an email from a reporter and spoke with her briefly on this subject.

How Can I Hire QA Engineers That Write Software?

Software is an interesting animal. It can do useful things like help you find movies you love. Software can also test other software to help insure that movie-lovers get the best possible movie-finding experience. I manage the quality assurance group for the Netflix website. For over a year, we've been aggressively pushing towards more test driven development. We've constructed a jUnit based automated framework for testing that lowers the barriers to unit test creation for the development engineers. We've integrated the EMMA code coverage tool with our nightly regression test runs to get a handle on how our level of testing is improving. We've developed code that allows us to execute tests within the context of our Tomcat application, relieving some of the burden of fixture and mock-object creation. What I'm having a much harder time doing is finding QA engineers that can wear both hats:

1. can analyze the underlying business and insure that the developed system accurately follows that model
2. can effectively develop software that automatically tests the website and underlying tiers in a relevant and productive way

I've looked on craigslist, LinkedIn and plumbed the depths of our recruiting database looking for this rare bird. Anyone out there have a good idea of where else to look?

The Story of My Life

Random bit of video that hits close to home on some points and just made me laugh on other points. Nicely produced mockumentary on the whole Dungeons & Dragons nerd theme.

Hamas & Israel

On NPR this morning, I heard a comment by an Israeli official that he would not sit down to negotiations with a Palestinian government led by Hamas. His statement was something like -- What are we going to negotiate, the means of our own destruction?

Part of Hamas' platform is the destruction of the state of Israel. This is clearly not a good way to make friends and influence people.

Perhaps Israel should not categorically refuse to sit down at the table with a Hamas led Palestinian Authority. Perhaps the answer to the question "What are we going to negotiate" has an obvious answer. Perhaps the first item on the agenda is the removal of the 'destruction' plank from Hamas' platform.

But I suppose it's easier for a diplomat to dig in his heels than to work towards a reasonable compromise. I can't say that I'm completely surprised. It's hard to work with someone who wants you dead, even if the best option for a first step is to get him to stop wanting you dead.

Herb Greenberg needs better listening skills

Let's look at what Greenberg is criticizing Netflix for:

Herbism #1 --

"So what if the "beat" was the result of lower general and administrative expenses?"

It would seem to me that the ability to improve the financial efficiency of a business by reducing unneccesary expense would be a good thing.

Herbism #2 --

"So what if higher margins for the quarter were largely the result of lower content costs?"

My assessment would be very positive if Netflix can leverage its increasing subscriber base to better negotiate with content providers, and can use its technology to steer customers to lower cost content that still makes the customer happy.

Herbism #3 & 4 --

"So what if average revenue per subscriber fell, hitting an all-time low, while subscription acquisition costs were up -- hitting an all-time high? So what if the company raised revenue and subscriber guidance while guidance for pre-tax earnings remained unchanged?"

Maybe Herb didn't listen to the conference call when Reed said that Netflix is going to first hit $50MM in pretax earnings and then grow that at 50% per year, then, everything else goes into marketing to accellerate growth, but SAC will never go above the lifetime subscriber value? Sounds like growing earnings to me. Sounds like accellerated subscriber growth without forcing economic losses on the business. Seems pretty efficient and well managed to me

Where I Work

It's kind of odd, because my new work address isn't yet in Google Maps. So, I got into the neighborhood and then painted in a splotch where there isn't yet a road. Enjoy.

Step one, get a million dollars...

So, over the weekend, I made my annual foray into the world of Bay Area tournament poker. I played at The Oaks Club in Emeryville in a No-Limit Hold'em tournament that is part of a series leading to a freeroll in June that will have as its first prize a $10k seat in the Big Dance. I've posted previously on last year's adventure.

I met my father-in-law there to guide him through his maiden voyage into the "wretched hive of scum and villany" that is Mos Eisley... err... Bay Area tournament poker. I got there a bit before noon and bought us both in to make sure last year's scheduling snafu didn't get repeated. Then we went off to lunch at a pretty good cafe within walking distance. I had the chicken & waffle, and he had the corned beef hash. Both tasty. We talked about strategy and the mechanics of the game in a cardroom, and in tournaments specifically.

We returned in time for the show, and sat down to play with 107 other hopefuls. I got one or two playable hands, and so at the end of the first three periods, had built my 1k starting stake into a whopping 1,240 (they use 20's instead of 25's at The Oaks). I rebought, and learned that F-I-L had rebought out of necessity a little bit earlier, but he had won a hand since then, and so had a bit over the 1,500 he got for the rebuy.

After the break, I got a couple hands, and in the next two rounds had built my stack up to a bit over 10k. Then I went cold. I didn't drag a pot until we got down to around 36 people left, and I was down to 2100 with 200 antes and 1000/500 blinds. Not looking good for the home team, but I woke up in middle position with QQ and it held up. Quadrupling through helped my attitude, even though I was still short stacked. From there, I built up to a peak of about 40-50k before busting out in 6th place. This gave me 5 points in the freeroll race. I figure I'm a longshot for playing again in June, but it could happen if the freeroll point distribution is heavily enough weighted towards a smaller group of regular tournament players. Of course, in the two weekly events played prior to yesterday, there were no repeaters. More news as it happens, if it happens.

F-I-L said he had a very good time, but it was exhausting. He managed to come in 25th, where 20 places were paid. An excellent showing considering that all he had was book larnin'.

Simply brilliant little applet

I saw this little applet on Jay Is Games and thought I'd share it here with you.




Originally seen here.

Followup on Uncle Frank

So, I was reading the Metro the other week, and I almost flipped past the letters to the editor. Then I happened to glance my name in the body of a letter with the title "I Hate Your Kid."

Seems that one of the alcholics took offense at my barbeque lament and told me to "stay away, whiner." I've decided not to send a response to the Metro pointing out to "K. Limon" that the article wasn't about Uncle Frank's or her watering hole "Francesca's", it was about how the article in the Metro was misleading about whether it was a 21-and-over joint or not.

I guess if she spent less time drinking and more time understanding what she reads, she might have picked up on that.

Funny translation

I ordered some stuff from amazon.fr, and I don't really speak French, but I can limp through the order process. However, sometimes I'll slap part of a web page or email into some kind of translator to make sure that I'm not asking them to send me a case of hot-buttered Lemurs.

Anyway, upon sending the order, I received an email containing this paragraph:

Cet e-mail vous informant de l'envoi de votre commande termine ainsi le traitement de votre commande et constitue l'acceptation du contrat de vente entre vous et Amazon.com International Sales.

which according to this free translation service means:

This e-mail informing you sending of your order finishes thus the treatment of your order and constitutes the acceptance of the sale contract between you and International Dirty Amazon.com.

I guess 'sales' in French means 'dirty' in English.

Silly graph of qubits

So, I've created this silly graph in a silly response to a silly post about the number of qubits we'll be able to compute with in the mysterious future!

Ridiculously funny and sometimes sophomoric

Found this in my wanderings today. It is a collection of ultra-condensed books. As an example:

Gravity's Rainbow
By Thomas Pynchon
Ultra-Condensed by Glenn Davis


Thomas Pynchon

A screaming thing comes across the sky. It's a V-2 rocket carrying twelve thousand pounds of symbolism, and it's coming down on your poor, deluded, postmodern head.



THE END

I say: brilliant!

Slashdot is kind of a stinker.

So, I saw a cool looking new style of keyboard and submitted the story to Slashdot. It was almost immediately rejected.

<ericCartman> Well, screw you guys, I'm going home.</ericCartman>

Old News

So, I was up late tonight working on a presentation, and I happened across this headline on Yahoo:

Blockbuster to miss online DVD rental target

Very exciting to read. Gave me a little lift. We up our short term guidance and tell people we'll be at 20 MILLION members not far past the end of the decade, and BBI is having trouble getting to 10% of that figure in the next year or two.

I have to admit to a guilty... well... not pleasure, and not even an indulgence. It's best described as a bad habit. I occasionally read the NFLX board on Yahoo Finance. Look through to see what's being said. I see a lot of nonsense on both the long and the short sides, but what really doesn't make sense to me is the rabidity of some of the short-siders.

They harp on the same things over and over again. They say there are no barriers to entry. Well, Walmart and Blockbuster might beg to differ on that point, because they've certainly both had their share of problems getting traction in this market. They talk about how video on demand will eat our lunch. Well, VOD has been around for a while, and our lunch is still sitting on the plate in front of us. We deliver, on demand, millions of individually selected movies to millions of individuals, week in and week out. For the next several years, you would be hard pressed to build a network that can move millions of movies worth of bits a day; until then, the USPS carrying DVDs is the king-kong of bandwidth (admittedly a very fat pipe with hellishly long latency between packets -- I wouldn't want to browse the web that way).

They talk about how we can't sustain growth, that we churn off a bazillion customers a month. I can't fathom why they don't understand that even when we lose 5% of the customer base, we still have convinced 95% of our customers to keep giving us money. We've also convinced a bunch of new people to start giving us money, and 95% of them will give us money the next month, and the next and the next. Are we expected to keep every customer around forever? We can't. It's kind of a 'frictional churn,' much like there's a 'frictional unemployment.' You can't ever get to full employment. Economists say it would cause the economy to explode.

People take breaks from Netflix. People come back. A great many of the people who leave tell us that they wish they didn't have to leave, and they tell us that even though they're leaving, they still recommend us, because they loved their experience so much. I'm insanely proud of the fact that I work for a company where people love us. It's gratifying to know that I'm on a team that's making a difference in people's lives. Admittedly, it's not curing cancer or eliminating poverty or global warming, but it's making people's lives richer, or at the very least, bringing some entertainment to them.

As gratified as I am by the warm wishes and happy customers, I'm equally puzzled by those people out there who for some reason wish us to fail. So, I guess in the end, maybe I shouldn't have been so cheerful about Blockbuster floundering. They're just folks with jobs, trying to do them the best they can. However, in any confict, there are winners and losers. If it takes a little viciousness to help insure my team comes out the winners, I suppose I'll pay that price. I just have to keep remembering that it's only business -- nothing personal BBI.

Highlander Hybrid

So, I sent in this question to the folks at Toyota regarding my disappointment with the Highlander Hybrid's fuel economy figures:

I waited with great anticipation the release of the hybrid Highlander. My family could really use a vehicle with a third row of seating since the birth of my second daughter just over two years ago. The obstacle preventing us from getting an SUV or wagon in all that time has been gas consumption. In the light of recent increases in gas prices, that obstacle has gotten even higher. Based on the mileage performance of the Prius compared to conventional cars in its class, I expected that I'd be able to get a vehicle with more room and still get better mileage than with my current small sedan when the Highlander Hybrid came out. I was exceptionally disappointed when initial reports from the real world indicated that the actual gas consumption when driven by real people on real streets was on a par with other vehicles in the same class as the Highlander. The reports of the Highlander's excellent performance didn't do much for me. Not wanting to give up, I talked with a sales representative at a local dealership, and I asked him if there was an option to turn down the performance in exchange for better fuel economy. With the high degree of computer control in the vehicle, this seemed like a natural and relatively inexpensive feature to include. He told me that there was no such option. I'm writing you to ask whether such an option is actually available that maybe the sales rep didn't know about. I'd also like to request that an option such as this be made available. If it were possible to degrade the 0-60 time by 50% in exchange for 30% better gas mileage, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. I'd even pay extra for that feature. Thanks for your time.

I'll let y'all know what they say, if they say anything.

The No Tilt Poker Zone

So, look what I found while avoiding work and wandering aimlessly thorugh the halls of blogger.com in the wee hours... The No Tilt Poker Zone. Quite possibly someone I know/knew, but they're being anonymous.

Adsense Is Very Strange

So I write a post earlier about Statler & Waldorf, two Muppets. Then, I go look at my blog today and see four ads for "Hotel Waldorf" and "Waldorf Hotel Rome".

Pretty useless, I think. Maybe I'll take all the whoring off the page.

Supreme Court Nominee -- Harriet Miers

I was a little taken aback and discouraged when I did a little sniffing for info on Ms. Miers this morning. I saw this page on answers.com:



note the ads on the right:



Doesn't give me a warm fuzzy that Google's AdSense thinks that Intelligent Design is a good matchup for people interested in this particular person.

Uncle Frank Broke My Heart

I read an article in the Metro about Uncle Frank's BBQ last week, and planned a trip for Friday to go get a slice of smoked heaven. Unfortunately, I planned this trip to include my family. One critical point not mentioned in the article was that Francesca's, the dive bar in which Frank's is housed, is 21-and-over. The only way into Frank's is through Francesca's.

When I walked in with my wife and my two daughters (4 and 2 years old), we were greeted by a woman screeching, "You're not allowed in here with them. Get on out." This was as she made a shoo-ing gesture with her arm. I peered in to look behind the bar for someone tending, and said, "But we're here for the restaurant, not for the bar."

I had hopes that the rules might be like in Nevada, where children are allowed to pass through the casino on the way to somewhere else in the hotel. I was encouraged by a man also sitting at the bar who told the woman to be quiet, and beckoned us towards the back. Encouraged, the four of us walked through to the back, and I asked the man at the register if we could eat here with the kids.

He was really apologetic and kind about it as he told me "No." I told him that there was no mention of the age restriction in the article. He said that they had strongly emphasized with the reporter that they're 21-and-over for now, but they're working on the patio and a permit to allow underage eaters. I wish that fact had made it into the article. As it was, I could see the food. I could smell the food. I just had to resign myself that I wouldn't be eating any of the food.

As we retreated, we endured the looks from the restaurant and bar patrons. They were looking at us like we were from another planet. We weren't. We're from Los Altos. Maybe that was the reason the woman was rude. Maybe Francesca's is her place. Her and her drinking buddies have been getting together for years, and now the sweet scent of barbeque will be bringing people (families, for heaven's sake!) from across the tracks to her dive. Perhaps she resents that invasion the same way you resent an invasion of yellowjackets at a backyard barbeque.

Maybe someday I'll get to taste that brisket, but not today.

Anyone out there help me with this?

One literary turn of phrase that has stuck with me (unfortunately) is "necrotizing hemorrhoids." Was it used by Hunter Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Was it used by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash? I just can't seem to recall. Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

Almost free books

If you've got an interest in an inexpensive source of books to read, you may want to check out FrugalReader.com. This is a service that aggregates listings of the libraries of it's members, and then allows members to request books from each other. All that's paid is postage. No membership fees. I can't see where they're making their money, but, the about page indicates an altruistic mission:

Why We're Here
FrugalReader.com exists to help you and avid readers everywhere enjoy the satisfaction and convenience of reading the books you want, when you want them, at the lowest possible cost.

Seems pretty cool.

Update: Upon further examination, it may be that part of the revenue model is click through links to Amazon to buy books that aren't available for borrowing. I certainly don't begrudge them the opportunity to make a little cash, since they appear to be charging nothing at all for the service.

Totally useless, but totally cool

While looking for an image of a balloon for use in a presentation, I wandered down this particular rathole. It's fascinating to watch, and makes the idea of inexpensive space access even more exciting. Sadly, the NASA home page that contains this presentation is kind of boring, and doesn't give any easy way to find this cool series of images and movies.

Need a Lift?

Looks like a new article on space elevator technology has been published at IEEE Spectrum. Pretty exciting stuff. It just seems that in this world of billions of dollars being spent on wars and bad stuff that we should be able to cough up a measly billion a year or so for the next ten or fifteen years, and have something to show for it.

Flash from the past

So, I was looking at HackingNetflix, and there was a link to "Statler & Waldorf -- From the Balcony." A series of movie reviews & previews done by Statler & Waldorf, the two old guys from The Muppet Show who sat up in the balcony and heckled the rest of the Muppets. There were a few bits in the three segments I watched that were chuckle-out-loud moments.

Fished in.

So, I have to admit to being fished in by the FullTiltPoker.com sponsored tournament that was on some random cable channel the other night. I didn't get to see Phil Gordon bust out, but I was somewhat pleasantly surprised that they were playing it out live, and showing every hand instead of just the dramatic highlights.

The fumbling of the button back and forth when it got to heads-up was so genuine it was almost endearing. I experienced that frisson of seeing something honest and real. More than once a furtive smile on the two players' faces when coming back from a commercial break made me feel their feelings of just wanting to get the thing played out.

Official Trip Around The Moon Lottery

According to The Guardian the Russian federal space authorities are offering a trip around the moon for $100MM. I've decided that I'm going to start a lottery to try and fund just such a trip for one lucky winner.

Send me a paypal payment for $10.01US to my email address, and I'll toss your name in the drum. If I don't get to 10 million entries by July 31, 2006, or if Roskosmos cancels the trip, or if they change the price significantly, then I'll send you your money back. No interest or anything, just a refund of your $10. I'll keep the penny for the time and effort of organizing the lottery.

You know, thinking about it, I'll even promise to forward any ticket-equivalents on to a larger lottery, if one comes up. I'm just an aggregating agent, in one way or another.

Mountains, Washing Machines and Winged Punkettes

I just finished reading Cory Doctorow's "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" and was mightily entertained and provoked into thought. I was thinking about writing a review for Slashdot, but instead came across this review that said everything I could want to say about the novel. I highly recommend getting a copy and reading it, if not for the sci-fi/fantasy elements for the pure literary skill displayed. After all, you can get it for free.

Hello? The Eighties are Calling, They Want Their Lightcycles Back

As if I didn't have other better things to do with my time, I unfortunately found a really good racing game. It's free, it's pretty well done, and it's based on the lightcycle sequence from the 1982 movie Tron. You can find the relevant scoop and links to the downloads on SourceForge under Armagetron.

Nicely done guys. Good UI. Nice graphics.

Interactive Fiction: Short Circuit Edition

So, I found out about Facade, a new interactive fiction program. There's a blog about it. It provides an interactive environment where you play a dinner guest at a couple's apartment. They have issues. One of the kind of neat things is that it keeps a script of your session. I believe I've found the shortest possible one:

------------------------------------------------------
FACADE STAGEPLAY
Thu Jul 07 09 52 10 2005

(ROB quietly approaches the front door.)

GRACE
Trip, when are you going to get rid of this?

TRIP
What, Grace... this?

GRACE
Yes, you know how I feel about it --

TRIP
I know I know I'll do it right now, alright?!

GRACE
You know I've had to ask you about this several --

TRIP
Get off my back!  I'll get rid of it in just a minute!

GRACE
Fine, Trip... fine...

(Trip opens the front door.)

TRIP
Rob!!

TRIP
Hey!  I thought I heard someone out here! God 
it's been so long since we've seen you!    How
are you doing, man?

ROB
Are you two having a fight?

(Trip closes the front door.)

(ROB knocks on the front door.)

(ROB knocks on the front door.)

(ROB knocks on the front door.)

------------------------------------------------------

Not a lot of drama there. Still, a very interesting experience. I walked through it a few times, and while non-sequitors abound, I was actually somewhat emotionally moved when the couple reconciled. There's a bittorrent for the download (800Mb).

Ahhh. A truly horrendous pun.

I apologize for the following pun unleashed on Slashdot this afternoon. My comment is the reply.

Let Freedom Ring

I found (through Slashdot) a story about someone wanting to give SC Justice Souter a taste of his own medicine. I think it's brilliant. "Lost Liberty Hotel" along with the "Just Desserts Cafe." Now that the Fifth Amendment isn't everything it used to be, it seems appropriate to apply its new nature to the property of one of the architects of its decline.

The Pledge of Allegiance

I was listening to Terry Gross on Fresh Air, and the guest was Richard J. Ellis discussing his recent book about the Pledge of Allegiance, To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance. He had several interesting points, including the fact that the original pledge was:

• I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

No God. In 1954, Congress after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, added the words, 'under God,' to the Pledge. No "United States of America". Ellis posits that this change in the early 1920's was a reaction to the flood of immigrants that weren't WASPs. These immigrants might be thinking about the flag of Croatia when saying "my flag" instead of the US flag.

He also wonders at the fervent adoption and defense of a practice that institutionalizes state worship for the people of the most individualist country in the world. I wonder about this as well. How can we foster a sense of freedom and responsibility for one's own actions when every day children are pledging themselves to unquestionably "follow the leader." These are leaders that have proven themselves time and again to be more concerned with re-election and the protection of business than with the true needs of the American populous.

So, I propose a new pledge:

• I pledge allegiance to the constitution, and to the principles contained within: one people for the common good, with liberty and justice for all.

New Word Spotted

So, on Slashdot today, I posted a comment declaring the coinage of a new word. 'Wob'. It is used to describe any web-based mob or mob behavior on the web. The Slashdot effect would be a good example of wob behavior.

Spread the love people.

Updated 2005-06-21 13:42 -- Hey! Lookit that! I suggest it and somebody else follows up. I must be a manager or something.

The Future of the Future

Wandering around Slashdot I saw a link to the RepRap project.Essentially a project with the goal of creating a machine that can create copies of itself and can also create other things. The fundamental idea being that if anybody has one of these machines, they could give away a copy of the machine to a friend if the friend gives them the materials. Sort of open source for atoms instead bits and software.

There's a lot to think about if you posit the ability for anybody anywhere on the globe to be able to make anything. For starters, the gating economic factor becomes energy, if you assume that materials are all commodities and are more or less available for free.

I just found out about a really great game.

Read about it.

Otherwise, not much else new. Although I did find out that I have one person who is interested in me writing stuff here. So be it.

Long time in coming

Well, rats. Seems like it's been a very long time again since I've posted. Almost a month. It's not that there's not a lot going on. Just not a lot of time to say anything about it. At least the search engine spiders keep visiting.

Brilliant explanation of regular expressions

This probably means nothing to you unless you have a certain degree of dealing with computer software as a part of your daily life. I found this page about regular expressions very lucid. I thought I would share.

Back

So, let's start off with the obligatory comment about how long it's been since I wrote anything. Now, with that out of the way, I can relate a bit of what's been going on for the last week-plus. Hm. Seems that time went by, but not a lot was accomplished. At least not by me. Oh, that's right! It's springtime! It's really strange how the nights can seem so long when you wake up at 3:30 or 4 in the morning, and you lay there as still as you can, obsessing about all the things you didn't get done during yesterday and how much more there is to do today. You lay still and don't get up because you don't want to wake up your spouse. You feel tired all day, then lay awake at bedtime. You stare at the keyboard and screen, willing your fingers to press some combination of useful keys instead of just reloading the Slashdot home-page for the thirty-eighth time that hour. You go to meetings and click on the 'remind me later' button on the reminder pop-up windows. Seems like I have one that's now fourteen days overdue. I think that's a personal best (worst?) for active inactivity. I actually knocked off a couple of committments today that have been dragging behind me for at least a week. Of course I totally failed to get one moderately critial test deployed out to production, and I haven't even pretended to do work on getting the next revision of bug tracking deployed. That one's actually been slipping since January. At least the fog is lifting now. I think I'm through the worst of it. Let's see where I am this time tomorrow.