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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Eli's LiveJournal:

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    Sunday, May 11th, 2008
    6:53 pm
    Funny Google reqs
    Here's the job benefits listed by Google for their New York office on a job posted on Craig's List

    Health care for you and your family, vacation days and holidays, and flexible work hours, maternity and parental leave, employee referral bonus program, employee assistance services for personal issues, learning opportunities and tuition reimbursement, adoption assistance, Google Child Care Center ( near Google headquarters), free shuttle service to several Bay Area locations, Fuel Efficiency Vehicle Incentive Program, and onsite dry cleaning, plus a coin-free laundry room in the Mountain View office.

    I wanna see their shuttle service from Manhattan to the Bay Area -- can New York employees use it to send their kids to that Mountain View child care center? And, can I send my laundry from New York to Mountain View along with my kids?

    --

    In fairness, though, here's the mouthload of an e-mail that Microsoft sends you when you set up a career profile. Not a single line break:

    Thank you for creating a Microsoft® Careers profile. We encourage you to take advantage of your personalized Microsoft Careers home page which is designed to provide you with quick and easy access to your most commonly used site tools. Simply visit http://members.microsoft.com/careers/ and sign-in using your Microsoft .NET Passport e-mail address and password. To modify or delete your profile at any time, please visit http://members.microsoft.com/careers/profile/. (You will be requested to sign-in first.) If you haven't already done so, sign up for the free Microsoft Careers newsletter. It's a great way to learn more about finding Microsoft employment, life at Microsoft, and exciting Microsoft projects: http://members.microsoft.com/careers/newsletter/. Thank you for considering Microsoft Corporation as a potential employer. Staffing Department Microsoft Corporation http://members.microsoft.com/careers Please note: This mailbox is not monitored. Please do not reply to this message.
    Thursday, May 8th, 2008
    10:29 am
    LONG: Some seismic shifts I'm seeing in small print music (and tangents)
    If I had the opportunity to take a year off, I would love to study why people buy music.

    I think a lot is changing at a seismic level right now; there are a few things I've observed. I've spent an hour or two typing, but this just scratches the surface. I'm sure someone like Tom Smith would have a different set of ideas.

    THE OLD REASONS WE WANTED MUSIC:

    * We wanted the content itself. Now, it is often easier and faster to rip a friend's CD than it is to figure out how to buy it from the artist. We buy because something leads us to choose to buy rather than just copy. Just what is this "something"?

    * We wanted the packaging. Dunno about you, but my CD's are in boxes in a closet. Like I'm going to dig through hundreds of CDs to find lyrics to a song? I'd just Google for them. Packaging is increasingly ceasing to be an added-value incentive. Few publishers, if any, have adapted their packaging practices to acknowledge this real-world shift in customer behavior (e.g. providing full digital copies of liner notes).

    THE FACTORS THAT ARTISTS SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT TODAY:

    ( Read more... )
    Friday, April 25th, 2008
    9:29 pm
    Ouch! Expensive Skype UI ambiguity!
    I copied and pasted the phone number of a friend in Enschede into Skype and pressed Dial.

    So I was kinda surprised when the people answering the phone were talking in Spanish, but I figured "well, they have a lot of friends, maybe they have Spanish friends over and they are occupied."

    Anyway, they kept saying "un momentito" and all that, and a few minutes passed, and I noticed that my Skype account balance was decreasing by about $1 each minute. So I thought "Wow! It must be adjusting for those phone calls I made last week just now!"

    Then I started wondering "oh crap! did I dial the wrong number?"

    And I did. Or rather, Skype did. It treated the first few digits as the country code for Cuba, which is quite expensive! I wonder if the phone was shared by a larger community?

    Had Skype instead shown the flag of the country it dialed rather than a generic icon, I probably would have made the connection faster.

    Oh well. Cost a lot less than my first (three-hour) attempt at making falafel with my roommate tonight (I was probably filled with culinary hubris after the success of the quesadillas and nachos on prior days!)
    Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
    8:00 pm
    For the filkers - Avalon Rising/Broceliande videos up on YouTube
    http://www.youtube.com/user/kstoph

    A number of the Avalon Rising videos appear to be professionally recorded, and are quite stellar in capturing the experience of the band in video, in my opinion. Be sure to click on the icon to the right of the "Views:" text to bump the video playback up to high quality (if you have the bandwidth)!
    8:32 am
    San Jose: "Centex failed to sell a single unit at Plant 51"
    How things change in two years, even in Silicon Valley!

    Two years ago, Centex was e-mailing prospective buyers of this heavily-promoted and touted loft renovation project located in the best transit-oriented location in downtown San Jose with their "act now or you'll miss this opportunity forever" pitch:

    The Sales Release will begin promptly at 10 am; the Sales Office will open at 9:30 am. At each release, members of our Priority Registration List will receive the first opportunities to purchase these new homes. If you have not yet joined our Priority List, you may STILL have an opportunity to purchase a home. Arrive early and speak with a sales associate for information.

    And that was *before* a single unit had even been built -- they were taking non-refundable 10-20% downpayments. I nearly bought one, but they raised the price one too many times ($450-$500K for a one-bedroom, adjacent primarily to a railyard and vacant industrial land?!).

    Where's the project going now? Well, as of last week, they've dumped it on another company as part of a broader write-down:

    Centex failed to sell a single unit at Plant 51 after spending more than $100 million during the past four years to turn the former Del Monte cannery into homes, according to Trece Herder, Centex vice president of land acquisition in the Bay Area.

    [San Jose Business Journal]

    Or more specifically:

    "We sold zero," says Trece Herder, Centex vice president of land acquisition in the Bay Area. "The market has just diminished dramatically. A number of people canceled due to the fact that we didn't know when the units would be done. After numerous scheduling delays, those sales ended up going away."

    [follow-up story]

    Who knows...maybe I'll buy one in cash in a few years. Shouldn't cost more than $150K for a nice condo, unless their lenders enable them to go rental instead. You can already buy a 3-story townhouse across the street for $450K [down from $650K in just 18 months]!
    Sunday, April 20th, 2008
    12:27 am
    Burbed.com - love this website
    http://www.burbed.com

    It's like a mean-spirited Valleywag for Bay Area homes, ripping into all the typical Silicon Valley home cliches along the way. I haven't laughed so hard in months. e.g. this post, or this one.

    When I lived in the Bay Area, it was painful to see how expensive even the crappiest homes were going for - years after it was obvious it was the housing version of the dot-com bubble.

    Now I can finally enjoy the last laugh watching people trying to sell their dumpy tract home for $750,000...and find that nobody's interested in it. Here's to the return of a sane real estate market.
    Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
    4:07 pm
    Two cents on why CA real estate ain't recoverin' next year
    In short:

    #1: Look at this chart. Week 25 is the end of 2008.

    #2: Read this article. Note the author's point that Option ARM loans were concentrated in California.

    In short, after the subprime resets finish up at the end of the year, we then begin a 3-year period of Option ARM and other non-subprime ARM resets among more affluent buyers.
    Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
    4:50 pm
    More random notes from CHI
    * Irene (director of user experience @ Google) states that the most effective researchers are those that actively help development teams *solve* problems, rather than just raising them. Researchers need to understand design enough to help solve the problems they raise.

    * At eBay, the usability research department spent 3 months in the marketing research department. At Yahoo, usability research is part of marketing research.

    * Tom (a director at Yahoo) argued that user experience evangelism is pointless in the absence of a prior track record of providing products worth talking about. (This is kindaof a no-brainer to me; are you going to listen to design advice from Apple or from the Windows Vista team?)

    * Lots of panelists at the CHI conference claim that usability research work done very widely, perhaps even more than is warranted compared to other usability-oriented investment opportunities.

    * All the enterprise-related speakers bore the *$* out of me. Especially the ones from Microsoft.

    * I think there is a belief among usability practitioners that there really are super-people who just "know the answers" in our field. This is, perhaps, embedded even in the phrase "best practices". In my mind, this suggests that there are universal best practices available that simply need to be followed, rather than an awareness that appropriate practices are often situationally contextual.

    * This may contradict the last point, but sitting in the usability facilitation workshop, it really amazes me how little other people know about the nuances of running usability studies. I find this not a disappointment, but actually very reassuring in finding a job in the coming months. Everything I'm hearing in this workshop falls into the category of "well, duh, doesn't everyone know this already?"
    Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
    7:22 am
    Go Hilary!
    The NYT says:

    On Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton held a jobs seminar here — not a political rally but a wonky session about economic development. When someone mentioned how Pittsburgh had been retrofitted from a steel-based economy to the knowledge-based industries, she smiled.

    “I’m a big believer in comebacks,” she said, to much applause. The comment fit her economic message, as well.

    Whoa! If her idea of an American comeback is like Pittsburgh's "recovery", does that mean we can also look forward to decades of population loss, housing stagnation, and a government teetering on the verge of bankruptcy?
    Saturday, March 29th, 2008
    5:48 pm
    A Shabbat morning visit to a liberal synagogue in Holland + Hillel UW reflections
    This morning, I visited the regional liberal synagogue for Shabbat morning services.

    Although I've lived here in Enschede now for nearly three months and contacted the local synagogue shortly after arrival, it was only in the past week that I learned of a non-Orthodox synagogue in the area. How could that be?

    Well...as I understand it, at least, non-Orthodox Jews are not considered "real Jews" by the Orthodox community. I have been told that the chief rabbi gave a proclamation that Orthodox Jews may not even set foot into a liberal congregation. A complaint I heard was that Orthodox synagogues (unilaterally) do not acknowledge the existence of liberal synagogues, such as when people ask for a referral to one. But Google prevailed, and I found one.

    ( Read more... )
    Friday, March 28th, 2008
    3:43 pm
    A movie every American should watch...
    An 2005 Dutch television documentary -- The Day the Dollar Fell

    It is startlingly prophetic about what is now unraveling in our newspapers every day (although the movie's premise is on a single-day dollar collapse.)

    What a shame almost all of it is, well, in Dutch.
    Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
    7:30 am
    Dear Lazyweb: Do you find a tax accountant worth the extra expense?
    Dear Lazyweb,

    In short:

    Do any of you find a tax accountant useful enough to justify paying, versus TurboTax or online software? If so, what do you gain from your accountant to justify the labor expense?

    In long:

    Although I used to do my taxes on the computer, I started hiring an accountant during the dot-com bubble when I realized it might be a good idea. I changed accountants after she failed to explain little details like "AMT", which wiped out at least a full year of my livelihood. I kept working with a second accountant (who is a tax attorney), in part since I was afraid of making mistakes on my taxes and didn't really understand concepts like COGS, and I thought that an accountant would find additional tax deductions that I'd missed.

    Now I am having second thoughts about an accountant at all.

    So far this year, my accountant:
    - Hasn't replied to most of my e-mails (apparently he is having problems receiving them), or confirmed receipt of my FAXes.
    - Mis-applied my tuition waiver as income for the second year in the row (and didn't even realize that it wasn't treated by the IRS as income until I found the publication myself to prove it)
    - Sent my 1040 by plaintext e-mail (social security number and all) without realizing it was a problem (in fairness, I should have pointed it out when we spoke last night - but it was 11:30 and I was tired.)

    And, I can't think of a single tax deduction I've received in recent history thanks to this guy -- I had to point out the educational deductions I was qualified for which he missed last year! So perhaps it is more a marketing belief that an accountant can help you creatively find deductions than something actually applicable in practice. (One of my professors says that the service I receive from an accountant is typical, and his returns are just as poorly done.)

    I am definitely not rehiring this guy another year (I think he absolutely takes my business for granted, or doesn't care about it), but I'm not sure whether to look for another accountant or to just pay a tenth of the price for online software.

    Right now, I'm going to say that I think that hiring an accountant for annual income tax may be analogous to hiring a travel agent by the hour to buy an airplane ticket for you: unless you're doing something unusual or unfamiliar, it's not probably not worth it, and may be more of a hassle than a help.

    Am I missing something big here?
    Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
    7:52 am
    SNOW DAY!!!!
    So it's another day in Enschede. I wake up, roll out of bed, read e-mail, and then stand up drowsy to see...THE STREET IS COVERED WITH SNOW!

    And being in the Netherlands that means...I'm biking to work in the snow today! This is awesome - I have biked here in sunshine, fog, rain and hail, but never snow. I wonder what it's like? ;-)
    Monday, March 17th, 2008
    9:28 am
    Last weekend rant: WTF is up in the U.S.?
    “For the government to print money at the expense of taxpayers as opposed to requiring or going about a receivership and wind-down of any insolvent institutions should be troubling to taxpayers and regulators alike,” said Josh Rosner, an analyst at Graham Fisher & Company and an expert on mortgage securities. “The Fed has now crossed the line in a very clear way on ‘moral hazard,’ because they have opened the door to the view that they are required to save almost any institution through non-recourse loans — except the government doesn’t have the money and it destroys the U.S.’s reputation as the broadest, deepest, most transparent and properly regulated capital market in the world.”

    Rescue Me: A Fed Bailout Crosses a Line (New York Times)

    I don't know how you folks in the states feel about this, but I am really troubled reading about the government bailouts of the private mortgage industry.

    For my entire working life to date, I had naively assumed that if I worked hard and saved as much of my money as possible conservatively, I would have a reason to believe with a minimum of risk that I would not have to worry financially so much in the future. So when my Netscape co-workers were buying $50K cars, I lived on about 15% of my income and saved the rest.

    I technically still have those dollars, but now it looks like the value of those dollars is being looted by our government and transferred to other private interests under the guise of public benefit, with a lack of transparency in the process. So I may indeed have been better off "supporting the economy" and buying lots of crap I didn't need. I could have even bought a house that I couldn't have prudently afforded - after all - if it actually did fall in value, I could have just dumped it for foreclosure and let the U.S. government deal with the mortgage security loss.

    I wonder whether I should move some of my money out of U.S. currency before it plummets further, or whether I am acting out of panic. Certainly if I am able to secure employment in Europe, I will not be trusting the U.S. with the solvency of my currency for future savings. When I see American friends holding off on international trips due to the low value of the currency, I think back to when people were skipping vacation road trips saying "gas is crazy-expensive at $2.25 a gallon - we'll wait until gas falls back down to $1.50 and then we'll go to Yosemite..." And hey, now gas is $3.50 a gallon and ain't going back anytime soon.

    Why do we, as Americans, assume our currency will be worth more in the future in the seeming absence of fundamentals supporting that valuation? Is it just a belief in the inevitable regression towards a recent historical mean?
    Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
    11:16 am
    Notes to self: "Don Norman - Emotional Design"
    I've been skimming this book as part of a research project I started today at UT. Although I loved "The Design of Everyday Things", I'm not nearly as impressed with this work; I only chose to skim it because it has brought mainstream attention to emotional design in technology products, and therefore probably influences the practitioner discourse surrounding the topic.

    A cynical distillation of this book would be "Don Norman rambles about emotional design in a 200+ page essay, and places himself in the forefront of a pre-existing movement by presenting himself as a thinker, when he is mostly collecting and integrating pre-existing ideas. Perhaps as a consequence of working with Jakob Nielson, he veers into the realm of conflating actual facts with stating his personal opinions and predictions as if they were also factual. Only the first few chapters offer tangible value to product design practitioners."

    There are a few points that I wanted to make a note of, though. There is really no reason anyone else should want to read these notes, other than perhaps [info]cpratt so I've LJ-cut it.

    ( Read more... )
    Thursday, March 6th, 2008
    5:59 pm
    Lots of scattered notes from Israel
    [LOTS of random trip notes, mostly written from the hospital - my grandmother needed to rest, so I'm just doing unedited stream of consciousness here for personal recollection, and mostly avoiding emotionally tricky stuff.]

    Since I was carrying a little bit of luggage, I took the bus to the train station. I hadn't used the bus in nearly a month, and the experience was fulfilling to realize how much Dutch I'd learned in the past month.

    In particular, while waiting for the bus, I noticed that I could read and fully understand about 90-95% of the passenger information in the bus stop - with only one or two unfamiliar words. It was also fun to talk to the bus driver in Dutch ("ik ga alleen naar het station") -- and feel confident in my pronunciation!

    ( Read more... )
    Saturday, March 1st, 2008
    10:36 pm
    Two months ago from today...
    ...I arrived in the Netherlands. A number of friends have asked whether I'm glad I decided to come here, and the answer is 'hell yes'. I haven't written "real" blog entries for a while, so here is a summary for anyone following my life (in other words: hi mom! welcome back from Israel!).

    ( Read more... )
    Friday, February 22nd, 2008
    1:03 pm
    Oy! American sense of entitlement in the NYT
    I cringe at the thought of how people outside of our country might respond to this article in today's New York Times about a bailout for some of the 10% of American homeowners who now owe more on their homes than they have equity.

    I usually respect the New York Times as solid journalism. But this piece leads me to wonder if the author was intentionally attempting to undermine her own credibility in order to push an anti-bailout agenda.

    Here's an example:
    ( Read more... )
    Sunday, February 17th, 2008
    9:46 pm
    Samuel Adams: Hop Sharing Program
    I don't brew beer -- and outside of Germany, I don't even really drink the stuff - but I found Samuel Adams's Hop Sharing Program wholly inspiring to read.

    This is how I certainly aspire to run my own business; it makes me happy to see large corporations making carefully chosen trust- and value-based decisions that do not optimize for profit, but which treat the organization as an actor with the potential to bring benefit to a greater global community.

    Here's an excerpt:

    ( Read more... )
    Monday, February 11th, 2008
    5:38 pm
    LOL! Microsoft buys Danger.
    PC Magazine said it best: Microsoft Buys Danger, but for What?.

    I guess there was so little interest in their IPO attempt that they had to sell the company to stay afloat. I am baffled, though, at what Microsoft could possibly see of value. I'm curious whether they paid fire-sale pricing (my bet), or whether there actually are MS execs clueless enough to have paid real money to acquire the company.

    As with the (disastrous) WebTV acquisition, I assume Microsoft will chuck the OS and migrate the Sidekick to WinMo. In all likelihood, it'll mean a Palm-styled failure to tangibly upgrade the product during the porting. But since they haven't significantly improved their product since 2003 anyway, I don't see how it would materially impact their customer experience.

    At least the experience involved in making the product has been acquired, as Robbie Bach notes in Microsoft's acquisition announcement. What Robbie forgets to mention is that the talent acquisition was made not by Microsoft, but by Google and Apple -- the companies most of the people who invented the product actually work today. Tough luck, bud.
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