Andy's Blog http://blog.aharbick.com/ Wasting more of your time en Copyright 2008 Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:18:36 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Customer Service in a High-latency Environment A couple months ago I sold some stuff on e-Bay and I got an invoice from them for my seller fees. I logged into my account and verified that it is setup with automatic payment via PayPal and I ignored that invoice. Yesterday, I got the same exact invoice. So it would appear that the "automatic" part isn't so "automatic" and I decided that I needed to contact their customer service. Like all customer service these days (even for good companies) you have to wade through a mine-field of options that are structured to stop you from asking a question to a real human being. So rather that hunting longer for a phone number (or just finding it on wikipedia which I'm sure has it) I just tried out their "Live Help" functionality which is simply instant messaging. Either they've got a few superheroes handling dozens of simultaneous conversations by multi-plexing them or they've got a bunch of two-fingered typers because it's SLOW. Every question that you ask takes a couple minutes to get a response. Even still, that's not the main thing that I noticed... And that is, that when it takes so a long time to respond, typical courtesies that CS reps use are actually annoying. For example: bq. "Hello, Andrew, I'll be happy to assist you" bq. "Just a minute while I look that up." bq. "Hold on while I transfer you to the Billing Department." (the "rep" that I'm talking to should be virtual and they may transfer under the covers, but don't let me know that) It seems to me that answers in an IM/chat-based customer service system need to be FAST (why would I go through the hassle of using it if it's more of a pain that talking to a REAL person) and they need to prize word economy (cut the pleasantries and just get me the answer... I'm not chatting you up because I saw your latest change on Facebook). http://blog.aharbick.com/2008/01/customer_service_in_a_highlate.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2008/01/customer_service_in_a_highlate.html Thoughts Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:18:36 -0500 Steve Yegge Makes You Smarter I worked "near" "Steve":http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/ while he was Amazon. We were on interview loops together and occasionally sat in meetings together etc. I also started reading his blog when it was just an internal company blog.... I never had the chance to work on his team, but every time he says something publicly I regret that. In his most recent "rant":http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/12/codes-worst-enemy.html he tackles the "problem" of code-base size. I've done my fair share of refactoring in Amazon's massive code base, and after having been working in Ruby for the past couple years it's crystal clear how VALUABLE concision is. It's really amusing all of the commenters on the post who say "the number of lines isn't a problem when you have nicely modularized code...." They have a point when they argue that Steve doesn't count the number of lines of code in the kernel's of our OSes, etc. but generally I think they miss the general point that he's making which I would characterize as "your language and the expressiveness of that language affects how much code you'll be responsible for" and "the more code you have the less possible it is to keep it in your head" (reconsider his point about 1M lines of code with 50 lines per "page" being equivalent to a 20,000 page manual. He seems to echo some of what Paul Graham has "said":http://www.paulgraham.com/head.html. Either way, if you're into software. Steve is well worth reading and thinking his thoughts. http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/12/steve_yegge_makes_you_smarter.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/12/steve_yegge_makes_you_smarter.html Technology Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:58:54 -0500 Kindle Review A couple of weeks ago I bought Amazon.com's latest product offering, the "Kindle":http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-kindle/dp/B000FI73MA. I got it primarily to experiment with a new technology but secretly my hope would be to consolidate all of my reading into one little device. I'm typically reading 3 or 4 books , several magazines, the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and a dozen PDF papers at any given time (obviously not all at once). The prospect of having them all available simultaneously in a little form factor was pretty cool. If my experiment didn't work then I was planning to sell it on Ebay and take a loss if necessary. I haven't sold it and I'm not sure that I plan to however it's far from perfect. Here's what I like: # I *love* the fact that I can e-mail myself documents and they appear in the device (e.g. send something to aharbick@kindle.com). It takes PDF, DOC, HTML, and a bunch of other formats. Many people complained about apparent lack of support for PDF, but it's just not true. # Shopping on the Kindle is pretty flawless though selection isn't amazing (particularly in periodicals). # The screen provides a great reading experience. # I love the fact that it's about the size of a paperback. # The search, clipping, and highlighting functionality are great. Here's what I don't like: # There is no way to match a page in a physical book with a "Kindle location" If you have a friend reading the same thing and they say "could you believe page 25!!" you're out of luck unless you respond "can you tell me a phrase from that page" and then you search for the phrase. # Similarly it's incredibly hard to tell where you are in a book. There's the little meter at the bottom of the page that records general progress through the book, but there are no indicators for chapter, etc. This is particularly hard in reading something like the Bible. You turn to Genesis chapter 8 and start reading... The only clue that you've moved into chapter 9 is a tiny little "9" and the fact that the verse numbers have recycled back to 1,2,3... # Also related is navigation... Again, this is mostly related to reading something like the Bible where you jump around a lot. If you're lucky the thing you're reading has a Table of Contents. So from any given page you click the scroll wheel and choose the "Table of Contents" navigate through a couple of pages of ToC, choose one of the chapters and navigate to it. It's about 6 clicks and scrolls to jump around and as far as I can tell there are no "Next Chapter", "Previous Chapter" functions. # The display is pretty weak for anything but text. It's grayscale which would be OK, but in a PDF (that you mailed to yourself) graphics are often stripped presumably because they're vector-based and the Kindle can only do pixel-based images. # The digital edition of Time has absolutely NO GRAPHICS. It's all text. This makes reading the magine pretty hard when the text refers to a chart, etc. It's a pretty poor experience. That said, reading it made me in the "know" for my other Time-addicted friends. # There's a bunch of lame hardware things. a. The battery life isn't amazing. You get at most 7 days if you never turn it off. b. There is no "lock" feature to disable buttons (big pain if you leave it on while it's in a bag). c. the power button is awkwardly located on the back of the unit which makes it very difficult to shut off it it's in the supplied carrying case. d. the previous button should be the entire left-side so that right click is next and left click is previous. Instead the previous button us only the top left and there is duplicate next functionality at the lower left side. e. It's WAY to easy to click the paging buttons while handling the device. f. the navigation wheel is hard to use... too easy to scroll and too hard to push (makes it incredibly hard to click precisely). g. the menuing system is pretty lame. h. The iPhone is a game changer and not having a touch screen feels the same psychologically as using a 28k modem to get on the Internet now. # The selection of materials isn't that great. Of the books I'm currently reading I could only get about 25% on the Kindle. I read a bunch of "theology" books, but even books like "Emergence" or "Cub's Nation" or "The World Is Flat" can't be found. The periodical selection is really poor. There are only 10 papers and not a whole lot more magazines. Basically, I'll have to carry a Kindle and a book for the foreseeable future. # It's proprietary... Once there's a better device than the Kindle how do I port my content? This problem isn't possible with physical books. So... Now that I look at it, I should probably sell mine ;) I think that Apple could totally clean Amazon's clock at least hardware-wise. If they launched an iTablet computer similar in functionality but larger in size than an iPod touch it would be vastly superior from a hardware standpoint. Perhaps this is the whole end-game of Amazon? Amazon could be jump-starting a market. Get people talking about the "future of reading"... Get people passionate about it... Apple swoops in a builds a GREAT device and Amazon is there to sell content because they already have the relationships with the publishers.... Hmmm http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/12/kindle_review.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/12/kindle_review.html Technology Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:10:45 -0500 Wow Awesome!]]> http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/11/wow_1.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/11/wow_1.html Humor Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:30:16 -0500 Cabin Update "Jeremy":http://flickr.com/photos/aharbick/942478375/ just pointed out that I never wrote about what the engineer had to say. On the whole it was great news! The holes through the foot of the scissor trusses (in the great room) don't need to be repaired, nor do the holes in the diagonal beam of the bonus room trusses, nor do the holes in the porch trusses. Basically the only holes that need to be fixes are the ones in the 2x10" bottom beam of the bonus room trusses which totally makes sense since they form the joists for the loft floor. The fix is easy too (though time consuming). Basically I have to pull out the wire and re-route it (which means that I'll have to replace some of it) then I need to cut 4' "scabs" out of 2x10" boards and center then over the holes nailing it in place with 10d nails 3" "on center" (OC). I'm trying to find a time when I can get down again to do the work. Hopefully sometime during the middle of next week, but if not then I'm thinking that the Friday after Thanksgiving, I might make it down with my Dad and Brother-in-law. Don't know if I mentioned it, but the roof is done. However, the siding is pending. The guy I'm having do that work broke his foot and is out of commission for a bit. No worries really since it's not blocking anything else. The septic system is supposed to be installed any day, but contractors have a bad habit of saying they'll do something on a given day/week and not doing it. I need to call them. Also, now that the leaves have fallen "the view":http://flickr.com/photos/aharbick/1905713744/ is great (though pictures don't do it justice)... I'm definitely going to have to have a chainsaw party to clear out some of those little trees that block the view other parts of the year. http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/11/cabin_update.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/11/cabin_update.html Aisling Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:50:52 -0500 First Leopard Complaint I installed Leopard yesterday with an "Acrhive and Install" installation (it basically moves everything over to a /Previous System folder and then does a clean install). Everything went pretty smoothly and I'm more or less up and running as before except with the new features. Here's my first big beef... There is a new feature to the dotmac integration that synchronizes system settings/preferences. That new feature adds a little "rotating arrows" icon to the menu bar and periodically trys to sync with your dotmac account. I don't have a dotmac account and I didn't particularly want one. HOWEVER there doesn't appear to be a way to get to the configuration options for dotmac without first entering in account information. So I ended up having to get a dotmac trial account so that I could get to the "Sync" tab in the dotmac configuration which allowed me to make synchronization only manual and to remove the icon from the menu bar. Now I'm stuck with this bogus dotmac account that I'm sure I'll be pestered to upgrade. As I wrote this, I've uncovered a second big beef... I used a "PC keyboard" hooked in through USB to my MacBook. It appears that Apple apps like Mail, iCal, etc. no longer recognize the Backspace key as "delete on character backwards" and the "Delete" key does what it traditionally does on a PC ("delete one character forwards"). I'm gonna have to fix this (or get an Apple keyboard)... http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/11/first-leopard-complaint.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/11/first-leopard-complaint.html Technology Thu, 01 Nov 2007 08:42:38 -0500 Close But No Cigar
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Originally uploaded by aharbick Today I met Nelson Ailer, an Augusta County inspector, for my first inspections of the cabin. We didn't pass but I think we did pretty well. Here's what needs to happen: * Install a second grounding rod * Move the grounding wire into the panel (and not the meter base) * Install a heater in the kitchen and bathroom * Install ducting for the bathroom vent * Prep a couple of wires (cut them back, strip housing and prep the grounds) * Prepare the plumbing for a pressure test (100lbs on supply lines, and 5lbs on the drain line) and demonstrate * Fasten trusses to walls with "hurricane clips" * Talk to the engineer and do what he says regarding the holes that were put in the trusses (apparently that's a no no) * Shim the center beam on top of the footers All in all, doesn't sound like tons of work and I mostly know what to do. Another nice bit of news is that I can setup permanent service once I fix the grounding issues.
]]> http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/10/close-but-no-cigar-2.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/10/close-but-no-cigar-2.html Aisling Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:17:17 -0500 Costco Humor I went to Costco for lunch and to pick up some office supplies. As I was checking out one of the "cashier assistants" came up to me and said "do you want a box?" I had to ask her to repeat herself because I didn't understand what she was asking. As she did I noticed that her name was PANDORA. I just about lost it laughing but managed to squeak out a "no thank you!" Heck no Pandora, I don't want "*your* box":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/10/costco-humor.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/10/costco-humor.html Humor Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:09:23 -0500 Mark Cuban Is Hope The Cubs had a disasterous finish to the season. The only thing good was that they never teased the faithful into believing that "this was the year" so the wound will heal much quicker. There's always next year right? It'll be 100 years since we last won and "Mark Cuban may buy the Cubs":http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-cubs-cuban&prov=ap&type=lgns I don't know why I find that exciting. Perhaps it's the fact that he's so passionate about his teams, he's willing to spend money, and he's been successful with the Mavs. I hope it works out. http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/10/mark-cuban-is-hope.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/10/mark-cuban-is-hope.html Thoughts Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:32:44 -0500 Quick Tips on Moving to EC2

I should really spend time documenting all of this, but instead I’ll just do a quick dump:

  1. First you’ll need a “Dynamic DNS” provider. Currently there is no guarantee that your EC2 instance will have the same IP address forever. I chose ChangeIP They have a plan that is $6/year/domain once you’ve listed the first domain at $15.
  2. If you’re already locked into a registrar like http://register.com don’t worry. Just change their DNS settings to point to ns1.changeip.com That’s how I’ve got it setup. register.com is my registrar and changeip.com is my DynDNS.
  3. If you want to do SMTP on your new domain don’t forget to setup MX records for the domain. Otherwise you get “relaying not permitted” errors.
  4. There’s no guarantee that the instance will remain available. It could die at any moment and because it’s a virtual instance it’s more likely to die than even physical hardware. So BACKUPS are essential. I’ve got two scripts one for a full backup and one for incremental backups of e-mail and databases etc. You can use the former to quickly spin up a new instance (which is the instance exactly as is was up to 24 hours ago) and then user the later to recover the most recent changes to e-mail, etc. One caveat about the full backup one… EC2 has a image-size limit of 10GB so if your instance has lots of data this strategy won’t work (not the SMS notification on filesystem size error)
  5. Webmin is great for system administration.
  6. Don’t forget that you need to permission ports in your EC2 instance for everything you wish to have access.
  7. The EC2 Firefox plug-in is great!
  8. I’m using Exim for SMTP/mail… It does a nice job with e-mail aliases and “catch-all” addresses like andy-is-clever@aharbick.com
  9. Exim may solve this, but I don’t know… I’ve got a dozen+ domains on the machine and the e-mail is tied to a user account so aharbick@fivepints.org is the same as aharbick@aharbick.com is the same as… I kinda like that. Though the way that I handle is is with procmail rules to move messages based on the domain they were sent to. Here’s my .procmailrc
See more progress on: move all of my domains to an EC2 instance
]]> http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/10/quick-tips-on-moving-to-ec2.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/10/quick-tips-on-moving-to-ec2.html Technology Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:11:07 -0500 Cabin Update It's been a while since I've said anything about the cabin. That's because I've taken a bit of a break for Cub Scout camp and a family vacation. That said, last Friday the electrical and plumbing rough-in work started. I've forgotten to take my camera to chronicle this phase of the work so you'll have to imagine lots of holes drilled in studs, lots of yellow 12-gauge Romex electrical cable, a breaker box with breakers, and lots of junction boxes with switches. The lion's share of the work is being done by my brother-in-law's father Jim who is has been awesome! Yesterday, I went down to pour a concrete pad for the hot-water heater in the crawlspace. It was perhaps the hardest work I've ever done. I don't know that was mostly due to working in cramped quarters (3.5 foot crawlspace) or from having to dig a 3'x3', 4" deep hole for the pad, or from having to mix and haul 250 pounds of concrete into the crawlspace. Either way, I sweated so much that every last inch of my clothing was soaked. It turned out very nicely, but needless to say, I'm glad it's done. Today, Jim is finishing off the final electrical tasks and starting the process of adding the plumbing for the drain. Friday, my brother-in-law and Dad are coming down to help finish the work. With any luck, next week I may be ready for inspections. http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/08/cabin-update.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/08/cabin-update.html Aisling Thu, 23 Aug 2007 09:29:33 -0500 Kiva Update As I "mentioned before":http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/06/letting-other-people-blog-for.html I loaned some money using Kiva, a VERY cool micro-lending organization for small-scale entrepreneurs in developing nations. Recently my loan account received a repayment of $19.84. I can't re-lend the money until the term of the loan completes next July, but it is really cool to see it working. I only wish I could get some more pictures of Gulshen's business, etc. http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/08/kiva-update.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/08/kiva-update.html Thoughts Thu, 23 Aug 2007 09:25:53 -0500 Say Hello to the Cabin
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Originally uploaded by aharbick We made it! Err, to "dried in" at least. This past weekend we put up the porch trusses, sheathed the roof, laid down roofing tar paper, finished the porch decking, tarred the foundation, and did a bunch of additional framing tasks inside (which I wasn't a part of, but I think the main purpose was for extra bracing and to provide a surface for drywalling). Building houses is very physically demanding, but (at least when it's your own) very satisfying too.

When I embarked on the task of building my own cabin at the persuasion of Don, Scott, and John the task seemed huge and unknown and my fear was that we'd never finish (lest I jinx myself... we may still never finish ;). John, took the drawings and came up with a plan to finish framing the cabin in 4 weekends with 4+ guys every weekend. It was close; from the foundation being laid the day before we were to start to God holding off the rain and giving us BEAUTIFUL weather every weekend to using up every last hour of the 4 weekends (we finished around 5PM on Saturday) but John proved to be right and we did it. Thanks to John, Scott, Don, Dad H., Dad C., Dan, Eric, Jim, Ben, Scott H., Jakob, Carroll, Randy, and Jeremy! You are true brothers. And thanks to Shiree, Aiden, Riley, and Brody for giving me the time to work on it.

There's still a bunch of work to be completed and I hope you can join me over the coming months (I hope to be done before winter) for some of the tasks that I'm not going to hire professionals for. The next time I'll be working on something is the electrical and plumbing rough in (the week of Aug. 20th). Let me know if you're interested!
]]> http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/07/say-hello-to-the-cabin.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/07/say-hello-to-the-cabin.html Aisling Aisling Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:55:50 -0500 Grand Central "Andrej was right":http://andrej.mobileduo.com/archives/2007/03/grandcentral.html. These guys have a VERY cool service and they were acquired by Google. I'm still trying it out, but if I decide that I like it (and if it makes it out of beta) I'll pass around my number.]]> http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/07/grand-central.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/07/grand-central.html Technology Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:29:36 -0500 Half a Roof and Three Quarters of a Porch
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Originally uploaded by aharbick This was by far the most physically demanding weekend and psychologically too I suppose since progress wasn't so visible. At the end of the weekend we had laid the roof plywood and tar paper for half the roof, laid all of the porch decking that we had (ran out) and got the porch headers (or whatever they're called...) in place so that we can hang the porch trusses next week.

I spent all my time on the roof work. We had three guys on that. Two up on the roof and one down below. The guys up top balanced precariously on trusses (or 2"x4" cleats) while hoisting up plywood and tar paper rolls. They then placed the plywood and nailed it down which in itself was a task because the plywood didn't have truss markings so making sure you didn't miss was a chore (amusing too because those nail guns can shoot a 16 penny nail through the plywood really easily). After a row of plywood was down the guys up top rolled out tar paper and tacked it down with dozens of "cap nails" (little one inch nails with a one inch diameter plastic cap). Meanwhile the guy below was cutting plywood (not that hard... just needed a tape measure, chalkline, and circular saw). The hard part of his job was hefting the 4'x8' sheet of plywood up on the roof and once the progress made it's way up to the top he had to heft it onto the first cleat, climb the ladder and heft it to the next cleat, climb the roof to the next cleat where it could finally be passed to the guys now at the top of the roof.

Saturday evening we had all of the guys back to our house and I made steaks for everyone. At the end of the evening I collapsed into bed sore in what seemed every muscle in my body; but a good sore.

When you get inspired enough to build your own cabin here's a tip... When you're working on the roof, bring knee pads.
]]> http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/07/half-a-roof-and-three-quarters.html http://blog.aharbick.com/2007/07/half-a-roof-and-three-quarters.html Aisling Aisling Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:24:17 -0500