The blog of Matt

Simplifying speech

2011-11-23T16:06:00.005-08:00

“I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one.” - Blaise Pascal

Recently, I decided to reduce my use of the following words, along with others that aren't coming to mind.

very
like
really
extremely
incredibly

The reason? I believe my overuse of emphatic adverbs decreases the emphasis. "I really enjoy that painting" imparts less meaning than "I enjoy that painting." Even though I've said that I really enjoy the painting, I believe it sounds as though I don't enjoy it as much as if I omitted really. "That dress is very beautiful" doesn't mean as much as "that dress is beautiful." I believe overuse of emphasizers also decreases memorability. When I think of the most persuasive people I know, they tend to speak simply and focus on a few concepts, instead of giving lower emphasis to more concepts. Their focus drives home a clear message - something to remember the conversation and the topic by.

There's a few other words I'm trying to say less often:

thing
stuff

These words require more mental engagement of the reader or listener. "Would you bring those things over here?" (and pointing) requires the listener to determine the meaning, whereas "would you bring the plate and glass over here?" puts the burden for my request on the speaker. Even when the noun is obvious to speaker and listener, replacing the noun with "stuff" or "thing" frees the listener from determine the speaker's meaning.

Twitter has trained me to be more precise in my statements. The Twitter service, with its limit of 140 characters, pushes users to retype their tweets to impart maximal meaning in finite space.

The landlord game

2011-11-10T15:55:00.003-08:00

Helen and I have been on the lease for our apartment since September 2007. The landlord had us sign a 2 year lease, with a $50/month rent increase after 12 months (in September 2008). There hasn't been another rent increase since then.

The rent is low for Palo Alto. I joke to friends that our approach has been to not contact our landlord at all - if she forgets about us, then she won't remember to raise our rent! Seems that our landlord thinking about us may have caused a rent increase!

Our downstairs neighbors changed about a month ago, and over the past month the landlord has been involved with coordinating repainting the house and repairing the back steps. This week, I had to contact the landlord when a pipe rusted out and we started dripping water onto our downstairs neighbor's yard.

Today, I got an email notifying us of a rent increase of $50/month, effective January first. The rent is still fair, so I have no complaints. But it seems that our stay-out-of-the-landlord's-mind approach had been working!

iOS from an Android user's perspective

2011-11-08T09:26:00.007-08:00

I'm starting at Strava at the end of the month - a cycling and running data company that has iOS and Android apps. I already have a Google Nexus S Android device. I wanted to be able to try out Strava's iOS app, so I picked up an iPod Touch 4G last week.

I had an original iPhone and iPhone 3G. While working for Google, they gave me a G1, a Nexus One, and a Nexus S. The G1 was terrible, not worth switching to. It was slow, Android then was clunky, and it didn't engage the user the same way that the iPhone did.

I liked the Nexus One better than the iPhone 3G (more responsive, widgets, etc), and I happily switched over to T-Mobile and the Nexus One in December 2009. When Google gave me a Nexus S, I upgraded to that. When on Android, I've always used phones that were latest-release-track, carrier-software-less.

Every once in a while, I read iPhone users' responses to trying out Android, and invariably they're frustrated, disappointed, and certain iOS is the better platform. Every time a friend asks me iPhone versus Android, I wax on about how Google Voice is amazing, the Gmail and Google Calendar integration are great, and I summarize "Android is a better phone that does other things with less polish, whereas iPhone is a device that happens to make phone calls. If you live a Google life, use Android and Google Voice. If you like your music and well polished devices, and happen to make phone calls once in a while, buy an iPhone."

After a few days poking around on iOS, I'm disappointed by the ease of use of iOS. I believe I gave Apple too much credit.

There are things that I like better on iOS / the iPod Touch:

The screen has better colors than the Nexus S. The iPod Touch screen is brighter and crisper.
The iTunes integration is perfect. Musically, I live an iTunes life. doubleTwist is an inconvenience versus staying in iTunes. I've never synced a podcast to my Android devices - I have no clue how.
In the same vein, automatic conversion of high bitrate songs to 128 kbps AAC is convenient.
The iPod Touch is thin. Sure, the iPod Touch lacks phone hardware, but darn, every time I pick it up I notice its thinness.
The touch responsiveness is better. Every once in a while, I need to lock-and-unlock cycle my Nexus S to have it recognize when I lift off my finger. No such issues on the Touch. (Maybe I haven't dropped the Touch as often as I've dropped the Nexus S!)
Software consistency. It sucks that carriers put their own layer over Android - software I think doesn't make user experience better. It sucks that carriers and manufacturers don't upgrade older devices quickly or often.
Availability of third party devices for iPods is high. (eg: iHome, hotel alarm clocks, in car integration, Garmin ANT+ adapter)
Many applications are iOS first or iOS only. (I wish Android had a Chipotle app.)

Things that have annoyed me on iOS:

The keyboard always displays capital letters, even when shift isn't selected. (I miss Swype a lot too, which isn't native Android, but replacing the keyboard isn't possible on iOS.)
Lack of turn-by-turn directions in Maps.
When an app loads, and it has multiple prompts, I see the first prompt, then immediately see the second. I have to respond to the second prompt before I see the first prompt again. It's a jarring user experience; the prompts should be serial instead of going over each other before a user can react.
Prompting users for permission for push and location services on first app load is distracting. I'd much rather do that on app purchase/download like on Android.
The iPod connector insertion is awkward. I keep thinking I'm breaking something.
iOS presents the ability to sync with Gmail and Google Calendar from the phone, but not Google Contacts. (This is way better than it was on the 3G, where I had to do IMAP and iCal syncing manually, but still sub awesome for the legions of Gmail+Calendar+iOS users)
Calendar and Gmail didn't background sync by default. They're pull systems - I understand that they could be push if I dug deeper, but that's annoying.
At some point, the home screen instructed me on how to rearrange the apps. However, I'd already done that a few times.
To change settings on some apps (and most iOS apps), you have to go to the Settings application. Why do I mentally have to context switch do change settings in the app I'm already in?
I miss the hardware back button. Each app seems to have its own convention about how to go back. (On the other hand, at least in iOS it's clear what back goes to.)
The screen doesn't get bright every time I turn the display on.
The address bar / search box differentiation on the mobile browser is silly. Apple: please steal that from Android or Chrome.
I need to authenticate repeatedly. I had to type my password to download a free app.
There was no way to discover what "iTunes Match" was from the settings dialog asking me if I wanted to turn it on. (Much of the iCould stuff seems slapped on)

And here are some design decisions I disagree with, but aren't clear iOS problems:

I miss widgets - desktop items that aren't simple app launchers.
Apple charges money to take songs you've already purchased and crop them to ringtunes.
App store policies and platform rigidity / control. Why can't I replace the keyboard? I wish it had deep Google Voice integration.
Where's Siri? Why is Siri iPhone 4s specific?
Fanboys. Actually, that could be true for both iOS and Android.

My conclusion? The iPhone has become more complicated since the 3G, and the user experience hasn't kept pace. Apple did a good job with Visual Voicemail - but Google Voice and its deep Android integration makes Android a better phone. I can place and receive calls and text messages from my computer or phone, and I can listen to my voicemails on my computer or phone. I'd give my mom an iPhone, but she'll still be confused for a while. The device for anyone who's frequently using the phone as a phone, or someone who wants to highly customize their device? Android.

The Matt Test

2011-10-28T09:40:00.004-07:00

In 2000, Joel Spolsky (insightful software engineering blogger) introduced The Joel Test. It tests the bare minimum for a dev team with 12 easy questions:

Do you use source control?
Can you make a build in one step?
Do you make daily builds?
Do you have a bug database?
Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
Do you have a spec?
Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
Do you use the best tools money can buy?
Do you have testers?
Do new candidates write code during their interview?
Do you do hallway usability testing?

A score of 12 is perfect, 11 is tolerable, but 10 or lower and you've got serious problems.

It's not a perfect test of an engineering organization, but it's a great minimum. It's great for being over a decade old - but at a decade old, some of these seem painfully basic to me now (source control and bug database).

I would add a few:

Do you use Google Apps, or at least Gmail and Google Calendar?
Do you deploy at least once every other week?
Do you love your and respect your designer?
Do you have a Twitter account that replies to users?
Do you have design docs for major components that resembles reality?
Do you have a wiki that employees use?

More to come, I'm sure. This is a living document. 1-6 were added on November 2, 2011. I'll annotate the addition date for new ones.

INTP grieving

2011-10-27T14:12:00.003-07:00

I've been playing with Myers Briggs types lately to understand myself and my relationships with others. I've been trying to understand where I come up short and where I excel, trying to figure out what my strengths are and what I would be better suited for in life.

One test said I'm INTP - Introverted (versus Extroverted), iNtuitive (versus Sensing), Thinking (versus Feeling), Perceiving (versus Judging).

My uncle (father's brother) Roger passed away this morning.

Roger is 10 months younger than my dad - and they have some scarily similar mannerisms. Roger and my dad shake their heads the same after swimming, they ski the same, their speech has the same cadence, heck, they even swear the same.

Roger, his wife Diane, and my cousins Mike and Nicole live in Truckee - under four hours from Palo Alto (where I live) and close to great skiing. I've become close with them - I've spent dozens of nights at their home since I moved to California. Roger and Diane are great hosts - they've even opened up their home for my friends. Every meal with them is engaging, and love is palpable around them.

He was diagnosed in April of 2010 with a stage 3 GBM tumor - basically a badass brain tumor that had a 5% survival rate at 6 months. He had incredible doctors, nurses, and surgeons, and in the summer of 2010 it appeared the cancer was kicked. He did chemotherapy but there was no sign on the MRI of cancer anymore.

In March of this year, the cancer came back. Roger underwent surgery, but nothing seemed to work. This summer, he had a ruptured appendix surgically excised. Roger had to pause too much of his cancer medicine while the wound closed. The cancer had been crawling stubbornly to kill him, and after the surgery it was running.

I got the call Sunday that Roger was doing poorly. He passed away this morning at home - a few hours after the 4.7 quake 20 miles northwest of Truckee. He was 62 - too young.

I got the call from my mom at about 7:45 this morning to tell me. And I didn't cry. I bet my mom heard a robot on the phone - I was close to my uncle. And my voice showed no emotion, heck, I didn't feel much.

I didn't feel numb, I don't feel much except when I think about the loss. Just thinking "My uncle is dead" doesn't make me sad. Thinking "I won't be able to talk to him again" makes me sad. When I go visit his home and Roger's not there, when I see family pictures of my aunt Diane and my cousins without Roger, when I see my Dad with Diane and without Roger, that's when I'll grieve.

I feel weird about how I don't seem to grieve - but that's my personality type. I struggle to feel what his death means until I think through the scenarios that are different. And when I do feel what his death means, I struggle to express it others. I think that's part of the curse of being an INTP - we grieve - but we grieve on our own schedule, we grieve when we are in the moment where something is lost, and we don't express our grief well to others.

I'm happy that Roger lived for 18 months when he was given 6. I'm better for having gotten to know him better than I know my other aunts and uncles. But I will miss him - something won't feel right for a long time when I'm with his family or even when I'm in the greater Tahoe area.

Algo interviews are overrated

2011-10-27T09:17:00.008-07:00

Google loves algorithms interviews. Palantir loves algorithms interviews. Pretty much every tech company who prides themselves on hiring smart people spends at least half the dev interview time on algorithms questions.

I think algo interviews are overrated. Useful to some extent, but not the only thing and not as important as most engineers think. I think Steve Yegge (mentioned yesterday) would agree.

In my opinion, these are the important things in hiring a new member on a dev team. They are not priority ordered or of equal weight.

Ability to translate a problem into components.
Ability to reason through a problem and feel the solution.
Ability to keep trying and go deeper on problems unlike ones she's seen before.
Ability to translate these solutions into code.
A bag of tricks (data structure knowledge, technical knowledge) and the intuition that says "I bet there's a better way to solve this problem, I just don't know it yet."
Ability to build stuff.
Technical flexibility (can a SQL expert adapt to NoSQL? Can a Java person learn Ruby?).
Attitude. Is the candidate going to mesh with the team? Are they going to make coworkers' days better or worse? At Google, this was "Googliness".

Good algorithms questions can address points 1 through 5, though algo problems and every day coding problems don't map perfectly. Algo problems are too neat - they're like bowling with lane bumpers whereas everyday coding is like bowling without gutters or even lanes.

The real kicker: algo interviews don't gauge the ability to build stuff. Some companies get this and ask for you to build something for them. Airbnb and RockMelt ask candidates to spend time building something on their own. Square does pair programming so you can build something together (I interviewed at Square and feel that I was at a significant disadvantage because I don't know Ruby.).

Companies are wary about having candidates build something on their own time because it adds hours to the candidate's time load. Companies and candidates alike perceive asking a candidate to spend their own time (as opposed to shared interviewer-candidate time) as arrogant and pushing too much onto the candidate.

I think it's important to gauge how good someone is at building things ahead of hiring, but I haven't figured out a method to do it that isn't burdensome.

Another problem with algorithms interviews: the distribution of questions makes it possible for a candidate to have heard 80% of the questions you're going to ask before the interview. I'm not saying the candidate knows 80% of all the problems asked on interviews, but there's effectively a finite set of questions interviewers ask in a 45 minute interview. Algo questions need:

Simple set up. The question needs to be intuitive and you can't spend 15 minutes for the problem set up.
Bounded solutions. There's probably going to be one or two efficient ways to solve it.
Non-esoteric solutions. Priority queues are awesome, as are tries, but they're rarely used outside of algorithms classes and algo interviews. Questions mostly come down to: divide and conquer, dynamic programming, hashing, merging, binary search, sorting, and iteration.

If you paid attention in your 100 level courses, and solve some example problems, you can probably pass your Google onsite with 10 hours of preparation. Steve Yegge (yep, I have a thing for him today) tells you how. Google has an internal list of banned questions that have become affiliated with Google, but even those are still often asked. Good algo questions are hard to find.

I've concluded that algorithms interviews can be gamed and I've concluded that even if they couldn't be gamed, they aren't the only thing to gauge during the hiring process. So where do we go from here?

Find a way to have candidates build something during the onsite. I don't have the answer yet, but the closer to real work candidates are doing, the better the interview will be.
Ask design questions. Not design patterns esoterica, but problems that almost beg the candidate to say "This is like something I did before! We solved it doing ..." and then asking about the other tradeoffs the person has made.
Ask questions that speak to grey (technical) issues. Ask when they'd choose between GWT and jQuery. Ask when they'd take their HashTable and throw it into MySQL, and when they'd go from MySQL to NoSQL and MapReduces. See if they've gotten the feel for products they've developed before instead of simply hacking at them.
Get a feel for the candidate. See if it's someone you'd enjoy working with when the server's been down for 3 hours and you still haven't figured out why.
And yes, still ask some algo questions. See if the candidate has the gut feel of when to use HashSets, or if they're only into brute force solutions. Ask for the runtime - if someone really gets the solution, runtime is trivial.

Too many tech companies are measuring in great detail something that has poor correlation with career success. I haven't noticed it change much in the past half decade.

Five things every Carnegie Mellon student should do before graduation

2011-10-26T18:36:00.006-07:00

If you spend more than a year in Pittsburgh, you should try to do all of these:

Visit the Frank Lloyd Wright houses Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob. (I've never been to Kentuck Knob - it's a shame since it's 7 miles from Fallingwater)
Visit Kennywood. It's the best old-time amusement park in the United States. Their halloween evenings ("Phantom Fright Nights") are great.
Visit Sarris Candies in Canonsburg. The ice cream parlor is old timey and the milk shakes are fantastic.
Visit Phipps Conservatory. Heck, go several times. They do a great job changing the flowers for the seasons - I love the Christmas poinsettia display, I love the butterfly exhibit - I pretty much love it whatever they do. And I'm not a flower guy.
Go down by Heinz Field at night - preferably when there's nothing going on across the river. The city by night across the river is serene.

Things Google does poorly

2011-10-25T23:07:00.007-07:00

You may have read Steve Yegge's Google-sucks-at-platforms rant. I have no real opinion on it since platforms are not my forte. And I agree with him on a lot of positive things he says about Google in the run-up to the rant bit. It's easy to write about what Google does poorly because of the huge number of things they do well.

This isn't meant to pile on, but I do have criticisms about the way some things work at Google.

One product, many leaders: Product teams usually are functionally aligned instead of product aligned. The PMs report to a PM VP and the engineers report to an engineering VP. The eng VP and PM VP have different priorities. And there are other roles: marketing, communications, support, design. There won't be a clear, unified product vision that management and employees are on board for - so teams can't be nimble and push forward. (Google has always had YouTube as a "business unit" where people across roles report up to one VP/GM/Director, and they've expanded it to other products, but it's not universal.)
Too many cooks in the kitchen: The New York Times wrote an entire article about this: The Auteur vs. the Committee. Google does a great job of listening internally - every employee is encouraged to give feedback on every product. But at a certain point, a product needs to do some things well and figure out, in the future, what next to add. And that hurts feelings - employees often felt unseen and unheard when a product goes in a direction they don't like. I believe that before a decision is made, employees should work to make sure the best outcome happens and after a decision is made, employees (from CEO to individual contributor) should fall in line behind it.
Managing out poor performers: Google is too easy to remain at. If you're a bottom 5 percentile performer, why would you chose to leave? You probably got in through a mistake in hiring, and you're probably not going to get as good a paying or perked job elsewhere. So you're going to milk Google until you can't milk it any more. High performers, who could go anywhere, hate working with low performers. Google knows they do a poor job managing people out, but is timid about getting rid of people. There's a delicate balance - cull the herd too hard and employees start getting stressed.
Industry isolation (technology): There's too little knowledge of what else is going on in the industry. This argument and complaint has been made by many Googlers before - most Google internal technologies are a generation behind what the industry has come up with in terms of features. C++, Java, and Python are Google's 3 big languages. But none turn on the 20-something startup-bound engineers. Sure, Google infrastructure can scale, but it can't replicate the speed at which engineers at other companies can add features.
Industry isolation (products): It's a company with hundreds of products and 31,353 employees (pre Motorola). It's hard to keep up with what's going on just in the company - and many employees don't have the energy to figure out what the trends are in the rest of the industry.
Good but not great products: Google products are guaranteed to have many users. That's keeps new products from having tons of users. The PMs and management are playing it safe - trying not to fail - instead of making pure products that might win and might crash and burn. Instead of building intuitive, simple, useful products that do a few things, they're making products that do many things without engaging the user. Yelp, Foursquare, Strava, Gmail, and Google Search all started by doing one thing extremely well. What did Hotpot or Plus launch doing extremely well? On the other hand, Google is doomed by high expectations and high attention in this space - launch early with few features, and users may be disappointed. Those users won't give the product a second chance.
Listen to their own support people: maybe this is because Helen is in consumer operations at Google, but I still think it's true. If Google's billion users all had one customer service request every three years, and each request took 10 minutes, Google would need over 20,000 support employees. But the issues that Helen deals with are the same issues, day in day out. They're fixable if the engineering will were there to fix recurring customer issues. But product people generally don't like blending engineering resources across new features, bug fixes, and customer enhancements. I love working at engineering centric companies, but I love more having happy users and customers.
Hiring (employee side): Each interview took about an hour and a half - 15 minutes of set up (read resume, tweak questions), 45 minutes of actual interview, and a half hour of feedback. Doing full interview feedback on someone who bombed the interview was painful and demoralizing - at one point, I was allowed to write two sentences about why the person was a poor fit and moved on. Eventually, I was asked to do full feedback even for the worst candidates - I saw no benefit to it, and boy was that sucky.
Hiring (future employee side): Want to pick what you work on? Nope. You'll get slotted. Start at Google, wait 12-18 months, and hope to transfer projects. I hate most ads (Google text ads for products usually excluded). I'm not working to put more ads out there. Ads are distracting and dehumanizing. During the recruiting process, candidates often don't know what's going and probably feel like a number. I recognize hiring at scale is a hard problem, but why isn't there a JobScore equivalent where candidates can log in, see whether they're waiting on recruiter communication, interview scheduling, interview feedback, hiring committee, etc?

I hope Google figures it out and can make better products. Change is painful, but out of the right pain comes something great.

Friends for different seasons

2011-10-16T21:37:00.003-07:00

Today, Helen and I hosted the fifth annual Laroche Oktoberfest at our apartment. We cook wurst (usually from Dittmers, but Dittmers had a fire in January and still isn't open!), provide beer, and ask people to bring their favorite German themed food. This year, I provided an Oktoberfest homebrewed beer as well - my first homebrewed lager!

One of my friends mentioned "I made a faux pas - I asked [former coworker] if he was coming today - and he didn't know about it." The former coworker is an awesome guy, someone I like talking to and seeing in situations like this. But I know a lot of people - I would have loved to invite about 20 people today - and then there's Helen's invitees too! But there's two problems with inviting everyone I want: First, I like events at about 6-12 people. It's enough to have 1-2 conversations going on, give everyone a chance to speak, and get to know each other. And second, I try to pick groups of people who I think will match well to the event - there's grill guys and German food guys. There's loud folk and contemplative folk - and I want a different type of friend at different events.

It's hard to avoid hurting feelings, though - I want to put things on Twitter and Facebook, but I don't want people hurt that I didn't invite them, especially if I invited them last year.

One solution: host more events!

Becoming more conscious on food

2011-10-13T21:12:00.002-07:00

I am a terrible moderators. If I tell myself "I can only have a little sweets today," I end up having a croissant, a bag of peanut M&Ms, and cake with dessert. If I tell myself "I will only have a little cheese" I'll have a ton of it. I ... I don't understand moderator. I'm all or nothing. To eat properly, I can't moderate bad foods - I need to abstain.

Most of us spend some time at a not quite conscious level. It's those times where we can't articulate what we're doing, or have some kind of breakthrough when we explain the problem to a friend.

When I lost weight, I logged what I ate into a food notebook. Technically, this was to show my trainer - but effectively, writing food in my notebook kept me honest to myself. Logging what I ate created a consciousness that I lacked. I stopped writing down what I ate because my weight was low, I was exercising strenuously, regularly, and I was eating perfectly. Then I had surgery and gained some back. I'm back on a writing-down-what-I-eat-kick, and I already am finding myself not eating something because I know I will have to write it down later. I find this silly - the log isn't reality, the food and the effect on my body is the reality. However, it works, so I'll keep at it!

"blogged" at work today

2011-10-12T22:01:00.001-07:00

I wrote a long email to my tech lead that fulfilled the goal today of blogging - articulation, introspection, and expression of formed ideas. And now, after kegging the Oktoberfest beer, I'm exhausted and going to sleep.

The noise

2011-10-12T07:32:00.002-07:00

Few moral issues are black and white - but religions, societies, and families give morals and absolutisms about what are good ideas and bad ideas. It's comforting to have affirmation of rightness - something that allows one to say "I did the right thing" and move on. But many people go off the rails at some point - they do something outside the playbook, and are lost.

One answer is to be one's own moral compass - to decide right and wrong on one's own, with no playbook to fall back on. It creates a deeper, more flexible person - with more humility. One can't help but be humble when one's morals are based on on opinions and not a rigid dogma.

But choosing one's own path is full of grays. If one is deciding between two things with tradeoffs, how does one feel good about not going down the second path? I usually have been good at living without regrets, but I can't help but feel tugged in different directions right now.

Trouble starting? Narrow scope

2011-10-11T07:54:00.002-07:00

I've been struggling to blog every day somewhat because I forget, but largely because I have too broad a scope of things I could talk about and no defined audience or scope for my blog.

I assume that pretty much every college, or even high school, grad has heard about narrowing scope in a writing class. Having no set topics is leaving me awash in ideas for terrible blog posts, posts that would basically be an unemotional recitation of facts. Unless I feel otherwise drawn to a topic, I'm going to try to blog about consciousness traps this month - consciousness traps like starting too broad.

Some days, I have nothing to say

2011-10-09T21:07:00.003-07:00

It's great to be back home. I'd love to be able to say I did something intelligent, had some great insight, or bettered myself, but instead, Helen and I went to Alice's in the coupe, I walked to the Tesla dealership in Menlo Park and checked out the Model S, and I tried out a new cocktail: the Maple Leaf.

I think a lazy (ish) Sunday was just what life needed.

In the west again

2011-10-09T08:36:00.003-07:00

I may have to amend the 30 day challenge to be averaging a post a day, not actually post every day, since that's how it's been going anyway.

I'm back in California again. I took my favorite flight in the country, United P.S., in my favorite row of that plane, row 9. United P.S. is a domestic flight in an internationally equipped plane. P.S.'s business class has older style business class seats. I had some expiring upgrades, and this is the best way I knew to use them! Because the 757 has two adjacent exit rows in the business class, Row 9 has about 8 feet of legroom.

It also has wireless internet onboard, rare for United. I had planned to write a post onboard, but instead I took two naps and watched the inflight movie!

New York was great - I wish I'd seen more friends and family, and my liver needs a breather, but it's good to be home.

The biggest shortcoming in consumer applications right now: meeting people I care about

2011-10-07T08:20:00.006-07:00

"Is there anyone I should meet near me?"

This is a squishy statement - imprecise ('near'? 'should'?) and not the type of thing we nerds excel in. But I believe this is an answerable question with technology. Some combination of rarity, closeness, extroversion, and other knowable factors help answer this question. Let me give you some examples:

Do I care that my work acquaintance is at the bar a half mile away at 1 AM, when I've been asleep since 10pm? Probably not. (Especially if we've never talked outside of work)
Do I care that my college roommate, who normally lives on Long Island, is about to fly out to San Francisco, 30 miles away from Palo Alto? Yes. (Especially if we've emailed or talked on Facebook or Google Chat since)
Do I care that the woman who just walked into the bar also likes road biking, home brewing, skiing, and the Red Sox? (If I were unmarried) Unequivocally yes.

More than a few services have tried to solve items around this problem.

On Facebook, you can search by "current city." Many users, however, don't fill this in and Facebook doesn't do radius search. It also doesn't cover weekend trips or other chance encounters.
Foursquare has no concept of interestingness for a check-in. Users can select a radius for alerts, but there are so many check ins that it becomes too distracting - so users disable the alerts.
Google Latitude got closest. For about a year, they had Latitude Alerts. Latitude kept your cell phone's location history and formed an approximate model of where you were at which time which day of the week. If you went somewhere strange for that day and time, it would alert people within an appropriate radius. For example, if I went home early one day, it would alert me of a friend in my neighborhood. If my friend flew from New York to San Francisco for the weekend, it would alert me. If they'd left it on, and if a critical mass of my friends used it, it would have been great.

None have handled friend-of-a-friend meetups, or potential compatible friends or partners. And none have handled a fine grain notification system that tailors itself to introversion level, work night partying tolerance, and ranking of contacts.

I used to check in on Foursquare religiously. Its game mechanics stimulated me, and I hoped to have chance encounters with friends. It started taking over 60 seconds to check in - geolocation takes too long, it showed irrelevant venues, and alerts were too noisy to leave on. I interviewed with them back in February for their new San Francisco office and pitched my idea - the reactions of the interviewers made it seem that they aren't interested in friends-meeting-friends.

It drives me crazy is that this information is there. As a technologist, I figure the solution is to make a new service that combines Latitude and TripIt to know where you have been, are, and where you will be, combs your email, Foursquare, Twitter, and phone logs to know who you actually care about, and make a service that works primarily with other people who use the service. But the set-up cost is high, the privacy implications are high, and I can't see enough people coming on at once make it useful - I imagine burning out early adopters as it seems that Foursquare has done.

This all came to me because I'm in New York City this week and I'm struggling to figure out who is in town, who might be in town, and where in town they are. I ended up using "current city" on Facebook serially for the five boroughs, remembering who lives locally, checking Latitude, and spamming Twitter, Facebook, and Plus to try to find those who might happen to be here for the weekend. (If you want to meet up with me before I leave, I'm hanging out at Ginger Man in the Flatiron Saturday from 12:30pm-2:30pm!)

I don't have the answers. What I do know is meeting other people, seeing the people we know and share history with, is one of the greatest things in life. Meeting more friends is also emotionally valuable. Technology can help, but it's falling flat right now.

Some days

2011-10-06T17:11:00.002-07:00

Some days, it feels like I get nothing done. Paying down technical debt is nice and all, but it isn't amazingly tangible.

Levi's GranFondo

2011-10-05T19:30:00.002-07:00

You know that thing in life that you were part of that just gelled? The restaurant you started going the second week it was open where the employees are all nice, they've succeeded, and you're a regular? The product you love, and when you submit feedback you get a personal, fast, great reply? That class you were in where the teacher was awesome, the other students were attentive, and you really learned the material? You know the feeling when the wind is at your back, nothing can get you down, you're present, and you're part of something? Levi's GranFondo is that for non-competitive cyclists. Even participating in it feels like being in something bigger than oneself.

Levi Leipheimer is a professional cyclist who calls Santa Rosa, California home. In 2009, Levi's GranFondo started with 3,500 cyclists cycling out of Santa Rosa, in support of Santa Rosa and several local charities. In 2010, the GranFondo was back with 6,000 riders (and me!), and the Gran route sold out in 3 weeks. For 2011, they bumped it up to 7,500 riders (4000 for the 'Gran' route at 100 miles, 2500 for the 'Medio' route at 65 miles, and 1000 for the 'Piccolo' route at 32 miles). The Gran route sold out in 6 days, over 8 months in advance of the ride. The day that entries went on sale, the site crashed due to rabid cyclists hitting-refresh, being unable to imagine missing the ride.

Fast forward to sunrise last Saturday, October first. My friend Jim and I checked tire pressure, donned spandex, and headed out from our motel to the start line. We staged about mid-pack, 20 minutes before start, and listened to the announcer list off names of famous riders prsent. This year, the names I remember (besides Levi and his wife Odessa Gunn) were Patrick Dempsey, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, and Dean Karnazes. The announcer also told us home towns - people flew from as far as New Zealand and Europe to participate (and many other countries and states). At 8am, the first riders started... and 20 minutes later Jim and I crossed the start line.

For the first fifteen miles, I couldn't ride hard, couldn't even warm up because there was no room to pass - even though the roads were closed in both directions and we could ride in the oncoming lane, there were just too many other cyclists around! Jim and I rode together for about 45 minutes, and then I broke away. I kept looking back for him, spending 20 minutes at the first rest stop looking for him. I had no cell reception (and didn't for the next 5 hours). I assumed I'd lost him for the day and carried on.

The weather report, and the actual weather at the start, was great - low 70s and partly cloudy. As I climbed onto Kings Ridge, the fog set in. I climbed on, with some amazing views of valleys and forests - but my sunglasses started to get covered by drizzle. I'd prepared for 70 and sun, not 60 and rain!

Just after the halfway rest stop, I descended the steepest of the entire ride - down towards Hauser Bridge. At one point, I checked my brakes only to find that I might not be able to stop due to the damp roads, my wet brakes, and the steep grade. Right before Hauser Bridge, volunteers were out commanding us to dismount. It turns out I could stop, although it was close! Curious, I asked the volunteer if any riders had wiped out - she replied "Every ambulance and Medevac chopper in the county is full of people who wiped out here." (I learned later that 3 people got helicopter rides from that area).

After we descended towards the coast, the fog and drizzle lifted - thankfully! I blitzed in and out of a couple rest stops because I was warmer on the bike!

On the coast, I was ecstatic to catch the back of paceline - I was tired and wanted all the aerodynamic advantage I could get. It was the first time I was out of the wind the whole day. Within a mile of joining the paceline, though, the rider just in front of me jerked on her brakes, jogged left, and clipped my front wheel, pushing my wheel left. All of the sudden, I knew I was coming off the bike in the next second; the only thing I could do was choose where. I picked the brush on my right - it looked dry and scratchy, but it had to be better than pavement. I pulled the wheel back right and aimed at the brush. Over the bars I went, hitting my head in the brush and coming off the bike.

After shaking myself off, I checked my bike and my body out. I had dirt on my left leg, scratches on my left forearm and left calf, and a tiny cut on my knee. Astoundingly, I wasn't injured (although four days later my neck's still a bit tight!) and my bike was fine, though my chain came off the front derailleur. After putting my chain back on, I mounted, and continued on.

I was weary for the last thirty miles, but finished the 103 mile ride in eight hours and fourteen minutes, including rest stops. I grabbed some food at the finish line festival and sat down, waiting for Jim and wondering how I only left that morning.

I finally heard from Jim - one of the riders who fell near Hauser Bridge fell down an embankment and had to be rescued - the rescue closed the road for over an hour. Jim, much like me, was not prepared for drizzle and cool weather - he was on the verge of hypothermia. Jim elected to get a ride back to the start from a volunteer - but the volunteer couldn't show up until the road re-opened, so he had to wait in the cold for two hours! When he showed up at the festival, he was in surprisingly good spirits for someone who had spent the day cold and not doing what he'd come to do.

You'd expect that the local, non-cycle community would be annoyed by road closures, delays, and 7500 cyclists invading the community. But for much of the ride, we saw nothing but happy families cheering along the road. Levi's Gran Fondo brings in a lot of business for the Santa Rosa - full hotels and busy restaurants. It brings in money for local charities. And my guess is the community feels as swept in this as I did.

The Land of Milk and Honey

2011-10-05T07:39:00.005-07:00

As I posted yesterday, I'm in New York for the week. New York is a fascinating, disorienting place - I'm out of my comfort zone the moment I hit the baggage claim and limo drivers solicit passengers. It continues when I get to the subway platform and find out, from another passenger, that the subway line I want isn't running this weekend due to construction. It's not a friendly place for tourists much of the time.

This is my twelfth trip to New York. I've progressed from finding it scary, overwhelming, and impossible-to-get-my-mind-around to exciting, overwhelming, and impossible-to-get-my-mind-around. I've learned some of the city's ways, and have cracked some of the keys to getting around, getting great food, and not getting ripped off. Some of the credit is due to Yelp and Google Maps Transit, some is due to becoming older and more experienced with cities, and much is thanks to friends' personal recommendations.

I started enjoying cities a lot more after I lost weight. Cities are tiring to heavy, out of shape people. Cities require a lot of walking and stair climbing. Cities are hard on people who take up a lot of space. Cities are warm at awkward moments. Cities have a ton of fashionably dressed, attractive people - and when I was heavy, I was self conscious about being both fat and foreign.

New York is hard on me even after all these trips - I usually have no clue which way I'm going when I get off the subway. I hate cold shouldering people who try to hand or sell me things.For someone who grew up rurally, being constantly surrounded by masses of people may never become comfortable. I'm still somewhat on alert on the street.

New York has her wiles for pretty much everyone. Her charms for me include great speakeasies with great cocktails. Great theater. Great architecture. Great food. Great people watching. And I have a lot of friends who live here.

Walking around New York also piques my inner details nerd. The infrastructure required for housing and hosting ten million people is immense. I'm always amazed by the same things. I'm amazed the seemingly endless subway trains that show up every five minutes. I'm amazed that there are multiple train (not just subway) lines running under the city. I'm amazed by the network of food delivery services. I'm amazed by businesses squeezed downstairs on a side street. I'm amazed that it seems to work, day after day, without falling apart.

New York doesn't seem to be a place that encourages the lazy. It asks you to work for its charms - by handling the masses of humanity, by handling the challenges of navigating, by handling the immensity of options, by handling her special challenges, she'll show you her parks, her hole-in-the-wall gems, and her best. It's not an easy city, but it is an amazing one.

I meant to post yesterday

2011-10-04T06:39:00.002-07:00

I meant to post yesterday, continuing the 30 day blogging challenge, but I was ill.

I'm in New York with my team this week, occupying our Meatpacking District office. We're literally sleeping in our office's unfinished fourth floor.

Yesterday, I checked off a good number of my NYC TODOs:

Walked on The High Line, a former rail line that has been converted to a park. It's incredible.
Went to Cafe Grumpy, a cool coffee shop with Clovers.
Went to Energy Kitchen, a fast food place specializing in protein rich, calorie low meals.

And then in the afternoon, I fell ill. My stomach is still tender today, but I'm feeling way better all around.

On my consciousness

2011-10-02T13:25:00.009-07:00

My own ego is a blessing. It's wonderful when someone gets angry at me, I can think to myself, "I'm not a bad person, I'm worthwhile". I usually get past my impulse to brush the person aside and invalidate him. Instead, I try to listen to what's underlying his criticism - am I doing something unkind? Is he having a bad day? Is there a misunderstanding? Can I do something to turn this bad interaction to a positive one for both of us?

My ego is also a terrible force. In high school, my course work came easily. I had great teachers, I grokked the lessons, and I never had to push myself to study or learn. The first week in college, I started struggling. The material was hard. The concepts weren't as intuitive. I didn't know how to push through, I didn't know how to dig deep, and my ego told me that office hours and tutoring were for other people. My ego told me my grades were more important than my learning, and so I half learned things by just scraping by on some assignments. For exams, sometimes I learned what kind of questions would appear and how to answer those questions instead of learning for the love of learning. I understood some things for long enough to hand in the assignment. I no longer took the content and made it part of myself in a deep, self-altering way.

My short term, short-sighted focus on the deliverable recurs in some aspects of my work and my life. I have consistently worked with people at or above my intelligence level. Intellectually, some people will get some topics faster than I do, and I'll get some topics faster than others. But when I don't understand a design, an algorithm, or solution at work I struggle to ask for clarification and I didn't do the work on my own to figure it out later. My ego says "Don't admit to them, or yourself, that you don't get it." And I skated by, not growing myself as I could have.

This probably sounds like I haven't learned or that I haven't grown in the past decade. That's not true - I rocked some courses, I have put in great work on some projects. However, I have grokked things more slowly than I could have. I've wasted days of work trying to understand solutions before understanding the components of the solution. For example, I have participated in team design discussions suggesting the details of the MapReduces we'd use before reading the Wiki page on MapReduce and writing a few. Time and again I've tried to solve the problem before understanding and internalizing the components of a solution. Each time, I've done myself, and my team, a disservice.

So how do I grow myself? First, I get the ego out of the way. I admit to myself, and to others, that I don't know or don't understand. Quoting Penn Jilette talking about one of the best minds of the twentieth century, Richard Feynman:

My friend Richard Feynman said, "I don't know." I heard him say it several times. He said it just like Harold, the mentally handicapped dishwasher I worked with when I was a young man making minimum wage at Famous Bill's Restaurant in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

"I don't know" is not an apology. There's no shame. It's a simple statement of fact. When Richard Feynman didn't know, he often worked harder than anyone else to find out, but while he didn't know, he said, "I don't know."

I like to think I fit in somewhere between my friends Harold and Richard. I don't know. I try to remember to say "I don't know" just the way they both did, as a simple statement of fact. It doesn't always work, but I try.

Second, I start slower. I learn the material. I never start on a poor foundation. I don't let deadlines cause me to try to create a solution without the necessary comprehension.

Third, and the most important, is growing my consciousness. I get tunnel visioned - and my higher, self-reflective brain takes a vacation. That's the part that can actually change these habits and break the cycle. To be more self-reflective, I need to slow down - I should stop typing code when I should be thinking, asking more assertively when I don't understand. In my most panicked times, I'm doing my team a disservice by trying to fix problems before I understand the problem and the solution.

I have a few things I'm going to attempt to grow my consciousness:

Do one thing at a time. Be present for it.
Make sure each day contains one non-work thing I'm present for and do without the nagging guilt of "you should be doing something else". Cycling, yoga, weight lifting, driving the coupe, reading for an hour - anything that absorbs me completely.
Learn. Ask. Quiet the ego and say, "I don't understand. Would you explain that again?"
Slow down. Recognize that if I slow down I'm more likely to make deadlines, and if I miss a deadline I might as well learn something.

What do you think? I've checked my ego, is there something I can do to be better? Do you suffer the same?

30 day challenge

2011-10-02T13:08:00.004-07:00

After watching Matt Cutts' 30 day challenge TED talk, I decided to try out 30 day challenges.

August was no alcohol, and I counted it as a win - I did have a going away drink when my tech lead left, and I sampled some homebrew when I took gravity measurements. I learned that I had become too accustomed to having a beer in the evening - merely drinking it instead of enjoying it. I believe I have reset myself to opting in to alcohol instead of opting out.

September, I tried the One Hundred Push Ups program, but I dropped out after the first week. My form was terrible, and I hurt my lower back by going for numbers instead of quality. I may try this again later - I still hope to increase my upper body strength, and there's something about pushups that makes me feel more at home in my own body.

October's goal is to blog daily. I find myself more confident in my own head when I talk about or write about what's going on. I tend to be too in my own head to be conscious about what's going on at work or in some facets of my life. I believe that writing an entry every day will strengthen the reflection muscles and make me more present and conscious about what's going on (more on this struggle, hopefully, in another post later today). I think we all suffer from this at least a little - why else do answers come in the shower, or solutions to our bugs come when we're describing the problem to a coworker?

You might have noticed that this is posted on October second. Yesterday, I rode my bike over 100 miles on Levi's GranFondo. I decided on the ride that this would be my goal, but returned home at 8:30pm exhausted and mentally gone. So perhaps this month's challenge should have been "bike 100 miles or blog every day"!

The first 90 days

2011-09-12T07:30:00.002-07:00

If I had written this paragraph, it would have also included the words "panic" and "anxiety." But this is a good summary of my first 90 days.

During times of rapid growth, a team doesn't necessarily take the time to stop and get to know each other because they arrive and the first thing they notice is, "Whoa. Everyone is in a big fucking hurry, so I must hurry as well." Their normal instincts regarding getting to know those around them are buried in their goal of being recognized as a person who is also in a hurry.

From Rands' post Fred Hates It.

Changing attitudes

2011-07-19T08:29:00.002-07:00

Growing up, Saturday morning was chore morning. I'd put new sheets on my bed, vacuum, dust, and tidy my room, and take out all the trash in the house. I didn't like it - since I didn't know how unlivable a heavily dusted, un-vacuumed, messy room was, I didn't see the point of Saturday morning chores. And so I have a bit of a block against dusting, vacuuming, and tidying - Helen and I have a maid come biweekly to do the vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning.

But I've started to do something that looks suspiciously like doing chores: I've started to block out time with the simple goal of making my life better. If I have a weekend chunk of time free, I just walk around thinking "What would make my life better?" and then I do it! It might be filing the stack of papers on my desk, it might be breaking down boxes and bringing them to recycling, it might be recycling old magazines, and it might be rearranging the food on the shelves. It might be going through the Wii remotes and putting new batteries in and charging them. Since I'm setting out with the goal of making my life better, I'm happy, energetic, and almost bouncing like Tigger.

Here's the funny thing to me: I don't like chores. But these things I'm doing are chores - and I'm doing them happily.

Kindle books I can loan

2011-04-20T07:34:00.002-07:00

People with Amazon Kindle Books can lend them to friends. The recipient has one week to accept and two weeks to read. If you want to borrow them (and I know you!), contact me through email or Twitter.

This is the list of Kindle books I have that are loanable:

Fiction:

Non fiction:

Being Geek (by Michael Lopp a.k.a. Rands)
Hold On to Your NUTs
Intuitive Eating
The Portable Atheist

(Current as of April 20, 2011)

Distributed identity management

2011-04-08T13:31:00.003-07:00

Contact and address book management is annoying and over manual - this should be automatable. Here are a few cases that highlight the redundancy and time wasting right now:

Mike changes his phone number. Mike either hopes people notice the change or he emails out his new number to people he thinks have his old number. Wouldn't it be better if wherever you had Mike's number, it automatically became the new number?
Jane wants to use Facebook as her address book. But there's no way for Jane to add a phone number to a contact such that only Jane can see it. Even more difficult - Jane's grandmother isn't on Facebook. Jane can't create an address book entry for her grandmother.

I don't know exactly what the proper solution is, but I'd love to see some kind of distributed e-identity system that allows for notification of changes with minimal interaction. I see it working somewhat as following:

I have a list of contacts. For some contacts, it's information they curate. For others, it's information I enter - maybe they've never participated online in this system before.
I can see who's got me listed as a contact. (Or I can see who's listed me as a contact and opted into me seeing that they've listed me)
When I change some detail about myself, I can select whom I'd like to notify about this.
When users get notifications about a change (maybe email), they can choose to accept or ignore the changes. Or if a user doesn't act on it immediately, the information is annotated with the change and the user can accept it or reject it later.
I can choose to trust people's changes - I don't even see their update notification, their contact info is gracefully changed.

Some solutions get close - most notably Plaxo. Plaxo charges $60 a year for the sync, though, and I don't think an external service is necessary for this. Address Book's use of vCards allows me to send out a vCard when I change my information, but vCard doesn't seem seamlessly integrated into other services and isn't as graceful as I'd like.

I'd love to see better integration across different services and applications on this. I'd love to see my Google Contacts knowing about people's Facebook information. I'd love to see this taken from an occasional sync to a gracefully pervasive and integrated system.

I'm not quitting, I'm declaring victory and moving on.

2011-04-02T07:17:00.002-07:00

I sent this out to my coworkers and friends at Google a couple weeks ago:

Hey everybody,

I'm not quitting, I'm declaring victory and moving on.

My last day at Google will be Friday, April 1. It's been an honor to have worked at Google over the last 5 years. There's a real wealth of intelligence, passion, talent, generosity, and big hearts here, and I'm hoping for your continued success.

A big, genuine thank you to everyone, especially the official and unofficial mentors and the people who went out of their way to help even when they didn't have to.

FAQ:

Wait, I thought you resigned last fall!?

That was Ian Langworth! I still can't escape the Ian-Matt-Lan-Rob confusion!

What are you going to do next?

I'm going to Disney World! No, seriously, I'm going to Disney World in May. I'm taking about a month and a half off. After that, I'm going to work at Palantir on their Finance product. I'm excited about what they're doing and the approach they're taking.

Will there be drinks?

Yes! Details forthcoming!

How can I reach you?

Facebook
Twitter @mlroach
LinkedIn

I wish you all the best,

Matt

P.S. If I may quote Kevin Stephens quoting someone else, "I've been offended by not getting people's farewell emails before, but now, facing up to the task of not spamming and not leaving anyone out, I see it's a daunting one. If this reached you and you don't give a hoot that I'm leaving, sorry for the spam. If this was forwarded to you and you're offended at being left off the list, sorry as well."

Part of my grandfather's legacy

2010-10-20T18:00:00.004-07:00

[I posted this to Watchuseek - so the language is going to be much more tuned to watch aficionados than my friends & family. My grandfather, John J. Bubbers, passed away in May. The watch I'm referencing, an Omega Speedmaster Pro, is also known as "the moon watch" because it was worn by Apollo astronauts and tuned to being in space in several ways.]

My grandfather was a product of the great depression. He was born in the US, moved to Germany during the 1930s during the Great Depression, and moved back to the United States after the outbreak of war with his family. His family had almost nothing, from what I understand leaving it behind to flee Germany.

A self made man, he put himself through college while holding down a full time job and raising my mother, my aunt, and my uncle. He started his own businesses, and traveled the world for them. He said he picked up this watch in Switzerland the week after the moon landing. From Chronomaddox.com, I believe this is a ST145.012, a caliber 321 Speedmaster.

Over the past few years, I've been flying to Boston (from San Francisco) every other or every third month for a weekend to get to know my grandfather as an adult, get to hear the stories he was too quiet to tell in front of many people. (He wasn't a quiet man with his opinions, but he never told old stories with a group.) He remained heavily involved in HAM radio and his community until the end. He was heavily into the details of everything he did and was engaged in a way that's sadly rare.

I've been wearing this in very heavy rotation since his memorial service, and today sent it to Nesbit's for service. The Hesalite is pretty heavily scratched, and I believe it wasn't regularly serviced before. If I turn the crown backwards with the crown out, the movement can stop and I'm noticing significantly diminished reserve when the chronograph is running. But all in all, she's a beauty for a 42-ish year old watch.

I can think of no better way to remember my grandfather than to wear his old watch, to look at it and think of him every day I wear the watch.

Full photo gallery

You're just a shade

2010-08-18T05:00:00.004-07:00

For those who haven't seen Inception, minor spoiler alert.

Inception is about people who can modify other people's dreams. One of the dream changers keeps unintentionally bringing his dead wife into the dreams. He tells her that he can't live the rest of his life in the dream world with his imagination of his wife:

I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all your perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You're the best I can do; but I'm sorry, you are just not good enough.

Quick painting tips

2010-08-02T21:38:00.002-07:00

The answer to "have I put enough paint down?" is always "no."
You only have too much paint on your roller when it doesn't roll.
Either color match or do something different. It'll save you from putting too little paint down and having to do a second coat.
3-4 people is perfect. Any more than that and a surface will get missed (if the old and new colors are close enough).
The answer to "did I put too much spackle down?" is always "yes".

How I lost weight

2010-02-12T07:22:00.004-08:00

Someone beer-mailed me on BeerAdvocate after I mentioned in a forum post that I lost 100 pounds in 2009, asking me for tips and advice. I figured I might as well post it here! I hope you enjoy, and I hope you disagree a bit with some of it!

Hey Frank,

Good luck in your quest! Losing the weight (100 pounds from 2/23/2009-8/24/2009, started a bit higher before, dropped even lower at the end) was one of the biggest things I've ever done. To give you some reference, it sounds like we started in similar places - I turned 25 while losing the weight. I'm 6'1.5". My hundred pounds was 287->187, and I was 297 at one point and 181 a bit after the end. I'm back up to 191 now, but come biking and running season, it'll hop back off. http://hphotos-snc1.fbcdn.net/hs180.snc1/6772_572160972709_4800650_33607245_723831_n.jpg

Losing weight a healthy way is hard because we're fighting the attitude of "You can eat whatever you want and lose weight if you just X" (take our pill! Eat our Weight Watchers food! Cleanse your colon on our expensive juices!). I don't believe you can eat whatever you want, lose weight, and keep it off. It requires a psychological and biochemical change.

I admire everything you're doing - what worked for me may not work for you, but here's roughly what I did:

* Ate perfectly. I had almost no sweets in the middle phase. I still haven't had any bacon since I started. I even lost 4 pounds on an all you can eat cruise, I was that disciplined (my wife and family would say obsessed) with eating well.

* Worked out 6 days a week - 4 days a week of running and lifting weights, one day a week just running, and one day a week going on a longer bike ride (40+ miles). A lot of the lifting days I just went in, did half what I planned and left because it was too hard, but getting in the habit of being in the gym every day is great.

* Read a lot and asked people. Which it sounds like you're doing.

* Hired a trainer. I had a friend lose a lot of weight with this personal trainer, and it got me to realize I could too. Not every trainer is good, and I realize they're expensive. But going twice a week, I paid maybe $2000 for the trainer. $2000 for 100 pounds was totally worth it for me.

* Keep a food and exercise log - it'll keep you honest.

Sample day of eating:

6:30 Oatmeal with raisins, fruit

9:15 zbar, fruit

12:00 Salad with the vegetables I liked and vinaigrette, maybe some whole carbs, and a lot of fish or chicken or turkey. Probably a whole large chicken breast worth.

3:30 zbar, fruit, maybe some protein like turkey jerky or a Muscle Milk shake (the Lean line).

7:00 pm pretty much the same thing as lunch.

(my morning and afternoon snacks were pretty much evenly spaced between meals)

After I worked out, I would have protein. Turkey jerky is great in a pinch, and if you can have egg whites with vegetables, it's a nice reward after working out.

I swapped in burritos at lunch pretty regularly, and I would have whole wheat pasta with chicken sausage and tomato sauce (and a salad) for dinner if I was going to go on a long bike ride the next day. I'd have one beer with friends during the week, and one on Saturday or Sunday, and one if I did something extra (like bike to work when I worked out that day too). Chicken fajitas were pretty regular at home too.

Things I believe:

* You don't have to count calories. If you eat the right things, your body will tell you what you need. Counting calories is a pain in the ass. Sometimes, I counted calories over a day to get a general idea of how many I was taking in, but I didn't do it often.

* Lean protein is awesome. Men's Health said in one issue that people who lost the most weight and kept it off were the people who added in more protein. Protein fills you, doesn't turn into fat on your body easily, and helps you in the gym.

* You have to eat to work out, and you need to work out when you're cutting weight. I don't think 1000 calories a day from food, or 1500 total, will be sustainable - if you always are hungry, you probably won't have the resolve to keep going. The only reason I could lose so much weight so quickly was because I was only really hungry right before I ate.

* Lifting weights helps. You burn calories during the session and for 48 hours after. Also, your body will eat muscle if you lose weight and don't work out. Your bike riding is good, but you probably will end up weak in the upper body (I have no clue what your day job is).

Food "rules":

The problem with many foods isn't the calories they themselves carry, it's that they cause you to be "hungry" (not real hunger, but an addictive want) for other things. If you avoid trigger foods, you'll eat fewer calories total and you won't feel hungry.

* I had no cheese in that time frame. I also avoided yogurt and milk (and definitely cream), but had a little if they were ingredients in a better dish. (You probably want to supplement your calcium intake if you do this.)

* Whole eggs are good, but egg whites are *perfect*. No fat, no cholesterol, just plain protein.

* No red meat. It's not great for your heart, it's generally not as lean as chicken breast or fish, and it often isn't in healthy dishes. Also, remove the skin from your turkey and chicken, and avoid gravy - it's all fat with little benefit.

* No fried foods.

* No traditional sweets. If you want sweets, eat fruit :) (In six months, I had two slices of cake - on my birthday, and on my first anniversary)

* If you're truly hungry, eat. If it's just an apple, that's alright - it's 60 calories, some fiber, and it won't wreck your day.

* Whole grains are great. If you can't get a meal without refined carbohydrates (white rice, white flour, potatoes), then eat the refined carbs. But whole grains (oats, brown rice, whole wheat breads, etc) fill you up, metabolize differently, give you protein, and don't spike your blood sugar. White flour, white bread, and potatoes basically look to your body like straight up sugar.

* No mayo - it's just adding fat. I put a lot of mustard on my sandwiches to get them wet.

If you have a Trader Joe's near you, I found them to help a lot. Instead of having one whole wheat tortillas option, like I have at Safeway, they have three - so if one is nasty, I can find one I like. Lots of healthy food tastes awful, but it doesn't have to.

Resources:

* The End of Overeating: http://www.amazon.com/End-Overeating-Insatiable-American-Appetite/dp/1605297852

* In Defense of Food: http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Food-Eaters-Manifesto/dp/0143114964

(I don't believe everything in either book. Not everything they suggested worked for me.)

* Sugar: The Bitter Truth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

I know this is a lot of data, but there was no silver bullet for me. Good luck in your quest, and let me know if you have any other questions!

Matt

Things I'm thankful for in 2009

2009-12-01T09:59:00.004-08:00

My wife: I live a much richer life because of Helen. She's patient with me and cares about me.
My family: always fun, but more importantly always loving and supportive. I always know I'm not alone.
Modern medicine: my grandfather got a 12 months to live prognosis 24 months ago. I'm going to visit him this weekend.
Airline prices and being financially stable: I will make 6 trips to New England in 2009 to visit my family and grandfather.
My trainer, Nick: I lost over 100 pounds this year, and owe a lot of that to Nick's interest and skills.
My friends: they've always been there for me, listening and helping. No questions asked, they help. They make my life richer and I enjoy their successes.
The ability to go to the Inauguration of Barack Obama: an incredible experience, made possible through frequent flyer miles and Helen's aunt and uncle.
My employer: they are flexible and treat employees with respect and appreciation.

Training

2009-03-11T20:21:00.005-07:00

I started with a trainer about three weeks ago, and he's laid out what I can and can't eat. Basically everything I eat must have a purpose, nothing can be empty calories. (Helen's going to the same trainer, so Helen has the same diet)

My trainer doesn't suggest how much I eat, but I can consume no pork or other red meats, no cheese, no sweets, no mayonnaise or mayo-based products, no cream, and no white bread. I can have limited white rice, but brown rice is much preferred. Whole grains and whole wheat are really preferred to white flour.

I can consume as much fruit and vegetables as I want. I've replaced sweets/after dinner desserts with nuts (I found a canister of macadamia nuts at Costco. Pretty awesome.).

We've been eating a lot of chicken fajitas on wheat tortillas, grilled chicken, and lots of salad. I'm excited that we're going to be eating more fish!

Last week was pretty bad - Helen and I both somewhat detoxed from sugar while ramping up on the exercise. My digestive system had quite a shock ramping up to eating tons of whole grains, vegetables, and other things that actually exercise the digestive system.

Working at Google has been a major help in this endeavor. Every cafe has healthy options. There's always salad options, there's always healthy meats.

Living in Northern California is also great for this - grocery stores have great ingredients, and bay area restaurants always have healthy options.

However, going out to eat in Truckee was very difficult last weekend. My favorite ski area killed off their salad bar. The Mexican restaurant we went to had no meals without either cheese or pork or flour tortillas.

Anyway, the training is going well, and the food is going pretty well too. I'm guessing we're going to have to tweak the food better eventually, but I feel that it'll be OK. It appears that travel is going to be a bit of an exercise in the lesser of two evils when choosing food.

2008 travels

2008-12-31T09:24:00.004-08:00

Somewhat for myself, a list of travel I (or Helen and I) did in 2008:

January:

Lake Tahoe for a weekend of skiing

Mammoth Mountain for a week of skiing

February:

Disneyland for the company winter trip

Boston to see my Grandfather

Lake Tahoe for a weekend of skiing

March:

Lake Tahoe two weekends for skiing

NYC for Helen to go to the Opera, and me to hang out with Kacy and Kevin

April:

Boston for my Dad's 60th birthday

Lake Tahoe for one weekend of skiing

Pittsburgh for Carnegie Mellon's Carnival

May:

Qatar for the first graduation of Carnegie Mellon Qatar and a side jaunt to Jordan to see the Dead Sea and Petra

Los Angeles for Helen's grandmother's 80th birthday

San Francisco for my bachelor party (not exactly travel, but people traveling to see me!)

June:

Lake Tahoe for Jeremy's wedding

July:

No travel!

August:

Helen and my wedding in Burlingame (again, not travel but our favorite people came to us)

Maui for our honeymoon (Lahaina/Ka'anapali and Hana)

Boston and Maine for labor day

September:

No major travel

October:

No major travel

November:

Maine for the Maine Brewery Festival

Los Angeles for Thanksgiving

December:

Mendocino/Fort Bragg for beer tasting

LA for Christmas

Maine for Christmas

Miles flown in 2008:

58074

Holiday Ale postmortem (or How I accidentally started a lambic)

2008-12-05T08:22:00.002-08:00

The holiday ale was just thrown down the drain.

Cause: bacterial growth

Symptoms: persistent "fermentation" (aka bubbling in the airlock), even far past the window it should happen, a weird sour apple smell out of the airlock.

Confirmation:

Percent sugar recorded at ~3% by hydrometer after almost two weeks with consistent bubbling implies a "gusher infection" per How to Brew
That sour lambic smell that shouldn't happen in a holiday ale.
Wort tasted and confirmed un-sugary and un-alcoholy. And just plain wrong. Yes, I drank bacterially-contaminated wort.

Things to do better next time:

Sanitize equipment better (we used unsanitized equipment to squeeze the hops bags outside the acceptable temperature range to do such a thing, and I can think of a couple other things we could sanitize better)
Sanitize hands (hand sanitizer purchased)
Take a specific gravity reading so I can earlier test when something seems wrong and pull the plug earlier, with more confidence.

Ok, that's all I got, folks. Scotch ale being brewed next week on an evening.

Current brewing projects

2008-12-01T07:41:00.003-08:00

In keg: Brewcraft Rogue Dead Guy kit with White Labs American Ale Yeast Blend. It's somewhat flat and possibly under-fermented, reminding me to not rush the fermentation process.
In primary fermentor: MoreBeer's Holiday Ale kit with White Labs California Ale Yeast. This will be bottled, although right now the smell coming out of the airlock on the fermentor suggests it's not going to turn out well.
To be brewed this week: MoreBeer's Scotch Ale kit with White Labs Edinburgh Scottish Ale yeast. This will also be bottled.

Back to brewing

2008-12-01T07:22:00.006-08:00

For my twenty-first birthday, my parents bought me a True Brew beer brewing setup. I brewed two True Brew kits in college, and then moved to California.

When I brewed in college, I fermented beer in the basement. The apartment was also air conditioned, overall keeping the beer within the range of good fermentation temperatures (68-72 approximately for ales).

In the bay area, however, most people don't air condition. This presents a problem to trying to keep the beer within good fermentation temperatures. Our apartment doesn't have AC, and I never felt comfortable that we could keep the beer in a good fermentation range. I didn't try to solve the problem, I just left the equipment in the closet.

About 2 months ago, I saw a Brewcraft Rogue Dead Guy kit on Costco.com, and on an impulse, I purchased it! I got back into brewing!

During fermentation, it actually stayed at pretty much the right temperature in our back closet in November, and last weekend I kegged it (kegerator setup to follow in a subsequent post). Last night, we drank the first beer from the keg! Although a bit flat, it was pretty tasty and I will work on carbonating it a bit more.

More posts to follow, including:

Kegerator setup
Fermentation cooler setup (I can brew ales or lagers year round!)
Current projects

Distress versus correction

2008-09-29T16:16:00.002-07:00

This Marketwatch story says:

Critics also say the plan inadequately addressed job losses and a distressed housing market --problems that underlie current economic weakness.

The housing market was a bubble. No question in my mind. So why don't reporters say the housing market is being corrected? When stocks fall after a bubble, it's a correction. When housing prices plummet, it's "distress".

Congressmen: Do not, under any means, artificially prop up home values. Please.

Randy Pausch succumbs to cancer

2008-07-25T07:16:00.003-07:00

I never had Randy as a professor. I was on campus for recruiting the day of his last lecture but I didn't know what was going on and I didn't go. All the same, he's been an amazing cheerleader for Carnegie Mellon, an amazing cheerleader for optimism, and an amazing role model.

Support craft beer!

2008-06-11T16:22:00.002-07:00

I like beer. I like stouts and IPAs, I like ales and lagers. I like Belgian beer, British beer, German beer, and American microbrewed beer.

One of the great things I've discovered at brewpubs is that you can get a half gallon of beer to go in a glass jar called a growler. The beer stays fresh about 7-10 days in a refrigerated, sealed growler, and once the growler is open it's good for another few days.

Helen and I are going up to Lake Tahoe next weekend for a friend's wedding, and I want to bring back some beer from Fifty Fifty Brewing. It's a four hour drive back - certainly, in the summer, enough time for the beer to warm up.

So what's a beer guy to do? Buy a specialized beer growler cooler of course! So I went over to the nice folks at Cape Cod Beer, and ordered a growler cooler. It can fit up to two growlers, and looks like it should keep the beer cold for a little while. If I'm on a longer trip, I can even use ice packs to chill beer.

I hope to keep buying craft beer on trips and check the beer cooler on the way home. Great way to extend the trip a bit.

Failing airlines

2008-04-05T08:08:00.003-07:00

For those following along at home, 3 airlines have halted operations in the US in the past week.

A moment of silence for Aloha (intra Hawaii and Hawaii-west coast), ATA (low cost carrier, code sharer with Southwest), and Skybus (Columbus based ultra low cost carrier, started up last May.).

2 bicyclists killed in Cupertino when deputy drives across double yellow line

2008-03-12T10:59:00.004-07:00

Two riders, Matt Peterson and Kristy Gough, were killed on Steven's Canyon Road in Cupertino on Sunday when a Sheriff's deputy crossed the double yellow lines and struck them. The riders were riding single file on the shoulder. The deputy possibly fell asleep at the wheel.

Sports Illustrated has a pretty good editorial about the dangers of mixing cycling and cars.

A phrase not on the internet

2008-03-03T10:52:00.002-08:00

I coined a phrase this weekend after going off piste. "It burns when I ski."

I figured I must not be original, but this phrase does not exist anywhere on the internets.

Evil ad

2008-02-25T15:28:00.002-08:00

Via Facebook/Scrabulous, I'll let this ad speak for itself

2 patent applications published!

2007-12-16T06:19:00.000-08:00

APPARATUS, SYSTEM, AND METHOD FOR ENHANCING HELP RESOURCE SELECTION IN A COMPUTER APPLICATION
APPARATUS, SYSTEM, AND METHOD FOR CONTEXT-AWARE AUTHORING TRANSFORM

Luxury < safety

2007-12-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

Attention bikers:

Headlights and taillights are both legally required for night riding and a really good idea.

Bluetooth headsets are luxuries.

That is all.

Helen wants a dog

2007-12-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

Helen wants a dog. She wants a dog very badly. She's desperate enough that she's even suggested a puggle.

We're in an apartment with a great price, great character, and great location. However, it's in our lease that we can't have a pet. Even if we were in a better place, we both travel a lot and work long hours. It wouldn't be fair to a dog. A smaller, lower maintenance pet might be ok in the right apartment, and so I broached the issue with Helen.

Me: what about a bunny?
Me: as a pet?
Me: when we want to go skiing, we can make stew
Me: and start over with a cuter one
Helen: I was almost considering it ... then you said stew

But I thought all of you were broken!

2007-10-29T12:21:00.000-07:00

Apparently I have a genetic disorder: photic sneeze reflex (aka ACHOO (Autosomal dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst syndrome)). I sneeze when it's too bright. No, seriously. Helen thinks it's funny.

My mom used to tell me people without this are the broken ones. Now I know that it's really a syndrome!

I biked to Half Moon Bay, and all I got was this pumpkin. And the makings of a cool scar.

2007-10-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, a Googler named John arranged a bike ride called "The Pumpkin Fetch". The premise is just to bike to Half Moon Bay, buy a pumpkin, and bike back. Also, we were required to buy pumpkins. (Apparently John's been doing this ride for quite some time.) I'm not an amazing biker, but I figured a 60 mile bike ride would be fine.

The ride requires two ascents from basically sea level to the top of the hill between Silicon Valley and the Pacific Ocean. Most people call it going up to Skyline Boulevard. I've biked up to Skyline about 5 times now, but never twice in one day. I knew it would be a strenuous ride, but John said that he took his time and would be ok with people a bit slower.

I left home at 7:30 am. I met my friend Jim and John at 8 am at Google. It was pretty chilly last Saturday, and I didn't really warm up until about 3 miles out from Google (9 miles total into the ride). Jim and John kept a pretty fast pace to King's Mountain, and I just tried to keep up. We had a pretty leisurely ascent up Kings Mountain (according to Jim, I took 48 minutes from Tripp Road to Skyline). We then turned north and biked to 92. 92 is a busy road to Half Moon Bay. We descended on 92, and then passed quite a few cars while we biked on the shoulder.

We picked up our pumpkins at a small farm on 92 and took a bit of a break. John purchased a 29 pound pumpkin, and I picked up 50 cent pumpkin - one I'm very proud of!

After the pumpkin selection, we headed west towards Route 1, and then south on Route 1.

The second ascent was up Tunitas Creek Road. From the description, I thought Tunitas would be just a little bit more challenging than King's Mountain. I was wrong - Tunitas is one heck of a road. It's beautiful, not many people, but fairly steep for a few miles.

After one of my many stops on the way up Tunitas, my right foot slipped while trying to clip into my pedals, and came back against the chainring. I started lightly bleeding, but there wasn't much I could do but continue on.

About 3 miles from the top of Tunitas creek, I got a flat in my rear tube. I tried to replace it, but broke off the tip of the Presta valve on my spare. I was trying to reach Jim, who was far ahead, and let him know that I got a flat. Since we were in the middle of nowhere, it took me 15 minutes to get a text out. In the meantime, a very nice biker named Ryan stopped and helped me out - we busted a third tube before we realized that my tire also had a hole in it.

John came back down from the top to help out. Some duct tape, a patch kit, and 15 minutes later, I was on my way again. We reached the top of Skyline again, and I biked home.

I recorded 66 miles and about 6000 feet of vertical. John got quite a lot of compliments on riding up Tunitas with a big pumpkin on the back of his bike.

GPS data and the map of the ride.

Las Vegas!

2007-10-02T11:19:00.001-07:00

Helen and I are off to Las Vegas this weekend, and I'm curious - what would you do in Vegas? We have 3 shows to see, and we're staying kind of south strip.

What's really worth going to? What made your trip to Vegas? What stunk?

So far, this is what I want to see:

Anything else must do? Is the New York New York roller coaster worth it?

I might be a little old

2007-09-19T08:08:00.001-07:00

I might be getting old, or at least too interested in the economy. I heard the Fed cut the federal funds rate a half percent, and all I could think was "What's this mean for inflation?"

Elmo's Fire

2007-07-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't be surprised

2007-07-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

Bush commutes Libby's jail time.

President's statement

Article about it

Things to learn before going to a foreign country

2007-07-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Austria, and while on the trip I figured out that I didn't prepare enough. There are a few things I think I should have learned before I went to a country where I don't speak the native language. (Although, Austrians spoke great English in a commercial setting. Gas station employees switched to English easily, as did servers at restaurants.)

How to say:

Excuse me
Sorry
Do you speak English?
I don't speak X
Please, thank you
May I have a ?
Do you have a menu in English?

What the road signs look like. For example, European road signs are different from American ones. Who knew this meant "no bikes" as opposed to "caution, bikes"?

Helen giggled whenever I tried to speak German.

Bad news, good news

2007-05-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

Bad news: the USPS is raising stamp rates to $0.41 per stamp on May 14.

Good news: the USPS is offering a new "forever stamp" that can always be used to mail a first class letter, no matter how much stamp rates go up. (You can't put it on a package and expect it to be worth the current first class stamp rate, but I never have tried that.)

It makes a ton of sense to introduce "forever stamps", assuming that first class stamps rise with inflation - I use maybe 50 stamps a year, and they raised rates this time 15 months apart. I could never go through a roll of stamps in between fair increases.

I lost my temper

2007-05-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

Today, I biked to work. I was in the bike lane, all the way to the right. A Prius driver was on my left, with her right blinker on. Well, when the light turned green, she tried to get ahead of me and make the right in front of me.

From talking to other guys to bike to work, I'm not the only one who is sometimes cut off by a recently passing car. (It happens every once in a while to all of us it seems)

Bikers aren't nearly as slow as drivers seem to think they are. Or cars aren't as fast as their drivers think. Either way!

Hint

2007-05-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

I have a new favorite drink. The Company recently added a new bottled water, and I adore it. It's called Hint. I drink about 6 bottles of Hint a day at work. It's lightly flavored water with 0 calories - it's so lightly flavored that I feel like I'm drinking water, but it's flavored enough that I don't feel bored like I do chugging water all day long.

If you want to lose weight

2007-04-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

If you want to lose weight, you might want to stop looking at the prices at the grocery store.

Breaking news

2007-04-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

Virginia Tech Shooting Kills at Least 22.

Why Snapfish is the worst site ever

2007-04-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

Snapfish has earned some wrath today: they force you to log into see a photo album and they charge you to download the originals. They charge me to download the images my mom took.

Flying flying flying

2007-04-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

I fly about 50,000 miles per year. Assuming that's split into 10 round trips, with non flying time of 4 hours per trip (layovers and getting to the airport early), and an aircraft speed of 500 miles per hour, that's about 140 hours per year of travel. 1.6% of my year.

Boooo Dollar

2007-04-07T09:46:00.000-07:00

Dollar rental charges $25/day if you're under 25, as opposed to the $15 that other companies charge.

I tried to rent a Charger and they gave me a Grand Marquis. Lame.

Bob Marley went forth

2007-03-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

Bob Marley went forth and multiplied.

My favorite thing? 3 kids born in one month:

Stephen, born April 20, 1972, to Rita
Robert "Robbie", born May 16, 1972, to Pat Williams
Rohan, born May 19, 1972, to Janet Hunt

Google Maps is still the best

2007-03-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

New York, NY to Dublin, Ireland

That's right, no flying for you

At least they were honest (and spell well)

2007-03-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

From: "Parr, Kelli"
To: Matt
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2007 07:21:16 -0500
Subject: Fraudulent Spam.

Dear Homeowner,

You have been pre-approved for a $438 ,000 'refinance' Loan at a 3.23 % Fixed Rate.

This offer is being extended to you unconditionally and your credit is in no way a factor.

To take Advantage of this Limited Time opportunity all we ask is that you visit our Website and complete the 1 minute post Approval Form.

http://refinance_approval.saveloan005.com

Sincerely,

Sincerely yours,
Brett Abraham

NovaForm + Roomba?

2007-03-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

When I crawled into bed last night, I felt a little congested. But I hadn't felt congested before. So I decided I should change my sheets and probably vacuum my bed.

Lo and behold, my Roomba does not like to work on my NovaForm mattress. The Roomba's cleaning rotors suck the mattress cover in, and the Roomba can't go anywhere. Maybe I'll have to do this the old fashioned way...

New favorite site!

2007-02-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Fark, I've found my new favorite site. hockeyfights.com.

Goalie fights are beautiful! And this fight last night between Buffalo and Ottowa is fun.

Fat fingers forge fear

2007-02-23T09:43:00.000-08:00

Every time I mistype my password at work I get:

Username or password not recognized.

and I worry I've been fired and that I haven't been told. :'(

Tragedy of the Commons

2007-02-16T12:38:00.000-08:00

The Tragedy of the Commons. I think reading an essay on this should be in every high school English class.

Colbert + O'Relly

2007-01-19T17:02:00.000-08:00

Colbert on The O'Reilly Factor

O'Reilly on the Colbert Report

Remarks:
O'Reilly likes to yell, and Colbert didn't rise to it, although O'Reilly was baiting him.
Colbert was so patronizing that O'Reilly couldn't find anything to yell and get angry about.
Seeing O'Reilly on the Colbert Report was kind of anticlimactic.

(Belated) New Year's Resolution

2007-01-15T19:39:00.000-08:00

The Alpine Meadows National Ski Patrol is looking for more patrolmen. They have a "ski check" that you have to pass to be a patrolman. Well, I ski most of their terrain, but not their double blacks or some of their off piste terrain.

In 2007, I want to get in good enough shape so that in the 2007-2008 ski season I can train to be a patrolman. Basically this is a 2 year resolution: year 1, fitness to train. Year 2: train on the terrain and gain a bit more strength to be able to take a loaded toboggan down all of that terrain. Then, fall 2008, take that ski check and pass it.

"But daddy, I'm only 5"

2007-01-12T18:53:00.000-08:00

University Ave, Palo Alto. A father has his five year old son in his arms.

Father: "You have to be, pretty much, first in your class every year for that"

Zombies!

2007-01-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Eve, Helen and I went to one of her LA friend's parents' house for a small party. One of the other people there brought a student movie he acted in for us to watch.

Towards the end of the movie, there are zombies and there's a non zombie guy who is leading the zombies. This dialog still makes me smile:

Leader: What do we want?
Zombies: Brains
Leader: When do we want it?
Zombies: Brains

Edit: apparently this wasn't as original as I'd thought.

Loyalty: hard to earn, easy to lose

2007-01-04T20:45:00.000-08:00

Usually, mileage from United Airlines flights posts on my US Airways account within a couple days. When I flew back from Pittsburgh in early December, I didn't get my miles normally debited. So I mailed in the ticket stub, as they say to do after a couple weeks. A couple weeks later, no miles posted.

So I email them:

... I haven't yet received the miles, and miles are always deposited within 2 days. I even mailed in the ticket to the
mailing address you specify...

They reply, 8 days later:

To credit missing flight activity ... in your Dividend Miles account, we require both a copy of the ticket receipt and the original boarding passes to be submitted ...

Ok, at least pretend to read my email, please.

So I call. I have status on US Airways, so I call my spiffy elite line. I figured I'd get some perky, happy customer service rep - I mean, shouldn't frequent flyers get better service? Nope, the CSR was completely unenthusiastic and bored.

I used to be happy with US Airways: usually on time, usually pretty good service, usually just kind of another mainline carrier. In 3 events (miles not normally posting, lousy and slow email support, unenthusiastic customer support reps), in the span of a month, I've completely lost any enthusiasm to fly with them.

Mission: make it to Boston

2006-12-22T00:59:00.000-08:00

I got bumped on the way to Maine and on the way back, netting me two free round trips on United anywhere in the continental 48. I was hoping to get bumped tomorrow because Seat Counter says my flight is sold out.

Which leads me to tonight's story. One of my friends called me tonight to pick her up at SFO. Turns out her flight to Vegas was so delayed she'd miss her flight to Charlotte, so she decided to rebook. Well, the earliest she can get to Charlotte (out of San Jose, SF, or Oakland) is Monday morning. I would assume it's the same issue for me heading into Boston, Manchester, or Portland. So I'll keep my seat tomorrow, and make sure to arrive on time! (She was in line for 4+ hours between trying to check in and trying to rebook)

No means no, not "maybe next week"

2006-12-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

I have opted out of receiving credit card offers based on the lender running my score and then offering me a card. However, that doesn't stop groups you work with from sending you offers.

Both United and US Airways have been sending me card offers to link with my frequent flier accounts. Not only that, but they send an offer every time they mail me something anyway and they send me offers about once a week in the mail. I've had to call both of them and tell them to go away.

Iran: score -1, troll

2006-12-11T21:07:00.000-08:00

Iran Opens Conference on Holocaust

Way to bone that one

2006-12-08T20:59:00.000-08:00

I use Yahoo TV to see tv listings. Until today, you could look at local listings without signing in. Now you can't. And it's uber ugly.

Ok, so what do I use for TV listings online? Suggestions, readers?

Isn't that strange...

2006-12-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

Only two British air carriers and two American air carriers (and two grandfathered other carriers) can fly US-Heathrow routes due to some 1970s agreement.

Plan of the day

2006-12-06T16:36:00.000-08:00

Current plan: summer of 2010, take a 3 month leave from work and travel, or bike from California to Maine.

Nerd Humor

2006-12-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

Nerd humor for you about sudo from xkcd.

A statement I wish were true

2006-11-30T21:20:00.000-08:00

I wish this statement were true:

"(I sleep well every night, but) I get my best sleep on planes!"

This year I will do 10 trips to the east coast, and 9 of those have red eyes. Anyone have secrets for bulletproof sleep on planes?

Sororities and the maximum number of residents

2006-11-29T09:06:00.000-08:00

Carnegie Mellon's sororities only have 16 or fewer females living in them. The rumor was that more than 16 females living together was forbidden as the state considered it a brothel.

Not true, apparently. Snopes says it's not true in general either.

(But a random joke site says it's true!)

Midway

2006-11-29T07:02:00.000-08:00

Chicago Midway, most boxed in airport I've ever seen.

Port

2006-11-28T21:06:00.000-08:00

I don't like wine very much. But I have developed an affinity for port. In fact, I like 6 Grapes a lot, and my favorite retailer carries it.

Does anyone have any suggestions for other good ports to try?

(I still love good beer. If you like beer and want good ratings on beer, check out Beer Advocate)

Opt out of receiving credit card offers

2006-11-17T20:51:00.000-08:00

I hate receiving credit card offers. I don't need to receive them, I've got 1.5 credit cards, I don't need more cards. And if I want one, it won't be because I get an offer in the mail, it'll be because I researched it.

You can opt out of credit card offers - Opt out prescreen works with the credit bureaus so you can stop getting them.

Also, if you get credit card offers, don't forget to shred them so no one searches your trash and gets a card in your name!

(FYI: the site is FTC endorsed)

Delta + US Airways = crazy delicious?

2006-11-15T22:38:00.000-08:00

US Airways trying to merge with Delta

This is big; as a former Pittsburgh resident, I'm a big fan of US Airways. As a kid, I loved Delta (because it brought me to Disney World).

Summary for those too lazy to read the article: Delta is operating in bankruptcy. US Airways is offering 8 billion, not to Delta, but to Delta's creditors. Delta doesn't want to merge.

The combined company would be called Delta. It won't happen until at least January when Congress re-convenes (they have to make sure it's not violating anti-trust).

Tier Matching

2006-11-09T21:44:00.000-08:00

I fly too much.

There are three major airline alliances in the world, Star Alliance (Notable partners: US Airways, United, Lufthansa, and Air Canada), oneworld (American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific) and SkyTeam (Delta, Northwest, Continental, and KLM). The major benefit of these is earning miles on fewer airlines: if I fly on United, I get miles on US Airways (or vice versa). In effect, you need 3 frequent flier programs to cover the major US carriers. (Jet Blue and Southwest are different - they don't partner, and their miles expire much more quickly)

Well, not only can you earn miles for free tickets, but you can also earn status. Well, I thought that was cool - I flew so much on United and US Airways this year that I got Silver Preferred on US Airways. But the problem is I will probably start flying United a lot more as my work trips to Pittsburgh are going to lessen. And if I had status on United, I could get cool things like Economy Plus seats.

Well, here's the airlines' dirty little secret: you can ask for matching status on other airlines. Today, I requested status on American and United. And you can too. Sometimes you might have to ask for it through a travel agent, or you fax things in. But don't forget this, if you ever fly too much - you can be 'cool' on many airlines even if you don't fly with them much. I know that right now, I select slightly more expensive United or US Airways tickets because I get more miles. Other airlines are smart to compete with that bonus to level the playing field.

I have a problem

2006-11-06T08:45:00.000-08:00

I have a problem. I spend a lot of time looking at flight prices and thinking about whether I should travel or not.

I spend a lot of time at Kayak. Every week, I read my domestic and international fare deals from SmarterTravel.com.

One thing I don't get is why I will sometimes see longer, more expensive flights that take off earlier and land later listed by the same airline on a search. For example, let's say I'm traveling to Pittsburgh, I just saw these two flight options listed:

Flight 1, US Airways, departs SFO 10:30pm, lands PIT 6:00 am. $499
Flight 2, US Airways, departs SFO 8:00pm, goes through Chicago, lands PIT 7:00am. $509

Now, I don't know about you, but I'd prefer flight 1 (too bad United has flights for half price that aren't direct). Well, I would go so far to say I don't want to see flight 2 in my results - I have to be at SFO earlier, I land at Pittsburgh later, and I pay more money.

However, people have departure time needs. People want to arrive by a certain time. People have airline preferences. And they don't want their searches to be more complex. I propose that an airline search doesn't even display flights that take off earlier, land later, and cost more that are on the same airline.

This creates another problem. What if I book a couple days after my friend does, and I want the more expensive, less useful flights so I can be on the same flight as him. How do we avoid users being confused that what was an option now isn't?

People who look for the cheapest, or direct with less regard to cost, flights won't often notice the longer flight, more money problem - it's people who are optimizing for both time and money who will. So this is a smaller crowd we're talking about.

I've included pseudocode about the first way I can think to filter. I can't figure out how to make this any better than O(number of flights^2) (but I've only spent 10 minutes), though with airlines separated, it gets to be a bit more reasonable in the real world.

List<flight> logicalChoices = new List<flight>();

for (Airline airline : airlines) {
  flights = search(departureDateRange, departureAirport,
                   arrivalTimeRange, arrivalAirport, 
                   airline);
  flights.sortByPriceAscending();
  for (i=0; i < flights.length; i++) {
    boolean displayFlight = true;
    for (int j = 0; j < i; j++) {
      if (flight[j].totalDuration < flight[i].totalDuration
              && flight[j].departureTime > flight[i].departureTime
              && flight[j].arrivalTime < flight[i].arrivalTime) {
        // assert flight[j].price < flight[i].price - ordered by price asc
        displayFlight = false;
        break;
      }
    }
    if (displayFlight) {
      logicalChoices.add(flight[i]); 
    }
  }
}

Display logicalChoices to user

The magic of voicemail

2006-11-03T23:41:00.000-08:00

Attention potential callers:

If you call me 3 times and don't leave a voice mail, that's silly. Voice mail was intended for the type of communication that doesn't need a reply, or even the type that means "Please call me back". Text messaging works too. Also, email. 3 calls with no voicemail? That's just plain strange.

I used to think I was liberal

2006-10-31T07:29:00.000-08:00

Proposition 1C is a California Proposition for $2.9 billion in bonds for housing.

The first thing the bill (on some ads, the only thing) supporters mention is that the bond includes money for homeless shelters and battered women's shelters. That's about 300 million out of 2.9 billion - a little over ten percent of the total money. The positioning of the bill is actually a huge turnoff for me on this bill - don't pitch the bill based on how ten percent of the money will be spent!

The other thing that makes me dislike this bill: California housing is expensive. If we subsidize housing, it will only get more expensive for everyone. Let the free market take care of it.

I dislike bonds. On this proposition, over the next 30 years the people will pay off $2.85 billion in principal and $3.3 billion in interest. It's not awesome to spend taxpayer money to pay off bond interest. If I had the option to pay $84 in taxes for this immediately or $182 over the next 30 years, I'd choose the $84 in taxes this year! (Values calculated as $2.85 billion / 33.8 million people and ($2.85 billion + $3.3 billion) / 33.8 million people, assuming the population stays constant. I'm too lazy to factor in how population growth will affect my total amount)

Of course, I probably will leave California in the next 30 years, but I'm also paying past bond interest with my taxes - if all programs were funded by bonds, every tax payer would pay about 2 times as much as she does currently. I say we use bonds as a last ditch measure, and just pay as we go.

Daylight Saving

2006-10-29T07:05:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, every clock in the house would have to be readjusted for Daylight Saving time. I'd often go quickly around the house and update all the clocks.

In 1996, Windows 95 prompted me to change the clock - wow, something that (more or less) changed itself!

This year, on the other hand, my alarm clock and computer both switched themselves - silently! So I woke up and thought I'd only slept in until 6:30 am. I had to be reminded by other people that I'd had an extra hour of sleep.

Some day I could imagine not even knowing that the time had switched, I just sleep in one day too long or too short.

I'm not cut out for this

2006-10-27T13:11:00.000-07:00

I had a dream about snow last night. I dreamed it snowed 4 feet in Palo Alto, and therefore I was happier than all get-out.

This tells me a few things:
1. I probably need to add a blanket to my bed!
2. I probably should consider eventually moving to a colder climate.
3. I can't wait for the ski season.

Michael J Fox Missouri ad

2006-10-25T10:57:00.001-07:00

Thanksgiving, redux

2006-10-24T21:59:00.000-07:00

Right now, the cheapest flight from SJC/SFO to Boston, Manchester, or Portland for Thanksgiving (Wednesday-Sunday) is about $650.

Direct flight from SFO to Heathrow + hotel is about $700.

Facebook jumps the Shark

2006-10-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

This site warns that Facebook will put sponsored stories on their news feed. And today, I logged in and found they have linked to the Washington Post with an article named Celebritology. I can't find a way to turn it off.

I already ditched MySpace in June. I almost just deleted my account - it's that annoying.

On notice: Delta

2006-10-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

For Christmas originally my flights looked like this:
San Jose->LAX, 10am-11:15am
LAX->Logan, 12:20pm-8:40pm

Well, tonight I logged in to Expedia and my flights looked like this:
San Jose->LAX, 10am-11:15am
LAX->Logan, 11am-7:32pm

I've had flights rescheduled after booking before, but I've never had them schedule me out of a flight without being notified & automatically booked on a comparable trip. I wonder if they would have notified me before my flights!

Partially hydrogenated oil

2006-10-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

I urge everyone who is a fan of Costco to complain about the prevalence of trans fat in many of their foods. For such a progressive company (living wages, trust in the customers and employees) I'm amazed they don't have a policy against it yet.

Youtube

2006-10-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

Was this filmed in front of a TGI Friday's?

Getting things done

2006-10-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

I have decided I am not getting enough of my 'core job' done (I have lots of things to say I do, but I'm not making enough progress on what I am really judged by)

I will therefore:
1. Attend fewer meetings
2. Make todo lists each day