Walt-O-Matic

Went to submit a bug report today, but was denied for a very interesting reason; the system had no one to hand it to.

Ever wonder how a well-intentioned policy turns into a horrible nightmare for the very people it was designed to serve? I found the perfect example.

Let’s take the case of Apple’s technical WWDC ‘09 conference in San Francisco. Brilliant talks. Amazing speakers. Fantastic audio and video. It’s good stuff.

Now Apple is a company that is on the forefront of user experience, they pioneer usability and design, and their big presentation this year is on efficient resource and queue management. You’d think this innovative thinking would hold over into how they actual manage crowd control, but you’d be wrong. Apple has totally missed the mark. I know, it seems impossible.

There’s an absolutely stupid policy that’s being enforced, and while the best of intentions are there, the policy isn’t helping anyone. It actually makes things worse. Follow this.

You’ve figured out your course tracks for the day, bunkered down to do some work on your laptop, and are watching a series of presentations being held in that room with your development buddy. It finishes, and so you tell him “Can you watch my stuff, I’m going to hit the restroom before the next presentation.” He says ’sure’ and you leave. After all, being a convention center, the restrooms leave little to be desired in terms of personal space.

On the way out, you’d tell the Apple guy at the door “be right back” and empty handed you walk across the hall to the restroom, return in minute, and reclaim your equipment-occupied seat. At least that was how it was at the start of the conference. All was fine. Things ran like clockwork.

Mid-conference someone revised the policy. Instead, if you leave, you now have to go wait in line to return.

Why did Apple do this? I asked. Two reasons.

First, by only letting people out and not back in, this is supposed to make things easier for the presenters to set up.

Second, it’s supposed to establish an order of fairness for those people coming into line.

On the surface it appears to make sense, but what this policy really does is prevent grown adults from being able to go to the restroom. Instead, you’re standing there with a full bladder and Apple’s staff is literally telling you that you’ve got three options:
a) Hold it until the session starts.
b) Abandon your equipment (as you might not have a buddy to watch it), and then wait in line to see if it’s there when you get back.
c) Go get your equipment and hold it while you do your business, and potentially miss the session (although you already had a seat).

Let’s examine this.

1) Does the policy improve seating fairness?
No. There’s equipment, and most likely a person, reserving the seat until you return. No one standing in line is going to benefit whether you reclaim it now or later. And, realistically, every talk that has been “filled to capacity and people were turned away” had plenty of chairs mid-row, plus people are willing to stand.

2) Does this improve the line?
No. It actually makes them longer, meaning Apple has more to manage. And, as the lines wrap all over the halls, it makes them more cramped, confusing, and uncomfortable.

3) Does it make conference attendees happier?
No. It’s annoying, bordering on rude, telling someone they have to return to their seat and wait for the presentation to start in order to relieve themselves. It’s a frequent conversation topic to overhear, Apple is putting a lot of people off.

4) Does it make Apple look corporately smart?
No. In fact, even its own employees are mocking the policy behind Apple’s back, all the while blindly enforcing it (most of the time), at the door. Even their own realize how ludicrous it is. This makes Apple look bad in a very self-aware Dilbert way. Of course there’s an insulting double set of standards, as the guy managing the gate preventing people from using the restroom calls on his buddy to take his place while he goes to take a piss.

5) Does it make the presentations go smoother for the presenters?
No. In fact, worse. Now one has to wait for the presentation to start, interrupting the speaker, and by going in and out letting more light in the room. It causes distractions. Plus I’ve seen one attendee fall over a chair during a presentation, and two people trip during a presentation, all trying to temporarily exit.

6) Does it make viewing the presentation go smoother for the attendees?
No. Being seated in the middle, one now has to navigate over other people who are trying to watch the presentation. I’ve had my equipment kicked as well as my foot stepped on by someone telling me “whew, now I can go.”

7) Is it safer?
No. There is now less room to get out, where before the row was empty. Plus, there are power cords, laptops, cases, drinks and other obstacles to navigate, crush, and trip on.

8) Does it provide accurate metrics for seating?
No. In re-entering you get counted a second time. This messes up Apple’s counts and artificially makes room seem more full, turning away people who could be viewing.

9) Does it make it easier for the presenters to set up?
No. The presenters are up on stage, a good distance from the audience. No one is trying to interact with the presenters before the talk.

So, what starts as a “good idea” ends up impacting far more people than it should. Compare this to a simple first-come first-serve policy, which would allow everyone to get settled before a talk begins. If seats are full, stand; if you don’t want to stand, sit; if you don’t want to sit, find another session; if you don’t want that to happen, get there on time or before, just like everyone else does. It’s acceptable to leave a session during Q&A in order to find a good seat at the next session.

Unfortunately, as with most failed policies, the solution usually is to add more policies (rather than correcting the root problem). Kudos to Apple for not going this extra step. The slippery slope would be to kick everyone out in order to have them stand in line again; that however would be truly idiotic, especially given the equipment people carry and set up to attend these things.

When I want to keep my software up to date on my Mac, I use Version Tracker Pro. The pay software works great and, seriously, I have no complaints.

But then a friend pointed me at this new tool called AppFresh. It does the same thing, but for free. And, honestly, it’s a lot prettier and I love the way it organizes the downloads into meaningful folder names.

Of course, it does have some small kinks, being still beta.

Check out when it thought this update for uTorrent was released.

Software so old, it predates the birth of Christ.

The largest pizza bill I ever covered was $300 at Pizza Hutt when I decided to throw a party for a number of friends in high school. Since then, I learned you always go Dutch, even with folks that have the best of intensions, and you always order more plain cheese than anything else, because people like to mix toppings, but hardly do people consume what they create. Toppings are expensive.

But my all-time record almost got blown the other day, when I went to order a small cheese pizza and was charged over $1,000 for it.

The cashier fumbled the entry trying to enter a one dollar coupon and a fifty cent topping, only to miss the add button and pressing seven instead.

I caught the mistake, and we all had a good laugh. The date on the receipt was mere coincidence.

The story doesn’t end, as I kept this little token of amusement in my wallet for some future use.

While visiting Potbelly’s I happened to order a drink, cookie, and pickle, but no sandwich. This greatly confused the cashier who questioned me about why I didn’t order a meal.

The truth was I had just eaten and was meeting a friend, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Normally, I would, but I’m broke.” I pulled out the receipt and handed it to her. “See? I was charged a thousand dollars for a pizza topping.”

The girl looked at the real receipt with total amazement and shock on her face. “What topping did you order?” And before I could answer, she offered, “Was it mushrooms?”

So, I kindly fed into her misguided fantasy. “Yea. Those suckers are expensive,” shaking my head in sad disbelief that if only I’d known….

I now wish I could be the fly on the wall the next time someone tries to order a pizza with mushrooms with her. You know she’s going to intervene. Or, at least, go Dutch.

I recently visited a family that we’re particularly fond of. I’ve known many of their children since they were but mere infants. It had been a while, perhaps too long, and the infants were now in early grade school.

One little girl, about six, ran up to me, having remembered me lifting her up and flying her around at a much younger age.

“Pick me up!” she exlaimed, hoping to relive old memories. But, I couldn’t help myself. I love ambiguity.

And, in my best lounge lizard voice complied to her request with an awful proposition, “Hey, wanna go back to my place?”

“Yeah!!!” she started jumping up and down.

I looked at her mom, “Wow, ya know, that’s my fastest time yet.” Her mom just shook her head and burried her face in her hand.

This evening a few of us went out to eat. As we walked in the front door the hostess smiled at us, escorting us to a booth that would accommodate our party’s size.

“Excuse me,” I said to her as she was seating us, “which way to the restrooms?”

She looked at me very confused. But, being sure they had some, I deduced what we had was a language barrier.

So, I tried again with a different term. And, briefer. “Bathroom?”

Again, she shook her head indicating she had no clue what I was saying.

Never to be discouraged, and with an audience of many patrons, I said in a baby voice: “Pee pee?”

She instantly smiled, holding back a laugh, and pointed down a hallway. That, she understood.

Last night I was watched a very impressive and emotionally compelling seance.

It included objects moving on their own, volunteers themselves channeling spirits not a specific medium, where they’d revealing knowledge they couldn’t have, such as the contents of a sealed envelope. No stooges or actors were used in conducting the actual seance. They were very much freaked out by the experience.

Of course, it wasn’t real; it was an elaborate television special conducted by a famous magician who excels in deception, using magic and psychology, as an experiment to see if a modern day audience would be suckered by such showmanship. Disappointly, they were. And, in the end, the magician even showed the participants how he pulled it off and manipulated them, hoping they’d question their beliefs about the supernatural that made them fall for it. It’s clear that he, like many other magicians, do not have a belief in the supernatural and get very cheesed off when tricks of the trade are passed off as genuine, especially for the sake of defrauding.

It was amazing how easily smart people get suckered. For example, they were all told to look at a set of photographs and let one come to them, but not to reveal it. However, outside the context of the seance, it was no different than when, say, David Copperfield would have you put your finger on the television anywhere and tell you to follow his instructions, revealing your position at the end; this was just more sophisticated. Later on he’d make them reveal that name using a makeshift Ouija board (he also explained how that worked). Sneaky, if not genius, to apparently take himself out of the loop.

Of course, the Ouija board is more psychological trickery, especially since the dead spirit being called on happened to move the glass happened to be an actress sitting outside in a van. None the less, the glass moved, as it had to, with no stooge touching it, leaving them to invent a plausable explaination for the context they were in.

It started with the directions “Everyone ask, ‘Are you here spirit? If you’re here, move the glass to Y, for yes.”

At that point I paused the show, turned to the person next to me and stated, “If you’re not here spirit, move the glass to N, for no.” It was the spooky equivalent of “Everyone who’s not here, raise your hand.”

Elizabeth and I go way back, in fact, so far back, that in current day as a teen she has little recollection of events that took place between us, although for me, they seem like they just happened yesterday.

When Elizabeth was a little girl, I worked with her mom and like all happy co-workers, we’d socialize after hours on occasion. Quite often Elizabeth got to tag along. Her mom educated her with an impressive vocabulary and incredible set of social manners; thus it was very much a treat to see her. Although, as I’ll reveal now, even back then as a little girl she was still quite the flirt.

One summer day her mom came over with Elizabeth just as my wife had asked me if I could water the yard. Elizabeth wanted to help in order to spend time with me, so I pulled out the hose and we sat on my front steps talking while I sprayed the lawn. It wasn’t long before she asked if it was her turn, so I let go of the squeeze nozzle, shutting off the water, and handed it to her. In retrospect, that was the key mistake.

I recall Elizabeth was about 5 or 6 at the time. But, she engaged the conversation as all women do: with an entrapment.

“Walt?”

“Yes, Elizabeth?”

“Whenever I come over, Tamara is always here.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“Does she live here?”

“Yes, she does.”

It was evident that she was not fond of this answer, as she put her little fists on her hips.

“And why is that? Are you married to her?” Her little eyebrow went up.

“Yes, she’s my wife.”

At that point, Elizabeth scolds me, “You Never Told Me That!!!” and she points the hose right in my face and unleashes gallons of cold water all over me in an instant. And doesn’t let up.

Apparently, Elizabeth’s mom caught a flurry of activity through the storm door and came running, “ELIZABETH!”

Elizabeth shut off the hose, and looked at me expectingly, “Tell her what you just told me.”

And so, I had to apologize to Elizabeth, and her mom, for my big secret.

So, I go out to eat this evening and as soon as I walk in the door, the Korean waitress announces to all in the place that I’m from Hell.

Yes, hell.

Not only that, but I’m the devil.

I’m trying to figure out what she’s talking about, and she explains that she had just been telling another customer, who’s also a photographer, about me, and then I just walked in.

Confused for a moment, I figure out her context — she’s starts grabbing her ear and saying it was on fire, all the while pointing at me and professing to all, “You the devil! You from Hell.”

Obviously, the customers weren’t feeling all that comfortable with the revelation.

“Oh, were my ears burning?” She nods.

“You mean ’speak of the devil’?” I inquire.

“Yes! Yes! You the devil. You from hell!”

Well, damn.

I like to get my hair cut at the same place by the same Korean barber; it’s enjoyable because he’s learning conversational English, and I find it interesting to get an outsider’s perspective on picking up the language.

He explains, “When on break, I listen to customer.” He points at various barber chairs, “Overhear conversation. Pick up words.”

I nod, “Any other ways? Like the radio?”

“No radio. Also TV. Tried listening to Friends. No understand – use slang.”

Empathetically, I could see how this would be a problem, especially with the double meanings and catch phrases. However, he had an ingenious solution.

“Instead, watch cartoons with son. Words simple. Words slower.”

It made total sense. Shows intended for children took things at a better pace and used a more trivial vocabulary.

“What cartoons do you watch?”

He hung his head in immediate shame. “SpongeBob.”

Quickly recovering, he mentioned that he had some problem pronouncing certain animal names.

“Could you give me an example?”

“Yes! You teach me.” He then took a deep breath: “Re-zeh-da.”

“Come again?”

“Rē. Zĕh. Dăh.”

“Is that English?”

“Yes. No can pronounce.”

“Can you describe the animal?”

“Uh, it has a head…”

“That’s a good start,” I jest.

“It has craws…” (I assume he meant claws, as he made gestured talons with his hands.)

“Is it a Lion?”

“No.”

“Tiger?”

“No.”

“What’s the first letter? R?”

“No. Reh.”

“L?”

“Yes, yes! Reh.”

What’s the next letter?

“Eh.”

“E?”

“No, eeeeeh.”

“I?” By this time I pulled out my iPhone and was typing the letters out.

“Yes. Next is zeh,” and he drew a big squiggle in the air.

“Z?”

“Yes!”

I’m looking down at the iPhone. ‘L-I-Z.’ “Not an O, it’s a Z?” He affirms.

Oh, I get it — LIZARD. The moment I saw the word, he brightens. I also see what’s going on. He can’t pronounce L, and it’s coming out as R. And he can’t pronounce ‘zard’ as one syllable, so he drifted the soft a into an soft e, and added a third syllable to account for the d on the end.

We try a few times, “Lih-zard” “Re-zeh-da.” “Lih.” “Re.” “L-i-h.” “Reeeeee.”

At this point a young Korean girl, also a barber, comes over with her hand over her mouth giggling. She doesn’t speak much English, but she says Lizard perfectly.

Apparently, she learned how to say it, and “taught” him a new word to torment him all day in order to watch him go through a linguistic nightmare, knowing his determination to get it.

It reminded me of the Prell shampoo reference in Drawn Together, where Ling-Ling describes his new shampoo as his worst lingual enemy, asking how “Plerr” can give his hair such shine and body yet leave his soul with shame and embarrassment.

For the record, I saw no “Plerr” in the barber shop.