Project Miner

A few updates relating to my blog world.

1. I added a Twitter area on the right side bar (over there —>). Twitter is the first “social networking” application that I actually like. I’ve got an account on MySpace and Facebook, but just can’t really get into it. Twitter is kind of “a one line blog”, but is used more as a “here’s what I’m doing right now” kind of thing. You can update it via text message from a phone, IM chat, or directly through the web page. I love the idea of getting quick one-liners about what my peeps are up to. I can see things like “just saw X movie, it was cool” or “at Braves game, 3-1 in the third inning, Chipper hit a HR”, and the like. mmmm. Oh, if you get on Twitter and want to find me, my handle is “muntzen“.
2. I’ve ditched BlogJet for Windows Live Writer as my blog editing tool (thanks for the tip Jol). Writer is free and has nearly identical functionality with some things missing, but some things added. mmm, free.
3. Katy has started blogging! Woot! Check out our family blog (http://www.stoutmuntz.com – yeah, that is an ugly template, I need to change that).

Our friend Veronica loves good food and cooking, and in November we got to see where part of that love must have originated.  Veronica had a birthday (don’t worry, V, I won’t out your age here) and her parents came down from NY to help celebrate.  Katy and I were lucky enough to get an invite to the gathering, where her parents cooked some traditional Chinese birthday dishes.  I won’t make myself look stupid by trying to name them, but everything that I ate was fantastic (which was everything other than the seafood, because I’m picky like a four year old and hate seafood).  The deliciousness (is that a word?) of the food was aided along by a spicy sauce-like addition Veronica’s Dad brought along with him.  It can only be described as looking like black oily flecks of sludge, and only described as tasting like spicy heaven.  Seriously, it was amazing.  It was seriously difficult to stop myself from just eating a spoon full of it, which I’m sure I would still be feeling.  The taste is hard to describe, but it’s, well, spicy (in a garlicky kind of way, but also a red chili pepper kind of way) and kind of smokey and oily and did I mention delightful?

Well, Veronica’s Dad’s Daughter is pretty awesome also…  A few weeks ago (errr, months ago?  I still have no concept of time) Veronica and Josh came over to drop off some extra fried rice, and as a side, she says "oh, and I brought you some of my Dad’s spicy sauce".  NAAARF.  (Side note: friends who make great food and bring you the extras, friggin’ ROCK)  That night, they ended up staying to play some Rock Band and we all ate most of the fried rice, but thankfully there was still plenty of sauce to keep around. 

Tonight, we ordered take out from our favorite Chinese place nearby – Hong Kong Harbor.  We ordered pork fried rice (not as good as Veronica’s, but good) and chicken lomain (lo-main?  lo main?  something).  Both are good, but become fantastic with Veronica’s Dad’s sauce of the Gods on top.

Here are some pics of the sauce, maybe you can "see" how it tastes?  I don’t think that makes sense, but whatever, here’s how it looks…

I’ve decided to stop saving every book I read. My bookshelf is overflowing and it doesn’t make any sense to me. Well, ok, it does make sense, I love the idea of looking over the books I’ve read and having fond memories of them. Also, it’s kind of cool to stack them all up and say “wow, that’s a lot of reading”. However, it’s just not necessary for me (I say for me, because for others it totally is and that’s totally ok – I am picturing Jim curling into a ball and pulling his hair out… poor Jim). The reason I know it’s not necessary is the absence of one of my favorite books. I lent “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” to Jol a while ago and never got it back. At first, I wanted to cry, but now that it’s not there, I totally don’t care. If I don’t care about a book that I’d put in my top 5, why do I have all these others on the shelf? So, they are going to the library this week, hopefully to make other people happy, happy.

I did decide to keep all gifts and ones that I just have to keep because I’ll either read them again, or I super super loved them and just need to save them. The books that made the cut are:

• A Confederacy of Dunces (an old version I bought used in Portland that has been ‘round the block more than a few times)
• A Prayer for Owen Meany (twas a gift from Kelly Johnson in college)
• To Kill a Mockingbird (my fave and was a gift from Momma Donna)
• Lord of the Rings (the trilogy in one book, gift from Josh and I’m a nerdy)
• In Cold Blood (sooo good)
• The Harry Potter series (for Ona some day)

There are 35 others that didn’t make the cut (a few of them technical geek books) and of those, the library probably won’t take 6 of them due to their condition (I wrote in them… Jim just died). I have lucky 13 on my “to read” part of the bookshelf, but now there is tons of room left on the shelf for stuff sitting on the floor now. Crazy.

(This is also my first blog using BlogJet, and so far, it’s the good stuff)

I have started riding the bus into the office in Decatur. Katy and I are doing the one car family thing and I’m working in Decatur twice a week to keep myself out of the house and maintain a bit of my sanity. Marta has an absolutely putrid website, but I was finally able to find a route that went from very near my house to very near the office location. This morning was the first attempt (on Monday, Katy drove me to the Marta station a few miles away and I rode the train to the station very near the office).

This morning, I left the house at 6:15 and walked a half mile (according to Google Maps) to the bus station. The bus rolled up within a minute or two, right on time at 6:22. I hopped on, paid my $1.75, sat back and read (“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle“, by Haruki Murakami, which is awesome so far). The bus arrived at the Avondale station at 6:50 and I was opening the door to the office (a short walk away) at 6:55. Awesome, awesome.

Things I love about riding the bus, after Day 1:

• It takes me 30 minutes in my own car, 45 minutes by bus. But, I’m reading, not driving, so it’s sooooo much better.
• I get my body moving and energized with the walk to the bus stop.
• The dirt head in me loves that I’m not throwing extra pollution out – the bus would be running that route with or without me.

Since I’m an early bird, I don’t have many concerns about the bus being off-schedule. The 6:22 bus should always be there right around that time (barring a breakdown or something), because it won’t have any traffic to deal with.

It’s interesting to me the negative social connotation that riding the bus seems to have. Even in DC, where public transit was a normal thing, it was as if riding the bus was “for poor people, or people with suspended licenses”. I don’t get it. The bus I was on was clean and comfortable. The driver was nice, the other riders were quiet (mostly half asleep).

I love the bus. Of course, it’s Day 1, so that can certainly change, but for now, I’m happy to report that I’m officially a fan of the bus. And there are stops within spitting distance of our house! I’ll now be looking into all the routes and where they can take me.

RAGE. There is no other word to describe dealing with phone systems where you have to speak and some damn computer doesn’t understand a word you say. I recently called our health insurance company (which is a whole different rant for another day) and had to “talk” to an automated operator.

Things that infuriated me during this call:

1. Computer woman asked me to say my member ID, but then said to not include the first three letters. WTF? If they knew enough to program computer woman to tell you not to include the first three letters, couldn’t they program the response handler to ignore them?!?
2. While I was trying to slowly speak my member ID, computer woman interrupted and gave me a brief lecture about how to say the ID… which seemed to mirror exactly what I was doing before she interrupted me.
3. She then asked me to say my birthday. My birthday? I said “twelve twenty six seventy five”. She said “I’m sorry, I did not understand that, try again, what is your birthday?” My ID number was just a sequence of numbers and I got a lecture on how to read that, yet my birthday, which could be said in a bazillion different ways gets no format. I tried again “December twenty six nineteen seventy five” and again, she couldn’t understand.

I eventually just started screaming “HELP” until she said “I don’t understand that, please hold for the next available agent”. What happened then was infuriating enough that I won’t even bother here, it’s a post for another time.

If I had a point with this rant, it’s that computerized conversations are not ready for prime-time and customer service really should not be the place for it. The problems, as I see it are:

1. Real people are all a little bit different when it comes to cognition. Conveying what you need from people requires slightly different instructions for each person (or type of person). If the computerized voice can’t adapt (and the one I just yelled at certainly couldn’t), then it seems a lot of people will end up in a frustrating “I didn’t understand your input” loop.I’m pretty tech savvy and I get what they are trying to do, so I try things to make it work better (speaking slowly, formatting properly, etc), only to get frustrated and start screaming (because we all know that being loud helps. sigh). If you want true comedy, watch my Grandma try to deal with one of these systems.
2. We spend time getting to the point where we understand what the computer wants, and then it doesn’t understand what we gave it!! Not because of a formatting problem, just because voice recognition sucks. RAGE. This must stop. Seriously, if it has a “95% success rate”, that’s 1 in 20 words missed. If each person is speaking an alphanumeric value 12 characters long, that’s a TON of mistakes. “Not ready for prime-time” doesn’t even begin to address the situation.

One last note, this reminded me of something Thomas told me the last time he called me. I picked up the phone and he was laughing, saying “Voice recognition sucks”. The situation he had just gone through was this…

Thomas to phone: “Call Eric Muntz”
Phone to Thomas: “Did you say ‘Call Supercuts’?”
Thomas to phone: “NO”
Phone to Thomas: “Ok, calling Supercuts…”

If the voice recognition fails on “no”, me thinks it should not have been released to the public. I can’t even think of a similar analogy, maybe a car not understanding it’s gas pedal? Sigh.

My tech blog is now open for business. I have been wanting to geek out and write nerdy programming stuff that maybe others would find useful (or I’d benefit from archiving). So, it’s open for business now, if you are a programmer, check it out – http://www.projectminer.com/techblog

Just a quick post on something I found useful that maybe some of you will. I have Shingles, which I won’t even start to detail and complain about (or I would be writing forever)… basically, it is the suck. I have medicine to take for it, and I am terrible about remembering to take medicines. I thought “damn, it’d be nice if I could easily setup my phone to bark at me to take the meds”. After asking Joogle (which is asking Jol to look things up for me, because he is like a librarian on steroids… and I be lazy), I decided to use Google Calendar to setup events and attach SMS (phone text messages) reminders to each of them.

What I did was:

1. Setup a new calendar, I called it “Eric’s Medicines”, so it will be useful again some day.
2. Setup a repeating event for each daily dose (i.e. Take Morning Valtrex @ 8am, Take Afternoon Valtrex @ 12pm, etc), made them repeat daily for however long I’m supposed to take the meds.
3. Setup a reminder for each to my phone (you have to register your phone by going into settings and adding your phone number, then google sends a text message with a verification token)

That does it. Easy as hell and now my phone says “hey, donkey, take your meds to get the scabies to go away” (Katy and I are calling them “scabies”, at least I have a sense of humor about my skin feeling like burning).

I have always hated the idea of New Year’s Resolutions. First, I get geeky about it and think it’s lame to make them just because the calendar happened to flip – why wait until then, or choose that specific day? Why not an April 17th Resolution? Which, of course, leads me to “why resolutions anyway”, why not just realize there is a problem and fix it, without some grand statement made at the start of the calendar year? Bah, humbug says me.

Until this year. Ah, Eric the hypocrite. I can’t defend it, but this year, as I thought about my hatred of the New Year’s Resolution, I started thinking of all the things I’d like to do differently, or make happen, or make some grand proclamation to do for the upcoming calendar year. So, well, crap, here goes my resolutions for 2008…

1. Read more.
   My reading patterns go up and down all the time. The most I’ve ever read was about a book a month when I was taking the bus/rail in DC every day. So, that sounds like a good goal – read an average of one book a month in 2008. I plan to read a blend of fiction and non-fiction, I’ve got a reading list in-place already, thanks to the generosity of friends and family during the holidays. Here is what is on the book shelf as of today:
   • Summerland, The Final Story, and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union – all three by Michael Chabon. Should be interesting to read the same author for a while, I’ve never done that, and I loved Kavalier and Klay.
   • The Invention of Solitude, and City of Glass – both by Paul Auster.
   • Jackie Robinson: A Biography – Arnold Rampersad
   • The Soul of Baseball – Joe Posnanski
   • My Life – Bill Clinton (Dad just had a heart attack)
2. Finish Software Projects.
   Sigh. I’ve got at least a half-dozen projects either sitting in my head or further along (some even have art and some code done). I really need to get off my bum and get some projects finished. I plan to take it out of my own hands a little bit and bite the bullet and hire a cheap developer (entry-level type) to knock out some of the projects so I can throw them at the wall and see if any stick (and, ahem, use some of them, because the majority are things I need!). Finish and release 5 software projects in 2008.
3. I really miss playing ball.
   I really do miss playing baseball/softball. I’m not as crazy about softball, but it’s more socially fun (softball = beer) and a lot easier to find a league to play on, and requires much less “remembering how to play”. That said, I really do still want to look into playing baseball on some adult league team (a scrub one!). Play baseball or softball in a league.

I think that’s enough. I would love to add things like “be healthy” and “lose weight”, but I’m still too much of a resolution hater for those types of generic things. Hopefully not having a car and riding my bike everywhere will be a big help in taking care of the newfound chub.

The common thread in all three above are that they require time… and effort. Both of which I tend to lack. I guess it’s not worth striving for if it’s going to be easy…

A few months ago, I read about a website Kiva.org where people can supply “micro loans” to small business owners in small/developing countries.  Micro loans are basically small loans, done person-to-person or “multi-person”-to-person (which is the case with Kiva).  With Kiva, the company uses contractors who look into the business owner to see how viable their business is and how financially responsible they’ve been in the past.  They have something like a 98% successful loan repayment rate because of the up-front research.  So, with all the information at hand, I went and found some business owners and issued my first two loans of $25 each - one to an electrician in Kenya and the other to a soft drink vendor looking to open a grocery store in Cambodia.  I’ve been notified several times that each of them are doing well and repaying their loan on schedule.  Yippe!

 Today, I got an email from them, their Holiday Newsletter.  The very first sentence was:

 You’re receiving this email because of your relationship with Kiva.org. Please take a minute to confirm [confirm was a link] your continued interest in receiving email from us.

Whoa, asked to confirm that you want to continue getting email?  Not having to tell them to bugger off, but instead “here is one, confirm you want more”?  Wow, that’s what I’m talking about! 

I heart Kiva.  It’s really great stuff, not only a great cause, but well done website development and design.  Hooray for them, please go make a loan if you are in the sharing mood!

Quick update on the recent happenings…

Thanksgiving was awesome.
Sean, Dee and Isabella came into town. Super fun to see them, it’s been a while and they hadn’t seen our house or been to the East Coast since 2004 for our wedding. Sean and I went and rode go-karts at Andretti Speed Lab and had a blast. Note to anybody listening: don’t compete with Sean on car things. He nearly lapped me once and also managed to hit me directly in the side t-bone style. Ouch. He did teach me how to drive them properly and I actually nearly passed him, but ended up eating dust. Fun as hell, though.
Mom put out an awesome spread, as usual, and it was a great day.

War Eagle, bitches.
Went to Auburn for Iron Bowl, where we beat down Bama for a 6th straight year. Coincidentally, every year since I first met a former co-worker Tony, we’ve beaten then down. Maybe there is a God?

DC on business
Was in DC last week, feelin’ the super guilt for leaving Katy and Ona alone for a whole week. They did awesome, as is to be expected from Super Mom and Super Baby. It snowed in DC, which was sad because Katy and I always got a little extra romantic in the snow in DC.
DC was fun, got to see Jol a few times and the Carliles and Thomas. Thomas has a new cat, who is super cute and made of rabbits feet. Hartley is her name. Best cat name ever, says me.
Got the sinus suck at the end of the week, so it was nice to get home and medicated.

Ona is awesome.
She just gets more and more cute every day. I always thought I hated babies, but she’s pretty rad. Even with reflux problems, she doesn’t get too pissed off and yelly, so she can stay. There are still times when I want to pull my hair out (errr, if I had any), but the vast majority of the time, I spend saying “damn, she’s awesome”. She is smiling a ton now and sleeping 6 straight hours. Yay, super baby.

Date night.
Katy and I got sitters (G’parents) and went on awesome date night Saturday. Super nice to get out and just be alone, even if we were old people and went out at 5:30. She dressed up all super hot and it was a great night. She is now wafer-thin and I’m going for high score. Sigh. Back to the gym, I go.

MINI goes bye-bye.
We sold the MINI. It was a blast for a year, but I put like 6K miles on it in just over 12 months. Can we say “unnecessary”? I sold it to a really cool family that lives south of Atlanta. Got $18,200, which was my “priced to sell” asking price. Hooray for MINI’s keeping their value, we didn’t have to pay anything to get rid of it. All things considered, it was a wash price-wise (taking our deposit into account). So, we are a one car family now! Hooray for trying to do things smaller. I will be biking and walking more. Hooray for not going for high score anymore!

There is my quick summary. Hope all is well with everybody in internet land.