Category: Weblog

Michele’s new office



Michele’s new office, originally uploaded by Argyle.

After a few weeks of talking about it, I took advantage of the girls being out of town to redo Michele’s side of the office.

I surprised her with it today when we got home from the airport. Happily, she loved it.

The price

In life you need to be careful that you understand the price of things.

Work has been keeping me exceedingly busy these days. It’s been a slow but gradually ramp up of things to do, but now I find myself completely out of juice when I get home. There’s lots to do and I power up at the office to get things done, but the to-do list never seems to get any smaller. When I do clear out some space by finishing something it invariably is replaced with a stack twice as high.

I’m not complaining. With my personality, I crave the challenge and power of this kind of job, but it does have it’s price.

At home, I focus on the girls, the one I married and the two I helped make. They really don’t care about my title or job or the latest project, they just want me to do the daddy thing and pay attention to them. Even when I think I’m out of juice, I crank up the reserves and try to get the job done.

Once they go to sleep, I have the brief time when I’m free. Stacks of crap surround my desk. A site redesign sketch lays untouched for months. Multiple projects await my attention. Rants that course though my brain on the daily commute don’t get written. Even the escape of video games loses it’s allure.

Not that I’m sad, but I notice that I’ve hunkered down. Scaling down life to the bare essentials: family, work, and a brief decompress. The world passes me by. Emails go unreturned. Phone calls don’t get made. Friends grow.

So the cost of success appears to be losing track of many things. Today I realized that my best friend lost 100 pounds and I had no fucking clue. What the fuck?

I mean I know I’m not good about keeping in touch with people. That’s where Michele backstops me. But I mean really how can I miss out on something like that and it catch me unaware?

Everything in life has a cost, it just sucks that you don’t always realize the price until you’ve paid it.

Picopad ftw

A while ago I saw a post about Picopad on the Lifehacker site. I often run into situations where I want to write something down and don’t have anything to use. Sometimes at lunch I end up writing notes on scraps of magazines and any other paper I can find.
The Picopad promised to give me a pen and a pad that fit in my wallet. I had to give it a try.


The Picopad arrives in a nice little package with instruction and everything. The package holds multiple picopads. Michele had already taken hers before I took the photo.

Closed it has a clean design, using the pen to help be the spine of the fold.

Inside you can see the pen and the pad. The pad is like a mini-post-it note with 15 sheets. The pen has a little flap on it. I wasn’t sure what that was for until I picked up the pen.

Once you you pick up the pen it all makes sense. The little flap gives your thumb and forefinger something to hold onto comfortably. If it was just the pen, you’d have to squeeze hard to hold the tiny pen. The flap is just rough enough to allow for an easy grip.
Taking a quick note is simple and straightforward. The mini-ballpoint writes well and cleanly. I wouldn’t want to take notes for an hour long meeting on it, but an impromptu message or note, it’s perfect.

The real test was seeing if the Picopad would fit into my wallet. At first glance I was a bit skeptical. It’s thicker than a credit card by a bit. But when I slide it into my wallet, it fit perfectly. It really is designed well to fit so well into the credit card slot. My wallet is made of Rawlings Baseball leather and can be a bit thick, but the Picopad didn’t cause any issues.

You can see from the side view that the Picopad doesn’t add any real thickness to my wallet. That little silvery bar is the pen.

My only minor complaint is with the Picopad web site. They have a ten dollar minimum order but each Picopad only costs $3.79 and refills are $1.99. That means you need to add items until you get to $10. It would be better for them to have packages that were $10 right off the bat to let someone buy a get started pack and get to the checkout immediately.
Other than that, the Picopad get the Cruft Labs seal of approval.

McDonald’s Coffee

On my way to work, I recently noticed that McDonald’s was advertising that they had a full coffee bar going. I’m not a coffee snob, so I decided to check it out one morning.


Outside was a poster of what I was to expect from McCoffee. Didn’t look half bad, but the proof would be in the drinking, not the photography.

At the left of the counter was a little display of coffeeness. They even had a jar of biscotti, just like Starbucks. Behind the counter was a full coffee bar. They had special machines to make the various drinks. It was halfway between what you see at other coffee shops and a soda dispenser. The woman that was making the coffee had a special shirt on that said ‘barista’ on it. McDonalds has made serious commitment to getting into the coffee business.

A close-up of the sign that descibes for the customer what McDonalds says goes into the various coffee drinks. I found this more helpful than the signs at any other coffee shop I’ve been to before.

I decided to get a cappuccino, a mocha, and a cup of regular coffee. I also decided to try the biscotti. I watched the barista make the coffee and she bascially did the same things they do at every coffee place. It took a bit for her to walk to the back of the store to get the can of spray whipped cream for the mocha.
The packaging didn’t look half bad. The store didn’t have the same kind of little area to mix up your coffee with creamer and sugar but I was able to grab a few packets of sugar.

When I got the coffees home, I opened up the lids and took a look. I was suprised to see that all the whipped cream and sprinkleshad melted away completely. The froth on the cappuccino was still there.
I tried the straight coffee first. Just like traditional McCoffee, way to hot and just a little bitter. With a packet of sugar and a dollop of creme, the coffee was fine.
I tried the mocha next and it was pretty good. It’s kind of hard mess up basically coffee and chocolate milk. The whipped cream whould have been nice, but it was still good without it.
The cappuccino was OK. I’m not a big cappuccino fan, but I guess it was fine. Nothing spectacular to be sure. I’m not really down with the frothy foam thing, so it was a bit distracting to me.
Lastly, the biscotti was exactly the same as the other factory mass produced cookies that you get everywhere else. Not that it tasted bad, but I’d rather get a hash browns from MickeyDs than have a cheap cookie. A warm hash browns and cup of coffee on a winter morning is a good way to start the day.

Overall, the McCoffee experience is firmly mediocre. If you are a coffee connoisseur, you probably won’t be happy. If you are a regular coffee drinker like me, and you want a quick cup, McDonalds is just fine.

Podcast is a word

Exactly one year ago, I bet Phil Torrone, one of the Make guys, that the term ‘podcast’ woudl be gone in a year.
This morning I opened the local paper and this is what I saw.


When traditional newspaper headline writers are incorporating a term like this, I must admit that Phil has won our bet.
I’ll be sending out his ten bucks today.
I still think the term is stupid, but it is being surpassed by the stupidity of the recent term, ‘vodcast‘.

Crossing the Rubicon

At work, I’ve been describing the recent Apple/Disney deal on providing TV content for the iPod as “crossing the Rubicon” because of how I feel that it changes everything to television not just for Disney, but for the entire industry.
Most bloggers about the deal say ‘meh’ about the Apple/Disney combo deriding the fact that it doesn’t address every single concern about downloadable media.
However, Mark Cuban gets it. In a clear way, he describes how this is truly a turning point in the business of entertainment.
My job just got a lot more interesting.

Spoiler Rules

Today at lunch we had a big crowd, nine of us, so the discussion topics were broad and we ended up talking about spoilers. A spoiler is a key bit of plot information that can ruin a movie or book if it is learned in advance.
The discussion was about how long should someone expect others to avoid mentioning spoilers around them. Several of us had seen Serenity and were being careful not to reveal the spoiler. (BTW, you shoudl go and see Serenity. It’s a great movie and you won’t be disappointed.)
None of us could find the heart to support spoiler queens, but a variety of opinions abound.
Several different viewpoints were mentioned:
No Spoiler Freedom – This silly notion was only supported by one truly strange lunch participant. He believes that spoilers shoudl flow freely and makes no effort to conceal spoilers form others. Obviously a fringe belief.
Once a film is out of theaters – Also mentioned as a ‘three month rule’. The concept that people be given a chance to see the movie without worry of spoilers. Once it’s no longer in theaters, it’s open game for discussion. ” I mean, you had your chance, right?” Two people held this as correct.
One month after DVD release – A variation on the out of theater viewpoint. The idea here is that it s understandable to miss a film in the theater, but once it’s on DVD, you have a month to buy/rent it before the spoilers rain down upon you. Two people thought this true.
No blanket policy – The idea here is that each situation warrants it own spoiler rules. An action film and a who-done-it need different spoiler policies. Three people (including me) felt this to be most reasonable.
That left one person undecided. Our co-worker Jasmin is from Germany and many of our idioms (like spoilers) don’t make sense to her. I tried to explain. Here is the rough transcript.
Jasmin: What is the spoiler?
Michael: Well, it’s like revealing the secret of a movie before it’s time.
Jasmin: Huh?
Michael: It’s like finding out that Darth Vader is Luke’s father before seeing Empire Strikes back…
Jasmin: Darth Vader is Luke’s father?
Michael: You didn’t know that?
Jasmin: No…
Others at the table: *gasp*
Michael: But, umm, err. See I just spoiled that for you.
As you can tell, spoilers are a tough thing to deal with in groups. Jasmin’s lucky I didn’t reveal something important like the fact that soylent green is people…
So loyal Cruft readers, what are the proper spoiler rules in your humble opinon?