Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Breakfast: same as yesterday. It's Joel's birthday! I got Joel his very first DVD—Funny Girl (1968) starring Barbra Streisand. He previously had refused to purchase any DVDs until he owned either West Side Story (1961) or Funny Girl (1968) first. Cindy brought in bagels and Odwalla tangerine juice. Ena treated Joel to lunch at Pancho's and I went along too. Joel claimed he wasn't going to watch any more TV starting today (which I don't believe for a second). He says he's only going to watch Funny Girl for the rest of his life. Talked with Patrick in China using Skype. We talked for 22 minutes—all for free! Skype worked amazingly well. Only big problem is that when using the instant messaging in Skype it always steals focus away from other windows when new messages come in. That's extremely annoying when you're trying to get other things done. Defrag and ScanDisk and Windows Updates and Office Updates for Chris's computers. Graduation changes for Joel after his and Cindy's reviews came back. Two days ago student Diane N left a beautiful phalaenopsis in the IRC for me with a note: "To Frank Farm—Thank you for all your help. I hope you like the orchid." Cindy said I could keep it as long as it went in her office. Ha ha! I had helped Diane N out with her laptop and PDA problems. She's so nice to have done that. I don't have space at home for yet another orchid (there are 3 big ones at home), so I offered to leave it in the front office for the whole staff to enjoy. It's about 22 inches tall with 6 blooms—very, very pretty! Ordered miniblind samples—James found a place called decoratetoday.com which sells the blinds we've been looking for—honeycomb (they call them "cellular"—weird) in over 80 inches wide with top-down bottom-up and color on both sides. I thought these blinds didn't exist. Fixed PharmAdMIT 2004 for Ena by reinstalling as local admin rather than as netadmin. While I was checking Melissa's computer for Windows updates, I got The Look—twice—from some white guy sitting in a waiting chair in our front office lobby. Sure enough, nearby there was an Asian guy for whom he seemed to be waiting and who seemed about my age—he was talking to Ena, so he was likely either a prospective or current student. I paid the white guy little attention, but he kept trying to get some sort of response from me using body language. Later I learned from Ena that the Asian guy was indeed a student. Shopped for secure floppy disk disposal services, found a place called greendisk.com which seems like it would work. Lots of Windows Updates for everyone. Discovered publicmind.com through Skype—it's cool—it's a little like how I envision software development ought to be—driven by customer's desires rather than technology, programmer's whims, manager's whims, the marketing department's whims, etc. My vision would take the idea further (but not to the next level) by creating a contract between the software company and the potential buyer/upgrader. e.g., "I'll upgrade to the next version of Photoshop if it includes the following 10 features I want (e.g., the Remove Holes feature that PhotoStyler 2 had 10 years ago) and is priced less than $70." If and when Adobe makes good on that feature set, the customer is obligated by contract to purchase the software. Users agree to not modify their feature set for 6 months or 1 year or whatever, permitting the development team to work toward fixed goals which guarantee a certain amount of revenue when the goals are met and the product is delivered. You could even negotiate things like application stability—the software company owes me 10 cents for every crash (which can be recorded by third-party software) up to a certain amount. Web forums could enable users to argue amongst themselves over what features are more or less important. And services like publicmind.com give each of them the tools to broaden the support for specific features. I was planning to make pasta for dinner tonight, but I didn't have time to get to the grocery on the way home. So tonight it's spinach salad, broccoli crowns, carrot shavings, shredded cheddar, and creamy garlic dressing. Still hungry, so I finish off the carrot stick and make mini pizza with cheddar and tomato basil spaghetti sauce. Too late to call Patrick's mom, so I'll do that tomorrow morning. Did a Web survey forwarded to me by my cousin Jeanne. It's by Jane Y. Yang, M.S.Ed. and Ruth H. Gim Chung, Ph.D., at the University of Southern California for Jane Yang's doctoral dissertation. They are interested in learning people's perspectives on physical conflict in romantic relationships and how those perspectives might be related to one's cultural values and racial/ethnic background. It was interesting and took about 30 minutes. My long distance telephone provider, ZoneLD, let me know in my most recent bill that they're changing their rates, so I'm shopping for a new provider. If you have one you like, please send me e-mail.