The Daily Interface

recent publications

2012-04-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

"Ariel Sharon's Brain" at Pure Slush

"Why I Occupy"

"Sopa Azteca"

"Passing" part of the travel junket at Pure Slush

"Road Trip" featured in the Festival of Trees

"Courgettes and Aubergines" part of the Language + Place Blog Carnival

"A Seat at the Table" about NaNoWriMo and Thanksgiving

"Kaiten-zushi" in the BluePrint Review.

“Famous Jewish Criminals” in storySouth

“Dostoevsky & The Idiots” in the Mississippi Review issue, Partly True Tales

“Ísland” in the BluePrint Review

“Meetings of the Mind” and “View Finder” in the BluePrint Review mo(nu)ment issue, available in print or as a download from Lulu

“Photos I didn't take in Mazatlan” Cautionary Tale, also available from Lulu.com in the Best of Cautionary Tale

“Why do you think they call it 'submission'?” Reflection's Edge

“The Ballad of Curly_Sue” Exquisite Corpse

“Unattached on the Road” The New York Times

“Top 10 (Bad) Excuses for Not Voting” Christian Science Monitor

“What I was Watching” and “Flowers in Her Hair” The Noe Valley Voice

“Fossils,” “Swing State Summer,” and "Pro-Choice Virgin" The Raw Story

“The Shrimp Tax” Hostelworld

“Baked Alaska” Subside.zine

turning over a new leaf

2012-01-04T10:39:00.000-08:00

I love calendars. Even though I do all my scheduling digitally, I still print out month calendars for planning and sketch calendars on index cards to figure out everything from workouts to projects.

So I was delighted to pick up this calendar from the San Francisco Environment Department (formerly known as the water department). They were free for visitors to the Conservatory of Flowers.

As you may know, I'm an unwilling environmentalist. Conservation bores me--but I do it and love the results. My first car got 60 mpg on the highway. Since we started curbside composting, I have barely any garbage. I've successfully persuaded the NY Times I don't need 365 blue bags a year.

What a brilliant idea, to include environmental education in a free gift and fill the pages with flowers. Not to mention information about mercury and polluting the bay, and where to take batteries and motor oil to recycle them. There's a whole section on not flushing prescription drugs down the toilet.

And it includes a survey postcard, which being a good researcher, I enthusiastically filled out. (As a colleague once noted, surveys are disproportionately populated by people who like to be surveyed. Like researchers.)

Maybe environmental education can be engaging after all. If you pair it with enough pretty pictures, even I'll pay attention.

***

I got home to find another calendar in the mail, this one from the Blood Centers at the Pacific. How could I throw this one away? Especially after realizing it was signed by people with life threatening diseases who received blood donations.

I am a terrible donor. I probably should not be giving blood. They have to get the supervisor to even find a vein. It takes forever because my hands are so cold. Sometimes I faint.

But the customer experience at the Blood Centers of the Pacific is an exception to the rest of the world: at every step, you are greeted and thanked and given juice and cookies. (And if you faint, cold compresses, and a pillow.)

The calendar is filled with personalized thank yous and biographies of people like Travis the hockey player and Angel the cheerleader. Almost makes you forget about yourself for a while. Also they upgraded me to gold status.

For profit companies could learn a lot from these non-profits and local government agencies about making customers feel like they matter. The Iowa caucus last night was just decided by a handful of votes.

This year, make your participation count. Day by day. Resolutions are really about changing behaviors in small, consistent steps.

And be sure to tell the people close to you--or those you hope to see again--that they matter. That validation is all most of us are looking for.

customer service hell #463

2011-12-01T16:18:00.001-08:00

I sat on my hands for Do Nothing Day (aka Black Friday) and snagged an iPhone car charger for half price from RadioShack.com on Saturday.

No need to pay for shipping. I'd pick it up in store and test out that online-offline user experience.

I chose the store nearest my house, paid with a credit card, and went to sleep.

Imagine my surprise when I took the receipt to the store two days later and discovered it had burned down. Two months ago!

Another branch did give me the product after a little coaxing. The manager first wanted to track where the shipment had gone.

I don't care where you shipped it, I said, kind of miffed. Why did your website let me ship it an outpost that doesn't exist?

Update: two days after picking up my charger at another store, I received an email from Radio Shack that it had shipped--to the store that burned down. Glad I didn't buy an HD tv.

unboxing detox

2011-11-08T16:33:00.000-08:00

As a gift to myself, I decided to take a healthy break from cooking and eating in restaurants. Sadly, the vegetarian spa in Mexico closed this year. My next thought was a vegetarian meal delivery service. I found a few, but most meal delivery caters to extreme dieters or juice fasts (kale smoothies? I'd rather have a bowl of vegetables).

detoxing with Juicey Lucy aka the smoothie psychic

The best looking services are cooked to order and often prohibitively expensive. Others cater to busy families. Their meals serve four; but I hate leftovers, and I don't need anyone to make buttery mac and cheese for me. Others were just unappetizing, like fancy Lean Cuisine. Besides, I gave Sean my microwave.

Then I found Evolution Catering, which runs a monthly detox workweek for $135 per person. This includes all meals and snacks from Monday dinner through Friday dinner. All you have to do is warm each course. The box felt like Christmas. I love presents.

The food promised to be healthy without red meat, dairy, or added sugar, focusing on whole grains but not counting calories. The only complaints I found on Yelp were that portions were small. It sounded perfect.

As I prepared this week, I cleared out some of the junk food in my kitchen by eating it. Wouldn't want a chocolate bar or marshmallows around to tempt me, right?

Then I began to feel deprived in advance. Aside from not preparing any meals, it also meant I couldn't go out for dinner or happy hour with friends this week. Which cuts out most of my social life. And email.

I bought a few teas as a treat from Tea Time in Palo Alto: Yunnan gold, Moroccan Mint, Masala chai, and oolong would be my friends this week. And I began to wonder: could I have a glass of wine or was that cheating? How about an extra piece of fruit? (More important: cheating on whom?)

It's a sweet package. (The piggy bank is extra.) Each meal is labeled based on how fast it will perish with instructions for reheating. Lunches are bigger than dinners. Dinners are...small. And it's November, that harsh week when we've suddenly shifted from warm summer breezes with lots of daylight to shivering in the dark and damp.

Will detox week help me reduce portion size from the gargantuan plates served in restaurants to the sizes we grew up eating? Will I become a slender hermit, or merely drown in pots of tea and coffee, and whatever I forgot to clean out of the fridge? I'm supposed to start weight training. Will I have enough energy?

Meanwhile I'm sitting down to a meal at my table for the first dinner in a long time. So that's progress. No computer. No newspaper. No phone. Thanks to Renee, I remember to chew.

Of course it's 6:28 pm, and I've finished everything for tonight. Every last caper. Gulp. (When was the last time you saw me finish anything?)

Anyone want to go out for cheese on Saturday?

***

If you're curious, here's this week's menu:

Monday 11/7

* Dinner: Greek stuffed cod: Wild cod, artichokes, capers, olives, lemon zest, olive oil. 583 calories

Tuesday 11/8

* Breakfast: spinach fritatta: Eggs, spinach, potatoes. 309 calories
* Snack: apple w/ almond butter: 166 calories
* Lunch: health nut salad: lettuce, avocado, bell pepper, kale, almonds, lemon vinaigrette, turkey. 485calories
* Dinner: Chicken Stew: chicken, tomatoes, onion, garlic, oregano, kale. 241 calories

Wednesday 11/9
* breakfast: turkey scramble: ground turkey, eggs, bell peppers, onions 462 calories
* snack: almonds. 98 calories
* lunch: mandarin salad: lettuce, mandarin oranges, sesame seeds, shredded carrot. 131 calories
* dinner: pumpkin curry: pumpkin, potatoes, green beans, coconut milk, curry powder. 343 calories

Thursday 11/10
* breakfast: veggie frittata: eggs, potatoes, squash, bell peppers. 323 calories
* snack: orange. 81 calories
* lunch: tuna salad with a side of mixed greens. 326 calories
* Dinner: turkey chili stuffed peppers: bell pepper, turkey, tomatoes, beans, spices. 337 calories

Friday 11/11
* breakfast: hard-boiled egg with guacamole, slice of turkey and tomato. 319 calories
* snack: trail mix. 98 calories
* lunch: carrot ginger soup. carrots, ginger, vegetable broth, onion. 80 calories
* Dinner: sesame chicken with veggies. 275

More info from Evolution Catering.

Want to try Evolution Catering? You don't have to do detox week. They have regular meals too. Here's a 20% discount off your first order. (Full disclosure: If you use it, I get a 20% discount too.) Meals come in paper or metal containers, designed for an oven or stovetop rather than a microwave.

I'm also looking forward to trying Jane Peal's well-regarded vegetarian meal deliveries, if only to find out what a cuisinaire is. They're $35 for a 3-course vegan meal for 2, less than a restaurant dinner. They're offered twice a week, and the menu is published in advance, so you can eat whatever you want the rest of the week.

***
Results:
I broke down the first night after three cups of tea. And had...a bowl of dino kale in yuzu-sesame dressing. Not bad for a late-night snack. I was still full when I woke up, to start preparing spinach fritatta and tea.

I ended up staying home most of the week to avoid walking by bakeries or cookie shops or any kind of groceries. This meant the extra snacks I had were leftover cabbage and an old pear in the back of the fridge. And they tasted really good, even the raw kale that was meant for garnish with breakfast. I missed snacking, even healthy snacking. But the portion control was great, and it wouldn't hurt any of us to remember what's it like to be hungry.

The scale says I lost 2-3 pounds, which is technically not possible in 4 days unless I ran a marathon. But I'll take it. Looking forward to doing this again in December, with some extra veggies and fruit stashed in the house. I did miss grains a lot--more than sugar, red meat, or dairy.

ranked choice voting put to the test

2011-11-07T16:06:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow's election in San Francisco is the first in which ranked choice voting will be used citywide. I'm predicting a lot of confusion and spoiled ballots.

To be fair, ranked choice was introduced because we had a problem with expensive runoff elections. Typically, San Francisco has good turnout in November. No one wins a clear majority, so the top two had a December runoff with low turnout, at great expense to the city.

Unfortunately this instant runoff approach is confusing too. If voters select the same name more than once, ballots are discarded. Here's the description from the SF Chronicle:

Clear as mud. It's like a poker game; each losing candidate's chips are reallocated to the next round's choices.

This year, it's made worse by a large mayoral pool with more than 10 viable candidates. Leading to ads and endorsements like: "Mayor: Avalos Herrera Chiu."

In Oakland, Jean Quan who was apparently no one's first choice won.

Does it favor the appointed incumbent, Ed Lee? No one knows.

In races like Sheriff with fewer candidates, ranking all the candidates surely brings them closer together than just choosing one.

This is what democracy looks like? Haven't we learned anything from the hanging chads of 2000?

More on ranked choice from the good folks at Bay Citizen.

why Americans hate financial institutions

2011-10-12T12:51:00.000-07:00

I got this adorable Visa gift card recently. How exciting! Free money! It even came in a cute package. I put it right in my wallet.

But product design's not just skin deep. The devil is in the details, also known as the fine print.

There's a $4.95 card fee for buying the card. Good thing this was a $100 card, because that's only 5%. You know, when the bank is offering interest rates of 1/20th of 5%. On a $25 gift card, that would be 20%.

It gets worse if you read the back. Maintenance fees of $2.50 a month if you don't use the card quickly enough! $5 card replacement fees. And of course Visa charges the merchant to redeem it, even though Visa has had the money upfront since purchase.

Makes you want to occupy Wall Street. But don't just blame the banks when credit card companies are extorting fees on this scale. Next time, send a check.

if not for Steve...

2011-10-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

who would I be?

Not a software designer or producer at Farallon or Macromedia. Not a documentary filmmaker, working on Macs with digital video editing tools. Not a traveler clutching a camera/portable music library/translator in my fist, playing games of Words with Friends and posting from remote corners of the globe.

The internet would still exist. My touch typing would still come in handy. But the web would be the domain of developers, not artists. Accountants, not musicians. Rule makers, not rule breakers.

We would express ourselves in spreadsheets. Our computers would be functional--but ugly. Our ideas would be constrained by the tools used to create them.

We would still be paying $16 a CD to the record industry! There would be no self-publishing or print or demand. No personal computers. No Macworld.

Who would I be, had there been no Steve Jobs? Who would you be?

That world is unimaginable. Uninhabitable, in a Brazil sort of way. Unthinkable, for those of us who thought different(ly).

the luxury collection

2011-09-12T23:36:00.000-07:00

Spent a divine weekend at The Nines in Portland, part of Starwood's "luxury collection." The whole place looks like a Tiffany box.

Too bad their exclusive bottled spring water turns out to be tap water.

unclear on the concept

2011-08-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

American Airlines is running a mobile photo contest, and giving away a digital SLR and round-trip tickets!

My ears perked up immediately. Click-through.

Too bad the first week's theme is "Where do you want to go?"

Because if I could take a picture with my iPhone of where I want to go, that would mean I was already there...

standing at the corner of walk & don't walk

2011-08-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

Fortunately in the East Bay, pedestrians still have right of way in a crosswalk.

easy as 1-2-3

2011-08-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

I was shopping for eye shadow and noticed Maybelline had literally baked the documentation right into the product.

The instructions are stenciled onto the cakes. Ever in search of a write-off, I bought it.

Plus who can resist a color named Chocolate Mousse?

*

parklet

2011-08-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

the dangers of error messages

2010-10-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

moo!

2010-05-13T21:50:00.000-07:00

My new business cards arrived today. It was like opening a Christmas present.

(You can tell this when you covet and save the box. Like, you know, this one:)

Moo is a company that really gets customer experience. From the website to the end product, these people really understand the pleasure principle.

I almost hate to give them away. Almost.

everyday taxonomies

2010-05-03T23:04:00.000-07:00

for your convenience

2010-04-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

a “Greeked” restaurant in Paris

2010-04-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

Or maybe they just serve Latin food? Au Fil des Saisons

Despite the placeholder website, it is a real restaurant, and apparently quite a good one.

Zappos’ star system

2010-04-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

Are these bar charts or just a distraction from the real numbers?

It's hard to tell that 2 customers loved this product but one thought it was mediocre.

cacess? aces?

2010-03-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

The cover story is entitled "Why Access Matters." Maybe it should be called "Why Usability Matters."

meter maid

2010-03-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

Even better, solar powered :)

the mystery box

2009-09-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

I'm famous for never cooking. I live in a city with great restaurants, have no children, and would rather eat a BBQ pork bun than leftover chicken.

But this week, I was inspired by the constraints imposed by a local farm's mystery box. For $25, they'll meet you at a nearby restaurant and hand over a huge box of whatever's fresh. Mariquita is famous for its basil and delicate chard, and I'd had their wonderful pimientos de padron at Incanto. They have a CSA, but I don't cook enough to plan around regular mystery deliveries.

So I got my guerrilla box and picked up a huge bag of basil for my friend Arrigo to make pesto (and I hope, give some to me). The basil took up half my back seat.

The box contained potatoes, heirloom tomatoes as big as your head, purple, orange, and bright red peppers, erbette chard, two kinds of carrots, padrones, lovage, dino kale, eggplant, parsnips, and basil. Enough for a family of ten. I spent the next 48 hours slicing and simmering. I even got The Joy of Cooking down from the shelf. (Parsnips?)

Lessons from cooking that are applicable to software development:

* If you have good ingredients, you don't need to do much to them. Padrones need a quick flash with olive oil and salt in a pan. Tomatoes and basil need washing and slicing.

* While improvising is fun, basic technique and recipes make a big difference in the end product. Why reinvent the wheel?

* It's not six times more work to make six dishes than one, from a production perspective. After I'd committed to tomato sauce and oven-roasted potatoes, it wasn't hard to get eggplant, padrones, and caprese salad going at the same time. Caldo verde led to sausage and peppers. Small projects may be individually gratifying, but they're not very efficient.

* Once your kitchen is filled with ingredients, you find ways of using them because they're there. This is good and not so good in terms of end product. I still believe in a healthy mix of regulars (olive oil, garlic, eggs) and as needed players (salmon, sausage, lavender salt). But dino kale is like the employee you only needed for one special feature, and now they're still there, working in obscure code. Does calling it "dino" kale make kids want to eat it more?

* Cooking isn't a job for one person. It's more fun to have someone to bounce ideas off, to share the chores with, to stir while you chop. Also it's nicer if you have a kitchen like chefs on TV do.

* You can make perfect omelets but be terrible with eggplant.

* Good tools help, but you don't need 100 gadgets to distract from the task at hand. I love my carving knife, my teapots, my Aero press. I just wish I had a dishwasher, and a prep chef.

* As much as you taste your own cooking, the really satisfying point is when someone else enjoys it.

Lovage, anyone?

*

pillow menu

2008-07-07T21:05:00.001-07:00

I arrived at the Holiday Inn in Salt Lake City late Thursday to find five fluffy pillows and a pillow menu on my king-sized bed.

I felt momentarily like Goldilocks. Soft or firm? Too many choices....

the magic map machine

2008-06-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

AAA has closed its headquarters downtown and opened a bunch of branches out in the neighborhoods, so you no longer have to drive to them.

Imagine my delight to find they're not only open Saturdays (including for DMV services) but they offer self-serve maps! There was no line for a live agent, but I headed right to the machine to check it out.

You insert your membership card and then choose up to 8 frequently requested items. Wineries. California Tour Book. Utah parks, A9. Just like buying a Snickers bar and a bag of CheeseIts.

The only problem is the map machine's located inside the AAA office, which must be open for you to use it. It would be a lot handier at the airport, or a gas station, or the rental car office, at least for people who don't love to spend as many hours researching a route as I do.

"Yes, but then I wouldn't be nearby to restock the maps," the agent said, a little hurt at the thought of being replaced.

"Fair enough," I conceded. "But I'll bet you could make money from on-the-spot renewals."

*

green is for...?

2008-06-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

that existential feeling

2008-06-03T23:38:00.000-07:00

Today I tried to check out Acrobat.com. Except first the log in didn't work.

Then I was invited to participate in a survey, that asked 1000 (okay 27) questions on things I didn't know or care about, like the performance of the Adobe website, and whether the layout made it easy or hard to do things.

Generally I answer surveys as karma, so that other users will participate in my research, but this was taking a quick password retrieval a bit too far. Also it wouldn't let me skip any questions. So I bailed.

Finally, when I was allowed to log in to CONNECTNOW (a service very like one we worked on at Macromedia six years ago with the FlashCom team), the screen was blank, I had no friends, and they disconnected me.

Talk about a welcoming out-of-the-box experience: "you were alone in the room for 20 minutes" :( Doesn't it make you just want to ConnectNow™ ?