This is Not a Post about Michael Jackson

Posted in Everything Else, Technology on 06/26/2009 10:54 am by lux

But it is about music.

One thing that technology has done to music is the decline of shared musical spaces. Years ago, it was habit for me to bring a boom box and a pile of tapes or CDs to the office & play music every day. Music was a shared experience — coworkers would bring in and trade CDs, vote some stuff on or off the playlist, even make office mix tapes. It wasn’t a paradise — especially when your co-workers had very different musical tastes — but it was more social.

Now, each of us sits at our desks plugged into our own private music streams. Nobody has to argue about whether or not [Band X] is good work music, or negotiate a preferred volume level — but also we’re more isolated from each other.

On the whole I’m not sure it’s a step in the right direction.

 

Friday Cat Blogging

Posted in Pets on 06/12/2009 07:15 am by lux

I was playing with the depth of field on this shot and am pretty happy with how it turned out.

Tommy

Only thing I wish I could change is the pillow in the left corner, but if I’d moved it Tommy would have woken up.

 

Surprise and Delight

Posted in Business on 06/10/2009 08:34 pm by lux

“Surprise and Delight” was one of the mantras we got trained on at Starbucks. The way Starbucks sees the concept, it was about doing what you needed to in order to exceed customer expectations — remaking drinks to make sure customers were happy, handing out samples, etc. When it’s done right, it’s a great way of building customer loyalty.

Someone over at wine.woot must have been paying attention, because today I checked my mailbox and found an envelope containing a bumper sticker and a little card that invited me to send them a photo of the bumper sticker in use to get even more “cool stuff”.

I’m at best a casual wine.woot customer. I’ve only bought from them twice. So I was definitely surprised to find a gift from wine.woot in my mail. And you know what? It worked. I certainly would have bought from them again, but I’m definitely going to be more diligent about checking the site regularly for their latest offering. I’ll probably put the sticker up somewhere; maybe on my car, maybe even on my laptop. And I’m blogging about the whole thing to boot.

Multiply that out by all the other customers woot sent this to, and for the price of a run of bumper stickers and some postage, that’s pretty good marketing. And good for customer loyalty too.

Bravo, wine.woot. Well played.

 

Who Would Jesus Shoot?

Posted in Women on 05/31/2009 10:33 am by lux

Dr. George Tiller was murdered this morning as he walked into his church to attend regular weekly services.

Killed at a church, of all places. How could his murderer miss the irony in that action? Did he think that it was somehow fitting? Or was it simply a place where he could more easily get close enough to Tiller to kill him?

Whatever you think of Dr Tiller’s work, he was a brave man who stood up for his principals in the face of decades of threats and violence. Reasonable people can disagree about abortion. But there’s simply no justification at all for killing someone that you disagree with.

He didn’t deserve this.

UPDATE: If you’re so inclined, I’d suggest making a donation to Medical Students for Choice in Dr Tiller’s memory.

 

Memorial Day

Posted in Everything Else on 05/25/2009 07:24 am by lux
US flag at sunset

Because freedom isn’t free.

 

In The Spotlight

Posted in Business on 05/22/2009 09:50 pm by lux

So today, some news broke about a big disconnect between the organizers of the Palm PreDevCamp and Palm.

I have no idea what really happened and I don’t want to speculate. I’m more interested in what can be learned here.

As someone who spends her time working with passionate user communities, I’ve been wondering tonight, what would we have done? If it had been our team, would we have made the same mistakes, different ones, or would we have gotten it right?

You like to think that when push comes to shove you’ll do the right thing. Still, anything involving humans and communication has a chance of going off the rails. Even with the best people and the best intentions you can still end up with a bad outcome.

There’s no way to know until you get there. The best you can do is prepare as much as possible and hope that when it’s your turn under the spotlight, you’ll rise to meet the challenge.

UPDATE 5/23: Looks like Palm is responding well. Kudos all around.

 

One Year Later

Posted in Business, Personal on 05/12/2009 07:00 am by lux

One year ago today I started working at Adobe and my life completely changed.

I have 100+ pieces of e-mail backlogged in my in-box, and more projects to work on than hours in the day. There’s a user group meeting tonight, which means a 12+ hour work day today, and my dinner is likely to be cold pizza, consumed while sitting on the floor of a conference room.

You might think I’d be hating my life right now. You’d be wrong. I’ve never been happier.

It’s a good thing that I had no real clue what I was in for when I walked in my first day. If I’d known, I think I would have been too scared to move. With no expectations, I could just stand under the firehose and take it all in without anything getting in the way.

And what a ride it’s been.

I can’t find the scene on YouTube & don’t have time to rip it from my DVD, but there’s a snippet from early in Season One of “The West Wing” where new White House employee Charlie Young is watching his first Presidential TV taping from the back of the Oval Office:

Charlie: I’ve never felt like this before.
Josh: It doesn’t go away.

I know the feeling. :)

Time has never flown faster than it has this year, and if I’ve ever worked harder I’ve blocked the memory out. (Actually, that’s not true. The summers I worked 1-week summer stock theater, I worked harder, but that was only for 3 months at most.)

I’ve also had the privilege to work with a team of intelligent, funny, hardworking colleagues both inside and outside Adobe. A better or more passionate community you cannot find. I’ve found a home here, I think, and I hope it continues for a long time to come.

I know that some day I may look back at this blog entry through the eyes of an older, more burned-out self and feel sad, disillusioned, or cynical. It could happen. But after a full year of full-throttle, it’s not even close to going away.

I am a lucky, lucky girl.

Thanks to all of you who’ve been along for the ride and made it so worthwhile.

 

Point, Counterpoint

Posted in Everything Else on 05/10/2009 10:24 am by lux

Point (Thanks Mike):

Here’s the rule: If you even suspect that you’re at risk of becoming complacent, you probably already are.

Counterpoint (Thanks Richie):

Inspiration is not linear. There is no map to find it by. That book that lit your fire a year ago might seem completely foreign to you now. But the constant pursuit of inspiration is what’s going to make you better. You have to search it out.
…
If you’re not inspired, it’s your duty to seek out whatever it is that gets you going. Re-visit. Talk. Laugh. Read. Listen. Love. Fight. Debate. Get angry. Feel elation. Let pain in. Just don’t deny any moment that might move you forward. At the end of the day, inspiration might be what ends up getting you through.

 

Speaking Gig: May 13

Posted in Business, Personal on 05/07/2009 03:32 pm by lux

If you’re in the SF Bay Area, I’ll be speaking as part of the panel at this event: Social Media: Where Do We Go From Here?.

It’s free and will be happening from 6 to 9 PM on May 13, 2009 at De Anza College in Cupertino.

Hope to see you there!

 

More Pix Online

Posted in Personal on 05/03/2009 09:36 am by lux

For the few who were curious, I’ve been plugging away and there’s now a coast to coast selection of photos online from my trip. I still need to get the Ruby Canyon shots dealt with — AMAZING scenery by the Colorado river — so it’s not done yet.

 

Weekend Hacktacular

Posted in Technology on 04/26/2009 05:44 pm by lux

I couldn’t resist. I should be focusing on getting my trip photos dealt with, but instead I did a little hack project this weekend.

The fact that the Dell Mini 9 is one of the few netbooks out there that can run OSX has not gone unnoticed. And after hearing from one of the Adobe community folks that the method for turning a Mini into a “Hackintosh” really did work as reported, I was intrigued. So when an extra Mini crossed my path, I decided to give to a try.

The necessary ingredients:

starting out

One Macbook Pro, One Dell Mini 9 (1 GB RAM, 16 GB SSD HD), One copy of OSX 10.5.6, One 16GB USB drive. Not pictured: a 2nd USB thumb drive for the bootloader.

How I did it: the “Two USB Drive” version described here.

It was actually quite easy. The only pain in the butt was getting the ISO of the OSX install disk onto the thumb drive — it took a long time. Other than that, though, everything worked as described. After the standard installation and setup process and a few reboots, I had this:

end result

There was only about 2GB of free space left on the drive after installation, but Monolingual cleaned out almost 3GB of additional space. I used Xmark to sync my bookmarks onto Safari, threw on a copy of NeoOffice in case I need to do any basic document editing, and added Last.FM so I can listen to music without having to load any MP3s onto the Mini.

I haven’t tested the Bluetooth yet but everything else is working like a charm. I can stream videos, listen to music, check email, and do pretty much anything else I need to, on a machine that’s small enough to fit into my purse. I can even plug SDHC cards from my camera right into the Mini and then upload photos to the cloud. And I don’t have to put up with Windows to do any of it. :) The only drawback is the tiny keyboard on the Mini. It’s fine for a few emails but I wouldn’t want to use it for extended writing.

And yes, installing OSX onto non-Apple hardware is most likely a violation of the EULA (and may void the Dell warranty as well) so bear that in mind if you decide you want to give this experiment a try.

(Hint: Having a sweet little Hackintosh is worth it IMHO)

 

Travel Update

Posted in Personal on 04/26/2009 04:20 pm by lux

Over Passover, I spent a busy week in NYC and followed it up with the promised train ride across America. It was great — very scenic, very relaxing, and I’m very glad I did it.

I took a huge pile of photos, the best of which are slowly making their way onto Flickr here. Please be patient — there’s over 500 to sort through and I have a lot else going on as well.

 
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