Snubber Ring, SeanSexy, Little Chub

The washer at the southern rental property (makes me sound rich, but it's all borderline debt) has been acting up and blew an internal hose. Rather than make several trips to Home Depot and risk breaking various bits and pieces, my brother and I called in an appliance repairman (I have yet to meet a repairwoman). He popped it all apart in about two seconds and then announced, "There's a problem with your snubber ring." (note the bottom area of the diagram). You don't want to hear that. Sounds painful. And obscene. While only a $10 part, it requires ripping apart much of the machine and, if you're talented, leaving the breaking mechanism partially intact while replacing it, before putting it back together. Around 1-2 hours of work - so presumably $100-$200. They generally fall apart after 5-7 years, but ours died in a year, prompting said repairman to note that ApplianceSmart had probably sold us a refurb without telling us. I had him clamp the hose and seal it back up, he tilted it toward the back for good measure to balance it a bit more, and gave the renters instructions to use a half load. The real fix will be to yank it in a week, store it in my garage, and give it to my parents as a cabin washer for half-size loads, or try to replace the snubber ring myself and let them do full size loads. The renters can bask in the glories of a new direct drive washing machine not from ApplianceSmart.

I got a Lil Chub for Kyle on my way to RAGBRAI. How does he repay me? By keeping it? No, he hid it in my bike bag and I had to give it back. Did he leave his Lil Chub in the rocks of his fish tank where Eryn hid it? No...he gives my wife a Lil Chub. I know, because I found it in her car. He claims I should geocache it - but if I do, it'll be at his house. The good news is that Kyle can now count Ryan Seacrest a metaphorical brother, because according to this TMZ post, he "gets a little chub" too.

My friend Adam is enamored of the phrase "Seansexy". What does it mean? Absolutely nothing, unless you're drunk and playing boardgames with Adam and Sean. Then it means several hours of Adam laughing and wishing he had a t-shirt to wear that said "Seansexy". This is my personal contribution using one of the online t-shirt making tools. I think we get a discount for three or more, although I wonder how often Sean would game if he had to look at Seansexy shirts all the time.

Mean Mr. Mustard gave me one of his more consternated looks this morning when I gave him his birthday present, three weeks late and wrapped in pretty purple fairy wrapping paper. After his failure to properly identify the central candle of the menorah in the Caribou coffee trivia, and his wife's assurance that his religious identity was tenuous at best (my paraphrase), I went in search of something that would help him connect with his heritage. I don't presume he wants to get in touch with his heritage, I just went in search of something. What I found was The Menorah Game, courtesy of an Israeli blogger/boardgammer/programmer I read, Yehuda. The Menorah Game is his creation, although you can't buy it. But my friend Kyle, with access to laminaters, printers, and sundry, printed me up a copy of the various items on Boardgamegeek, I printed the rules from Boredgamegeek, and bought a 1" scrapbooking circle cutter to punch out the Israeli menorah coins. I considered using chocolate coins, or some other real coins, as gelt, but even with the help of Sank from Old and in the Way, couldn't find something quickly enough to avoid being a month late. Regardless, it turned out nicely, and Mr. Mustard has three full copies of the game (240 coins - my poor squeezing muscle) so that he can host super-cool parties for up to 12 gamers. A big thank you to everyone who participated. Even if he's dubious of the game, he can't deny that his present was the concerted effort of a moderately sized posse. On a similar note, his wife made me a tin of walnut-chocolate chip cookies for services rendered. They were a hit in my work area and with my family and received many glowing compliments.

I've always said geo-kayshing. Then Sarah corrected me at a boardgaming day and said geo-kashing. I didn't argue, as I'd just made an assumption way back when. Apparently it's actually something of a discussion on the web, with a few posts noting that it's programmers, Aussies and Kiwis who tend to say kaysh. I'll have to ask my brother in law about that. At least I'm not some fool who says kashay.

Finally, if you got this far...a bit of Web 2.0 outsourcing humor at Techcrunch (original Doubtsourcing.com).

Invisibility

I've been reading Morville and Rosenfeld's Information Architecture for the World Wide Web at work for the last month, whenever I've been in the office for more than 8 hours. Some parts of it are repetitive, intuitive, and boring, but other sections are really worth the read. One part near the end actually gave me an idea for improving the corporate centralized data-publishing service from a search engine optimization perspective. While that means squat unless someone is willing to pay for the development, it's great to be able to pitch an idea that facilitates partner interaction internationally, and to be able to grab at something that's so low-hanging that I can demonstrate it with two simple SQL queries.

Unrelated, but something I found particularly interesting, was a paragraph near the end (p. 391-393) where the authors discuss how the web, and putting out something new on the web, is starting to be a non-issue for making your fortune.

"As all companies come to embrace Internet technology, the Internet itself will be neutralized as a source of advantage. Basic Internet applications will become table stakes--companies will not be able to survive without them, but they will not gain any advantage from them." [from Michael Porter, "Strategy and the Internet", Harvard Business Review, March 2001].

I paraphrase, and add some value, but basically they're stating that technology, web technology, and particularly, visible, intuitable, technology, isn't something that can sustain your business, because anyone can reproduce it and they will. However, there are architectures and behaviors (users, content, context) that can be harnessed that even a dedicated competitor might not be able to ferret out or duplicate (or afford). So in that context, embracing open standards lowers costs and increases sustainability, and eventually doesn't matter from a competitive standpoint, because what drives your business are the things that aren't visible to those with access to the same open standards, but rather the things they can't see, or can't reproduce. Sounds damn similar to O'Reilly's line.

And this (p. 391)...this is just damn funny: "So while you might not work at ExxonMobil, Thomson, or the UN, it's likely that you're dealing with enterprise-class IA challenges." I don't work for the UN.

O'Reilly

I forgot to mention that I found the Tim O’Reilly presentation on the intraweb at work last week. If you’re a coworker and you’re interested in his presentation, I have the location of the file and a link to the player. It’s voice plus slideshow, so if you’re one of those people who don’t function well if you can’t see the speaker, maybe it’s not for you. If that’s the case, I can summarize:

O’Reilly’s talk was on Web 2.0 and Asymmetric Competition (“rivals whose different business model transforms the nature of the conflict”). He brought up these points (though my numbering doesn’t match his precisely):

• Users add value


• Only a few people will bother with your application, so harness their self-interest and make sure your defaults aren’t limiting you or your user interaction. Watch your architecture – the design of the system drives its use (an IA plug…sweet)
  Create code where people can share. Participation is valuable. Web 2.0 systems get better via user contributions. Harness the network effect.


• There’s now a perpetual beta and the move from artifact to service – the idea that you’re constantly putting new features in front of your users (or a slice of your audience) and are engaging your users in constant dialog. Don’t be afraid to remove features.


• Think of software beyond the level of a single device. I don’t want to reiterate what O’Reilly says, but if you’re interested read Morville’s Ambient Findability, as he devotes many pages to the ways new devices change everything. Watch for patterns. Watch for disruptive technologies. The move from artifact to service allows you to shorten the distance to harnessing a disruptive technology (he didn’t come right out and say that…but it’s implied).


• Owning a unique, hard to recreate source of data is a competitive advantage. That’s a database you may own now, or one you can create by harnessing users’ self-interest to create that database for you. The harder it is to recreate the better, because the software industry and information industry (database industry and publishing industry) are on a collision course and you don’t want something they can replicate inexpensively.


• A platform beats an application every time. There are companies with platform aspirations out there who want to create a programmable web.

Other bits:

• This is probably Tim O’Reilly’s daughter, showing you how to open a beer bottle the Scandanavian way.


• A cool presentation (with realtime) on how a page in Wikipedia evolves by John Udell.


• O’Reilly likes Kathy Sierra’s blog at Headrush. I’ve linked there before for the types of applications personified as users.


• O’Reilly’s own blog resides at O’Reilly Radar, which includes a number of individuals, but you can narrow it down to just him by slapping on /Tim.