Random Thoughts from the Ranch

Go Maverick!

2008-09-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

Monkeys

2008-08-29T11:06:00.000-07:00

With no disrespect intended toward my simian brothers, have the Apple industrial designers all been replaced by monkeys?

I recently upgraded (though "upgrade" may be a generous term) my iPhone to an iPhone 3G and, at about the same time, inherited a MacBook Air from my lovely wife. After about four months of trying to learn to love the Mac Way, she had finally given up and gone back to her beloved ThinkPad laptop running Windows.

Strike One (iPhone 3G): The first thing I noticed with my new iPhone is that it's slightly wider than the previous version. Just wide enough, in fact, that it won't fit into my lovely iPhone / Apple Bluetooth headset charger. Thanks a lot, Apple.

Strike Two (iPhone 3G): This one's been talked about elsewhere, but why-oh-why did Apple decide it was a good idea to save the $0.14 per device by not supporting all those existing 3rd party chargers that use the FireWire lines (in other words, ALL of the 3rd party chargers I've seen that were produced before the 3G came out.) The Apple interface on my Alpine car deck? Useless. The speakers on my bedside table? Useless. Thanks again guys.

Strike Three (Air): So apparently there's the DVI standard as I and the rest of the computing industry understand it, and then there's Apple's creative interpretation of it. I have a number of monitors in my house, some new digital ones and some old analog ones. In addition, I regularly need to connect to a variety of video projectors to give presentations. I assume I am not alone here. The Air comes with a little adapter that converts from its ultra-slim version of DVI to the DVI that the rest of the industry understands. With. one. little. exception... For some reason that's not at all clear to me, they decided not to support the 4 analog signal pins (the ones on either side of the "blade" on the DVI connector). This means that no industry standard DVI-Analog adapter will fit their connector. Now, don't misunderstand -- the slim-DVI (or whatever it's called) port on the Air supports analog. I know this because they sell an addition proprietary adapter for the analog connection. Somebody at Apple just decided it would be a good idea to force me to buy their special adapter rather than use the one I already have. The end result here is that I got to be in a meeting this morning that started with "hey, that's a Mac Air, how cool" and ended with me giving my presentation on a borrowed Windows machine and "hey, that's a Mac Air, it makes a very pretty paper-weight."

Well, at least you're getting paid for that additional adapter -- congratulations guys, would you like that in dollars or bananas?

Buying from Lenovo

2008-07-28T20:17:00.000-07:00

My wife recently decided that, as light and sexy as the Mac Air is, she'd rather go back to a Windows laptop (yes, it happens.) She really liked the Thinkpad she had while at Google so we went to the Lenovo site to see what was currently available.

After comparing a few models, she found and configured the one she liked and went to checkout. Whoops, have to create an account first. Fine.

That's when we started playing a little game with the Lenovo site designers.

"Please select a password (must be at least 8 characters)"

Ok, here you go... **********

"Error: your password may only contain the letters a-z and numbers"

Um, ok... Let's try this... **********

"Error: your password must contain at least two numbers"

We can play this game all night.

Advice to aspiring account creation designers: if you have specific rules about what kind of password you'll accept, tell me ALL of them up front.

But wait, we're not done.

"There are two counties in your zipcode, please select the correct one for tax calculation purposes"

Option 1 - KING (RTA)
Option 2 - KING

Sorry Lenovo, but that's the same county, but I'll play along and pick one.

Result:
Total price: $1,294.42
Estimated tax: $3,441.82
Total: $4,736.24

Wow, taxes have gone up.

A new adventure

2008-07-01T12:53:00.001-07:00

Haven’t posted for awhile but am trying out Live Writer to see if I like it. The jury’s still out (actually, the jury hasn’t even had the case presented yet.)

To catch up… I left Google around Christmas last year to start a new venture. Google was a very entertaining place to be but I’m really much more cut out for the start-up environment. Best of luck to everyone still there – I think they’ll be fine if they can just figure out how to make money off that search idea of theirs.

We’re not really talking too much about the new venture yet but we’ve had some very interesting developments unfold over the past week so there may be more to say in a little while.

D-Day minus One

2007-11-05T08:07:00.000-08:00

My wife, Jeni, has been working her tail off over the summer guiding John Marchione's campaign for Redmond mayor. Tomorrow's the big day, it looks pretty good right now.

Here's her latest effort to get the word out:

I weep for our educational system

2007-11-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

My daughter, Nicole, just showed me a congratulatory award from school. It read:

"Bravo! Nicole has completed all of their work."

Sigh...

Aurora -- R.I.P.

2007-07-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

I got a call from Nicole yesterday while at work. Aurora, our beloved goldfish, had finally breathed her last and said goodbye.

A little background might be in order for those of you unfortunate to have never met Aurora. For Allie's fourth birthday, my sister gave her a little goldfish. You know the kind, it lives for six weeks at best and becomes the object of a sad but important lesson in life and death.

According to Allie's calculations, Aurora was with us for 9 years, 8 months, and 48 days.

She was a good fish and will be missed.

Celebration cakes

2007-06-05T06:50:00.000-07:00

This morning was a time of celebration in the Craswell home. At the beginning of the school year, my youngest daughter signed up to play violin in the school orchestra. Rehearsals are before school, twice a week. Shortly after school started, however, she discovered the harp and fell in love. Since then, her interest in the violin has waned and getting up extra-early on Tuesday and Thursday morning became a major chore (for all of us.)

She's stuck with her commitment though and today marks the last day of regular orchestra classes. In celebration, I made her favorite breakfast.

Stacked higher and higher

2007-05-31T23:37:00.000-07:00

So I'm looking at the stack of books on my bedside table. Usually I'm pretty good about keeping it under control but, for various reasons, it seems to have gone a bit wild of late. I need a two week reading vacation.

Here's the list; any suggestions on ordering / deletions / additions appreciated:

In An Instant, Lee & Bob Woodruff - Authors@Google
Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter - read it 22 yrs ago, came up in conversation twice in a week, figured it deserved a re-read
The Sheep Look Up, John Brunner - another re-read from long ago
Chances Are, Michael & Ellen Kaplan - game theory
Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken - Authors@Google
Rant, Chuck Palahniuk - hey, it's Chuck
The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan - should've read it long ago, recently recommended
Why Marriage Matters, Evan Wolfson - Authors@Google
Small Stakes Hold-em, David Sklansky, et al - yet another re-read
Twilight of the Superheroes, Deborah Eisenberg - random impulse buy

[Edit] I just got reminded of GoodReads.com so I've added a tracking widget to the sidebar

Pretty Colors

2007-05-06T21:56:00.000-07:00

Movers and Shakers

2007-04-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

I've got to hand it to my wife. She is one of the busiest people I know. Recently she took on the job as Campaign Manager for John Marchione, mayoral candidate for the city of Redmond. He's a good guy and, with her highly competent help, he shouldn't have any problem winning. Rock on.

MonsterP in da House!!!

2006-08-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

Day 4 of the WSOP Main Event is starting shortly and our own Jeff Parcher, aka "MonsterP", is alive and kicking. Jeff finished off day 3 with 114,000 chips which puts him 304th out of a remaining field of 481. From this point on, everyone is guaranteed at least $26,389.

So far Jeff has gotten to play against Humberto "what's the spanish word for shark?" Brenes and reigning champion Joe Hachem. All in all, it's a good run.

Of course in times like these, we turn to our roots for inspiration and so I bring you the one, the only Metallica...

Some Kind of Monster
Metallica

These are the eyes that can't see me
These are the hands that drop your trust
These are the boots that kick you 'round
This is the tongue that speaks on the inside
These are the ears that ring with hate
This is the face that'll never change
This is the fist that grinds you down
This is the voice of silence no more

These are the legs in circles run
This is the beating you'll never know
These are the lips that taste no freedom
This is the feel thats not so safe
This is the face you'll never change
This is the god that ain't so pure
This is the god that is that pure
This is the voice of silence no more

We the people?
Are we the people?
We the people?
Are we the people?

Some kind of monster
Some kind of monster
Some kind of monster
This monster lives

This is the face that stones you cold
This is the moment that needs to breathe
These are the claws that scratch these wounds
This is the pain that never leaves
This is the tongue that whips you down
This is the burden of every man
These are the screams that pierce your skin
This is the voice of silence no more

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

This is the test of flesh and soul
This is the trap that smells so good
This is the flood that drains these eyes
These are the looks that chill to the bone
These are the fears that swing overhead
These are the weights that hold you down
This is the end that will never end
This is the voice of silence no more

We the people?
Are we the people?
We the people?
Are we the people?

Some kind of monster
Some kind of monster
Some kind of monster
This monster lives

We the people?
Are we the people?

This is the cloud that swallows trust
This is the black that uncolors us
This is the face that you hide from
This is the mask that comes undone

Ominous, I'm in us
Ominous, I'm in us
Ominous, I'm in us
Ominous, I'm in us

This is the cloud that swallows trust
This is the black that uncolors us
This is the face that you hide from
This is the mask that comes undone

Ominous, I'm in us
Ominous, I'm in us
Ominous, I'm in us
Ominous, I'm in us

Are we the people?
Some kind of monster
Some kind of monster
Some kind of monster
This monster lives

Me and Phil

2006-07-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

Well Phil Hellmuth and I have at least one thing in common. We both busted out the the WSOP Main Event on the first day. The difference, of course, is that Phil now has 10 WSOP bracelets while I have some number fewer than that.

I started play on the second of four "first days" of the tournament at seat 4, table 133 with 2181 other players in the room with me. Sitting across from me was Eric Froehlich, sporting his two WSOP bracelets, one on each wrist -- very stylish I must say.

Doyle Brunson, playing that day as well, got a royal entrance and standing ovation after which he kicked things off with a quiet "dealers, shuffle up and deal!"

Less than seven minutes into the game, we heard the announcer state, "congratulations, anyone still seated will NOT be the first person eliminated."

Play at our table was generally conservative with the exception of Eric and a woman directly to his right in seat 8. I didn't see very many good cards for the first hour and a half but took a few blinds and won two other pots, the second with pocket Aces (which didn't go to showdown so didn't have to show.)

Two hands after those pocket rockets, I look down to see another big pair of Aces in my hand! Woo hoo!! Here's how the hand went down:

Ron UTG (seat 4) with Ad Ac - stack 10,900, blinds 25-50
Raise to 150
Fold to Eric Froehlich in seat 9 who raises to 450
Fold to Ron who calls
Pot is 975

Flop comes 10h 7c 2h
Ron bets 600
Eric raises to 2600
Ron calls
Pot is 6175

Turn comes 2s
Ron bets 3000
Eric calls
Pot is 12175
River comes Qs
Ron bets 2500
Eric goes all-in, Ron calls (an additional 2350 -- all-in)
Eric shows Qh Qc for a full house
Ron shows Ad Ac for two pair
Ron shakes everybody's hand and heads for the exit door.

Now, there are a number of ways I probably could've played this hand to avoid the situation I ended up in but, all told, I have few regrets. Obviously, I would've liked to have lasted longer and gotten more table time in but, as they say, that's poker.

Strike Three

2006-06-20T07:48:00.000-07:00

I used to love FirstTech Credit Union.

I really did. They were one of the first with an online banking system. Now, granted it was a dial-up character-based terminal, but it was the coolest thing around.

But somewhere between then and now, something bad happened. The new version of their online banking website is the archetype of software gone awry. Aside from the horrible, horrible user interface, it just plain doesn't work.

And so, with a heavy heart (and after getting no response from any other correspondence) I sent them one last message.

To whom it may concern,

Yesterday I deposited a check into our FirstTech Checking account and then went home to pay some bills via the FirstTech Online Bill Payer system. After negotiating the frustratingly awkward new system (see my previous eight messages regarding specific bugs and user interface problems -- none of which garnered a single response from FirstTech) I managed to complete my session.

This morning I logged back into the system just to verify that everything had worked properly. As it turns out, my distrust of your system was fully warranted as I noted that four of the transaction had failed with the helpful message "Undefined CU Error". Nice…

Now, I assumed (correctly, as it turns out) that these transactions had failed because you decided to hold some amount of the funds of the deposited check (note: this check was drawn on a bank three blocks away from your Redmond branch -- all technological solutions aside, somebody could've walked down the street, knocked on the window, and said, "say, is this check good?"). Fine -- I understand that. But I got no notification whatsoever that this had happened. I had to take the initiative to go check the log, call support, and ask, "say, what might 'Undefined CE Error' mean in this particular context?"

Now, as it turns out, those transactions are not just being held until the funds are released. They have flat out failed and I now have to go back into that horrible user interface and re-enter them. I will do this. It will be the last time I use your Bill Payer system. I will be transferring my active accounts to another bank.

Sincerely,
Ron Craswell
Redmond, Wa
FirstTech member since before you had a dial-up terminal-based online banking system.

psyched2be@google.com

2006-04-23T00:09:00.000-07:00

Big announcement time...

As of May 22nd, 2006, I will be working as an Engineering Director for Google. Woo hoo!

For various reasons, I've been feeling somewhat restless in my current job. My lovely wife finally convinced me to get off my butt and start looking about for something new to keep me entertained. "Hey, how about Google? I hear they're hiring in Kirkland..."

I've been playing with LinkedIn for awhile now -- mostly just as a way to keep in touch with old co-workers. Here, finally, was a chance to use it for its intended purpose. Hmmm, Jeaneane worked with me back at Action Engine and Jeaneane knows Pete who is an ED at Google. Bingo! (BTW, thanks again Jeaneane for the introduction! I owe you one.)

I swung by the Google offices on the way home from work one day and chatted with Pete about the company, the environment, the people, and a host of other things. He showed me around and outlined some of the company's philosophies and such. I was hooked.

The interview process involved six different people over two days and I got a chance to talk with them about management problems, design problems and coding problems. Everybody was great and I had a blast.

After the local interview, my application had to go down to Mountainview for a final approval and blessing by Larry Page. I was told to expect an answer the following Friday.

Tick, tick, tick...

Fortunately, the Google hiring department apparently believes in an under-promise, over-deliver philosophy and I was notified on Wednesday that everything had been approved we were ready to rock-n-roll.

Now, with full awareness that my position may change once I get inside and see all the dirty laundry, I have to say I have never been quite so excited to start a new job as with this one. From everything I've seen so far, Google just gets it. Hire the best you can find, give them a great environment and all the resources they need, and cut them loose to be creative and build great things.

Mama, I'm home.

Snuffle up and deal....

2006-04-22T07:37:00.000-07:00

I had a rather nasty cold the other week and spent Thursday and Friday home in bed. While I love sleeping in, I hate being in bed all day with nothing to do. TV gets old pretty quickly; the cold medicine means I can't hold focus long enough to read; bleah...

So at some point in the day, in my drug addled haze I decided it might be a good idea to try and play a little online poker. Fortunately, I had the presense of mind to realize that Nyquil and gambling don't make for a very good combination so I entered a freeroll tournament. Nothing risked but some time (which I had in great supply) and it would keep me entertained for awhile.

This particular tournament was a WSOP freeroll qualifier. 3500 entrants and the end result is that the top 50 finishers get the opportunity to play in yet another tournament later where the winners THERE get entry into the 2006 WSOP in Las Vegas.

As is pretty typical for this sort of tourney, the play was crazy-wild. With no money at stake, people are swinging for the fences from Hand One. I'm not sure if being sick kept my hubris in check or if I'm finally actually beginnng to see the light, but I kept to a pretty consistently tight aggressive game until, all-of-a-sudden, it dawned on me that there are only about 200 players left and I had a pretty healthy stack of chip in front of me. Hmmm, 3500 is a lottery long-shot but 200? That's something I can do. Sure enough, at the end of about seven hours of play, I finished in the top 50! The last few hands were a bit silly as there's no difference between 50th and 1st so, when player 51 drops off, it's all in baby!

Ok that was fun. Now what?

I turns out the the follow-on tournament was to be held that Saturday at 1:30 pm. I log on at the appointed time and find the right tournament. Great -- 3574 entrants -- yet another lottery. I'm thinking though that these people have all invested seven hours of time to get here and have beat their own set of 3450 players -- the play has got to be better, no?

Not really.

Again, the theme seemed to be crazy players swinging for the fences. Fortunately, I was on the back side of my cold by this time so I was able to concentrate and play my game my way. Unfortunately "my way" typically includes a few really blindingly stupid hands but, fortunately, today the stupid hands seemed to match up with the lucky ones and I managed to keep myself alive. Once again, I watched the field drop away and it started to become conceivable that I might actually place in this crazy event! Go figure.

Now, the pay-out on this event consisted of paid entry into various WSOP events and looked like this:

1st place - $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. + hotel / airfare / spending money
2nd through 10th - $10,000 NL Hold'em Main Event
11th through 20th - any $2,000 WSOP event

The HORSE event is new to the WSOP this year. It seems that the poker pros have been getting a little annoyed that all the online posers (like me) have effectively turned the WSOP Main Event into a lottery. Sorry about that guys. Anyway, for those who have never heard of HORSE, it's a game that consists of rotating rounds of Hold'em, Omaha, Razz, Stud, and Eight or better. Combine this requirement to be good at this range of games with a crazy-high entry fee and you should pretty effectively screen out the kids.

Back to the game at hand...

To make a long (another seven hours) story slightly shorter, I managed to hold my chip position in the top five or so until we got down to that last 10 players. At that point we all started looking around at each other with the same thought. "Let's see... my odds of actually winning the WSOP Main Event at this point are 1 in 100,000. My odds of winning the HORSE event? Zero. Time to bail." So I finished sixth and I'm off to Vegas in July! It turns out that, in addition to the $10,000 entry fee, PartyPoker will pay for a room at the MGM Grand if you're willing "to exclusively wear PartyPoker.com branded apparel while playing". For a free room, I can be a clothes whore.

A special thanks to Dan Harrington and his great set of books, "Harrington on Hold'em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments" Volume I: Strategic Play, and Volume II: The Endgame. Highly recommended reading for anyone who is not planning on playing against me this summer at the WSOP. If you are going to be there, please don't read these or any other books. Just remember, you are invincible and yes, you will hit that inside straight on the river... trust me.

Addendum: I just looked at the PartyPoker freeroll page and it looks like they're no longer offering the entry into the HORSE event as the first prize. Now finishers 1 through 14 go the the Main Event and 15 through 24 get the $2,000 entry prize.

Nobody knows I'm Elvis

2006-04-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

M:Metrics, the company I work for, just got a nice little writeup by Russell Buckley on MobHappy.

M:Metrics - The Elvis Analysts

I had to laugh because it reminded me of a Comdex long ago where my company at the time, Connectsoft, hosted an Elvis Extravaganza which included having the Flying Elvi land in the hotel parking lot, Mini Elvis on stage, and a theme of "Nobody Knows I'm Elvis" (which I never really understood, but we gave out a ton of t-shirts with the slogan. Go figure.)

That which is old is new again...

slashdot.gov

2006-04-08T07:54:00.000-07:00

I woke up a little early this morning and grabbed the Seattle Times off the front porch. We're still getting a daily paper -- there's something very comforting about early morning, a cup of coffee and real paper to leaf through.

Susan Gilmore of the Times wrote a little piece about the upcoming selection of the Washington State quarter. While my coin collecting has always been limited to the peanut butter jar of daily spare pocket change, I've enjoyed seeing the rollout of the various state quarters over the past few years and was interested in seeing what Washington might come up with.

In the article, Susan also included a link where you could go vote on your favorite -- http://www.governor.wa.gov/quarter. Democracy in action, baby!

Unfortunately, apparently nobody told the people running the site that this article was going to show up today and it immediately fell over under the pressure. Slashdotted by a physical newspaper.

And no, I don't really have a favorite among the three options. Each has their problems:

state outline with collection of "Washington stuff" -- boo-oo-o-r-ing! Very generic.
Mt. Rainier with jumping salmon -- nice composition but also very expected.
NW American art orca -- I really wanted to like this one. My dad's been carving NW coast art for many years now and our house is filled with his work. Possibly because of this, I have some fairly strong opinions on what I like in the genre and this dancing whale is a little too Barney-esque for me.

So it's a toss-up between #2 and #3. Hopefully I'll make a decision before the state IT staff can convince their poor little servers to wake back up.