It’s more nostalgia, isn’t it?
Scanner Time
I looted a scanner from my old workplace when it closed. Let me explain how I rationalize that action.
The thing is a combination printer/scanner - At first it was thought that I would be scanning a lot of artwork for the website so I got one. But eventually, they started sprouting up around the office like toadstools - we had network gear, so it might have made more sense to have one really good printer and scanner networked, but that’s not what happened. Stuff got bought in dribs and drabs. The purchasing mavens waited until my department got a new PC (I think it may have been for my desk…) to get a new printer.
I never really used the scanner part that much for work - I wound up getting most of what I needed online. But, on the other hand, it was really annoying to have to go down the hall to use the vintage Mac in the advertising office every time I needed to scan something.
One day I had a serious paper jam. That was when I discovered how hermetic the printer mechanism was. With the exception of a couple flaps, there was no access. I believe that to access the printer mechanism would require dismantling the scanner part - removing it from above the printer. Or something like that. Nevertheless, I managed to pull the diagonal wad of copy paper out. But I caused some subtle damage with the shuttle - that carriage for the ink cartridges that rode back and forth on a rod. From then on, there was a point near one end of the rod where the cartridges would stutter, leaving a vertical line running down the left edge of the paper. It would leave a rainbow from the narrow gaps where C, M, and Y never printed from the stutter. Black, begin further to the left had its stutter outside of the printing range. I had all the clues I needed, but no reliable way to fix it. And it was bargain basement junk anyway.
It worked that way for months and months. Not exactly production quality, but I didn’t do production.
Then one day it died completely.
I drew that face on post-it note, stuck it to the printer and started sending my print jobs somewhere else.
Paul Crowley Youngstown Ohio
This photo is a remarkably good one considering. It belongs to a collection of very crappy photos from the 1980’s. When I lived in Gaithersburg, I used to ride my bike down to the railroad tracks. As a teenager, I wasn’t particularly sure what I wanted to take photos of. I was just scanning around for something interesting. And, what looks interesting to the eye is not necessarily interesting printed. Any marginally good photographer has learned to compensate for this. I’m tempted to call it “pre-emphasis”. All image creation has to be artificial. Viewers won’t see what is there if it is simply recorded - they have to be shown something emblematic to see truth, but they can just as easily be manipulated into seeing something false in the process. Photos are no substitute for ‘being there’, and to think that they can be is clearly naive. But it’s also possible that you haven’t discovered that for yourself yet.
So here we have the young, naive me, snapping away at railroad tracks, trains passing by, track-maintenance equipment, and the extremely nondescript track-side architecture… Then one day I take an actual portrait. Albeit a corporate logo, ‘signed’ by a bystander three states away. Was he even in Ohio when he made his mark? Or was he tramping the rails like some depression-era hobo? I have no doubt that the graffiti struck me that day as particularly literate and legible. It is indistinguishable in mode from an artist’s signature, as if Paul here was taking credit for the thing. Did they fabricate those rail cars in Youngstown somewhere? Did Paul do this at the factory. I doubt it, but it’s a poetic thought. The mark is fresher than the paint job, that much is easy to see.
Maybe this isn’t the first good photograph I ever took, but I think there is a good chance that it is. I recognize it as a photo I would take today, given the opportunity. It shows the industrial decay that I forget even interested me that long ago. If anything, I’m not so different now because I haven’t been paying close attention.
Posted in photos, web-craft, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:59:00 GMT
All right. So what did I used to do? Back when I got paychecks…
One night last year, I met a group of new people at a bar - it was this night, but that doesn’t really explain what I’m getting at here… People asked me what I did at Olsson’s, and I didn’t know what to say at first - it’s a “variety of boring things” - but, when I muttered something about migrating the web site to a new server, people got interested. So, I filled in some details. At one point I had most of the group mesmerized… but then, I got bashful: “Oh, it really wasn’t all that complicated…”. They weren’t having it - it sounded impressive to them.
Well, of course it sounded impressive. None of them were computer specialists. I would be mesmerized by a tale of brain surgery. Because I’m not a brain surgeon, and I find it almost unfathomable that such a thing could be done at all.
Now, it’s all very flattering, but I’m not fooled. I’m grateful for the positive attention, but I still discount that - none of those people were in a position to judge whether I had done a good job of it. No matter what you do, you can probably admit that it could have been done better, or faster. I guess I don’t have to feel too bad about lacking better or faster, since I hadn’t ever done it before.
I never wanted to keep doing what I was already doing. People who think they know me, think I want comfort, but that isn’t true at all. What I want is manageable change. I want to be able to try new things without jumping out the window. When the new possibilities require great sacrifice, I’m not into it. I don’t think the world is truly structured this way - I think that perverse thinkers are in charge and it is their doing: I want open work; I want to be free to apply my abilities in ways I don’t yet know about. While there are some places it isn’t safe to dabble (Airline pilots, Nuke plant operators… Can you get excited about “Experimental Techniques in Nuclear Power Plant Management”?), most of life is not some disaster waiting to happen.
It doesn’t matter how well I can regale a group of strangers in a bar - none of that is going to cut it with the Human Resources department at some faceless corporate office. I doubt that’s how I’m going to arrive at my next full time position.
Why is everything so official? Who is responsible for such an uptight world - where I can’t just make some positive contribution? Why is work organized into positions, and why are there even companies at all?
Sorry - if you didn’t know, those are supposed to be rhetorical questions - but the more I ask, the less I understand the received wisdom. I read a lot of books in search of new answers. It’s got me very unsettled. These questions are driving me to read books with titles like “The Riddle Of The Modern World” and “A Culture Of Improvement”. Today I read a chapter on the history of Silicon Valley in “Cities In Civilization”.
When I look at a job listing - and I just looked at enough to make my head spin - I see precision: Precise requirements and precise responsibilities. People tell me not to take that too seriously… Heck, I bet a lot of people doing these jobs don’t have all those things required. But, if those specifications are not meant to be taken seriously, then the whole damned process unravels for me: Suddenly, everything seems meaningless.
There, I’ve gone and said it.
I Can’t Even Remember All The Things I Did
In the final days, everybody talked about what a great job I did, and how important I was to the company. Nobody ever talked about me that way before. Were they delusional? No - they thought it would “encourage” me to grumble that nothing I did was good enough or fast enough. Too bad that didn’t work. Otherwise, I could just pay someone to berate me all day and it would do wonders.
I like to simplify:
- Book Ordering
- Tech Support
- Web Maintenance
Book ordering sounds really dull. I was never a “buyer”. When I started that job, so many people worked there that that part of my job consisted of printing purchase orders one afternoon each week, and then spending several days figuring out where/how to send them - mail and fax were popular, but sometimes people would take the order right on the phone. We dealt with such a multitude of publishers, but - remember the “Long Tail” or “Pareto’s Law” - 90% of the work was contacting 10% of the publishers. Or something like that.
Tech support was nice, because it deserved respect. Some people really knew how to be condescending, and on occasion I had to do it too, but when things were going well, I treated people the way I wanted to be treated. I had an unspoken assumption that what I told them could help them rise to my level - that was how I got there - and some day they wouldn’t need my help anymore. But, most people don’t want that. And, some people were routinely petulant about needing help at all - they could make it sound like they believed deep down that it was my fault the computer was ‘broken’ in the first place.
Web maintenance infected me over the years until it was coursing unimpeded through my bloodstream: I was around to attend the first meeting. Back then, I couldn’t wrap my head around leased hosting. We already had one computer, what harm would one more do? I was all for doing the site - but I started to worry about content - I didn’t know what we thought we were going to stick up there. Now that sort of thing seems pretty normal - but the memory haunts me still. I find sites interesting if they have art or information, but e-commerce was like a bad word to me. I despaired of seeing the web turn into one big shopping mall. My skin still crawls at the though of being too pushy: Let people find you. Offer something to them to make it worth coming back. The author event calendar was that. And, the staff blogs that I helped set up. Amazon already existed back then, and I think they still only sold books. Competing with Amazon sounded like a stupid idea (it probably killed our company in the end).
Remind me to use some Action Verbs…
Posted in olssons, employment | 1 comment | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:12:00 GMT
I had planned to go to the Takoma Park Street Festival yesterday. I knew about it at least a week in advance - which can be a long time for my planning apparatus. Too long, even. I was getting ready to go over there when I had a writing idea. “This should only take a minute.” Ha. It was 3:30 when I was satisfied with my rough drafts. Much of the work went into the extended rant on Wall Street. For some reason those ideas were in my head Saturday night during the movie, but I couldn’t express myself. Part of the problem is an issue I’ve talked about before: Commercials can be a boon. WETA has no commercial breaks at all during movies. And “Wall Street” was two hours long. So I can’t run to the kitchen for a snack without missing something, or reflect on what I’ve watched. After not producing anything the night of the movie, I was predictably unsatisfied - So, when the ideas did start to flow, I wasn’t going to stop for anything. And I was too late to catch much of the street festival.
But that’s all right… Because it was on to the next thing. Yet another get-together with the brokenhearted of Olsson’s. This time it was very Alexandria-centric - they held it at the Union Street Pub, across the street from the old “Book Annex”, or as I sometimes liked to call it: “Store 4” - Or - the one voted most likely to flood.
I took advantage of the new Yellow line Metro service. The trains that used to turn around at Mt. Vernon Square (don’t you just love telling tourists that the Mount Vernon they’re looking for is twenty miles due south of where they’re standing?) now turn around at Fort Totten. Although, I think that’s only true during non-rush hour. With that new service, I can ride non-stop from Columbia Heights to Alexandria - which helps me rest up for the long walk from the train station to the waterfront.
I was running a little early, so I stopped in at Hard Times Cafe for a bowl of chili. Dry Texas with chopped tomato and onion on top. The service was crappy and the food was excellent. Actually, the cornbread could have been fresher, but since it took so long to get it - deja-vu! - I included it in the service category. I’m easy to please, so screwing it up is an impressive feat.
King Street in Alexandria is a template of memory. I never hung out there much, but most of that was more than ten years ago. The place haunts me - just to walk down that street today is an exercise, physical and mental: Many businesses have been replaced over the years, but I never pinned down where everything was anyway. More than once, I thought something was gone when I got to the corner I remembered it on, only to discover it still there, further on. It is just not a route that I can play back in my imagination and get right. One segment near the courthouse is clogged with the chains - Starbucks and Gap and Austin Grill to name a few. Starbucks is starting to feel old to me, though. One year around ‘93 or ‘94 we had Liz Phair play at the store, and when they ran late arriving from Philadelphia, I remember going up to Starbucks for a cafe mocha with orange colored whipped cream on top. It must’ve been a Halloween theme. Since then, another outlet has opened at Union, so there would be no need to walk all that way.
I took a minute to look in the window of Olsson’s - a place I haven’t been since who knows when… Was it an overnight inventory four years ago? The PC screen-saver was still going on the ticket sales computer. It looked ready to open in the morning. Part of me was hoping to be seen by a stranger, looking forlornly into the closed store for unknown reasons. And if they were a thoughtful stranger, they might wonder at the nature of my relationship with that place - the worlds of unknowing in a chance encounter.
A big group had assembled by the time I got there, but I think I arrived at the half way point. (I suppose in any normal distribution or arrival times, most people would appear to have arrived “in the middle”, though). There were book sales reps, the long silent former employees, friends who hadn’t drifted too far away, the veterans and the recently hired. People who seem like surrogate parents to me, and people who were only names on my computer. The drinks were flowing, and I didn’t have to pay.
Posted in DC-roaming, ontology, olssons, writing-craft | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:46:00 GMT
Two of these photos are doctored. One of them is a tiki mug from the bookstore. It was probably used in a display at 7th Street. I was laughing at the large variety of cups left behind at my office. I know why some of them were left unclaimed - nobody felt that this tiki mug belonged to them - but with others, I have taken ransom photos. I have your mug. Maybe.
Now, this is why I got that drawing tablet: To zip through a quick “extract” filter in Photoshop, then save copies as I rotated the hue values on that new extracted layer.
Posted in photos, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:07:00 GMT
Today I met my librarian friend Elizabeth for lunch in Dupont Circle. She works in the library at The Society of the Cincinnati. Elizabeth is one of the nicest and kindest people I know. Yeah, I’ve seen her get angry or frustrated plenty of times - she worked for a stretch in the old bookstore, then with us in the office doing data entry - but she hardly has a mean bone in her body. She grasped quite quickly who I was and what my talents were, and she also connected naturally with the idea that most of us had the bookstore as a safe haven. With the loss of that safe haven, one of her first thoughts was to worry about me, and what I would do next. This sort of consideration is like bright sunshine for me after working for years in a dark basement at a computer screen.
I have no desire to stop working, or indulge in leisure. I also hardly have the savings for that. People who guess at my situation and predict that I should take a break are misreading me. The best tonic for me is to redouble my efforts on the kinds of work I enjoy. I ought to have more of a puritan work ethic, and I would prefer to focus that ethic on a new set of things. But it is first necessary to survey the landscape: I build on my skills relentlessly. I have always been adventurous in my mind, if not out in the world. Elizabeth and I agreed that now is the time for optimism. All along, with the bookstore or without it, we are living in a turbulent time. It can seem a weird coincidence that one small business should fail at this moment in macroeconomic history, but I say it is simply emblematic: The people spending money on books are the same ones now facing their own uncertainties. Their reluctance to spend is no accident, and it chokes every retailer stretched to the limit, counting on that revenue. If you believe in Schumpeter’s “Creative Destruction”, this is both tragedy and opportunity: Isn’t this the world’s way of communicating, invisible-handily, that it doesn’t want those bookstores? And, so it raises the question of what: What does the world want instead? To those of us who love books - and it’s a bit more complicated than that for me - it feels like a personal insult, but there must be beautiful worlds we may now create instead. For Elizabeth it’s a library, for me it’s also something to do with how people share what they know - the Internet, obviously. But, more than the tubes themselves, a way of balancing our lives and sharing the best of what we know. One of the simple things I can do right away is lend my services in web programming. And step one is to make new contacts. If I can support myself on freelance work, I can continue building my portfolio and work to my own peculiar tastes.
So we sat down together to eat pizza…
We were both mildly hampered by our hangovers. She had a story about a date last night with a French guy and wine with his rowdy friends. I had another night of watching presidential debates - the vices this time - over Oktoberfest beer at the Reef. Elizabeth had not seen either of the debates and wanted my opinion. They have trained Palin well: I didn’t notice a rout. There were times when a grin came across Biden’s face in reaction to something Palin said, and it pained him to have to wait for his turn to rebut her. But I didn’t find her nearly as ridiculous as she is accused of being.
Elizabeth didn’t know about the testimonials page on the Olsson’s web site, and when I mentioned it, she was curious about what people were saying. I was happy to report that it was mostly positive. There was a lot of outrage over the general economic climate threaded through many of the comments. I feel proud to be part of something that would give so many people such good memories.
Once lunch was over, Elizabeth suggested I come back to see her library. It is quite a place: The Society is housed in one of Dupont Circle’s great mansions - the home of Lars Anderson, Harvard Graduate and career diplomat. The library is very nice: Down a narrow flight of stairs I wasn’t sure what I would encounter, but it was ultra-modern. I got a the round of introductions and we talked more about the demise of Olsson’s with the library’s director. But, more importantly, we talked about the possibility of freelance work for me - I got the sense that web site maintenance is not Elizabeth’s primary responsibility, and that there must be ways to help her streamline her maintenance tasks. This is exactly what I was just doing in my old job. She was adding photo gallery pages from recent events, but they are all full sized high resolution images. Those pages take a long time to load. Clearly, they need to be resized - and a slide-show script wouldn’t hurt either. And, finally, a representative thumbnail for each event in the list would do wonders. I got a sense of her workflow, then tried to set her up with a different ftp client, but we couldn’t get a login on the first try. Eventually, I had to let her get on with doing it the hard way so she could have any hope of finishing it in a day.
So then I took a guided tour of the mansion. It is opulent to say the least. One double staircase was measured to fit an enormous painting of the crowning of a Venetian Doge (hmmm… actually it was the Doge’s wife who was being crowned…). There were Billiard rooms, Music halls, Drawing rooms in French and English styles. There were paintings, tapestries, sculpture and curio cases. Enough Japanese screens for their own exhibit - and an expert is coming to give a talk about them next month. Wherever walls were bare of art objects, the walls themselves were painted with allegories. The breakfast room with a replica of the view of the garden from their house in Brookline, Massachusetts. Every room had a distinctive marble patterned floor, and I’ve never seen so much carved wood all in one place. Members stay in the bedroom suites - there is one for each of the thirteen original colonies - but the Georgia room was unoccupied and we got to take a look.
So all told, it was a wonderful excursion. Hopefully a rejuvenating experience.
Posted in employment, web-craft, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:26:00 GMT
It’s strange to work in a place for 21 years and have it suddenly evaporate - But I can’t really say I was caught by surprise…
The past few days have reminded me a little of when I drove through Texas last summer: I saw a lot, but didn’t get to take my time and record my observations. When work has that kind of urgency, my quality of life suffers dearly. I have had the exhilaration of pushing myself to the limit on tasks I knew couldn’t be redone later. But it also left me with the lingering illness often associated with stress. In addition, I was humping a lot of baggage home, which sometimes left me exhausted.
Not that it was all pushing myself to the limit… What made it worse was the down-time; the frustrations; the planning for a future that backfired in the end. I would have loved to go out with a whimper. The reality was different.
Sunday there was a meeting of all the department managers. I was ready to work a normal Sunday - and if I sat around not preparing for the future, I could just hasten the end. But, then it turned out that I couldn’t hasten the end after all: It had already been decided. I was even placing book orders on Sunday morning(!). It’s a delicate maneuver, sharing information with just a select few, while keeping it secret. I couldn’t even tell my friends and family, lest it somehow get back to me - that made me decidedly unwilling to talk to anybody if I didn’t have to.
By Monday, all I could concentrate on was making sure not to leave any of my possessions - I was going to have to make several trips, and I didn’t have that many days in which to do it. I’d been turning my office into a home away from home, and I uncovered things I didn’t even remember I had. I discovered many items of value that were not company property at all, but supplies purchased by and for the collective - mostly people who were long gone. It was at about this point that the Airport store called with a computer problem. It was really the communications link failing. Then, as people arrived at the other stores, three more links failed. It only added insult to injury: I couldn’t believe the common-mode failure was a coincidence. The theory I didn’t want to believe was: Verizon didn’t really postpone the leased-circuit move. They must have picked that day to knock out the lines we would stop using after we moved the computer to Dupont Circle. And, the worst part was that it took them nearly 12 hours to resolve one of the four circuits. I never even bothered with the others. Not my problem anymore.
We got paychecks and (most of us) had to go cash them at a different bank - where they have the payroll account. Next, I mailed a big box of free reading copies to a friend in need of books, then I shuttled some stuff home. I didn’t work all that hard Monday - but that was just the calm before the storm. Frustrations, as I said before. When I was back for round two, I started working on website alterations. In the meeting Sunday, one of the General Managers handed out the flyers to post on the door Tuesday telling everybody we were closed for good. There was a note about going to the web site to leave comments - ‘testimonials’. I had a moment of panic - “Nobody asked me if this was feasible!” But, calm down, Evan… The solution took shape in my mind so fast that I knew immediately how to do it. It’s one of those moments where just a mere word changes everything, and you realize that it hadn’t occurred to you before because the situation had changed in the interval. I came back Monday afternoon to set it up…
In September 2006 - it’s nearly two years to the day - we had to migrate the whole site to Network Solutions. It’s a story I’ve told here before. On the old host, there was no blogging option that I knew of (lack of control on my part probably played a role), so I went with what I knew: Blogger. That worked all right until I started having absurd difficulty publishing posts. At the peak of it I had six or seven people writing on separate blogs, and if there was trouble all abound, it could take days to get everybody straightened out. I was threatening to move everybody over to Wordpress - the system available on the Network Solutions host. It never happened because it would have required tedious copying post by post, and I also didn’t see a way to fake the time stamps so that I could reflect the real times old posts were written. Well, none of that mattered for this project. I just needed one post page with the comments turned on, and we would never need to manage posting again. I thought it would me much easier than it was: I picked a wood-grain design template that reminded me of all our wooden shop fixtures - a visual break with the look of the site so far - then I inserted filler text and put it away for the night. I was even home in time to watch Terminator at 8.
But by 9:30, I was passed out. I heard the phone ring, and knew if must be Marina calling me from Texas, but I wasn’t able to move quickly, and I rationalized my failure with the sure knowledge that I would not have the stamina to stay awake for an entire conversation.
I inherited the espresso maker - I was the only one who ever used it regularly. It’s small and sturdy, something that has paid for itself already and would actually fit in my kitchen. People assumed it would be really heavy, but some of that is the water tank. I wasn’t carrying the water home. We could consider it as payment in kind for Tuesday, which would never go on a paycheck, and which turned out to be my most excellent deadline ever. For some reason, I thought I’d be able to roll home around noon. Once again, I had to sit idle, waiting for content contributions - and exploring how to pack everything I still wanted to take home. So the real job only got underway after two. I had a major kung-fu session, rapidly navigating the admin interface for a blog tool I had never attempted to use before (Wordpress), learning the relationships among the stylesheets and template files on the fly, with an audience looking over my shoulder - an audience very picky about print-quality fonts and fractional line spacing aesthetics. By 4pm and after they brought me a sandwich, I had the thing largely tamed - the sidebar cruft had to be removed with no real navigation or outbound links intended. Not exactly brain surgery, but make one wrong move and you may never figure out exactly what you damaged. (And, I remember vividly how my Marketing Director was reluctant to learn simple HTML editing because it was so easy to break the code…) Firefox and the developer tools I had installed came in handy: I love the “outline current element” feature, but I learned how effective it could be in showing my non-technical audience the spatial extent of tags. CSS editing on the browser window always seemed like a great idea too, but the sheer speed I could attain with it today was liberating.
It also made my eyes hurt. And my stomach a bit queasy. Or, was that the sandwich?
After wrapping up, I got a ride from one of the Arlington crew. He said a whole group was meeting for drinks at Lucky Bar in Dupont Circle. I didn’t want to shun the group - many of whom didn’t know me well, but I had to fight that queasy stress-induced feeling all night. It wasn’t until I was home a couple hours ago that the knot in my stomach finally started to unwind.
But now, I’m zipping along on a still-frazzled energy. And, I wish I could get some sleep. I still have to decide what to do with the rest of my life. And if there are any other desirable formats for that life I just haven’t discovered yet. When I wake up, I’ll have to run out for a bag of espresso beans and get the machine set up. It’s usually a good idea to run it at least once a day.
Hey, don’t forget to check out the slow evolution of the Olsson’s website on the Wayback Machine…
Posted in olssons | 3 comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:09:00 GMT
It’s been a frantic day today, my nose to the virtual grindstone. I had a lot of impending work hanging over me, and when I couldn’t move on any other task, I worked on the PHP code for my event schedule editor - I’m trying to anticipate all the things that could go wrong.
The office move is postponed, but that’s okay - we hadn’t planned it out yet anyway. Now maybe we will. Regardless of planning, the Verizon tech arrived downtown to wire up the new phone jacks. But, really, it looks like I’ll need a dialup line or two for EDI ordering, faxes, modem call in for the shut-ins telecommuters without a Telnet setup. All in good time.
Somehow through it all, I was able to read two good articles on-line:
Here comes $500 oil - Is it irresponsible of Fortune to pick that title? Come now, it’s downright panic-inducing. I wasn’t driven to panic, since I’ve been reading about Peak Oil for years now. At least this guy is part of the Oil Industry. He doesn’t get off topic like a lot of people I read on this subject, so that’s refreshing. Here’s some sober advice:
“…as a society, we don’t have the ability to actually come to grips with a crisis until it’s hit us in the face. I am discouraged enough now to think that we’re going to have to have a really nasty shock before we wake people up.”
He also said the Senator McCain is clueless on energy policy.
The End: Have We Reached The End of Book Publishing As We Know It? - I just love reading about the demise of publishing. But seriously folks, there is some nostalgia for the past paired with at least one imprint that is trying to change the rules and adapt. I was happy about the theme of huge corporations rushing in to buy everything only to be disappointed at the results. They catch a whiff of money and come running.
One of my regular customers wanted a book I can’t get anymore. It might be back in stock soon, but who can tell? My distributor shows it “on order”, but that sometimes masks a title that is effectively Out of Print. Publishers won’t easily declare a book Out of Print - and I assume the rumors I have heard are true - because the rights will revert, the contract expire. Maybe the author can shop it around at that point - I just don’t know. Maybe soon I’ll be trying to get my books published. (Whoa… Hang on there, tough guy - gotta write ‘em first!)
But, this customer forgot whether she asked me to cancel the order. I’ve been wanting to draft something to send out the whole group - those who order on line for store pickup - to let them know that I’ve abandoned the old search system on the web site, but haven’t been able to replace it with anything yet. When I sent the link to the title in question on Amazon, she replied “To me, there is no Amazon!”. Now, that’s the spirit… But, although it runs counter to my organization, I have to insist that Amazon does in fact exist, and that there may be the occasional item that you know you want but just can’t obtain it at your favorite local store. By all means, shop in real stores, but when the tine is right, rely on all your available resources.
For a publishing jargon guide, try A Publishing Primer
In other dead-tree news: I finished “Simplexity”, and I’m almost finished with “The Drunkard’s Walk”. DW has a pretty good explanation of Randomness, and I might try to push it on a non-mathematical friend. In the meantime, it made me covet O’Reilly’s new statistics book even more: “Statistics in a Nutshell”, or however those nutshell guides’ titles go.
I’ve got stacks more to read, and I’m feeling guilty for not reading more new books. I’ve really got my work cut out for me…
Posted in web-craft, olssons, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:57:00 GMT
Okay, either my office *IS* moving this week or it isn’t. I wish I could get a straight answer. I can’t plan for complete uncertainty.
There may be one month of reprieve… But the results are not it yet. My understanding is that the landlord likes us and wants us to stay - but of course, our overhead staff is too small for the place now. I can do what I need to do out of the back room at Dupont. The biggest problem is the telephone lines - they have to move all at once. Somebody at Verizon updates a database table and the new connection is made. I just hope they can do it in the evening after we close.
Frankly, I’ll be glad not to work here anymore - by which I mean Silver Spring. And, I’m not excited to extend my stay. This has been a little home away from home in many respects - partly because there isn’t much to do around here without taking a long walk. At the store I won’t have some of the amenities of this office. We do have one of the nicer bathrooms I’ve seen in a public building. At the store I’ll probably go to the bathroom at the coffeeshop - surely I’ll buy enough coffee to earn the privilege.
All of this is to say that I’m growing accustomed to working as a nomad. Maybe soon I’ll even get a mobile phone.
Posted in olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:52:00 GMT
For my first official act as…
Director Of Operations
I thought I would address an Internet outage at one of the stores. I might have to rely on that connection for new equipment - it’s cheaper than the leased lines we currently use.
…So I want to make sure I have it as an option.
I wrote down a bunch of account information yesterday so that I would be prepared. I put it on post-it notes and stuck them to a computer printout. Then I left the printout at home(!)
But amazingly, the call to Verizon that I was dreading went very nicely. I was expecting a lot of trouble because I left the information at home. Talking to a person, it was much easier to identify the account. My operator was really nice - and at one point we had to wait for my laptop to reboot. Somehow I was able to establish a rapport - not always an easy thing to do over the telephone. Most operators - I had this problem with Network Solutions last week - have very little patience and are not interested in figuring out my degree of comprehension. One very good way to test this is by offering information: If they actually listen to you and attempt to use that information in finding a solution… You’ve got a winner.
Posted in olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:57:00 GMT
