Yummy or Crummy?

He has done it!

There is a Flickr group contest for the best sleeping cat picture. As of now, Jerry is in the second place. Voting is open until May 19. Please go vote for Jerry!

I know, I know. I should be posting about my new baby Yuuma! Her birth story will be posted in a month or so…

I am in a PISSED OFF mood. I recently ordered a new MacBook Pro — my first upgrade in 5 years. Needless to say, I was anxious to receive the package, so I tracked it everyday, almost obsessively. Everything seemed fine until yesterday, the day it was supposed to be delivered.

Apr 22, 2008 3:36 AM On FedEx vehicle for delivery

This made me think the package is loaded onto the truck, ready to go. I was out of the office on Tuesday, but I stopped by just so I could pick up my new shiny laptop. I immediately had a bad feeling when I didn’t see the package near the receptionist’s desk. So I called FedEx at 5:00 PM, and asked about it. The customer service rep told me that the drivers usually deliver to business addresses until 6 or so, and residential addresses until 7. I decided to wait at the office. Then about 20 minutes later, I saw this on the tracking website:

Apr 22, 2008 5:24 PM At local FedEx facility

Huh? So they went back? This didn’t make sense, as it wasn’t 6 PM yet. I began to suspect that the driver wanted to go home early, and decided to call it a day. But I wanted my computer badly, so I called FedEx again. This time, a different rep told me that there is something wrong with the package. I demanded to know what was wrong with it, and why they’re learning about this only now, 14 hours after it supposedly left the dock for delivery. The rep pleaded ignorance by telling me that there’s nobody left at the local facility to answer the phone, therefore he could get no more information. Super suspicious!

Wednesday afternoon — the day after the scheduled delivery date — the status is updated:

Apr 23, 2008 1:10 PM Shipment exception / Unable to deliver

Wow. So now I’m really disturbed. I called FedEx, and the rep tells me that the package is damaged, and they will not deliver it. I demanded more information, and she switched me to her manager. Ceci Watts at Cincinnati call center was absolutely 0% helpful. You could tell she handled this type of calls frequently. All she could repeat was the same stupid line no matter what I said or asked. This isn’t word for word, but it’s pretty much how it went:

Me: So was the package on the truck at 3:36 AM or not?
Ceci: It was a miscellaneous scan.
Me: What does that mean?
Ceci: It was a miscellaneous scan.
Me: So what does it mean? “On FedEx vehicle for delivery” sounds like it at least made it to the truck for delivery. I would like to know if the package made it to the truck, and when and where the package was damaged.
Ceci: That’s irrelevant.
Me: It’s relevant because I need to know why I don’t have my package.
Ceci: It’s irrelevant.
Me: So was it a lie? Are you saying the status was a lie? It never made it to the truck?
Ceci: It was a miscellaneous scan. It doesn’t matter.
Me: This is ridiculous.

Ceci insisted that there’s nothing they can do for me, even though they destroyed my package. My laptop was fine until it entered that mysterious 14-hour window on April 22. It was in FedEx’s hands, and it somehow got damaged, and who knows where it is now. The only option for me, Ceci said, was to contact Apple. So even though it’s almost impossible for anybody else to be responsible for the matter, they’re refusing to correct the situation or be helpful about it in any way. Now I have to take my own time to contact Apple, Apple would have to investigate it, then send me another computer.

I’ve also read some horror stories about FedEx employees and contractors. Drivers are often too lazy to deliver all the packages they’re supposed to, so they make up excuses and fake status updates or purposely leave packages on the dock. Based on this experience, I have to conclude that the status updates are meaningless until you actually get your package in your hands.

Update (Apr 24, 11:35 AM): I tipped Consumerist and they kindly posted about what happened. Some of the commenters suggested that I contact Apple. I actually did contact Apple, and they are supposed to give me an update on what they’re going to do about it soon. I like Apple, and the rep I talked to there was nice to deal with. So I have no beef with Apple so far.

Update (Apr 24, 1:40 PM): I called Apple again, as I hadn’t heard from them within 24 hours like I was supposed to. It was a similar experience as the first — the rep told me that I’d hear from them, this time within a couple of hours. She did say that I’ll hear from them when the returns department processes the order and sends me another MBP. I wish things were speedier with Apple, but I understand that they have to look into it to make sure that they’re not getting ripped off.

Update (Apr 24, 5:39 PM): No word from Apple yet. I’m starting to be a little worried. I’m going to contact them once today, and probably once tomorrow. Also I edited my post to remove some of the emotional comments I made in my fragile, enraged state.

Update (Apr 25, 7:50 PM): According to the order detail page, Apple seems prepared to ship me a new laptop, but they also seem to be waiting for the pending return to come through from FedEx. I’m skeptical that Apple will actually ship the laptop like they say they will on April 25, seeing that it’s almost 8 PM. Screenshot here.

Update (Much later): Apple did ship the new one on the 25th, and it arrived safely on the 29th. This story has a happy ending — I had ordered an older version of MBP because it was cheaper. But with the return, Apple shipped a newer one with multi-touch pad for no additional cost. And ironically, my daughter decided to be born earlier than expected, so I was way too busy attending to that and all that followed to care about my laptop anymore. In any case, now I’m making this update on my sweet new MBP, while my sweet new daughter peacefully sleeps!

Hideo Nomo is back in MLB. This makes me happy, because he’s one of my favorite athletes.

When I wrote about him 5 years ago, I said that one of the reasons I liked him was because of his insistence on sticking with his unorthodox style. Well, at 39 and having recovered from many injuries, he’s proven his perseverance by doing exactly the opposite of that. He stopped using his trademark windup style that earned him the nickname “Tornado Boy” — and is pitching only from the set position, even when there’s nobody on base. Apparently he has learned that his big windups were putting too much stress on his elbow, so in order to stay healthy he is only using the set position. At his age, he has lost velocity in his fast balls — so he’s relying more on his forkballs. He’s definitely had to adjust his pitching philosophies because he now has fewer weapons.

An ordinary player might decide to simply retire. But with Nomo, it shows that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to keep doing what he loves doing — playing in the Major League Baseball.

For the past two years he went from one team to another, mostly in minor leagues. He even played in the Venezuelan league, always hoping that he would someday come back to the stage that he believed he belongs. He doesn’t make much money in MLB standards, and he’s now relegated to being a reliever instead of a starter that he was for most of his career.

But Tornado Boy marches on. I think it’s an inspiring story. He would disagree, but I’m certainly inspired by his determination!

Thanks to Kansas, I have won the office pool. I hated Bill Self when he left Illinois to coach for Kansas, but boy, this guy can recruit or what? The title game was an exciting one, too — with the last-second 3-pointer to push the game to OT and all. I just love this stuff.

And not to brag, but this is the third year in a row that I’ve picked the eventual winner of the tourney. And in 2005 I had Illinois picked when they lost in the final — how could I not?

Tonight was the opening night for Wake, a play that our dear friends wrote, directed, and produced. It was a very intense character play about people and relationships. The play was good — very quickly paced and filled with unique dialogues.

I helped for a few hours with the set, and it looked great, if I may say so myself. Many kudos to all artists involved!

Before the play, we met up with friends and ate dinner at Kingfish Cafe. As we were waiting for our table, a couple with two kids finished their dinner and left, and the husband looked really familiar to me. I’m 99% sure he was none other than the all-time Jeopardy! champion, Ken Jennings.

I didn’t even know he lived in Seattle (well, just outside, according to his site). In my world of minor celebrity sightings, this one ranks slightly higher than passing Blago on a street in Chicago.

A copy of this memo was recently mailed to me by my friend in Chicago. I don’t know why he sent it to me — it was not accompanied by any other note. But I can imagine that it’s meant for a good laugh, and nothing else. He’s that kind of a person.

The memo was originally written by a design professor when my friend and I were in college. Let’s call him… Carl. He taught the highest level of graphic design history you were required to take as a foundation-level student. Someone stole his wallet near the end of the semester, and he basically wrote this memo to tell us how sorry he was to not be living in a world where you could trust each other. We all felt shameful, broke down and cried for his forgiveness. Well, not really. If only it was that simple…

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Someone at work sent around this story, and it made me want to verify how well these search queries were working. That is not what this post is about. I often use goo along with Google Japan to search for Japanese websites, and as I was trying those Japanese keywords, I wanted to see what other search engines were available in Japan. Not knowing exactly how to look for one, I just searched for「サーチエンジン」(”search engine” in Japanese) in goo. On the results page, goo was — to my surprise — the 9th item listed. I thought it would come in first. So I tried the same thing on Google — this time in English, obviously.

Where was Google? ON THE THIRD FRIGGING PAGE.

Alta Vista came in first, and Google UK beat Google.com by coming in on the second page. Live Search beat out Google UK. Woo-hoo, Microsoft.

I guess it doesn’t matter since I was using Google to do the search, but if more people are able to use the same algorithm on sites other than Google, like through their licensing — doesn’t it become more critical that Google itself comes up earlier in a search for “search engine”? Yes, I’ve seen the “What If Google Was Optimized” page, and ha-ha, that would be ridiculous. But can’t they at least rig something to show Google.com on the first page?

The recent news about the 81-year-old Fidel Castro stepping down as the president of Cuba only to be replaced by his 76-year-old brother Raul reminded me of a Seinfeld episode.

Season 8, episode #151: The English Patient. Jerry faces the Mandelbaum boys, who are all comically competitive while being, well, old.

I can almost hear Raul saying, “It’s go time… Oooh! My back!”

(This is the only clip I could find on YouTube… The second half includes scenes from “The Blood” episode in season 9 where Izzy and his son reappear as Jerry’s personal trainer.)

OK, maybe not exactly. But that is what I thought when I heard a little story on NPR’s Morning Edition about “script supervisors” on movie sets. Their job is to ensure that continuity mistakes do not happen in between takes. We’ve all seen it — a dinner scene where a steak magically regains its size even as the character munches away.

A script supervisors on the set prevent mistakes like this by sweating the details, and their end goal is to provide a seamless experience for the viewer. If you notice a mistake while watching a movie, it’s that much more difficult to immerse yourself back into the story. They are most successful when nobody notices the result of their hard work.

This reminds me of my own job, where a bulk of my effort is spent on making sure that no user gets tripped up on their way to accomplishing a task on a website. Like script supervisors, I’m successful when nobody remembers the site for being frustrating to use.

And just like when they make mistakes, it’s a lot easier to point them out than to know how to prevent the mistakes in the first place!