Obviously, I’ve had a hard time keeping up with this blog. I never seem to think about posting to it while I’m actually at the computer. But Wayne and I do spend a fair bit of time in front of the computer, and lately I’ve had my laptop with me most of the time. So I’m going to try to post something every time we sit here, even if it’s just about what I had for lunch. I’ll try to make it more interesting than that, though. :)
So did y’all have a good Christmas? Things went very well around here. It was our first Christmas together; we met on a Meetup hike on Christmas Day last year so we’ve now known each other for a year. Our first date was on New Year’s Eve so our official one-year anniversary is coming up on Thursday.
Zoolights (at the Oregon Zoo) seems to be extraordinarily popular this year. We went on the 23rd and it was packed; we went back tonight hoping the line for the train would be shorter and it was packed again. I’m glad to see them busy, but I want to ride the train, and time is running out!

Yea, so I haven't posted anything personal since July 1st.  What can I say but "Sorry, been busy"?  Both the personal and professional sides of my life have been bursting at the seams lately.  So let's catch up, shall we?

Personal

Most important – yes, Wayne and I are still together and going strong.  We haven't had a fight yet – sure, we get annoyed with each other from time to time, but that's life.  I have no significant complaints, and he doesn't have any either (that he's willing to admit to, anyway :).  It embarrasses him to no end when I say this but I still feel like a knight in shining armor rode up on his white steed and swept me away…

A fair amount of time (and money) has gone into our RV.  Mike had gotten it in the divorce, but he hasn't been working and couldn't afford it anymore, so now it's mine.  Wayne and I have gone on a few trips with the dogs and a good time has been had by all.  We've done a bit of traveling around Oregon, to the beach and the mountains, and we'll be taking it to Nevada to spend Christmas with his dad.

Wayne's 40th birthday was October 21st, and I made sure that was a Big Deal.  Originally all I had planned was a big party with all of our friends, but then fate intervened – the guy I do contract iPhone work for called us all to New York for a week of training and it happened to be Wayne's birthday week.  So we spent the week staying at Alex's place in Manhattan, three blocks from Central Park and one block from a subway station.  We had dinner on the 21st at an awesome restaurant , and then came back just in time for the original party, complete with limo ride.  I'm guessing he'll be remembering this birthday for a good long while! :)

Pet-wise, we still have the two dogs, and are now up to four cats.  Mike had found a new home for Angel;  she likes to pee in inappropriate places, which makes her somewhat unsuitable as a house pet.  We had hoped she would stop doing it if she was the only cat in the home but no, she continued until they finally gave her back, which meant she came straight back to me (don't ask).  She now lives in a decent-sized kitty cage in my office.  I don't like confining her like this, especially since she's getting *really* fat, but I don't know what else to do with her.  In the past the only option vets have had was to give her kitty Valium, which works but makes her groggy all the time.  At this point I'm not exactly sure I know which is worse, sleeping all day due to a medication, or due to being stuck in a cage with nothing to do…

Professional

Speaking of my office (how's that for a segue?), a few months ago I upgraded a bit.  I had been in the back bedroom since we moved here in 2005 and I decided it was time for a change.  So I got a new, much larger desk from Ikea and a super-duper powerful Mac Pro computer with dual monitors.  It's an awesome work space.  In order to fit all this, I moved my office up front, into the living room, which we never used for anything else.  It's a bit odd to walk in the front door and have my office be right there, but I've always been one to arrange things around how I use them more than how they look (though being able to accommodate both is nice when it works out).  

It's a bit odd at night, when I have the lights on and I know that everyone walking by can see me through the front windows, but I've learned to adjust.  The next challenge will be figuring out what to do with the Christmas tree;  it's usually in the front window, but that's not necessarily going to work this year.  Although having the tree there blinking colorfully in front of me could be very festive…. or it could drive me nuts, I'm not sure.

I won't get into too much work detail – I'd lose most of you.  The short summary is that I've lost a bunch of old clients this year, but have picked up new ones.  It remains to be seen if I will be able to completely replace what was lost, but we're doing fine at the moment.  Subject to change… the big difference is that my previous income came mostly from hosting websites, which is free money most of the time, punctuated by the occasional total panic requiring 24/7 effort until things are fixed.  My new work is mostly hourly, or fixed-price contract.  It's going to require me working a lot more hours to make the same amount of money in the new world order.  I can't say I like that, but it's not exactly unreasonable.  I've had kind of a free ride for a long time, and I always knew it would not last forever.

The main thing to know is that I'm now building iPhone applications, which is fun, though hard, work, and is about as cocktail-party buzzword compliant as you can get right now in this industry. :)  Right now I do all my work as a subcontractor for Codefab, run by my friend and colleague Alex Cone, but eventually I plan to pick up some clients of my own, and I also have a few ideas up my own sleeve that I would like to build and sell myself.  It's an exciting time to be a programmer who likes Apple products, that's for sure.

I think that's it for me – how are *you* all doing???

No, they haven’t closed. Not yet. But once upon a time they were one of my most favorite stores EVAR, and it has been sad to watch them slide into irrelevance. And now, they have made a decision which makes them, in the immortal words of Stephen Colbert, dead to me.

Back in 1998/1999, Mike (now-ex husband) and I moved to Southern California, leaving virtually all of our furniture behind as a gift to a friend who really needed it, and started over again. Virtually everything we bought was from Restoration Hardware (henceforth referred to as RH). We spent about $15K there; they had the good stuff, serious solid wood Craftsman style furniture.

It wasn’t just the furniture that caught our eye; you could get that from other places (and truth be told, most of them were less expensive than RH). What really drew us in was all the interesting accessories and knick-nacks. The kitchen gadgets from a bygone time. The stocking stuffers at Christmastime. It was an awesome place to browse and I almost never left the store without a sack full of new treasures I hadn’t even known existed before I walked in. And the entire eclectic collection was tied together by these little sign cards that described each and every item. One person wrote every single one of them, which ensured that they had a consistent style and voice, and they were wonderful. Perfectly descriptive, not too long or too short, and sometimes very witty.

It was a satisfying place to shop in other ways too. They had excellent employees and the service was top notch. I don’t know what their return policy actually was in those days, but they always took care of us no matter what the situation.

After we moved to New Hampshire we had only one RH, in Boston, so we didn’t go there as often. Slowly we began to see things change… the sign cards disappeared, and one year they put all the kitchen stuff on clearance and the entire department disappeared. After a while the store took on the look of a place that was in desperation mode; they kept rearranging and trying (or so it seemed) to hide the fact that their inventory was shrinking.

After we moved to Portland in 2005 I once again (for the third time now, if anyone’s counting) went to RH and replaced every bit of bathroom hardware in the house, spending hundreds of dollars in the process. I noticed with some sadness that the quality of the pieces was not what it used to be; they are still chrome-plated solid brass but the construction and packaging were much sloppier this time around. I went to the store a few times after that but was underwhelmed; even the selection of toys at Christmas failed to interest me.

Ok, finally we get to the point: This past January (2009) I ordered a hand-held showerhead, matching the rest of the bathroom hardware, from their website. I was planning to remodel the master bathroom and that was one of the main pieces. But life intervened, and now here we are in September and I still haven’t touched the bathroom, nor do I plan to any time soon. So I decided to return this unused (and fairly expensive) piece of hardware.

I went to their website and noted, to my dismay, the 90 day return policy. Oops. But I also noted that if you bring in a return without a receipt, you can get store credit. To my way of thinking, returning a resaleable item for store credit, no matter how long it has been, is a good deal for the store; they get to keep my money *and* sell it again. So I sent them an email explaining the situation and asking if I could send back the showerhead for store credit. I received the following response:

“Thank you for contacting Restoration Hardware. We do apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, due to the length of time you have had your item we are unable to honor any exchanges or return on your order# 689199. We do apologize for this inconvenience.”

Um, ok. Far be it from me to tell them how to run their business, but this makes *no* sense to me. Particularly since if it was an item I could have purchased in their store, all I would have had to do was take it in and say I lost the receipt, and I would have gotten store credit, no questions asked. They do still sell the item in question, btw, and since I bought it on sale they could resell it for *more* than I paid for it.

Ten years ago I probably would have engaged Vanessa, the “E-Mail Customer Service Specialist”, who probably works for a service and could not care in the least about RH’s customers, in a debate about the stupidity of this policy and tried to get an exception. But I’m tired of tilting at windmills, and I hope that by putting this out where Google will find it I might actually do some good, whether that is getting management to change their attitude or at least warn off some customers who might also find this to be a very poor business policy.

If anyone from RH happens to be reading this… I did some Googling to make sure I was correct in my sense that the company is not doing well. Yikes. Looks like things are pretty dismal. May I suggest that you find that guy who used to write the sign cards, and maybe the rest of the management team from that era, and bring them back? They knew how to merchandise a store that people like me, who still have some disposable income, wanted to shop in. The folks you have in there now don’t have a *clue*.

Apparently his name is Stephen Gordon. Here’s an article about him:

http://www.answers.com/topic/restoration-hardware-inc

He knew what he was doing. And there’s still a need for a store like RH used to be.

The article even talks about the sign cards. *sigh*

Did I say hate? No, actually it’s more like a visceral loathing. Every single encounter I have with them seems to go badly, and yet? I keep buying service from them. Kind of sounds like a personal problem, doesn’t it?

This time, I increased my FiOS speed from 15/2 to 25/15. I checked the speed before and after the upgrade date at speedtest.net, and found that it did not change when they said it would.

First I wrote to FiOS Customer Service. They wrote back telling me to call an 800 number. Exactly what difference does it make if they talk to me in person? I guess I made clear what I thought of that by eventually losing the email.

Then I submitted a trouble ticket on their website. This netted me a call, 8 business days later. I wasn’t here so the guy left a message saying they would need to check some settings. Hey, we might actually get somewhere! So I called back with moderately high hopes, which of course was my first mistake.

I started out by offering the guy a choice of a) a Vista system connected directly to the internet or b) a Mac connected via a powerline Ethernet adapter. He said it didn’t matter, so we used the Mac since that’s my system. He connected to my Mac via a screen sharing program. He poked around a bit but obviously didn’t really know what to do. He made me close all running programs, and cleared out Safari’s history files, which didn’t make any difference (seriously, does dumping cache *ever* actually make any difference???).

At this point he decided that the problem must be that the Mac is connected via the aforementioned Ethernet adapter, through an Airport Base Station, then to the Verizon router. Now, it’s not a crazy idea that all that could be slowing down the line, but I told him several times that this system gets exactly the same numbers from speedtest.net as the directly-connected Vista system so that can’t possibly be the problem… except in his mind, it was. So off I went upstairs to try again.

He had more options on Vista – apparently even though Verizon nominally supports Macs, they don’t actually have any tools written for them and so here he was able to run through his canned script and “optimize my internet connection”. While we were waiting for a reboot I asked him what we would do about the Mac if all this helped; he spouted a bunch of nonsense that basically amounted to “I haven’t the faintest idea, but I’m going to do my best to make it not my problem”.

All the optimizing didn’t make a bit of difference. Huge surprise. So then he went to the TCP/IP Analyzer at speedguide.net and pointed out that the RWIN value is too low, and that his tools should have fixed that, and that Vista must have some kind of firewall or something blocking him from changing it. I didn’t bother asking him what RWIN was because it was clear he wouldn’t have a clue. According to the site “RWIN (TCP Receive Window) is a buffer that determines how much data the receiving computer is prepared to get at one time.” Does that really sound like something one should have to tweak on a home computer???

Now, I know that speed test sites are notoriously unreliable. While he was doing all of this he went to speed.io, which gave radically different numbers from speedtest.net (much better on the download, much worse on the upload). But each site is fairly consistent, and I expected to see *some* increase when the line speed was turned up.

His last piece of advice? Call Microsoft to see if they could help figure out what in Vista is blocking his tools. And call Apple to ask them to optimize Safari and my Airport Base Station for me. Yea, right. Hello Apple? This kid at Verizon told me to call you, said my networking problems are your responsibility. I’d probably have hearing damage from the laughter.

*heavy sigh* Sadly, their only competition is Comcast, unless I want to go for ultra expensive business service, and they are no better. So all I can do is vent here, while I ponder what my next step should be.

Update: I posted about my troubles at dslreports.com. I’m still not 100% sure but it appears that my connection speed actually *is* what it’s supposed to be – it was the speed test website I was using to check it that’s bad. You can read about that here. But I don’t think that makes the incompetence of the Verizon tech any more forgivable.

I had a disappointingly un-Apple-like experience buying a new system last week, and of course I had to share. I would put the rest below the fold, since it's so long, but Typepad doesn't seem to support summaries anymore, or at least I can no longer figure out how to make one. So you're all stuck with the whole thing, sorry!

Last week I decided that my aging iMac was due for a replacement before it died completely, and with a little nudging from Wayne I decided to upgrade to a Mac Pro. (for those who know or care, dual quad core Xeon "Nehalem" CPUs :) Typically one might order this from the online Apple Store, but I needed to write a check for it (the price tag is well over the daily limit on my business debit card) so there was no choice but to buy it at a local store.

I wasn't even sure that a retail store would stock the high-end Mac Pro; it's not the sort of thing people usually buy at the mall. So I called the store at Bridgeport Village (from here on out, BV) and asked if they had one in stock. At first the kid who answered the phone, who sounded all of 16 years old, was confused… I said Mac Pro but I think he heard MacBook Pro, and what's this about dual quad-core what's that now??? We got it straightened out and he went off to check, reporting back that yes, they had them in stock.

When it was time to head out to buy the system, though, we needed dinner and for some reason we wanted to go to the Cheesecake Factory, which is at Washington Square (WS). So we decided to try that store first to see if they had them.

We walked in and the store was full (as it always is), with every salesperson busy. We saw one conversing with a customer about a Mac Mini, which are set up next to the Mac Pros, so we went over there and waited. And waited. About 20 minutes went by, during which we never saw a free salesperson, no-one acknowledged us at all, and the guy we were standing next to seemed to be in no hurry, letting his customer ramble on and tell irrelevant stories. Just when I thought they were done his family showed up and the entire sales pitch had to be replayed for his wife, who then dragged him outside to talk about this purchase (which she seemed pretty clearly opposed to).

At that point we thought we'd get some help, but without acknowledging us *at all* the guy turned to a girl who had been standing to his other side, who he had apparently talked to earlier, and walked her up to the genius bar to check her in. And then he vanished. We saw him a few minutes later, in street clothes and heading out the door.

I know that getting help in an Apple Store is always feast or famine; either they are bored and you get greeted all over again every 10 feet or they are all busy. But this seemed beyond the pale. This is far from the first time I've had bad service at the WS store but it was by far the worst, and I like to spend my money to reward good service, not bad. So we walked out and headed for BV.

This time the store was almost empty, but we still didn't get greeted; I had to go interrupt the conversation between two salespeople to get some help. When I said "I'd like to buy a Mac Pro" his eyes just about bugged out of his head, and he said something like "that's not something you hear every day!". He seemed stunned. He asked if I wanted to upgrade disks or RAM and I said I'd like to bump up from 6 GB to 8 GB, mainly to switch from 1 GB to 2 GB SIMMs, all the better for adding more RAM later on if I need it. He had to go back and ask if they could do that (that is what they will do if you order a system online, but apparently in the stores it is more usual for them to just stick in two more 1 GB SIMMs. Not a good deal for the customer at all). He came back and said yes, they could, but it would have to wait until the morning. We both recall him saying it would be worked on first thing in the morning and they would call me as soon as it was ready.

The next day I went out running errands. At noon, when I had run out of other things to do, I called the store. After putting me on hold the person came back and said they were working on it now and would be done in about 30 minutes. Since it's about a 30 minute job, I have to assume that they didn't start on it until I called. *sigh*

Picking up the system was uneventful, and everything worked out fine. Except I realized that with all the confusion about the RAM upgrade I had forgotten to ask for an Airport wireless card; it has been a long time since I purchase a system that didn't come with one built in. So back to the Apple Store I had to go… this time I had other things to do at WS so I went back there, figuring that not even they could screw this up. Close, but not quite! They sold me the card, no questions asked, but when I got the plain white box home and opened it up, I discovered a big warning about this not being available for retail sale, to be installed by Apple techs only. And no installation directions whatsoever. Yikes!

I did a Google search and found this site, which seems to be the only place on the Internet that helps us mere mortals with this task:

Meandering Passage

The inside of the Pro has changed a lot since the site was written, but I was able to modify the directions to make it work. I posted a comment about the changes but it still hasn't been approved. Maybe he wants to look at one for himself before believing me. :)

I have mixed feelings about this part of the adventure. On the one hand, I'm grateful that the WS store was willing to sell me the card and didn't force me to pay for installation. But I'm also annoyed that the kid didn't warn me it was going to be difficult and ask if I wanted to have it installed. It turned out to be ok for me; I'm comfortable with hardware and have been doing things like this for a long time. But your average graphic designer or regular code monkey? They would have had a very hard time with this.

I did get a nice email from the "business" guy at BV and he has followed up with me a few times, so that was a plus.

<rant mode on>

Am I the only one who remembers when Apple Stores first opened, and they were staffed with adults who knew what they were doing? Sure, they were 20 somethings, but they had the maturity to give good customer service and the experience to really know their products. It seems to me over the last few years that the quality of people in the stores is dropping all the time… it seems like they get younger and less technically savvy every time I go in there. I don't know this for a fact but it seems like they must be paying them less and less, and getting what they pay for.

As if to confirm my impression, when I picked up the system at BV the kid asked me if I had talked to the business rep and I said no. He said that I should do that when I was ready to buy another system, because they really know the products and could help me choose the right system – "I'm just a college student and don't know all that much", he said. Well, glad to see we agree on that….

Unfortunately, not even this trend excuses the rude guy at WS… he was easily in his late 30s and should have known better.

</rant mode off>

The story ended well; everything is working and I'm loving the dual-monitor setup. But next time I need a new system I'll be a lot more tempted to order it online and save myself the hassles.

Sorry to my regular readers, who are about to take a snooze… I don't usually post techie stuff here but this needs to be recorded for posterity and I don't really have any where else to put it. So here goes:

First of all, make sure this is the printer for you. I haven't used it much but it seems ok. The pages have a pretty pronounced curl when they first come out of the printer but they do flatten. My main objection is that the fan is very loud. It's also a bit disconcerting that the lights dim when the printer wakes up. :) But these are minor things. It prints fast, does duplex and handles legal sized paper, and Consumer Reports rated it very highly for cost-per-page (meaning it's cheap to use, relatively speaking). All good things. I've never had a Brother printer before; I've had several HPs and they have all been like tanks, dependable and lasted forever, but this time I wanted one with built-in wireless and this was the one Consumer Reports liked the best. I know, taking their advice isn't the sure bet it used to be… we'll see how this turns out.

Now, about the install. You need to install the driver from the CD (as of OS X 10.5.7, anyway) but beyond that just disregard the whole thing. The instructions on there are somewhere between incomplete and flat out wrong, and will just waste your time. (note I speak only for OS X; they might be just fine for Windows)

To get the printer actually working, you need this document:

Macintosh – wireless setup without a network cable

I don't know if Brother changes the names of their documents when they update them. If that link doesn't work, try going here:

Wireless Setup Instructions

and look for the document by title. anyway, this is *completely* different from what both the program and the documentation on the CD say, and this works.

Some things to note:

• The process feels something like a magic incantation, and it's easy to skip a step. If it doesn't work, you probably missed something; starting all over from the beginning is generally required if anything goes amiss.
• If pressing "Go" three times doesn't turn the status light amber, it's not going to print the printer settings report; it'll just wake up the printer but not print anything. Just press "Go" three more times and it will work.
• If you aren't able to bring up the "Brother Web Management" screen in your browser, try power cycling the printer. Be sure to wait for it to pick up its IP address before continuing; you can confirm this by printing another report (yes, this process does waste a ton of paper, unfortunately).
• I originally had my Wireless Security (in Airport Utility) set to "WPA2 Personal", but with this setting the printer was unable to connect to my network. I changed it to "WPA/WPA2 Personal" and that worked ok.
• It's not real clear that when you are using WPA for your Authentication Method, the Encryption Mode is TKIP and you can ignore the four WEP Key fields, even though they have default values in them. Just enter your Passphrase (the password needed to connect to your network)
• I don't know what the User ID and Password fields are for but you can ignore those too.

Lastly, I somehow missed the fact that I was following the "without a network cable" directions and had one plugged in (that is, I had an Ethernet cable connecting the printer to my Airport Extreme router). I have *no* idea if that made any difference or not, but if you try doing this without one and it isn't working, maybe it's worth a try.

The printer does seem to have good range; my office is in the front of the house and the Airport is in the back, and so far it's working fine.

That's all – good luck!!!! Feel free to add more tips and tricks in the comments if you feel I missed something.

So yesterday was our 6 month anniversary – I've been calling it our half-anniversary, since an anniversary is supposed to be annual. To celebrate we had dinner at Bar Avignon, the place we went to for our first date and have gone back to on several "monthiversaries" since. As always the food and company were excellent.

In addition, yesterday was Wayne's last day as a renter; he now officially lives at my house. One glance at the garage will confirm that, no doubt. :) He has unofficially been living here for about 3 months, but now there is no escape hatch! And now his mail comes here, which somehow makes it seem more real than having him actually here. Weird how that works, eh?

I've been thinking for several days about what to write here to mark the occasion. My last post about him embarrassed him to no end, despite my efforts to tone it down, and I don't want to make him cringe every time I post here. But sometimes there's no other way but to go all mushy…

I haven't had very good luck with relationships in my life, from my parents on down. I've had a boyfriend (or husband) in my life nearly continuously since I was 17, but most of them have not really been right for me. And I am not always the easiest person to be with, either – as I once told a friend (Hi Marina! :), I am both easily annoyed and have a high capacity for annoyance. In other words, it's easy to make me unhappy, but not easy to drive me away. Or, as my last therapist said, I stay in relationships too long, and my picker is slightly broken. :)

Well, it appears that my picker somehow got recalibrated, because this time around things are working out *much* better. We agree most of the time, and when we don't, we actually compromise! It tells you something about my life before this that that is a true novelty to me. We have a lot of fun together and he's doing an excellent job of adapting to my go-go-go lifestyle. And I'm learning to actually sit still on the couch sometimes and *watch* the television. What a concept! :)

He loves the dogs and likes the cats… he mows the lawn and puts away the laundry. We haven't had to divvy up the chores, because both of us pitch in and everything just gets done. He encourages me in the things I want to do, and sometimes motivates me to do the things I would rather not do, but must. He's just as cuddly as I am, and has adjusted well to being expected to hold my hand as we walk. :) In short, my life is the best it has ever been, and I am the happiest I have ever been, with him in it.

I have been accused of still having my rose colored glasses on, so I will say that not everything is 100% perfect all the time… we've had our moments just like everyone else. The difference is that we talk it out and get past it, and no-one ends up feeling disrespected in the end. There are a few things on which we don't quite see eye to eye, but how you deal with those is really the true measure of a relationship. And so far we're doing just fine.

Happy 6 months and one day, Wayne… I love you.

Wow, has it really been almost 3 months since my last post? I’ve been busy and all, but there’s no excuse for that. Once again I resolve to do better, though I know I probably won’t. So much to do, so little time…

Details below the fold.

(more…)

The new boyfriend…

(more…)

I’m still here, just have been crazy busy. All sorts of new things to report, most of them good (some of them *very* good :). I just need to take the time to write it all down.

In the meantime, Happy 2009 to all!