I'm back from a week wandering Death Valley and the eastern Sierra Nevadas. I've got loads of photos to share but for now we'll stick with a baker's dozen.
Click here to view a thirteen shot slide show from Manzanar, one of a number of Japanese Interment (or War Relocation) camps used during the second World War. I developed all of these using an "aged photo" technique. Hope you enjoy.
Robert Reich, who recently has made news by endorsing Obama, puts forth an incredible explanation of the way we live now in his most recent book, Supercapitalism.
His argument, adapted to my life, is: I lament the loss of Main Streets. I detest big box retailers. I cringe looking at how every corner of every town looks the same. But, on the other hand, I'm giddy at the efficiency of the American economy. I know that by cramming as much merchandise into a cheap box on an enormous field Wal~Mart contributes to our prosperity as a nation. Can this ambivalence ever be resolved?
The fight for Main Street and the Public Square has an advocate in James Howard Kunstler. Admittedly, Kunstler is as much a polemicist as he is passionate. Every single one of his books could be put in the growing jeremiad section at Borders. But this presentation from a recent TED is absolutely worth a watch. I agree with nearly everything Kunstler says in this talk and found myself cracking up laughing at his witty distaste for modernism.
(A nod to colleague Jeremy, as I found this presentation on his blog.)
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Image comes from Flickr User Dean Terry. My condolences to the owner of that McMansion.
If you've been following my Twitter updates, you likely noted that this week I saw Maggie off to the desert (Iraq) until July. With a difficult goodbye came a lot of thinking and contemplation.
Imagine going off to fight in World War II. How long was your tour of duty? The length of the war. Which, depending on when you departed, could be up to four years. Telephones? Email? Instant messaging? No, no and, obviously, no. You wrote home, what, every two months and hoped to received a treasured piece of mail about your child's first birthday that is now months in the past.
Flash forward to 2008. I've already talked to Maggie as if she were on a phone just ten minutes away. I know that when she arrives at Balad Air Base she'll have Internet access, satellite telephones, a digital camera and more of the devices that we use to stay connected in the an age of global dispersion. I know that she'll be coming home in July no matter how much this war protracts.
I don't, for a second, deny the great personal risk taken by the members of the military that have spent time in Iraq, Afghanistan or Djibouti. Watching members of the Army pulled away from their families for up to fifteen months, returned for twelve and pulled away for another fifteen months has left me bitter at the human cost of this war. My position on our presence in Iraq is ambivalent and nuanced at best; it's also strongly influenced by what I've seen as the true cost paid by other American families. I am, however, thankful for how things have changed in the past sixty-three years.
And, while we are on this topic, some resources for those interested: Balad Air Base, called LSA Anaconda by everyone but the Air Force (Logistical Support Area), is roughly fifty miles north of Baghdad. Its flight line is currently considered the second busiest airport in the entire world, including commercial terminals! Maggie is running intel support for the 48th Rescue Squadron, a unit of Pararescue (awesome wikipedia page). For some photos of the base:
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All shots are of the base. Some from Flickr User MASSIVE DEFEAT (I can't help but wonder about that username) and some from Flickr User James Gordon. All, as usual, under Creative Commons. Have you donated your content to CC yet?
The W-53 warhead atop the Titan II ICBM had an estimated yield of nine megatons, equivalent to nine million tons of TNT. That's roughly six hundred times as powerful as the warhead inside Little Boy that leveled Hiroshima. For most of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s this missile was the centerpiece of our deterrence posture: fifty-four missiles sat in silos in Kansas, Arkansas and Arizona, able to fire within moments of a launch order but classified as retaliatory only.
I've written prior about my visit to the only remaining Titan II silo in Sahuarita, Arizona, now more than a year ago. When I left Titan I was impressed by two things in particular: first, the knowledge and talent possessed by my tour guide and, second, the incredibly complex engineering problems solved by the crews that built Titan II. Within a few weeks, Maggie and I had signed up as volunteer docents (tour guides) and, a few months after that, started giving our own tours of the missile and launch complex.
Every Sunday we drive the thirty miles from northeast Tucson to missile site 571-7 in Green Valley and give four tours to up to twenty-five visitors. During these tours, we've met an array of incredibly interesting people: a plutonium expert that aided in the development of the W-53 warhead, guys from Czech Republic thankful that the US had a strategic arsenal that would protect them from Russia, former missile crew members that worked on Titan I, Titan II and Minuteman I, an astronomer working at NASA on Aries III.
This past Sunday Maggie and I gave the last tour we'll give for the next two months while she is in Iraq. We look forward to returning to Titan later this summer, but if you're in Green Valley any time in the near future, Titan is worth a visit.
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Second photo credit: Flickr user Telstar Logistics, under Creative Commons [Link]
I've said this before, but 75% of my blog traffic still goes to the one post I wrote nearly four years ago about the summer evening I spent dining at Bill Gates's house. I recently learned that two years ago Bill stopped inviting interns to his house for dinner. So, for all of you current Microsoft interns longing for dinner at his house on Lake Washington, here's a video I that does a great job of walking you through his house.
What, did you expect real video of the house?
The national attention being afforded to Villanova over the past weeks have left me with a great warm feeling. First it was a dance to the Sweet Sixteen from our twelve-seed Wildcats. Now it's a visit from John McCain to the Pavilion as part of the MSNBC Hardball College Tour. With MSNBC meeting Villanova, how can I not comment?
Of course, McCain's visit to the Pavilion and subsequent interview with Chris Matthews hasn't gone into the pile of day-old campaign media without a bit of sophomoric fun from one of the Villanova students picked to pose a question to the Senator and presumptive nominee of the GOP. First, the clip. Advance to 2:56 for the question to which I'm referring.
Mustering up his share of undergraduate male machismo, the Junior questioned: "I'm sure that you saw one of your Democratic opponents, Hillary Clinton, recently drinking whiskey shots with some potential voters. Now, I was wondering if you think that she's finally resorted to hitting the sauce just because of some unfavorable polling. And I was also wondering if you would care to join me for a shot after this." Of course the Pavilion went wild and students wondered if the Augustinians running Villanova broke into a cold sweat under their habits.
As is often the case, things aren't exactly as they seemed. In this week's Villanovan, we've got an interesting piece from Tom Nardi:
Viewers and audience members wouldn't know, but those four questions weren't the only ones that students wanted to ask. I would know; I was question No. 6. Staffers pre-screened 12 questions that afternoon from students and placed them in the order that students would be able to ask. But the first two questions we got to were set up to be softballs.
I always find it disappointing when I learn that the spontaneity of live television isn't so...spontaneous.
I'm sitting in the jury assembly room in the beautiful (not sarcastic) Seattle Municipal Court building downtown. The waiting continues as many eager jurors once deep in magazines have turned to staring into space. Care to see?
Yesterday I got to thinking about this article that ran in the Times discussing the resurgence of philosophy as an undergraduate major. The article professes philosophy's value in forming the compass we use to view and act in the world (it reminded me of an Ayn Rand speech, "Philosophy: Who Needs It?"). Having spent a while contemplating how I view the world and my role in it, I got to wondering in what ways my philosophy affects my daily life.
I got through a list of ways: morality, virtues, ethics, etc. The one at which I arrived almost immediately, however, was experience or, in jargon, empiricism. Wikipedia defines and contrasts empiricism like so:
Rather, according to the empiricist view, for any knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced, it is to be gained ultimately from one's sense-based experience.[2] As a historical matter, philosophical empiricism is commonly contrasted with the philosophical school of thought known as "rationalism" which, in very broad terms, asserts that much knowledge is attributable to reason independently of the senses.
I believe that continually stretching and expanding the sphere that contains our experiences is among the most virtuous of efforts possible. More new experiences, better Jeff. New experiences can be good ones, bad ones, whatever. They just have to be new.
I value new experiences so highly that, since early 2004, I've kept lists of new experiences I had during that year. My lists are pages and pages long--typically 1-2 pages of single-spaced flowing sentences for each year (not bulleted or numbered lists). The top of the page for this year, like all years past, reads, "What did I do in 2008 that I had not done prior?" They include cities, countries or continents visited, notable people I've seen or met, hikes completed, mountains summited, notable restaurants I've visited, new cultural events I've attended. You get the picture. I started these lists only recording exciting and "good" experiences but recently have expanded to include disappointing or frustrating experiences (realizing that these contribute to my character as much if not more than "favorable" experiences). One day I'll be able to pass this list on to children and say, "here are the experiences that formed my character."
Keeping this list has really changed the way I live on a daily basis as I look for new and different experiences to, essentially, add to the list. Is that virtuous? For me, it is. Only you can select what you deem virtuous.
Lately Maggie and I have bought nearly all of our books used, some from Elliott Bay, tons from Half-Price Books and a bunch from Bookmans (Tucson). Something I enjoy is finding ephemera inside a book left behind from someone else who had read it. When I was re-reading The Stranger earlier this year I found a receipt from someone who had purchased it twenty-five years prior at the same used bookstore where I did. Earlier this week, reading another Camus work, The Plague, I found an old Northwest Airlines boarding pass from 1993.
Look at this thing:
Those are stamped characters! From a daisy wheel printer! I found it fascinating how antiquated that document appears today, despite it being only fifteen years old. And yes, hello Heidi Tsai.
I try to do my part when finishing a book. I'll leave behind some scrap of paper that reflects where I was reading the book and, perhaps, when. Unfortunately, with the amount I've been flying this year, this has always been a boarding pass.
We spent Easter weekend on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I hope you enjoy a few representative photos. If you're interested, you can find the whole set, here.
We actually did this trail (10mi r/t, Bright Angel to Indian Gardens, 6000ft tot. elevation change) but started from an entrance without a "Crampons Recommended" warning. Goodness was it icy. We all fell and I still hurt nearly a week later (but the hike was worth it).
Continually reminded me of the lone Cypress at Pebble Beach.
No one understands why I like this photo so much. That's El Tovar in the background.
East rim entrance.
On the return trip, we stopped at the experimental community brainchild of Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti.
Last month I recounted the terrible customer service experience I had after finding corrupt files on my Xdrive. Thirty-six days and roughly 125 hits from inside AOL/TW later, I received a mail from a director at Xdrive. Darin gave, all things considered, a great update on how Xdrive is working to improve their service after I sent a few suggestions. In recognition of the effort that Xdrive and AOL made, below is the email thread in its (near) entirety.
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From: Ohlandt, Darin
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 9:00 AM
To: Jeff Maurone
Subject: Your postings on Xdrive
Dear Mr. Maurone,
My name is Darin Ohlandt and I am the Director of Xdrive's online storage services at AOL. At you convenience, can you please contact me on [redacted]? I would like to discuss your experience with Xdrive and our customer support team in order to understand things more fully in the hopes of improving them. I'd also like to get more information on the files you reference so that we can try to resolve your issue if at all possible.
Thank you and best regards,
Darin Ohlandt
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From: Jeff Maurone
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 8:20 PM
To: Ohlandt, Darin
Subject: RE: Your postings on Xdrive
Hi Darin,
Thanks for getting in touch. Below I’ve put together a few points I’d like to enumerate via email. Hopefully they prove helpful in your efforts to advance and improve Xdrive.
Incidentally, I felt like I pushed as hard as I could to get my issue resolved using the standard channels and got nowhere. I turned to my journalistic tendencies and published that piece. The few suggestions below, I hope, can avoid this happening in the future.
Provide structured ways for users to restore files
I think one of the key selling points for users of Xdrive is being able to rest assured that their files are intact and if anything happens to them, Xdrive has nice backup systems maintaining versions of these files. Hopefully that’s the reality in the backend. I know that if I come across an instance where I file I have authored become corrupt, I instantly freak and turn to places where I could potentially have this archived. Having a feature on the Xdrive where I can specify a file on my Xdrive and a date for the version I need and then receiving an email within five working days could really make some folks more confident of backups (using myself as a archetype user).
Provide confirmation for uploaded files
This is a standard feature request as well. I suspect much of the corruption that occurred to my files was resultant of problems during upload. Having some type of confirmation after uploading to assure me that my files made it intact would be immensely reassuring.
Fix customer service
You’ve seen my thread with customer service. Hopefully you see that it’s all but unintelligible. I absolutely understand the organizational pressures at AOL that force you to leverage their extensive support system to maximize the way you leverage the AOL assets. But sometimes the regression in quality is so significant that, frankly, it just sucks for users. Customer service in this situation would be personal email addresses to reps accountable for resolving individual user issues with real proactive amounts of communication on the part of AOL/Xdrive.
Fix public relations
I wrote my “Do not use Xdrive.com” post on January 28th but didn’t receive your email until thirty-six days later on March 4th. In the interim, I received what I estimate to be 125-150 hits from *users within AOL or AOLTW domains*. A PR team tasked with monitoring instances of Xdrive appearing in blogs and the press would immediately know about situations like these where brand perception is at risk and respond quickly and appropriately. As a point of reference, I have received quite a few more requests from users searching for “xdrive corrupt files” or “using xdrive” or “missing files xdrive.” Finally, configuring monitors for activity like this is quite straightforward.
Feel free to respond with additional questions; I put effort into this because I believe in the relevance and future of online storage. I do appreciate the gesture toward recovering my files, though at this point I’ve gone through the legwork to rewrite them.
Thanks.
Jeff
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From: Ohlandt, Darin
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 6:43 PM
To: Jeff Maurone
Subject: RE: Your postings on Xdrive
Jeff,
Thank you very much for your comments. They are very much appreciated and will certainly help us to improve the level of service -- across all facets -- that we provide for Xdrive.
I totally understand your frustrations, especially with respect to customer service. It took me a few days to get back to you so that I could do some research and get an understanding regarding some specifics as to what was going on.
If you'll allow me, let me please brief you on some of the changes we are making to our service to better help our customers, including you. I do consider you to be our archetypical customer so we should model our processes after the types of concerns customers like you have with the service.
We are in the process of completely redoing our customer service. We have brought in additional resources to specifically provide expert level technical and operations support and have set up a new e-mail address that goes directly to this tier of support: XdriveHelpLine@aol.com. We are revamping our processes to get information and problems to this tier more quickly and efficiently so that they can help users who don't have standard questions (billing, logging in, product information) and can get their issues resolved more quickly.
Within the Xdrive Desktop Client software, you can define multiple back-up sets so that you yourself can have multiple versions of your data resident on Xdrive. You can then select "restore" for any single back-up set to move these copies back to your hard drive. That said, we are developing mechanisms to make this more apparent to our users and are working on better mechanisms for general restore capabilities.
May I ask if you were using the Desktop Client software or the Web version of Xdrive? As you may see from our changes to our home page and within certain areas of the application, we have embarked on a program to complete update and renew Xdrive. This started with the introduction of our new Xdrive Desktop Lite software, which uses the new Adobe AIR runtime environment and flex (currently in beta). We will extend this to our web interface and also update our client software as well. Your comments and suggestions are very helpful as we continue down this path.
I appreciate your honesty and forthrightness in explaining your situation. I am happy that your posted your blog since it has enabled us to (1) engage in a dialogue with you as one of our protoptypical customers and (2) work to improve our levels of support. I am disappointed that our customer service team could not help you more readily, but (as I pointed out) we are actively engaged in improving the customer service that we provide to our users. It certainly should not have come to this, but I hope that we can learn from this experience and formulate better products and procedures to help you, our customer.
Sincerely,
Darin
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From: Jeff Maurone
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 11:25 AM
To: 'Ohlandt, Darin'
Subject: RE: Your postings on Xdrive
Hi Darin,
Thanks for the response. It seems that the efforts you’re taking are significant; hopefully they all prove to be fruitful in terms of user satisfaction. In recognition of the efforts you took to reach out to me, I’ll be sure to post this thread to my blog and link to it from my original post.
[Redacted] If there’s anything you need from me in terms of reviewing future software or whatnot, feel free to get in touch.
Thanks.
Jeff
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From: Ohlandt, Darin
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 1:40 PM
To: Jeff Maurone
Subject: RE: Your postings on Xdrive
Jeff,
Thank you very much for your feedback. My goal is to make sure that we incorporate this feedback into improving our Xdrive service from inital product registration to user experience all the way through to customer support. I hope that you will continue to use and experiment with Xdrive -- I would love to hear what you think about the product as we implement various changes over the coming months.
[Redacted]
Thanks,
Darin
To get an understanding of the underlying reason why I choose to voice my opinions, see my disclaimer of fallibility.
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