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May 9, 2008

The New Commute

My commute has changed quite a bit over the last couple of weeks.

For starters, I'm on two wheels once in a while. May is here, which is Bike To Work Month (with Bike To Work Day on the 16th). May also represents the last month before the Alcatraz tri, which means that, assuming I don't want to flail spectacularly in San Francisco, I needed to get out, buy a bike, and actually start using it pretty regularly.

My solution has been to start riding to work a couple times a week - or, in some cases, ride to work one day and then ride home the next or the day after.

I'm very fortunate in that 99% of my ride is along the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish River bike trails, which are mostly flat, 100% free of cars, have periodic water stops and bathrooms, and run through some spectacular scenery. The total work-home commute mileage is around 26 (each direction), which takes me just shy of 2 hours. We have lockers and showers in the building adjoining MacBU, which makes it even simpler.

It's a easy, gorgeous ride, and a hell of a way to start the morning. I can't recommend it more highly.

When I'm not on my bike, I'm on the bus. I've moved from regular Metro transit to Microsoft's private bus service - "The Connector." The company rolled out Phase 1 of the service back in September, and recently kicked off Phase Two, adding a bunch of new routes (one of which is right by our place).

I was a bit torn about switching to the Connector. While it's a great perk for people with poor bus service to campus (e.g., you live in the suburbs, or a less commute-friendly part of Seattle, such as Ballard), we've got great bus service where I live. Further, the Connector seemed to be a bit of a push in terms of transit time (it's a private bus, not a private helicopter, so we're still stuck in the same traffic with everyone else), and the system requires advance reservation (through a Web site) to ensure that everyone gets a seat.

In fact, the service is amazing.

First, in terms of real-world throughput, Connector buses are actually faster than Metro. The shuttles leave precisely on time, which is a godsend if you've ever played the 5 - 15 minute waiting game that sometimes happens with popular Metro bus lines. It's understandable - Connector routes have 3 stops, total, while a typical Metro bus will stop, you know, 14,000 or 15,000 times over a decent-sized route. With such precise timing, you spend less time checking your watch at a Connector stop, and you can rely on the Connector being ready at the same time every day.

Second, Connectors all have free WiFi. While this isn't unique (many SoundTransit buses have it, too), the thing that makes it awesome is...

Third, Connectors guarantee you a seat, and have space for your bags. This is the big one. Being guaranteed a seat - and knowing that it won't be Sardine Can Seating - means you can walk out the door with your laptop under your arm and be confident that you can do some violence to your e-mail (or Web surf, or whatever) while on the road. It's wonderful, because I know I can defer some of my last-minute work to when I'm on the bus, be confident of getting it done, and walk through the door of my condo with a clear mind and a closed MacBook Pro.

Connector Phase Two was just rolled out this week, and the buses are already at capacity - a trend I expect to continue as the good word spreads. Part of this is simple gas-price economics - as BusinessWeek wrote, "Suddenly, It's Cool To Take The Bus", and, indeed I've seen several e-mail threads from car-centric colleagues extolling the virtues of not having to drive in our stop-n-go traffic anymore.

More than anything, the biking and the bus-riding have helped me reclaim some of my commute as "me time" - time to get healthy, see my community, get a few more things done in the day - instead of feeling like it's The Great Sucking Sound of emotional energy and patience that I associate with driving.

If you're sick of your commute and are ready for a change, try your bike or a bus. You won't regret it.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 9, 2008 12:43 PM.
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May 8, 2008

Janelle's Out For 2008

Storm Center (and fan favorite) Janelle Burse is out for the 2008 season, sidelined by a foot injury:

Days after text-messaging Storm teammate Sue Bird in April, commenting on their team's "crazy and sick" roster, Burse re-aggravated a Jones fracture — a broken bone on the outside of her left foot — while playing overseas that will keep her from playing this WNBA season.

In related news, the team roster's been finalized, and we're looking great. Opening night is a week from Saturday!

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 8, 2008 5:45 AM.
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May 7, 2008

Some Random Notes From The Not-Quite-24 Hours I Just Spent In Toronto

I'm back in Seattle after a quick jaunt to Toronto for a work event. It was one of those leave-Monday-morning, fly-home-Tuesday-evening kinds of things. I'm dehydrated, sick of plastic-wrapped airport sandwiches, and just plain beat.

As usual, the trip notes:

• This was my first time flying Northwest in a long, long time, and the early indication of the experience wasn't very encouraging. I got to Sea-Tac and found myself barked into a line that fed into another line that led to another line and, eventually, ended with my getting a boarding pass, achy feet, and relief from an overwhelming, fellow-passenger BO smell. As trip starts go, this wasn't auspicious.
• I will say that the woman who gave me the boarding pass and took my checked bag was really wonderful, but the people working the lines themselves shout orders like they've just retired from 40+ years in the correctional system. Memo to Northwest: your customer experience would improve if you'd just get it over already by putting tags in our ears and using cattle prods to move us along. Moooooo.
• I've learned to pack my own food on to the airplane these days; you never know if the airline will be serving anything, or even if they have those horrid $5 "snack boxes" for sale on the flight. My line-of-a-line-of-a-line experience being what it was, I was a bit behind the eight-ball on time and had to swoop in to a Starbucks for bottled water and a plastic-wrapped sandwich.
• (Mmmmmmm .... plastic-wrapped sandwich....)
• Sign That You Might Want To Choose Another Aircraft #22: The aircraft lavatory's under-sink paneling won't latch shut, meaning it swings open whenever the plane pitches up, closes rapidly when the plane pitches down, and smacks the holy hell out of your ankles in the process. Yikes.
• Before I left home, I'd used CosmoPod to grab a fantastic BBC documentary about the Gutenberg press off YouTube. It's in six parts, about an hour in total, and uttery wonderful. (Tip 'o the hat to Daring Fireball for the pointer.)
• My flight to Toronto had a short Minneapolis layover, which meant I was sprinting from my arrival to find the right departure gate. I eventually arrived, did a quick survey of the food options nearby, found the selection wanting, and settled on ... a plastic-wrapped ham and cheese sandwich. With a Diet Coke.
• (Mmmmmmm .... plastic-wrapped sandwich....)
• I had about 10 minutes before boarding, so I decided to do a quick bit of work on my laptop. So there I am, using Publishing Layout View in Word 2008, merrily zooming around my document, when the guy sitting three seats to my right finally breaks his not-remotely-subtle staring at my screen to ask - very politely - what software I'm working with. I explain that it's the new Word 2008, show him a bit about what it can do, and suddenly I'm Ron Popeil giving an 8-minute infomercial for Mac Office. The guy's asking questions, I'm showing off features, he's smiling, I'm smiling, and we're both really enjoying it. Then the boarding call goes off, we both get up, and that's that. A totally random moment of mutual-geek enthusiasm.
• (You know, I don't think I ever mentioned that I worked for Microsoft, either.)
• In contrast to the cattle-call experience of the Seattle-Minneapolis trip, the Minneapolis-Toronto leg was sparse. The flight attendants seemed beside themselves with such a small passenger list, and lavished tons of personal attention on everyone. It was like a free first-class upgrade, but without the booze, legroom, and warm cashews.
• (Which, I guess on the re-reading, means the flight wasn't like business class at all. Ah, well.)
• On the flight to Toronto, I was seated behind a couple of hipster-ish, late-twentysomething Canadian geek professionals who chattered on between themselves for the entire flight. And man, I gotta tell ya - and this from one who's married to a Canuck - Canadians say "eh" an awful lot.
• The Toronto airport is very nice, very clean, and the Canadian customs people are thorough and polite.
• One nice thing about in-n-out trips: no real jet lag, and no need to try to acclimate. Sure, you're up at 4 AM Pacific time or whatever on the morning of, but it's only for one day. It made me feel very Pacific Standard Tribal.
• We had a weird cab-related snafu on the way home - namely, the nice receptionist called one, it arrived, and then the driver informed us that he "didn't go to the airport" and was "local only." I confess to being totally baffled by this - whaaaat?, but the driver promised to radio for another cab that could take care of us. We said OK, the cab drives off, we wait 5, 10 minutes - no new cab. So we got reception to call for another one, which arrived very quickly, and, thankfully, wasn't afraid of going near aircraft. But still - WTF? Does Toronto have some crazy non-cabies that drive around and just punk people?
• I'd been making jokes for much of the trip about Tim Horton's - a Candian fast-food chain known for its yummy coffee - and implying that my Tuesday dinner choice was likely to be limited to the 'Tim Horton's at the airport.' Well, it turns out that there is one at the Toronto Airport (see photo). Problem is, it was on the other side of the security perimeter, which meant that I was unable to complete my passive-aggressive Canadian joke by, you know, actually getting a bite there.
• Fortunately, I was able to buy - you guessed it - a plastic-wrapped sandwich from a kiosk right next to the gate. I swear I am not making this up.
• White wine is a great thing at to drink when flying.
• After buying a few different magazines at the airport, I can confidently say that Esquire > GQ > Details. Details, in fact, has very little reason to live.
• When I was in Minneapolis, CNN reported that Barack Obama had won North Carolina. This made me happy.
• I found seat 38D on the Minneapolis-Seattle home stretch, sat down, and promptly managed to lose the Monster cable adapter that allows me plug my iPhone into regular headphones - which pretty much meant I was hosed in the "gee, I'd like to watch a movie in-flight" department. I don't know whether to blame Steve Jobs' design decision (a recessed headphone jack? Really?), my own butterfingered ineptitude, or the strange vortex that somehow magically spirited away the jack to the land of lost keys, ball-point pens, and tchotkes.
• We arrived in Seattle about a half-hour late, which put us really close to midnight. All "Pacific Standard Tribe" posturing aside, that's a really long day.

Damn, it's good to be home.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 7, 2008 8:38 AM.
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May 5, 2008

Microsoft's Own Little EPCOT

Last week, I was fortunate enough to tour the Microsoft Center for Information Work (CIW) and the Microsoft Home (aka, "The Home Of The Future").

If you don't know what these are, they're very much akin to a Microsoft "concept car," a never-to-be-built prototype of a possible tomorrow that demonstrates how people might work together (or, in the case of the Home, live together) with a little extra technology, smartly deployed.

Tours are generally available only to VIPs (and the occasional lucky employee), and most of the stuff that is shown off is strictly under NDA. So I can't go in to any kind of detail about what was shown, or the general direction of the content.

That said, the most interesting thing to me about both tours - and I suppose this was made all the more apparent because I took them back-to-back - was how utterly, completely, and totally Disney-like they were. It felt, eerily, like I was on some Microsoft-sponsored exhibit at EPCOT or Tomorrowland.

Neither exhibit has audio-animatronics, but they do have the Disney exhibit hallmarks - a "concept" or storyline that serves as the narrative for the time you spend in the exhibit, audience interaction that moves the story forward, a series of lessons that are taught as part of the experience (Disney goes with things like, "Protect The Earth"), and, of course, insanely high production values.

Another Disney parallel is that both the CIW and the Home suffer from the "Tomorrowland Problem" - namely, that the future has an awkward (and consistent) way of, you know, actually happening, which means that one year's breathtakingly cool and cutting-edge exhibit is next year's collective yawn. I remember walking through the "Innoventions" pavilion in Tomorrowland back in 2001, and listening to a Cast Member breathlessly describe how, in the future, people would actually listen to the radio through the Internet (...isn't technology amazing?).

I remember laughing to myself, checking my watch to make sure it wasn't still 1995, and strolling over to Space Mountain.

Keeping up with the future is hard problem, and it's easy to get snarky about some of the more fantastical or implausible parts of these sorts of exhibits. That said, both the CIW and the Home are pretty well-done, and I've found that a few of the ideas that were shown off are still sticking with me, popping in to my cerebellum now and again and attaching themselves to some of my other, more "grounded" projects.

Which is, of course, the point.

I wonder how many other companies are doing this sort of thing - producing Disney-fied exhibits to tell the story of their business, product, technologies, or vision. Certainly, plenty of organizations offer plant tours or behind-the-scenes glimpses to the public or VIPs. As the stakes go up for these sorts of tours - particularly among companies that sell ideas - I have to imagine that a lot of Imagineers are going to find themselves lucrative work as private consultants.

Overall, a terrific experience - particularly the Home. The Microsoft Web site has a number of still images from the Home - be sure to check them out.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 5, 2008 9:16 PM.
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May 4, 2008

"Iron Man"

After several months of trailer-induced excitement and buildup, Iron Man opened this weekend, so Elaine and I caught the 12:15 showing at Pacific Place today.

I'm pretty happy with the picture.

Let's be blunt - Iron Man is about as straightforward a superhero movie as it gets. It's the standard-edition Origin Storyline (see: Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman Begins, Fantastic Four, (actually, don't see Fantastic Four) etc.), where the otherwise-normal main character finds they're endowed with special abilities, learns to manipulate them, incurs a mortal enemy in the process, and then heads for the big, noisy, Computer-Generated Extravaganza of Explosions in the third act.

(Generally, the hero prevails and is ready for a sequel.)

What makes Iron Man work is the simple, sheer joy with which it's put together. Robert Downey, Jr. is perfect as Tony Stark, and the sets, graphics, tone, and sense of the movie really gel. When Stark is learning how to fly in his powered suit through the Los Angeles skyline - well, you buy it. He's having fun, we're having fun, it's wonderful.

I do have quibbles. There are a few clunky lines of dialog, the plot sort of teeters under its own weight at one point or another, and the stellar supporting cast - particularly Gwenyth Paltrow - isn't given a whole heckuvalot to do (it's Downey's movie). But overall, it's great, great summer popcorn fare.

Word is it made over $100M this weekend, and, frankly, it deserves it.

Oh, and if you don't know - be sure to stay until after the credits. (Thanks to Khan for the tip!)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 4, 2008 9:09 PM.
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April 22, 2008

"New Storm Owners Know How To Make An Entrance"

The Times has a terrific piece today by Jerry Brewer on the reconstituted Seattle Storm:

Look at the star power on this roster: Griffith, Sue Bird, Lauren Jackson, Sheryl Swoopes, Swin Cash. It is a majestic lineup, and we haven't even mentioned accomplished veterans such as Janell Burse. Sure, Swoopes and Griffith are hoping for a little overtime in their careers, but on this team, they just have to be solid role players. ...

We're talking about some of the finest players and personalities in women's basketball history. We're talking about players who have helped build and maintain the WNBA. Critics will wonder whether the group can stay healthy and whether the stars can suppress their egos, but we're talking about players who have spent a lifetime trying to establish something bigger than them.

This isn't just the right way to relaunch the Storm. It's the only way.

I've been amazed at the talent that Brian Agler has managed to bring to the team these last two months (Sheryl Swoopes!), and I'm seriously tingling with the possibility that we'll do another championship run this year. The 2008 season is gonna be incredible.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated April 22, 2008 3:53 PM.
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Coupla Months Off

Tap, tap, tap.

[Blows into microphone.]

(Is this thing on?)

Wow. Two months off.

My blog turns four this summer (four!), and the last eight weeks represent the most extended break I've had since starting the silly thing.

I had a few kind inquiries from friends about the hiatus; to quell the rumors - everybody's healthy, everybody's happy, everything's going great.

I took the break because life just exploded on me after the new year. After spending my early January at Macworld, I came back to work and found myself managing three concurrent projects, all of which needed a specific level of attention. As a relative newcomer to MacBU and the Program Management role, there was a whole lotta' learnin' curve goin' on. I'd get home at the end of a typical day, exhausted, and not even want to look at my Mac.

(I work on Excel, by the way. That's new. I'm pumped. It's awesome.)

Things have stabilized. We're getting moved in, my training is going well, and, while work is keeping me busy, my ability to surf the busy is much, much better than it was back in January and February.

I'm looking forward to getting my blogging groove back on.
What's everyone been up to?

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated April 22, 2008 3:38 PM.
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February 22, 2008

On Hiatus

I'm putting the blog on hold for a while - might be a few weeks, might be a few months.

Short version: life is crazy right now. Ever since the calendar clicked over to 2008, I've been nonstop-a-go-go with work, training, getting settled in to our new place, and so on. It's been hard for me to make the time to post regularly - let alone work on some of the longer pieces that I really enjoy. So I've decided to just ... let it sit.

I'll be back to posting regularly once I've caught my breath.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 22, 2008 7:09 AM.
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February 18, 2008

Saturday Morning At The Farmer's Market

Every Saturday, from 9 AM to 2 PM, there's a Farmer's Market in the U District.

I've driven by it plenty of times, but had never made the time to walk around and see it in person. A number of our neighbors raved about it during the caucuses last weekend, so Elaine and I made some time this weekend to stroll over and check it out.

I have to say, it's really pretty cool.

From a style-and-vibe standpoint, this Farmer's Market was pretty much like every other you might attend - stall after stall of various produce, meat, fish, jams, jellies, breads, wines, pickles, cheeses, you name it. All of it is locally sourced and locally produced (we bought chard from a woman who'd come over from Sequim), and all of the people selling are enthusiastic about their wares.

We shopped for a good 45 minutes, browsing from stall to stall and seeing what was there. Our haul included some ham, cheese, bread, great veggies - and some Vashon Island Syrah. We then promptly returned to the condo, unwrapped everything, and had about the best Saturday-morning brunch I can remember.

The market isn't seasonal - it's there every weekend - and it's definitely worth a look if you're in the area. Bring cash (many of the vendors don't take cards), a grocery bag or two, and go early if you can - the yummy stuff sells out fast.

(I love our neighborhood.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 18, 2008 1:03 PM.
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February 15, 2008

"Disney's Night Kingdom" Coming In 2011?

This has shaped up as a big week of Disney theme park news here on the blog, but (apparently) when it rains, it pours: today, Jim Hill has the scoop on the forthcoming fifth theme park that will open at Disney World in Orlando: "Disney's Night Kingdom."

Disney's Night Kingdom's operating hours will be 4 p.m. to midnight (5 p.m. to 1 a.m. during daylight savings time).

Okay. I know. DNK already sounds unlike any Disney theme park that's currently operating on the planet. But there's a reason for that. The Imagineers want your Disney's Night Kingdom experience to be distinctly different. Something that you'll remember for the rest of your life.

How so? Well, let's first start with the extraordinary guest service that you'll experience as you enter DNK. Current plans call for Disney's Night Kingdom to be staffed by 4000 cast members. That means that -- for every guest that visits this theme park -- there'll be two cast members to take care of their every need. So expect to receive a lot of personalized attention & pampering once you arrive on site.

Price? $520 million. Slated for 2011. Fingers crossed!

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 15, 2008 9:34 AM.
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