Why I'll no longer read your no-comment blog

Earlier this evening, I followed a link from Techmeme and encountered an editorial that was, well, IMHO just flat out wrong.  Inaccurate, illogical, the whole nine yards.

As I was reading it, I considered adding a comment to provide corrections and contrasting opinions, but then reconsidered, since it's just not worth my effort to crime-fight every time someone is wrong on the Internet.  Furthermore, as I realized just moments later, I couldn't have sounded off on the piece even if I wanted to... since this author had decided not to accept comments for posting.

First, let me acknowledge up front this is absolutely within this blogger's rights.  And surely there are a number of understandable reasons they might have made such a choice:

• It can get tiring cleaning up comment spam.
• Commenters can be annoying, poorly behaved, and sometimes downright abusive, and dealing with these jerks is even less fun than dealing with spammers.
• Welcoming input from users (even the "good" ones) essentially results in the creation of an (oft-time-consuming) obligation to engage with the community of commenters, or risk being branded aloof, detached, etc.

However, there's a much less, well, neutral reason to have commenting disabled:  you can spout misleading nonsense and not get called out on it on your blog.

I no longer care whether a blogger's reasons for excluding comments on their blog are innocent or out of an intent to deceive.  I've decided I'm no longer going to read no-comment blogs for the following reasons:

Reflections on the New Year

I had just gotten back from a party.  Quite a fun one at that, with warm friends, delicious chips and true cake, even balconies.

But still, something wasn't right.  The New Year had come, but contrary to my hopes, I still lacked certainty, focus, clarity.

Luckily, however, I was prepared.  I know not everything can be bought, but in the supermarket the day before, I had come across an intriguing item.

Clarifying shampoo!

Applied to the head, I reasoned, this was bound to help... and at least unlikely to dull anything.

I lathered, rinsed, even repeated.  But seemingly to no avail.

Then it hit me.  Maybe I had to sleep on it!

Alas, nothing was clarified, though I concede some additional fogginess might have resulted from the non-soapy ingestions the night before.

But of course... how could I forget?!  Clarifying my life and goals wouldn't happen overnight.  From countless sources, I had learned that this sort of thing takes thyme!

[find thyme]

But alas, I couldn't find thyme.  It seemed I had so little thyme in my life, and certainly never enough thyme to share.

So for this year, I resolve to try a clean, new recipe for life.  I've come to grips that clarity doesn't come in a bottle, and thyme must be cultivated, not just found.

My resolution, however, will remain at 1920x1200.

Airlines -- please let us book Premium Economy from flight aggregators!

Dear airlines:  please settle on some standard naming for seat classes.  It'd make it a whole lot easier to compare and purchase tickets online.

United has Economy Plus.  Delta has recently unveiled Economy Comfort (does this suggest that the other seats in that cabin are Economy Discomfort, or is that just my take? :p).  Virgin America calls their slightly-nicer economy seating Main Cabin Select.  Many international airlines refer to their upgraded economy section as Premium Economy.

Maybe the airlines perceive this disparate naming, this differentiation, to be a positive thing for their branding.  But I think this is awful for consumers.

Right now, if you, dear flyer, want to book a ticket online, you can use a myriad of fine online services to select from Economy, Business, or First Class tickets.  But note there's no option for selecting the tier in between Economy and Business! :(

I'm guessing this is because the airlines could raise a fuss if the booking sites lumped this all under "Premium Economy."  Perhaps there are also logistical challenges, too; I'm not sure if the fare data shared by the airlines includes straightforward info on premium economy fares, since -- for example -- Economy Plus seating isn't sold directly, but is instead an add-on or premier-flyer upgrade of sorts.

*  *  *

But dangit, I'd like to be able to easily compare across airlines and book a more comfortable flight, and I sure as heck can't justify paying business class fares!  Airlines would likely get more money from me and others if they let me compare and book premium economy fares on flight aggregator sites.  Now... how can we convince them to do so?

An ode to universal music locators (let me take my playlists with me!)

I'm polymusical.  Not only do I have various music talents, but -- more relevant to this post -- I've "dated" quite a few music services in my time, and not all of them purely sequentially.  Heck, I even served as a volunteer community leader for one and a nicely-compensated community-UX designer for another.

PressPlay, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, Napster (the legal version), Real Music, Virgin Digital Music, MusicMatch, Mog, Rdio, Spotify and others I've likely forgotten for better or worse.  I've tried 'em all.  And I'm not even counting the music lockers, the music purchasing sites, the music radio sites...

In some cases, I've fallen in love, or at least deep like.  But then comes the inevitable breakups; they keep my money, they keep my subscription tracks, and well, that's fine... that's the deal.  We had our good times, honest!

You know what just kills me, though?  They also keep my playlists.  They don't let me have custody of that library of artists and albums and songs I so lovingly put together and oft-categorized over the last months or even years.  All my ratings?  POOF!  Not even a CSV dump, dear old flames?  No, apparently not.

This doesn't just make me sad about my prior "relationship," it makes me more wary of getting into new ones.  Put more plainly, I believe the lack of portability of our playlists and related personal music data is hurting adoption of music subscriptions.

People on Pedestals: Just Say No

Question:  Why is sex on TV bad?
Answer:  Because inevitably someone falls off and gets hurt.

Okay, so that isn't entirely relevant to this post, but now that I have your attention...

Question:  Why shouldn't you put people on pedestals?
Answer:  Because inevitably, someone's gonna fall, and you'll both get hurt.  In another striking similarity, the whole situation is just painful for all involved.

*  *  *

Chapter 1

I'm on an online dating site (yeah, yeah, get over it, you've likely been there, too).  One day I came across a profile of an attractive, deeply interesting, clearly talented singer-songwriter who seemed to be either a professional or semi-professional musician.  Wow!  As a pianist/composer myself, I generally connect well with and am very much interested in female musicians... and this one lives nearby me, too!  In the back of my mind, I was thinking... hmm, there's something oddly familiar about this woman, but no matter.  People often say I look familiar, too; 'sthe way of the world.  And the Bay Area is a surprisingly insular, small place in many ways, complete with highly overlapping Friend circles.

Pushing beyond any self-doubting and/or procrastinatory tendencies, I wrote her a friendly message, mentioning that I'm a (admittedly mostly lapsed) musician, that I enjoy going to music performances, and I'd love to catch a show of hers sometime, yadda yadda.  Then I hit send.

I've not abandoned this blog... yet, but...

You'd probably find more regular excitement if you follow me on Google+ and, to a lesser extent, if you follow me on Twitter. :-) (and if you don't already have a Google+ account, click on the "Send email" link on the lefthand side of my Google+ page, drop me a quick note, and I'd be happy to send you an invite!)

I will, however, still try to post more long-form stuff on this blog from time to time.  With that said... if you're craving AdamWritings, why not dip through my blog's archives for a bit (check out the labels on the lef)?  There are, if I dare say so myself, some oldies but goodies :-).

Thrice-weekly postal deliveries: Pound wise or pound foolish?

I was reading a fascinating article in The Economist about the U.S. Postal Service, and a few things came to mind:

• Hmm, the comments are delightfully civil and informative!
• Can I count on one hand the number of postal items I receive quarterly -- perhaps even yearly -- that I actually want?  Why, yes, I probably can!
• What would happen if the U.S. Postal Service delivered only three days per week (say, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday)?

This latter idea, then, prompted me to wonder the following:

1. Would this pose an actual hardship on people, and if so, would it (I assume) most likely hit the economically-disadvantaged more heavily?  And if so, in what ways?  Could other factors/proposals mitigate the potential hardship?
2. What if the U.S. Government got out of postal delivery altogether, perhaps in conjunction with some sort of requirement (stick) or deep incentives (carrot) prompting private delivery companies to continue delivering to loss-leaders (rural areas)?
3. Is the postal service largely public in most, or even all other industrialized nations?
4. What about a subsidy or other incentive for households or even apartment complexes which offered to accept minimized or even eliminated postal delivery services?

Keep in mind, I'm not necessarily proposing that pickup from centralized locations be reduced or eliminated.

Your thoughts?

Adam's septoplasty / turbinate reduction surgery diary. Infotainment the doctor ordered!

Three out of four leading doctors told me that I have a really messed up nose (my septum is shaped like a hockey stick rather than the more conveniently functional lower case 'l' style)... and if I ever want to breathe decently, I simply must get a septoplasty + turbinate reduction surgery.

The fourth (admittedly imaginary)  doctor actually insisted the same thing, but also urged me to detail my experience in a blog post.  This is my story.

Monday -- night before:

11:50pm:  I greedily cram in the last bits to eat and drink, 'cause I'm not allowed to swallow anything past midnight.  Rather a stupidly written rule, actually.  Despite the fact that I wasn't notified of my surgery time (1:30pm) until the day before, I was given oral and written instructions well in advance with the clearly arbitrary, or at least very conservative no-eating/drinking-after-midnight rule.  I mean, I could have been assigned a 7:30am or 3:30pm surgery time.  Why not just say "no eating or drinking within 8 hours of your scheduled surgery"?

The kind side of me presumes this is to account for a possible last-minute change in surgery times ("Mr. Lasnik?  We're just calling to let you know we had a cancellation. Would you like to get this crap over with a few hours earlier?")  The cynic in me figures the lawyers & doctors believe we're too stupid to understand "8 hours prior."

2:30am:  No sense going to bed too early, right?  If I go to bed early and get up early, I'll just have more time to be hungry and thirsty.  So a 2:30 bedtime sounds about right...

Tuesday -- day of:

8:20am:  Lovely.  The groundskeepers are turning it all up full blast.  Trimming, mowing, huffing, puffing, the works.  So much for sleeping in.

9:30am:  Against my better judgment I check my work e-mail and get sucked in.

11:45am:  My AdamTaxi'ing friend comes and rescues me, drops me off at the hospital and bids me a warm goodbye and good luck wishes :).

12:15pm:  I walk into the first building I find and announce with genuine enthusiastic anticipation that I'm there to be cut up. Receptionist exudes an almost comical level of both alarm and confusion.  Oops.  This isn't the Surgecenter.

How employment at prominent tech firms stymies open communication

Let me first get the disclaimers out of the way:

• I have worked at Google since March, 2006.
• I do not speak on behalf of Google in this blog, nor do my views necessarily dovetail with those of other Googlers; I've historically held more of a public-facing role than most Googlers, so I have heightened sensitivities.
• I believe prominent technology firms -- certainly including Google -- contribute many things to the world that improve communications and societal openness.

*  *  *

This particular question on Quora got me to thinking:

Do people who work at Google / Yahoo / Microsoft / Facebook resent the fact that they can't genuinely speak up on the Internet and have to do so anonymously, in most cases?

This really hit home for me, and I decided that I'd outline the many ways in which I (and presumably many others) are forbidden from communicating in some ways and -- more commonly -- feel uncomfortable expressing ourselves in specific ways or on a variety of topics.

Stuff I am not allowed to discuss...

This is perhaps the most obvious category, the list of what employees like me are typically forbidden from communicating. 

Hotels: Here's how you can win us over with the little things

Dear hotels,

I've stayed in you a lot.  Over the last few years, I've traveled over a quarter million miles and stayed many, many nights away from home, sometimes feeling a bit like that rudderless and sad character in Up in the Air.

But, hotels, you can do little things to make me feel more comfortable, and with that, you're much likely to win more of my business in the future.

• Welcome me sweetly
  Whether it's a piping hot chocolate chip cookie upon check-in (which I've heard at least one hotel chain offers) or a cup of wine or hot cider, or even a chocolate on my pillow, these little touches would cost you just a whee bit (probably less than a dollar out of my $xxx/night payment), but would make a wonderful first impression on me.