mikebz

I seriously can't stand reward travel and airlines points. They make you feel like you are getting all these points and how it could really be something. However when you try to book an actual travel reward - nothing is available on the dates that you want.

I used to have American Airlines rewards. Let me tell you - unless I traveled at the most inconvenient times with the most inconvenient layovers there was no way for me to use my points.

I switched to United and now when I have to be in MIA around the 20th of December - there is no travel available from Dec 13th till Jan 6th.

Now I am using my Fidelity Investment Rewards card. For every 5,000 spent - I get a $75 check. No questions, no blackout dates, no problems.

America's big mistake - believing that politicians can "create jobs"

Dear politicians on Capitol Hill. Before you spend any more wealth that has not yet been generated I’d like you to start a business. Please try to get it to the point where you have at least one employee.

Instead of revolutionary schemes that someone will pay off I’d like to see you create enough wealth to support just one human being.

You will find that it’s probably not that easy. Most of you have never created a business; most of you don’t realize what a modern day entrepreneur goes through.

One has to create a business, market and sell the product, and then deal with all the obstacles that you have created over the past 100 years to just keep the business running.

Here is the main problem facing most of the startups right now:
1) How do I get people to buy something new when their budgets have greatly diminished?
2) How do I service the few customers I have to make sure that they are happy?
3) How do I not lose a bunch of money doing this?

Your mandates, your regulation and stimuli are distractions and obstacles because an entrepreneur needs to concentrate on the following things “make the product, find customers, have some operating capital”

Then you come around and the first thing you want to do is collect some taxes for something that is barely working.

You think that you protect employees by all the laws but generally you just scare infant businesses into delaying hiring someone.

You have all the codes and all the regulation and if you ask an entrepreneur who is just trying to get things done – this person is trying to figure out a way to avoid as much of this garbage as possible and figure out a way to make the idea work.

I happen to be in information technology. Thank God you have not figured out a way to regulate much of it. That’s why we still create new products, new jobs and we give America hope.

Last year I went to China and I understand why China is taking away our manufacturing jobs. It’s not the cost of labor. It’s really the ease of creating a factory.

When I talked to manufacturing entrepreneurs in China they all had a really simple story: “I bought a machine, I hired some people I knew and we looked for a contract to produce widgets.” Some of those factories survived and grew, some died. Increasing or decreasing labor force is not something that a Chinese factory owner has to sweat over.

The end result is what we see today – rapid growth of the manufacturing sector and soon we will see manufacturing innovation coming from China.

Mr. Government Official, please understand: you are not helping – you need to stay out of the way for as long as possible. We, the common people, know pretty well how to interact with each other – you come in and use fringe cases to make blanket rules. Most of the time you won’t be around to see the long term affects of your policies.

- the guy who created one job today.

Just sent to her today:

Our President and you are mortgaging our future in order to socialize medicine.

The real problem in medicine are high costs. Those high costs are generated because a lot of people don't pay for health care directly. Most of the people don't even know how much their insurance premiums are. That is the reason that our healthcare has unchecked runaway costs.

We have the haves - people who get insurance through their job. We also have "have nots" - people that don't have employer provided insurance. The haves don't care about the costs of treatment and make it very expensive for the uninsured.

Socialized insurance is going to further create this separate and decrease the natural market forces that keep our other essential things in check.

In addition to that government usually kills innovation, adds waste and bureaucracy.

It's clear that we don't have one decent economist advising our President right now. The keys to affordable healthcare are (a) reduce barriers to entry for people who provide health care (b) increase competition by allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines (c) sell insurance directly to individuals (d) pass tort reform.

None of these things increase the government size or mortgage our future. Please consider them.

The phone rings and the lady of the house answers.
"Hello?"
"Mrs. Sanders, please."
"Speaking."
"Mrs. Sanders, this is Dr. Jones at St. Agnes Laboratory. When your husband's doctor sent his biopsy to the lab last week, a biopsy from another Mr. Sanders arrived as well. We are now uncertain which one belongs to your husband. Frankly, either way the results are not too good."
"What do you mean?" Mrs. Sanders asks nervously.
"Well, one of the specimens tested positive for Alzheimer's and the other one tested positive for HIV. We can't tell which is which."
"That's dreadful! Can you do the test again?" questioned Mrs. Sanders.
"Normally we can, but the new health care system will only pay for these expensive tests just one time."
''Well, what am I supposed to do now? "
"The folks at Obama health care recommend that you drop your husband off somewhere in the middle of town. If he finds his way home, don't sleep with him.

Public Announcement

Luke, Mariko, Mike B and Will Prater have a wager going on and *all of you guys* need us to help.

We are giving up drinking until Halloween. Who ever loses is going to buy dinner for the other 3 people.

The only exception is trips outside of WA - Vegas, LA etc.

If before the night of Halloween you see either one of us drinking alcohol you need to report that infraction to the rest of the people ASAP.

Thank you!

I took a plunge and I don't recommend it for a dev right now. My zend server, my mysql, live mesh, VPN and anti virus all stopped working.

I did a clean install and now starting to restore things slowly. MySQL is working after re-install, Zend has a work around... and so on.

Mail integration is nice but it's great that I am not doing any serious development at the moment. I could have been losing some serious time.

I found this site where you can see all kinds of stats organized. Some interesting stats like total spending on Education (US is in the top 3) and Healthcare are statistics that we almost always see filtered from biased sources. This is an easy way for someone to see the complexity of things. For example while we are big spenders in dollar amounts we are tied for 25th in literacy rates and #18 in mathematical literacy.

You also always here stats like "we are #37 in healthcare". It turns out that the enormous number of stats out there can be sliced in every way possible. We are tied for #1 in accessibility to drugs, we are also unfortunately #1 in obesity.

We donate over two times more to the Red Cross then any other country. We also #3 in years lived in poor health for females and #8 in males (being number one in this stat is bad).

So in any case I enjoyed looking at some data here, hopefully you will like it too.

I used to get frustrated because my users didn't read the carefully crafted documentation I created. I have become much happier since I gave up on documentation and I actually realized that I rarely read documentation myself.

Why? Documentation is usually not easy to navigate, sometimes it's out of date and then on top of it I actually have to figure out it maps to the program. It's too much work.

Software needs to guide people to the right decisions. Here is the general flow of a user with a new piece of technology:

1) Installed... can I start using this to do what I need to do? If the user can be walked through the set up and can get the job done - perfect! If not go to step 2.
2) Something is not working... I bet I can just figure it out. Let me click around and see if I am missing something obvious. If I can't figure it out go to step 3.
3) See the documentation - if it looks like something I can read in less then 5 minutes I will do it. If not then I am going to Google for another program that does something similar and in 5 minutes I can download it and go to Step 1.

All the software and web designers need to keep this flow in mind when they create their software. In today's world of Twitter, Facebook and instant electronic mail you need to design for the shortest attention span you can imagine.

President Obama has extended the "cash for clunkers" program. We are doing our part to make sure you don't get stuck in that "same old" Friday night routine! Upgrade your clunker of a plan to something new and cool - Copper Cart Ultra Lounge!

By the way if you haven't seen Sean Majors spin VIDEOS. You should really check it out! It's mesmerizing!!!

Quick reminder - if one of the hosts put you on the guest list please be sure to be there before 11PM. Since there is a line I suggest something even earlier then that.

Of course if you are late that's not the end of the world. The cover is only $10 (All my friends from DC, Miami and Europe can't believe that it only takes $10 in Seattle to get into a top notch club)

See you guys tonight!

Perpetually empty handed guest usually stops getting invitations. I grew up with this kind of etiquette and I would like to tell everyone that it pays many dividends.

The situation at hand is boat invitations. Boats are expensive and most of the time consuming. When people invite you to go boating with them - you are benefiting from thousands of dollars that are spent maintaining and mooring the vessel. I highly advise absolutely everyone to grab something to bring to the boat. That something can be alcohol, food, water, snacks or whatever else you think fits the situation. In US you are not required to bring anything "to the party" however I haven't heard anyone complain about a guest having something that adds to it.

In Russia showing up empty handed is guaranteed to raise some eye brows. Couple of situations are exempt:
1) if you are a little kid and have no means of income
2) if you are known to be going through a tough time (in this case you are still obliged to apologize for showing up empty handed).
3) if you show up somewhere all the time so the formalities are forgotten (I am sure Cramer used this clause)

If you are having doubts about what to bring it is customary to call ahead and ask. Most likely you will get 1-2 "no you don't need to bring anything" that's just the Asian influence on Russia where a ritual is required to ensure that everyone is fully comfortable with bringing a gift.

People that might think that adopting this Russian custom is impractical are very mistaken. Over the years I have received repeated invites and made great first impressions by staying true to this rule. Let me tell you that no one ever complained about a bottle of wine or desert.

The past two days I have been packing, sorting and dumping stuff. I am donating over a thousand dollars worth of household items, furniture and clothing. The amount of stuff that accumulated is insane! I actually have been resisting purchases for the longest time. I can't believe the number of things that gradually crept into my life.

I see a lot of similarity between belongings and mold. They make their way into your house and settle into the corners.

You scrub them out, you toss them but they keep coming back one little corner at a time.

I finally see a government that is actually looking to use electronics to stop killing trees.  Thanks Ann Arbor City Attorney for stepping into the 21st century!!!

http://annarborchronicle.com/2009/04/09/more-zoning-nope-street-repaving/

The city and county have already combined their data centers (hardware). On Monday, council authorized a contract worth $263,371 to integrate document-management software as a part of the “City/County IT Enterprise Content Management Partnership.” Based on the cost breakdowns, this particular contract appears to involve city departments.

Chronicle inquiries with the county yielded the insight that the county uses the OnBase system and that the city will be building their applications on the same technology infrastructure. This allows the city to pay for licensing, but not have to buy new servers. Descriptions of the work the individual city departments will be undertaking:

• City Attorney Scope: Implement workflow for contract tracking. Will initially use professional service contracts as the starting point. The developed process will provide visibility into where the contract is at all times. Includes eSignature process from Docusign and full routing for approval, including external signers.
• Purchasing Scope: Requesting Accounts Payable workflow for invoice coding and approval and simple workflow for Purchase Order requests.
• Accounts Receivable Scope: For storage and retrieval of scanned or electronic documents.
• Clerk Scope: Configure OnBase to store and retrieve the following scanned  document types: Annexation, Ordinance, Council packets, Minutes  Contracts, Easements/Deeds, Liquor licenses and Traffic Control Orders.
• Project Management Scope: Replace eCabinet process and convert existing eCabinet documents to the OnBase platform.
• Assessor Scope: Bulk load of Assessor property cards into OnBase.

I am paying over $50/month for my high speed Internet through Comcast.  Since I am moving I started looking around and there are some interesting offers out there.

As I was calling Comcast to possibly cancel my service they proposed an economy offer which is $27/month!

They also told me that they will move the moving fee for me so I can stay with them.

The economy package has a cap of 1.5 Mbps.  I tested my current speed with the CNet broadband test and with my current subscription I don't get much more then 1.5 Mbps anyway.

They switched me immediately and now I am saving close to 50% off my Internet costs.

This weekend I went to the U-Village Apple Store to check out some MacBook bags. I walked in and was looking at a few bags for my 13” MacBook.

An Apple Genius came up and asked me if he could help. I told him that I am wondering if I should get a 15” bag to allow for a bit more room.

The Genius told me that a couple of people he knows used the 15” bag and it worked fine.

Since I didn’t have my MacBook with me I figured maybe they could put one into the bag and let me try the whole package.

The Genius took me to the 13” MacBooks and we tried putting one in the bag. Everything worked great!

I was sold and I was ready to buy. I looked across the busy store and thought to myself “it’s going to be a drag to wait in line in the back”

The Genius proceeded “Are you going to be paying with a charge card today?” I was going to use my credit card. The Genius said: “I can just process everything right here”

I couldn’t believe it. I handed over my credit card and the Genius swiped it through a little device he had with him. “Would you like me to print your receipt or just e-mail it to you?”

Wow! E-mail the receipt? Perfect! I almost started to give him my e-mail address and then… the Genius told me that he has an e-mail address on file.

That was the best shopping experience of my life. Way to go Apple!!!

Seattle is known for its coffee, but I don’t believe enough has been said about its amazing coffee shop culture.

I am sitting at Café Vita on Pike Street. It’s a very clean outfit with about a dozen wooden tables and a free WiFi. Almost all of the tables are taken by creative looking individuals, students and young professionals. People are sipping on their lattes, eating their pastries and typing away on their laptops. Rolling stones are playing in the background. There is definite creative static in the air.

If you are wondering what Internet Explorer 8 has for you... my answer is *NOTHING*

I am writing this on blogger using IE8 and there is absolutely nothing in this browser that makes me want to launch it over Firefox or Chrome.

Assuming that some alarming bugs are going to be fixed before release it's still not interesting. Talking about bugs - Microsoft's own product Outlook Web Access doesn't work right with this new browser.

If you want a very fast browsing experience - go with Chrome.
If you want customizations or plug-ins - go with Firefox
If you like hiding what you are doing on the internet - Chrome again.

There are some catch up features that IE8 has, but those features have been out on other browsers for a bit.

IE8 says that "web slices" is the next big thing. Honestly I think Microsoft designers have missed the mark on that. I don't want to learn what Web Slices do for me, just like I didn't want to learn what Active Desktop could do for me.

What people want is:
- predictable browsing due to standards compliance
- compatibility
- speed
- customization

I believe more or less in that order. So if you haven't got IE8 on your machine you can safely skip downloading it.

For those of you who are wondering what the heck kept me super busy over the past several months - today the PR wire has a release about DocuSign Dev Center.

As a platform company we needed a developer center. This is a place where people can download the SDK, discuss features on the forum and a centralized center for information.

Check it out!!!

http://www.docusign.com/news_and_events/press_releases/2009-02-26.php

February 26, 2009
DocuSign Releases New Developer Center for Electronic Contract Execution (ECE)

Free Resources, SDK and Forums Enable Developers to Integrate and Test Drive Electronic Contract Execution for Third-Party Applications at No Cost

SEATTLE - February 26, 2009 - DocuSign Inc., the industry leading provider of on-demand electronic signature and electronic contract execution solutions, today announced the launch of the DocuSign Developer Center. This comprehensive portal provides software developers, enterprise architects, systems integrators and independent software vendors with free resources to learn about, create and test solutions powered by DocuSign technology. Complete with an SDK, open standards-based application programming interfaces (APIs) and a Developer Forum, the Developer Center is available to the public now by visiting http://www.docusign.com/devcenter/.

Despite the focus on business process automation, organizations mail or express ship millions of documents for signature every day, relying on a slow, expensive and inherently non-secure paper-based process. DocuSign's on-demand electronic contract execution automates this business process and enables companies to eliminate the antiquated "print-ship-sign-copy-return-scan" cycle, dramatically reducing costs and accelerating business. With the new Developer Center, DocuSign is providing developers a fast path to integrate DocuSign's online contract execution into applications including existing ERP, CRM and HR systems. Now developers can quickly offer their company and clients the power and productivity of electronic contract execution.

"In today's economic climate, corporations are clearly focused on three critical and essential activities: cutting costs, securing revenue, and retaining customers. Our customers tell us daily they have slashed operating costs, raised revenues, and improved customer retention by closing deals electronically which may not have happened otherwise," said Tom Gonser, founder and vice president of product strategy. "We are excited to provide developers the tools needed to drive the critical benefits of online contract execution into their organizations."

The DevCenter At-a-Glance

The DocuSign Developer Center provides developers access to the most robust and flexible electronic signature and electronic contract execution APIs available today that can be used to reduce costs associated with contract execution processes, while driving untapped business opportunities. DocuSign APIs adhere to the latest version of the WS-Security (web services security) protocol to ensure the integrity and confidentiality DocuSign-powered web services messaging. The cornerstone of the Developer Center is DocuSign Connect, a suite of integration services designed to extend DocuSign service capabilities into existing systems or new applications. DocuSign Connect includes:

* DocuSign Connect API - Enables the exchange of information between the DocuSign platform and enterprise business applications, allowing developers to create custom DocuSign enterprise Web applications.
* DocuSign Connect Service - Is a standards-based web service that pushes DocuSign contract transaction data into disparate applications over HTTPS protocol.

"Open APIs like the new DocuSign Connect are becoming the essential glue that makes the best SaaS services a truly integral part of enterprise IT, said John Musser, founder, ProgrammableWeb. "Enterprise and third party developers can use this new breed of APIs in the cloud to tailor solutions to work with existing corporate systems from CRM to ERP. DocuSign's just-launched Developer Center has the key elements that we''ve seen make a difference in getting developer's the resources they need to succeed.."

DocuSign Developer Community members receive access to all of the tools, tips and resources needed to develop and deliver a DocuSign-powered solution. For more information about the DocuSign Developer Center, visit http://www.docusign.com/devcenter/. To start using DocuSign Connect, sign up for a free developer account at http://www.docusign.com/devcenter/sign_up/register.php

About DocuSign Inc.
DocuSign is the DocuSign Inc., the #1 provider of on-demand software services for electronic signature and online contract execution, empowering individuals, small business and global enterprises to operate faster, more efficiently and profitably with enhanced security and compliance. DocuSign is the only Web-based service to fully automate the entire contract execution process. To date, more than 16 million signature events have been executed using DocuSign. Experience the service at www.docusign.com, and for regular updates go to blog.docusign.com.

DocuSign and the DocuSign logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of DocuSign, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other marks are property of their respective owners.

Dear Swedish Cherry Hill Hospital,

This is an open letter to you since you have no e-mail or web form to communicate with you.

First of all I'd like to thank you for admitting me to the ER on January the 6th. I thought I broke my rib and was in a lot of pain. I didn't have any surgery done and just had a CT and XRays to make sure that there was no internal damage. Thankfully I didn't break anything and by now the pain is gone.

A few days ago I got your bill and I honestly thought it was some sort of a mistake. Your fees for admitting me and doing two diagnostic procedures were over $11,000? All of that, by the way, was not broken out into any items but just was one line.

I think from my initial wait until the time a cab picked me up I spent about 3 hours at the ER. It was hard to believe that being that would cost me $60 a minute. Yes, this is not a miscalculation: it's $60 a minute, $1 a second, north of $3600 an hour.

I have been to the ER before and I usually expect a bill for $1000-$1500, but an order of magnitude difference with no warning from anyone?

And here is the tragedy of US Medical system. No one talks to anyone about options or pricing meanwhile these kinds of fees can seriously bankrupt an ordinary US Citizen. The second part of the tragedy is that once my insurance got a hold of the bill I instantly got a $9,000 reduction. I am almost certain that if I wasn't "represented by Premera" this discount would be pretty hard to get.

Just to add insult to injury it turns out that your radiologist and the physician will all bill me separately on top of the $11,000.

This is not an attack on any of the personnel that helped me. They all seemed to be great people. I come from a family of doctors and my mother is currently an MD working in urgent care - I know MDs are great people that care! This is some honest feedback to the way you run your business.

The business is being run on a principle of surprise charges. How does anyone know that going to your ER will result in $100, $1,000 or $10,000 in fees? There is absolutely nothing on your website that gives any indication of any of the fees you might try to charge me. All the costs and fees are carefully hidden. If you don't have a big insurance company on your side you could really be screwed.

Can you do something about it? I believe so! I work in software and some very complicated procedures can be grouped together and priced at a predictable level that makes sure that your business operates and patients don't get $11,000 bills they don't expect.

Oh joy oh joy!!!

I've had my hotmail address forever!!! Now I can get that mail on my iPhone via POP3.

It's still not as nice as GMail which supports IMAP. The main advantage of IMAP is that I can make things as read or unread and they will be marked as such on the GMail server.

Still this is a lot better then before.

In my iPhone 3G I just typed in my full hotmail address and it figured everything out.

Here is a Microsoft blog post for those who want to go to the source:

http://mailcall.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CC9301187A51FE33!49799.entry

It’s been a week since I’ve switched to the MacBook as my primary machine for work.

For a long time Windows user (since the DOS days) and having worked at Microsoft for 5 years I would say that I am a Windows Super User. There is something in Windows that I don’t know but it ain’t much ☺.

So after a week my productivity is still down. The coolness factor is up. I actually like taking my computer around with me again. It’s very light and it makes my DELL Latitude look and feel ancient.

Positive emotions come from:
- Spotlight which is absolutely awesome!
- Installing/uninstalling applications is amazing.
- Unix shell and all unix things installed.
- Doc
- Application management – I actually like the fact that you can see which applications are loaded and that closing a word document doesn’t quit word.
- Super fast startup and shutdown time
-

Negative emotions:
- Outlook is the best e-mailing and scheduling program ever. I miss it.
- Not being on the Windows domain is an inhibitor.
- I like pushing alt and seeing the shortcuts, I also like being able to use the keyboard for menus.
- Ctrl+Del is a great shortcut that allows me to delete a word at a time.

Couple of must get items I found so far:
- Firefox with a del.icio.us plugin.
- Windows Live Mesh to keep my documents synched up.

A couple of cool items that I found on the Mac:
- Aquamacs – a nice looking emacs.

I still use Windows for my development because I know Visual Studio and .NET better then all other stacks, but for Office use MacBook is a pleasure to use.