Quite a mouthful. The presentation describes how AlphaVax used multiparameter flow cytometry to explore one of their vaccine candidates. They then used – among other applications – SPICE 5 to do their data mining, visualization, and production of presentation-quality graphs for their presentation.

Samples were fixed and stored at 4°C until acquisition on an LSRII flow cytometer. Flow data was analyzed with FlowJo version 8.7 (Tree Star, Ashland, OR). Further data analysis was performed using software (PESTLE and SPICE, version 5.0) provided by M. Roederer and J. Nozzi, NIAID, NIH.

It makes me proud to know my work is directly helping researchers find vaccines for “what ails ya.” Very gratifying.

Whiny

As I mentioned with the MacBook Pro issue, the whining issue turned out to be very real. There were various conditions under which it occurred for different users, but I was “lucky” enough to get one of the affected laptops. I found older people couldn’t hear the extremely high-pitched whine, yet it gave me a damned “sick-headache” from its persistence. I finally narrowed it down to a fairly specific cause. I’m not a radio / antenna / electronics expert, but something didn’t seem to be correctly grounded. If I laid my finger (not an inanimate object, not conductive metal, not a ferrite rod – nothing) on the right-hand side of the rubber inlay between the hinges on the “lid,” the whine immediately stopped. As soon as I removed my finger, the whine slowly returned. If I “gently tapped” that same spot out of frustration, it might stop for quite awhile before returning. The whining didn’t come from the speakers. It was strongest near the very spot I could touch to make it stop. This told me it was some kind of feedback, interference, or some damned problem with one or more specific electronic components.

Apple refused to acknowledge the problem. Reading the various forums revealed a plethora of fan boys and fan girls repeating the same uninspired joke again and again: “The only whine I hear is from you.” Well …

It’s not as if I work with technology every day, so you’re absolutely right. The sickening headache I developed every day from this one Apple product among many I owned or worked with is all in my head after all! Thank God for your unilateral diagnostic skills! A sample size of exactly one surely accounts for all!

Yeah, I had that laptop less than a year.

Ugly Bags of Mostly Water

Humans are salty and wet. We tend to interfere with electrons and even radio signals. Which is the problem here? Are we blocking the radio waves or shorting the thing electrically? I say the iPhone 4 problem definitely seems to be caused by bridging the very part of the phone likely to be wrapped in a nice, salty, meaty hand – I think it’s electrical.

I don’t accept Jobs’ bullshit “you’re holding it wrong” answer. Anyone who holds the phone on the left side of their head is going to cradle the phone with its lower-left corner tucked into the palm, just under the fleshy root of the thumb. How can you possibly defend a phone that can’t be gripped on one whole corner without dropping its signal?

To be clear: my phone doesn’t just lose signal strength when I grip it “the wrong way;” it completely drops the signal in about one second flat. In three, a call is dropped entirely. No data gets through while I’m holding it that way.

… and it’s not in my fucking head.

And Steve: I’m not made of money and I rely on my communication device to communicate, so it really is a pretty big godamned deal when it’s so easy to cause it to fail. Considering how vastly easier it is compared to any other phone I’ve owned since my first one in nineteen-ninety-fucking-seven, I’d say it’s quite a bit more than a non-issue.

There is definitely a problem. I’ll accept it doesn’t affect everybody, but if your position is, “it works for me, so you’re an idiot,” then I can’t respect you let alone your opinion. Sorry.

One explanation that makes a lot of sense is the possibility of the sim card contacting the metal sim tray (which contacts the metal frame). I can confirm my own sim card was cut so that all the gold contacts along one edge come into direct contact with the metal sim tray. It was definitely shaved too close (much like a fingernail cut too far back, its nerves screaming at contact with anything, even air). My own 5-minute experiment with electrical tape failed because the thickness of the tape prevented the card from seating correctly. I may have to try again.

The one thing that makes me doubt this proposed solution is that the sim tray slides into the opposite side of the phone – the one that isn’t bridged by holding it “the wrong way.” This observation would seem to shoot holes in the running theory of interference by sim shortage.

What makes me so sure it’s some sort of short circuit is that today my phone failed me (signal-wise) for more than an hour. I was very sweaty, so even though I was avoiding holding it “the wrong way,” it still refused to transfer data or keep a stable call. Guess what happened when I wiped it down with a damp, then a dry cloth? Like magic, it was stable again. Perfectly. Instantly. Magic!

I’m Not a God Damned Idiot

So I’ll wrap this up by making this emphatic statement: the iPhone 4 most definitely has antenna issues for some users. My own completely drops the otherwise full signal on contact in multiple areas that all had strong signals for my 3GS and are far apart from one-another. I love the iPhone 4, but, being my only phone, this is quickly becoming a major issue for me.

The Jitterbug

For those who haven’t heard the wonderful news, Jitterbug provides simple phones and live operator services and caters to the elderly. The biggest feature seems to be the ability to call the operator and have them operate the phone.

Jitterbug phones have large displays and keypads, as well as loud speakers. The services comes with what can only be described as “old-school” operators, who can add contacts to customers’ address books, add appointments to your calendar, and even take dictation of a text message.

Why, Back in My Day …

Jitterbug’s success undoubtedly comes mainly from the operator service, which reminds an older generation of simpler times. Once upon a time, you could “ring Jenny the Switchboard Operator” to have her connect calls for you. You might even get to know Jenny and have a brief chat with her before she connected you to “Klondike 529.”

Still Relevant

The Jitterbug goes beyond this, though. Now that wonderful young lady Jenny can take dictation for you and send it as a text. Never before has it been so easy to send, “Happy Birthday, Grandson, LOLZ” to your grandson via a communications channel he actually uses!

New Feature

I propose a new feature: Navigational Services. Wouldn’t it be the bees knees if Jenny could give you directions like all those new-fangled iTelephones and Robot Phones? And how!

Let’s listen in on Ethel as she calls Jenny for directions on her Jitterbug.

Ethel [ takes twenty or so seconds to open the phone and press zero because she's always looking for the hand crank ]

Jenny: “Operator speaking.”

Ethel: “Jenny? Ethel here, how are you?”

Jenny: “Why, I’m just wonderful, Ethel! How’s your grandson? Did he enjoy the pegboard you got him for his birthday?”

Ethel: “Oh, he loves it! Thanks for asking? How’s Fred?”

… [ 5 or 10 minutes go by in this way ] …

Ethel: “Say Jenny, I’m looking for that new Buttons! Buttons! Buttons! store the girls have been talking about. Would you know where that is?”

Jenny [ chuckling knowingly ]: “I wondered when you’d get around to looking into that place. I can give you directions.”

Ethel: “Oh, that would be wonderful!”

Jenny: “Certainly. You go out to the old Harker place and take a left past where the old fruit stand used to be.”

Ethel: “The one old Farmer Harker’s grandson ran before he retired?”

Jenny: “That very one. Follow that into town. Then, at the corner of Elm and Second – where you used to buy a whole bag of penny whistles for a nickel – and head toward the old soda parlor where you met Jeb Jenkins and slapped him for looking at your ankles when your slip rode up a bit.”

Ethel: “Mmm hmm.”

Jenny: “After that, you’ll turn right at the corner where you and Mabel used to wait for the trolly. Turn left into the parking lot of that newfangled mall that used to be Old Man Savage’s mill.”

Ethel: “Oh! I met my late husband, Mr. Carmichael there for our first date!”

… [ and so on ] …

Now I’m sure you can see the benefits. Following the success of deploying such a feature, Jitterbug could expand their operator services and offer Internet surfing. Why get one of those confusing computers when you could have Jenny take care of all of that stuff?

I think we would all be wise to invest in Jitterbug. They’re going places …

Whiskas Temptations Bag

The back of the bag reads:

Not to be savored but once a year, oh no! This girthy bird of paradise can be enjoyed each and every day. I’ll wrap myself in his arms of sustenance and sink my teeth into those delectable drumsticks! Gravy and stuffing, hah! The only thing that’ll be stuffed is me, once I devour this phenomenal fowl…mmmm…I need my Temptations treaaa…zZzZzzz…

Um. Yeah.

My Day Job

Your taxes (and mine) pay my salary. My employer is Lockheed Martin, MSD, Inc. and I work as a contract software developer for the Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (part of the US Dept. of Health & Human Services).

BCBB is providing their bioinformatics and technology expertise to the VRC (Vaccine Research Center), among other NIAID initiatives. I’ve been working on a software application called SPICE for the VRC for the last three years.

The Problem

The Vaccine Research Center does as their name implies: they research possible vaccines for things like HIV, H1N1, and others. To do this, they administer a test substance and take lots of blood samples over time, looking for a useful immune response.

The blood samples (for many subjects, over different time points, with different vaccination methods) are all washed with a biomarker (a kind of stain that binds to certain cell types or cells that carry out a particular function) run through a machine called a flow cytometer. The flow cytometer bounces different color (wavelength) lasers off the individual cells and detects the presence of these biomarkers, which fluoresce when hit with a particular wavelength.

All this let the researchers know what percentage of cells fall under a specific category. For example, one category might be “what percentage of cells belong to Subject A, one week after the vaccination challenge, that are CD4, Interleukin 2 positive, and Interfereon-gamma negative?”

Now, what do we do with 20,000 categorical measurements? They have to be evaluated in a number of different ways to see if an immune response occurs, what type, when, and how strong (among other things).

You might think, “Okay, load all that up in Excel and start making charts.” There are a number of problems with that approach, but I’ll simplify them: Excel is slow and cumbersome when used for setting up and dynamically modifying complicated data views and its graphing capabilities are vast but don’t quite cover what the researchers need to see.

The researchers may want to average all the subjects together (because average response is more useful than that of an individual), overlay by vaccination type (because an injection might be a better vector than an inhalant), and ignore CD4 cells, looking only at CD8s. Then they might want to eliminate a few subjects who didn’t complete the study. Then they might want to turn the whole thing on its head and compare individual responses, grouping by their study group. All these custom data views would take a lot of effort to configure and reconfigure in Excel.

That’s where SPICE comes in: Simplified Presentation of Incredibly Complex Evaluations. This application allows you to cut, shuffle, recombine, compare, isolate, and reorder this vast categorical data set in near-real-time by drag-and-drop. What’s more, you can choose graph types, format the print-quality graphs, then drag them straight from the graph view into PowerPoint for a nice presentation of your findings, or into Word to write a paper. All this you can do in minutes (even seconds) versus hours.

My Part

I was brought on board to build SPICE 5, a complete rewrite to an in-house tool written and personally maintained by Dr. Mario Roederer. Bright guy.

Through version 4, Mario used an older Mac development library called Carbon. With Carbon’s future looking bleak and Cocoa designated as Apple’s New Hotness for Mac OS X apps, it looked like SPICE needed a good update. With ever-increasing duties keeping him from delving into an entirely new API, Mario needed an experienced Cocoa developer, preferably with a background in biology.

Instead, he got me.

The goal was to bring SPICE over to the Cocoa world – to modernize it and maybe add a few new features. As any developer would expect, there was plenty of scope creep. It took over two years to meet the extra demands placed on the new version (bigger data sets, more options, etc.).

SPICE 5.0 (the version I wrote) gained the ability to handle much larger data sets (while being more efficient with memory) by virtue of using a hash table instead of a sparse matrix. It also gained more formatting features and an easier-to-use data view control panel.

But it was pretty slow for a variety of reasons. Even slower than what we affectionately call, “Old Spice” (cue the whistled Old Spice tune). It also mirrored the “saved settings” mechanism of SPICE 4, where a particular configuration (a “data view” in proper terminology) was saved from the UI or loaded back into the UI.

I’m not a biologist. I’m not a scientist. I don’t even have a Computer Science degree. It took a lot of effort to build version 5.0 and I had no problem building it to “mirror” version 4 as much as possible. Once it was done and I saw what I had made, I realized I understood the problem very well by that point and I began to have some ideas of my own. SPICE 5.1 was very much on my mind.

I think I’ll end this post here as it answers the question of what I’m working on for Uncle Sam. In short, it’s an application that helps researchers identify good vaccine candidates for things like HIV and H1N1.

Up Next

In my next post, I’ll focus on the development aspect of version 5.1 for you developer types out there.

Disclaimer

Opinions and view points expressed in this article are my own. I do not speak for the US Government or Lockheed Martin, MSD, Inc.

Web Site

You’ll notice a new look for my site. The theme is not mine, rather it’s a slightly customized version of the “monochrome” WordPress theme.

That’s right, I said WordPress. Drupal turned out to be a huge pain in the ass to maintain and is serious overkill for what I needed. Meanwhile, WordPress 3 (currently at release candidate 3) adds better support for static pages and custom menus. I spent some time migrating my information back to WordPress, choosing a theme I didn’t hate, and getting things generally back up and running again.

I have to say I’m much happier with WordPress. Drupal is overkill and quite contrary.

Bartas

Bartas Technologies endeavors are chugging along at a slow but mostly-steady pace. XTabulator and Transcriva updates are in the pipeline. More than that is in the pipeline too, but that’s for a later date.

Zendesk

I’m still with Zendesk, despite my misgivings over the pricing debacle. Things seem to be working well enough, but my opinion of the company is still definitely shaken. I’ve decided they’ll keep my business for now, however.

Home Life

As with any home, there are happy moments and unhappy moments. I’ve had plenty of both over the last few weeks with family drama, relationship growth (not a snarky comment, but rather the reality), and some good times. I’m more or less in reasonably high spirits, though there are still things to work on. I’m inclined to label that normal.

• The disproportionate amount of increase
• The unrealistic value placed on features (like forums) that are not optional and that free, open-source does better
• The inarguable abuse of the term “grandfathering”
• The data lock-in for cheaper plans
• The substantial disparity in pricing, compared with competitors with similar or superior offerings
• The poorly-phrased responses from Svane on Twitter and in Zendesk’s forums

All of this amounted to a breach of trust in the company. Their actions belied the corporate image they’ve worked so hard to put forth. In short, it was a grievous error in judgment.

Then, two days and a few hours after the whole thing started, Svane posted an apology titled, “Sorry. We messed up.”

I would be a hypocrite if that’s all it would take to make everything okay again. Have Svane and his investors learned their lesson? By lesson, I don’t mean, “the social web can fuck you up as easily as it can help you,” as it’s obvious they have. Rather, the lesson to which I’m referring is, “if we say we’re good guys, we can’t make a douche bag move.”

I honestly don’t know the answer to that. The real question is, “will I stay or will I go?” For now I don’t know. I’m undecided. I need to know I can trust Zendesk not to decide to hold my data prisoner and jack up their prices again. Their promise to “grandfather” existing customers in (the proper use of the term) isn’t in any contract. It’s their word, which has been tarnished recently.

Plenty have praised Svane’s apology – I’m one of them – but that doesn’t mean all is now well. So, stay or go? I’ll let you know. I’m sure I’m not the only one debating this, either.

The Good

Zendesk is quite good, despite a few limitations. It’s simple and straightforward. I speak only about the ticket tracking aspect as that is all I need. The web interface is pleasingly simple and the system itself is reasonably fast. The technical support (and even general PR responses) have been beyond stellar.

The Bad

The UI still needs some work. Zendesk mentions iPhone (and by extension, iPad) compatibility and that’s largely true. However, like a Flash-based solution, Zendesk uses some mouse-over UI actions (such as hovering to preview a ticket, menu access, etc.) which provides for an awkward user experience on a touch-based device that has no concept of “hover” or “mouse-over”.

As I painstakingly detailed, Zendesk had some problems with how it approached the conversion of trial customers to paying customers. I damn near told them to fuck off on that alone. As I just mentioned above, however, their response to this made up for the annoyance.

The Ugly

On May 18th, 2010, Zendesk announced (in a very complicated set of pages and an e-mail) their pricing would change. The customer responses in the comments of one such page weren’t just a groaning over a minor increase, they painted a picture of outrage, disgust, and (above all else) level-headed descriptions of how they might be able to justify a 10-15% inrease in the current economic downturn, but certainly not what can be up to a 300% increase in cost. Some even suggest reasonable pricing or an a la carté pricing scheme. See “What People Are Saying” below for a sampling of these comments.

What’s so wrong? There’s not too much added – certainly not enough to justify what can be up to a 300% price increase.

Zendesk offered a “grandfather” plan for existing customers at quarterly and yearly intervals. Unfortunately, this up-front payment only extends the current pricing for the duration of your pre-paid term. After that, even existing customers will have to pay the New and Improved Price.

On top of the massive increase in cost, the unpredictability of the cost of the service is not easily dismissed for any reasonable business owner or CTO. While the “Starter” plan they will offer still remains cheap – and, to be fair, still gives me what I need – there’s no guarantee they won’t pull the same dramatic increase stunt they did with their other plans.

Couple this unpredictability with their removing technical support (“community support” is “no support from us”, guys, let’s be real) and the ability to export your data from the Starter plan and the prospect of remaining a customer of theirs would be borderline stupidity.

What People Are Saying

The following comments were pulled from the page mentioned above in case they “disappeared”.

More than double what we’re paying or lose email support? Yeah, no thanks. We’ll begin the process of moving away from Zendesk today.

Please tell me there’s a typo somewhere here. My annual fee for Zendesk is going from $2124 to $4956?! I used “cost savings” as justification for moving to Zendesk with my upper management. That just went out the door.

I wish I could increase my prices 300% but I would have a mass exodus from my product! I think ZenDesk may have just made a huge mistake and I am sure many of their clients feel they are held hostage!

Why not just charge on an À la carte basis for new features that only a subsection of users will even be interested in?

One question for the Zendesk CEO or CFO – would you use a company who didn’t have a stable price plan you could predict, with price increases in line with RPI?

I’m just trying to wait it out before I have to break the news to my boss. All of our departmental spending is being scrutinized, and I don’t know that this increase will make it past Finance.

The fact that I have to even spend time think about this now after spending precious time integrating ZenDesk and educating staff makes me even more angry at ZenDesk. Booooh! ZenDesk, Booooh!

A reasonable increase in price for a additional in features is certainly to be understood or even expected. More than doubling the price I pay currently pay is not reasonable by any definition. As many others have pointed out, the ‘grandfather’ clause is merely a stay of execution.

If a business has no reasonable expectation or ability to forecast costs, a premises based solution will be the only way to go. Especially when you consider the fact that all our historical customer project data is housed with Zendesk and that their cancellation page says that it will all be deleted immediately and permanently upon cancellation.

…when using SaaS services, you expect stability and fair pricing. This is extortion and we WILL cancel our service and move elsewhere if required.

Come on be serious, this is extortionate.

I’m sorry Zendesk, but this is not how to treat your customers. A 10% increase or something would have been ok and I guess no one would be complaining. But this is really too much.

… and it goes on. Techcrunch also posted an article.

Conclusion

Zendesk has shown a lack of respect for its customers and their budgets. Some speculate they’ve planned to gain x number of customers, have the high-end customers invest hours and money in customizing and integrating the system, increase the price (and drop “low-end” customers) and show an overall increase in profits. I have to say that’s not a bad theory at all. I think I share it.

As I explained to “Olivia” (as I called her in previous posts), I feel threatened by this as a business owner. My information may no longer be mine to take with me if I decide to leave. I may have to face similar decisions even with the minimum plan if Zendesk suddenly decides their minimum pricing should be equally outrageous and they should even it out.

The bottom line is, I’m afraid I can’t endorse Zendesk any longer. Lack of predictability, no official support at an affordable price plan, and information lock-in add up to a big steaming pile of shit for $30/month. I’ll pass, thanks. Had I known then what I know now, I would never have signed up.

Update (May 20)

This has unfolded into an outright saga. CEO Mikkel Svane had some things to say on Twitter that didn’t exactly smooth things over:

I hope all the new sexy Zendesk features don’t drown in today’s noise.

Leaving office with headache. Not happy about pricing reactions. Less happy that it overshadows what an awesome system Zendesk has become.

While the second comment drew some fire (“the headache is of your own making” and similar sentiments), it was the first comment that really riled up Zendesk’s customers. Many were none too happy at their valid and reasonable complaints (many of which agree on a better approach at tiered pricing – more on that in a moment) having been blithely dismissed as “noise.” Some on Twitter have repeated, more or less, the same idea: “How Not to Treat Your Customers” or “How Not to Roll Out Price Increases.” Even Zendesk competitors are weighing in, offering price-matching and rate lock-in.

Of the many voices expressing outrage (and the few churlish pokes), a growing number of users actually suggested what I feel is a fair compromise. They would accept a fairly substantial price increase in return for tiered pricing. That is, the “exciting new features” (such as a basic implementation of forum software, which users point out is not as feature-rich as the many free, open-source alternatives available today) should be optional, as should the knowledge base features. The more services you use, the higher the pricing. Some even suggested they’d pay more for heavier volume.

I propose a mix of both. I personally only need the ticket tracking portion. For up to two people. For not too many tickets per month. I’d rather pay only for that, and if I decide later I need other features or if I suddenly start processing hundreds of tickets a month, I would expect to pay more.

For now, it looks like the company is in damage control mode (taking surveys, saying little). I now have a strong feeling the shareholders are behind this decision (‘pump-n-dump’ perhaps, or just outright cluelessness). True or not, I think there’s a whole lot of reconsideration going on right now. Either way, my faith in Zendesk has been severely shaken. I’m still planning to move to another service (and to take advantage of the sudden flurry of competition).

At first I thought it was a good idea. There he could commiserate, gauge the intensity of his own suffering compared to others for context, vent, etc. I didn’t bother reading any posts on the forum myself. That was a mistake.

After awhile, listening to his descriptions and having read a few posts myself, I began to feel uneasy. It looked like a lot of self-diagnosis with no moderation by knowledgeable people. But it seemed to be helping him, so I only mentioned (several times) not to take people’s opinions there as gospel – they’re sufferers, not psychologists (or pharmacists). After all, I reasoned, the biggest problem with psychological problems is that we can’t see our own problems objectively – we can’t see ourselves from outside our own minds.

It’s only recently, however, I’ve been relieved to hear from his own mouth that this forum is bad news. I would call it dangerous. Virtually every thread is full of self-diagnosing wanna-be pharmacists, describing the interactions of these drugs with brain chemistry (using general terms) as if they fully grasp these complex systems with no degrees whatsoever. There are no psychologists serving as moderators. There are no volunteer pharmacists to debunk misinformation or gently explain that individual brain chemistry is far more complicated an issue. There is no voice of reason to tell someone firmly, “you don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re giving people dangerous advice.”

No, their information comes from what they’ve read online. They describe how they use this drug and that, mixed with a little of this or that, augmented by that, etc. Some make recommendations about what medications another should try. Some even go so far as to recommend illegal drugs (with no mention of precise dose and no references to how these drugs actually achieve the purported affect), heedless of the possible disaster for someone with psychological problems. I’m not an anti-drug crusader or anything (I think the “war on drugs” is a colossal failure of public welfare), but it doesn’t take much intelligence to see what a bad idea this is.

Some of the advice amounts to, “you should augment tricyclic antidepressants with LSD.” Yeah, that’s a great idea. I can see it now, “Works for me … I haven’t murdered a kitten with a staple remover in weeks!”

Yes, I’m conflating anxiety and psychopathy for comedic effect, but here’s a fun fact: “social anxiety” can be a satellite condition around a more serious general psychological issue.

What’s most dangerous about forums like this is, like anywhere else online, all some ass-hat has to do is use the relevant terminology (correctly or incorrectly, it doesn’t matter) and speak authoritatively to make the sheep follow. These sheep, however, are desperate for a solution for a real problem and since “psychological problems” can also include messiah complex and narcissism, this combination makes the ass-hats with an audience all the more dangerous.

I’m happy to say my own loved one has seen this for what it is, but if you suspect someone in your life is falling into the “google-itis” trap (whether for hypochondria or a true illness), it’s up to you to point out what a dangerous idea it is to put their faith into a “resource” where any ass-hat can claim to be an expert.

Hypochondria can be funny – even endearing – most of the time. Googling the psychopharmacological advice of self-described experts who suffer psychological illnesses themselves is a bad idea.

Even if you’re woefully analog, Transcriva 2 is easy to use, efficient and customizable—making transcription both easier and faster.

Thanks for the mention, Fahad!

As is usual in dreams, I knew her background automatically in the context of the dream. Just a few short years ago, she’d been burned out in her career and had been making poor choices. Essentially, she was on the path of self-destruction (much like Jackie). Then, the late director had taken her under his wing and gradually improved her, grooming her for the position. Though she had no idea she was being groomed for this position, nor that it had been “willed” to her (dream!), she was definitely up to the task, having grown as a person.

The only part of the dream I remember with clarity is some corny rock ballad you’d expect to be played for a character coming into their own. The words were interesting, though. The only part I could remember by the time I forced myself to wake up and write them down were the ones that haunted me. They were sung as if the late director were talking to her in a “just look at you now!” way. The line was:

Walkin round the waters of the Lake of the Used-to-be-You.

For some reason, that metaphor for triumphant introspection speaks to me deeply. I love the name “the Lake of the Used-to-be-You”. Lakes have long been a symbol for self-reflection. To “take a walk around the waters” suggests to me a deep introspection and (I suppose) looking back on one’s past.

I suppose this won’t mean the same to you as it does to me, but the words still move me a few weeks after I heard (thought) them.

The censorship wasn’t about offending a religion (if you know anything about South Park, you know that’s true – the show offended every religion), this was shameful cowardice at its worse. Even the end speech about fear was censored and it had no reference to the sacred cow of Islam. Comedy Central has shamed its country plain and simple. I’m so god damned disappointed we have so publicly bowed to the mere threat of terrorism over free speech.

For fucking shame, Comedy Central.

The Saga Continues

Not long after sending that e-mail (that evening in my time zone), I got a reply not from “Heidi”, but from “Bob” (as we’ll call him).

For reference, here is the original post containing the e-mail I sent in response to the two e-mails and a phone call just days after starting my trial.

Here was Bob’s reply:

Hi Joshua

Thanks for your email.

Ill pass on your feedback. It’s important for us to hear your thoughts and we appreciate your time.

Groan! Not only was it weighing in light on the give-a-damn-o-meter, but it looked like they used one of their own Macro responses.

Here’s my response:

Aw, come on! That long, heartfelt email and that’s all I get in response? Lame …

To be honest, Bob’s response looked exactly like the “Kindly fuck off and have a nice day” kind of responses I expect when I run my mouth to a company. I was wrong. Fast-forward two bottles of wine (between two people – shut up) and a day later. In an unprecedented act of bonafide give-a-damn, I received this from … aw, hell, let’s call this one “Olivia”:

Hi Joshua,

Where to begin … First, please don’t take our delayed response as an indication that we’ve been ignoring you. In fact everyone at Zendesk involved in connecting with customers on the phone or through email has thought about you several if not many times today.

Second, we weren’t sure how to reach out to you – how you wanted to be spoken to. Since you responded to the email below, we’re hoping this is the way that you wanted to hear from us.

Now, the most important thing that we want to say: we apologize for annoying you. We apologize for scaring you!

I’m happy to share with you why we screwed up but I’m pretty certain that’s not important to you. What’s important to us is that you have impacted how we do business. We’ve dialed back and taken time to correct very important things that were out of whack. What Bob said below wasn’t a pat response. But he should have put some effort into acknowledging the fact that we screwed up and that you had taken significant time to point this out to us in a colorful (hope that’s the right word) and creative way. And most importantly, he didn’t apologize. Please accept our apology and know that we don’t want to be a crazy girlfriend. We want to be sound, thoughtful, reliable and responsive.

You gave us a very measured response. Thank you for that. You’re a great writer. I hope you’ll stick with us and continue to write to us. You’re feedback is on target and we’d like to hear your thoughts about all areas of our service, or as many areas as you choose to comment on.

Again, we’re sorry for the lousy communication. Please let us know if there’s anything else we can for you.

Best regards,

Olivia

I’m an Ass

I might as well say it: my first response was to laugh my ass off. Not a cruel laugh, you see, but a surprised (and mildly delighted) laugh. A gleeful chortle, if you will. I was not expecting this kind of response at all. In fact, I wouldn’t have been too surprised if they’d “fired me” as a customer or asked me not to contact Heidi or Bob again.

Then, yesterday, I re-read the response. I was in a completely different mood, having just woken up from a nice long weekend sleep-in. I felt this odd sensation to which I’m not very accustomed. The damndest thing. I felt … bad. Yes, that’s it. I felt bad.

Now Matt tells me I shouldn’t. He believes it was a very positive outcome, but I still felt pangs of that unpleasent sensation known as “feeling bad” about one’s actions. Nasty stuff, that. All I know is Heidi hasn’t written me back (or called) once (or twice).

The Josh Problem

Okay, I’m used to entire offices discussing the “Josh Problem”. I’m an ass. Not necessarily an asshole. Just an overall ass. I speak my mind. I say what others are only thinking. I make light of serious situations even if I’m the one who’s on the hot seat.

Note: Prospective employers, please ignore that last comment. Current employers … meh, all that “consummate professional” shit was just pillow talk, baby. You knew what this was.

Emergency Meetings in the Situation Room

So, from Olivia’s response, I can only conclude that an emergency meeting had been called in the high-tech Zendesk situation room … my photo on the central screen, my blog post and e-mail spread out on their Microsoft Surface table, Heidi in a holding cell, un-showered and hungry, stripped of her black spandex tactical unitard, Bob in the next, weeping over getting himself involved.

Okay, so it probably didn’t go quite like that. Heidi was likely executed and I feel just awful about it. My intention was to be humorous, not a dick. So wherever you are, Heidi, I apologize. As I get older, I keep trying to find better ways to deal with life’s frustrations. I find humor is much better than frothing heat-of-the-moment phone calls, but it can have a bite to it nonetheless.

In any case, I’m glad they recognize how incredibly important I am and held an emergency meeting in their situation room. I worry over which picture of me they used, but that’s a minor thing, really. The important thing is, they reached out to apologize and took their power to annoy seriously. For that I’m thankful. It has definitely improved my opinion of Zendesk’s sales tactics (or at least their ability to apologize for said tactics).

Silver Lining

Now it’s important to mention that toward the beginning of all of this, I had been in contact with their support team over a macro that broke as soon as I created it. It wouldn’t even let me delete it. It took them a few days to try to figure out what went wrong before they had it fixed but it wasn’t a show-stopper for me by any means, so it didn’t bother me (well, it bothered my OCD to see it there without the ability to clean it up, but whatever). When I asked what it was (I thought their app might not have escaped a slash I put in the name or something like that), the tech responded with a link to a documented Ruby issue. Cool. Thanks. That impresses me. I know slightly more than shit about Ruby or Rails, but not much more, however the ability and willingness to share the technical details with me is definitely something I consider “good will”.

So I didn’t mean to imply it was all bad. In fact, I’m pretty sure I communicated effectively that I didn’t think that was the case.

The Make-Up Kiss

Here’s my response to Olivia:

Olivia:

I don’t really work on the weekends, so I actually wasn’t expecting any kind of response until today. I’m also aware I’m not the only person in the world, so no harm done there.

On one hand, I was amused to hear about the impact my e-mail had. On the other, I was surprised to get any kind of real response, other than “we’ve removed you from our contact list”. On a third hand, if I had one, I had started to feel kind of bad since I didn’t hear back from Heidi at all. Are she and Bob alright? If not, I trust it was quick and they didn’t suffer.

I accept your apology of course, but I’m not sure it was necessary. I did kind of poke you guys in the ribs a few times (with a large pole). Some would label me an ass for not just saying, “no further contact, thanks” but imagine what they’d say had I immediately returned Heidi’s phone call in the mood I was in. It was better to wait for later and I’m glad I did. That’s when the “crazy girlfriend like Betsie” idea hit me and I immediately found the situation funny. Once that occurred to me, I knew just how to handle it.

That was a true story, by the way. Betsie really was quite nuts.

At any rate, I detailed the ordeal on my blog (because I knew my friends and family would find it “très Josh”) so it’s only fair I laude Zendesk’s followup (and of course sensationalize that too).

It should be posted shortly, but I wanted to respond to you beforehand for two reasons. First, it’s just the right thing to do, and second, because I wanted to post my response to you as well.

So: thanks for following up and thanks for rethinking the frequency and nature of contact … and yes, “colorful” is a good word.

Regards,

– Josh

I felt it was only right to explain my position a bit just in case there were any hard feelings. So overall, I have good feelings about the folks at Zendesk. I hope they feel the same about me (Heidi? Bob? We cool?).

Maybe I’ll e-mail, call, then e-mail again once in awhile to see if they still love me.

Update: Oh man. I knew they killed them!

Another thing is wireless usage. When a WiFi network is available, I tend to have and be using the iPad anyway. Where WiFi networks aren’t, I usually don’t have the iPad with me and the iPhone’s 3G connectivity is the default. In response, I’ve turned off the iPhone’s WiFi radio. This did even more to improve my phone’s battery life, returning it to what I once enjoyed with my not-so-smart phones.

I’m definitely not regretting getting my iPad, that’s for sure.

In an all-too-frequent moment of customer service prescience, I was concerned that I’d be hounded, so I was happy to see an “opt out of further communications” link at the bottom of her e-mail. I clicked it and opted out, then deleted the message.

Yesterday – four days after starting my one month trial – I received a phone call from an unidentified number. I always screen unknown numbers, so I waited for the voice mail notification and listened. Who was it but Heidi, explaining she tried e-mailing me but hadn’t heard back. She reiterated her desire to know how I liked Zendesk.

As I’m listening to this voice mail with a mild bit of annoyance, I get an e-mail. From Heidi. She wanted to make sure I got her e-mail and voice mail … and wanted to know how I liked Zendesk.

Now, if you don’t know me well, it may shock you to hear I become annoyed easily and am quite vocal about it. I had to resist the urge to call her back and bitch her out for the incessant intrusion. She reminded me of a crazy ex-girlfriend I had in junior high school … when I had girlfriends.

Then I had another idea. Rather than lash out when asked what I thought, I related a relevant story. Here’s what I ended up sending Heidi (modified somewhat for clarity).

Heidi:

I’ll tell you my first impressions but I want you to think about it from my perspective as you read. But first, a tale of young love.

When I was in junior high school, I did the unthinkable: I got myself a girlfriend. Well, really, the girlfriend got me. We’ll call her Betsie. “Will you go with me?” Betsie asked, using the common phrase (at least in my part of the world). Oh, if only I had said no …

You see, Betsie was known to be “out there”. Didn’t bother me at the time; I like “out there”. She wrote me three notes a day. Long ones. Every evening she would keep me on the phone for hours. Being the typical teenage boy, I found this a bit excessive, but I did my best to keep up with the sheer volume. It was normal, right? To my credit, this went on for three weeks – practically a lifetime for a young romance. Several times, though, I’d have a bad day and just be content to talk a bit. Of course I would try to tell her this, but to Betsie, it was always taken as a prelude to a breakup.

At first, I would tell her I still loved her and nothing was wrong; I was just having a bad day. After awhile, the little things I did or didn’t do would trigger this insecurity. I began to feel like a captive, a slave to reply note writing, return phone calls, and constant reassurances.

Then it happened. When she asked me if I was going to break up with her for the 5143746253745th time, I hesitated. After all, by this time her fear was becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy. It was only the briefest of hesitations but it was enough for Betsie.

Her tone changed immediately. Suddenly she was deathly serious. Despite this she managed to make it sound almost nonchalant – perhaps it was her sigh – when she said, “I think if you would ever break up with me I’d kill myself.”

Wait, what?

I was thirteen … what would I do? Tell my parents? Tell hers? Yeah, right: “I made my girlfriend/your daughter want to kill herself. Thought you should know.” So I did the only thing sensible to a teenage boy: I kept it to myself.

This went on for awhile (a few days) until I finally realized she was doing it for attention. More to the point, she was doing it in a desparate attempt to keep her boyfriend. Ultimately I broke up with her. She’s still alive and well and now married to a man I must assume enjoys her quirks. She even invited me to her wedding a few years ago. I politely made an excuse and declined.

My point?

Nothing makes people want to break up more than an insane girlfriend/boyfriend.

I just started using Zendesk at the end of last week. I ignored your email partly because I had no opinion yet and partly because – and please don’t take this the wrong way – I just want to use the application and would like you guys to stay the hell out of my way unless I need you.

Like Betsie, however, you emailed, then you called (!!!), then emailed immediately thereafter to make sure I got your voice mail. All in less than a week of my starting the trial. That’s a bit … much.

So, there you have it: The jury is still out on Zendesk as a product, but I have to say, the insistent, voluminous “do-you-love-me?!?!” notes and calls are scaring me little. Especially after I opted out of your first email.

Simply put: Could you dial it back, please?

Now I’ll say I’m pretty sure I’ll convert to a paid account and stick with Zendesk. Unless something drastic happens to piss me off, I have no real complaints. It’s reasonably quick for a Ruby on Rails web app and it has the features I need without all the “our-way-or-no-way” required fields that annoyed me about FogBugz.

Rest assured, however, if they keep nagging me to tell them I love them, I’ll drop them like a Betsie.

Update: The saga continues here: Zendesk Second Impressions

Bookmarks Bar

Similarly to a major navigation action being focused on a tiny button in the corner of the device’s ample screen, the Bookmarks Bar is laughably bone-headed for having come from a spit-and-polish company like Apple. The bar is way too small. I’m constantly hitting the empty area of a new page (which stupidly closes the bookmarks bar) or I’m hitting one of the navigation/control buttons above the bookmarks bar. I have fairly average fingers, so I weep for the fat-fingered using this thing. It’s like a cruel game of Operation … don’t touch the sides!

Yes, I’m fully aware of the narcissism implied by having a bookmark to my own site as the first quick link in my bookmarks bar. Shut up.

Solution: First, increase the height of the bookmarks bar so there’s enough “finger room” below the main navigation controls (there’s plenty of room on a blank page, guys). Second, don’t close the bar when the empty page area is tapped.

Site Certificates

Is it me, or does Mobile Safari simply refuse to remember that you’ve accepted a site’s SSL certificate (fifty million times)? I can understand if this is some draconian enforcement of “user protection” but how about an option to remember the decision so I can take responsibility for my own security? I’m a biggie boy and I understand my own server uses a shared certificate that cannot be verified … but I trust me implicitly, so it’s not a problem, really.

Solution: Either remember the decision or give me an option to remember it for that site. I biggie boy!

HTTP Authentication

I’m referring to the microscopic dialog that pops up asking for user name and password on password-protected pages (not the ones built into the page). There are two problems here: stored login info and user interface design.

Stored Info

I asked Safari to remember my user names and passwords. Why can’t it do so for HTTP authentication? I understand the need to kill the authentication the moment the browser page is closed. Fine, but include HTTP authentication in the “remember my login info” feature! Let me choose every time to use that or to enter alternate information. It’s really not that tough and would save me typing the same thing again and again for protected pages I use regularly, but wish to log out of.

Solution: Obviously, I’d like this to work like the login panels that are built into the pages themselves. Specifically, I want to be asked to use saved login information or let me specify new information.

User Interface

Look at this shit:

Guys. Really? Really?

Tapping in the user name field isn’t too difficult (if you’re careful, you can hit it the first time). Tapping outside the dialog doesn’t cancel, mercifully, though I wouldn’t have been surprised, given the issues about which I bitched above. The problem occurs when you try to tap the password field. Since there’s no “previous field / next field” buttons on the pop-up keyboard, you’re forced to tap the fields directly to select them. Can you guess (or have you experienced) what usually happens next? If you guessed that 99% of the time, you end up hitting Cancel or Log In instead of selecting the password field, you’re a goddamn genius. Go work for Apple.

Solution: As a stop-gap measure, I think the first iPad update should include the previous/next field navigation buttons found everywhere else in the UI. The real solution, however, is a nicer, iPad-sized dialog and field navigation buttons.

Elsewhere …

After only a week with the iPad, I can say I’m hooked (and so can my coworkers, friends, and family). I can also say Apple didn’t seem to have enough time to polish everything. I’m lookin’ at you, Mail.app!¹

Just remember, Apple: I only pick on the products I love. Well, that’s not true … I pick on them more. I just save the really nasty shit for the products I hate.

1 – Why is Undo two strokes away in the keyboard and not in the compose window’s toolbar? Where’s my Undo button, man? Why you messin’ with me, man? Where is it, huh? Why you holdin’ out on me? Don’t hold out on me, man!

Greetings, Mr. Jobs:


On the iPad, the screen is blessedly large, but the “back” navigation button in Mobile Safari is relatively small. I find I have to tap it several times because I “miss” the area when browsing quickly.


I’m a long-time MacBook user and now also have a Magic Mouse for my desktop. I find the n-finger-swipe-to-navigate gesture indispensable with Safari. The gesture is now so deeply ingrained, I find myself doing it constantly on the iPad with disappointing results. It’s a bit of a surprise that the touch-rich iPad experience lacks this very powerful and magical gesture.


At the risk of earning a “magical gesture” from you, PLEASE bring swipe navigation to the iPad very soon – the platform demands it!


Regards,


– Joshua Nozzi
Bartas Technologies

http://bartastechnologies.com

http://joshua.nozzi.name

To elaborate, I understand why the gesture was never implemented in the iPhone / iPod Touch version of Mobile Safari. The screen is just too small. So small, it doesn’t even invite the gesture. I myself have never once tried to swipe-to-navigate. The iPad, on the other hand, invites this gesture almost as a reflex, if you’re used to either the MacBook / Pro trackpad or the new Magic Mouse.

It bothers me to no end that this gesture is not available on the iPad. So much, I’m willing to risk a soul-crushing, snarky reply from Steve.

I’m torn between “Please be gentle,” and “Thank you Sir, may I have another?”

Beautiful work.

Were I to become “Mr. Joshua L. B9140944-4EA0-4C67-8B1E-DFCC7443D68B,” I would no longer be confused with others. For those with offspring, your family would be uniquely identified. You Smiths would no longer need to tell people “No, we’re not related to those Smiths.” Mail couldn’t possibly wind up in someone else’s mailbox. There would be no confusion over how to pronounce it unless you wanted there to be. That brings me to the fun part. Think of all the situations where becoming Mr. B9140944-4EA0-4C67-8B1E-DFCC7443D68B would be advantageous.

Take telemarketers for example. Remove your telephone number from the National Do Not Call Registry and welcome telemarketers into your life. If they make it past the name on the screen without assuming it’s an error, they’re showing spunk (or desperation). Time to knock them down a peg.

Telemarketer: “Hello, is this Mr. … B9140944-4EA0-4C67-8B1E-DFCC7443D68B?”

Me: (sigh) “You’re saying it wrong.”

Telemarketer: “I’m sorry, Mr. buh-nine-one-four-zero-nin…”

Me [angrier]: “Oh.”

Telemarketer: “I’m sorry?”

Me [yelling, now]: “Oh. OH! Buh-nine-one-four-OH-nine… Christ, are you illiterate?”

… and so on.

What of social situations?

Subservient: “May I call you Josh?”

Me [sternly]: “No you may not.”

Think of the DMV. Those smug counter dwellers with their line-to-get-a-form-to-stand-in-the-form-submitting-line-to-get-a-ticket-to-stand-in-another-line lines should get a taste of their own complicated bullshit. Filling out the form for “B9140944-4EA0-4C67-8B1E-DFCC7443D68B, Joshua L.” may be tedious for you, but imagine the fun as they work out how to fit “B9140944-4EA0-4C67-8B1E-DFCC7443D68B, Joshua L.” onto a driver’s license. Bonus points if their computer systems don’t allow that many characters in the last name field.

Imagine becoming famous some day. Think of all the billboards and advertising for your latest movie, book, TV series, interview, etc.

Finally (in the heaviest sense of the word), imagine your tomb stone. Just how do tomb stone engravers handle word-wrap?

Here Lies Joshua L. B9140944-4EA0-4C67-8B1E-DFCC7443D68B. May he find his way to the golden gates on the wings of doves.

The mind reels with possibilities.