RandomFailure

Since I’m unlikely to turn on the computer tomorrow night, I’ll wish y’all a happy new year a little early.

Enjoy! Have a wonderful evening and a great 2010!

One of the drawbacks to being a lawyer is that we’re required to bill a minimum number of hours for the year. Due to my taking the PA Bar exam earlier this year, I’m still working on making up some hours. So I’ve been going in on weekends. Karen dropped me off in the morning, when it wasn’t snowing too badly. She suggested that I drive myself in, so I could get home, but thought that wasn’t such a good idea. I turned out to be slightly prophetic.

I think a visual aid will be helpful. A map of my journey home:

View Steve’s route home, 19 Dec 2009 in a larger map

By the time I left the office, around 5:30 to catch the bus, there was well over a foot of snow. The roads were treacherous at best, and there weren’t all that many cars. Not that many buses either. But before I left, I checked Septa’s Web site to make sure the buses were running. (My alternate route would have been to take the subway and walk the mile and change home from the subway stop.)

I missed the first bus on Market Street by less than a minute; I saw it blasting through the intersection, but I was too far away to flag it down. So I waited about 3-5 minutes for the next bus. I was one of four people on the double bus. Managed to get to 4th & Market in plenty of time for the next anticipated #57 bus, which would bring me south towards home.

There was a couple waiting there when I got under the bus shelter. I asked how long they’d been waiting. Only about five minutes. Not too bad, since the previous bus was more than ten minutes earlier, and it was only about another five minutes to go.

Well, 15 minutes go by. No bus, and no bus in sight (as difficult as it was to look up the street into the blowing snow). I was getting too cold to keep waiting, and the taxis weren’t having all that much luck going anywhere – skidding out, etc. Taking a taxi, if I could find one, would have been a dicey proposition.

So I called Karen and told her that I was walking. She thought I was nuts and said I should grab a taxi or she would come and get me. I told her to stay home, that there was no way she should be going out. I was looking back for the bus, expecting to be able to jump on as I kept reaching the next stop down the route. No luck. I got to Washington Avenue, and stumbled into drifts that were above my knee.

It took about 25 minutes, but I made it home in one piece, rather wet and cold. And since there have been no plows on any of the streets in my neighborhood, and there will likely not be, it’s going to be a messy few days getting to work. Plus, the plow that was supposed to plow out the common driveway here (it’s not a city street, so it would never be plowed) never showed on Sunday. Or called to say when he’d being showing up. Fun. Time to find a new plow company. Somebody plowed a one plow width of the common driveway today, but didn’t lower the plow far enough, so there’s a nice layer of ice in the driveway.

I first wrote about this in March 2009 (see the old post); apparently Fortune magazine had the idea about the same time I did (see the Fortune article on e-readers). There have been numerous developments since then (I really like the Fujitsu reader; see the Crave posting and the Technology Review article on it), including the rumored Apple tablet/e-reader.

I still think all the commentary and wish lists are heading in the wrong direction. All these people want to cram all the functionality of a laptop into a tablet device (in case of the Apple tablet) or they want to reinvent the publishing industry.

You all forget that the iPod did not change the music industry in terms of the product. It changed how the product was delivered, replacing the physical CD with a digital version. Only within the last few months (eight years after the introduction of the iPod), have there been any changes to the end product (for example, the Tyrese Gibson comic book plus music).

So why is everyone so obsessed with changing the entire publishing industry with an electronic reader? I can’t figure this argument out; it’s like doing an experiment with too many variables. If the experiment fails, you won’t know why. Was it the electronic reader device itself? Was it the new reader format/style? Following this path is the surest way to fail.

The electronic reader market needs to follow the iPod’s successful path and be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. How would I do it?

1. The first generation device duplicates the dead tree experience in an electronic device. A boring, but necessary step to see if people will even use the things to read on. Based on the success of the Kindle, the answer is yes, at least as applied to books. The jury is still out on magazines and newspapers (though Plastic Logic’s QUE reader should help with that). The screen and the delivery mechanism need to be perfected at this stage. There will be a few iterations, until there’s a color screen with a significantly long battery life (say, 8-10 hours).
2. Articles and ads get interactive. The device now needs to incorporate some Web-type functionality, to allow articles to include links to additional articles/information and ads are also click-able for additional information. Multiple iterations at this stage as well, with the articles and ads becoming more sophisticated in terms of their interactivity. Possibly including location-based interactivity as well. By the time we get to this stage, battery life should have advanced enough to make the wireless access not be such a large battery drain.
3. The content format changes. This is what people are thinking about now, but as you can see, it doesn’t make sense to do this first.

There may be some refinements to these stages, but I think that this is the best way to develop the electronic reader platform. Jumping ahead will likely lead to failure.

Or, how “skinny jeans,” Alice Cooper, and Grover got me in trouble.

Darling Wife (who has a Tumblr site of her own) mentioned the other day that she couldn’t wear “skinny jeans” because she looked like an aging rock star. I replied, “You mean like Alice Cooper?”

She shot me one of those laser-like looks that could bore a hole clean through my skull. And then she said she was posting that on Facebook (which I still don’t use; and she told me that she wouldn’t friend me anyway if I was on there).

Karen’s next comment: “Am I too skinny?”

“You mean the Grover arms?” I figure if I’m going down, I might as well go down hard and have some fun doing it. And, Karen has commented before that she thinks she has Grover arms. So I think that made it onto Facebook as well.

I guess I’m lucky that hardly anybody reads this; otherwise, I might get myself in trouble. Unless people find out on Karen’s Facebook page… 

The big TV is finally fixed. Things are back to what passes for normal around here, now that I’ve reconnected the cable boxes in the right places. No more having to coax Daisy to come upstairs and sit on the bed while we watch TV; she can just stay sleeping on the couch.

I think. I was wearing a Duke sweatshirt the other night and she was looking at the letters. I spelled it out and said “Duke.” And then she said “Duke,” all happy with herself. I smiled. She smiled. It was fun! Then she did it again for Karen, who rolled her eyes. Can’t please everybody…

A little sarcastic rant before starting work, to get this off my chest.

I left the house a minute or two late this morning, and expected to miss the 57 bus. Sure enough, about a block and a half away, I saw it go by. Not that big a deal. Then another 57 bus goes by, barely a minute later, and I’m still a half block from the stop. Grrr.

So I turn the corner to head for the 29 bus (and go for the bus-subway combo). I’m not even 50 feet in that direction when the 29 goes by. I’ve missed three buses in less than five minutes. Unreal.

I wait at the 29 stop, since I only have to cross the street (Tasker) to get the 57 if it comes first. The 29 arrives first, so I get on; there’s no 57 in sight. I guess this is a good thing. I sit and take out my magazine to read, since that’s the only way for me to handle commuting in the morning – I just can’t sit there and stare into space.

About three blocks later, we get stuck behind a trash truck. Which is odd, since trash pickup in this part of the city is not on Mondays. We creep through the next two or three blocks. The bus finally gets going and the driver hits a parked car in the 900 block of Tasker. I think she tore the sideview mirror off. I’m not sure, since I can’t see from where I’m sitting. I assume the bus will be there a while, so I get off and start walking.

At 12th Street, that bus passes me. Then the next 29 bus was almost directly behind it (thanks to our being slowed by the trash truck).

Into the subway, where as I’m walking into the station, the northbound train (which I need) is pulling out. Oh joy! Another five minutes or so goes by before the next train. An uneventful train ride (it’s hard to hit something in the tunnels).

Then dodging through the idiots coming in from Jersey who don’t know how to walk in the city. Some things never change.

Aaahhh. That feels a little better. Now time to get to work.