A classified internal eBay statistic

This evening an email went out company-wide offering reservations for free movie passes for the upcoming Simpsons movie. In all, 950 tickets were available.

All were claimed within 7 minutes of the sending of the email. Seven minutes. Seven.

Holding down the fort

More shenanigans today, this time with moving boxes. The worst part? We did this while that cubicle's resident was gone, then we simply left. The only way in or out is through a very small crawl space at the far end, under a wing of the desk. Here's hoping this person has a good sense of humor, eh?

It never happened

Would I ever conspire to procure and illegally transport a wheeled ottoman cabinet, with a coworker onboard, from a recently vacated corner of another building, down an endless hallway, at breakneck speed, dodging Facilities personnel, simply to aid in the color coordination of yet another coworker's cubicle?

Never. I would never do such a thing. How dare you even ask.

photo by iwm

The Great Lasagna Catastrophe of 2007

So I'm down in the eBay Cafe, checking out the day's specials. Nothing jumps out at me, but lasagna sounds good, so I order one up. The guy asks, "Meat or veggie?" Oh, meat for me please, and can you put some extra meat in it? He takes it off the little shelf and plops it in the rotating heating oven. So far, so good.

Folks trickle in to get pizza from the same station, and their slices go into the same oven, and come out a few minutes later. My lasagna keeps going round, and round, and round. That's ok, lasagna is a lot thicker and they probably have a minimum amount of time they're required to put it in there to make sure it's really hot for health & safety reasons. Ok, that's fine.

A couple other folks come in and order veggie lasagnas. Their orders go into the oven too, in between slices of pizza that are being shuffled in & out. Ok, that's fine. One of the people who ordered the veggie version was this lady about as tall as my belly-button, and somehow she managed to squirm her way in front of me in the waiting line. That was annoying, but it didn't really matter because they serve your heated food based on the order in which you plased your order, not where you are physically stand. Ok, still so far, so good.

However, time seemd to be moving very, very slowly. Five minutes went by. Ten. The lasagnas continued to go round, and round, and round. People were getting very antsy & anxious, as was I. This was taking entirely too long. What if I had a meeting to go to? The Cafe folks may have nothing to do all day but prepare & serve food, but ordering & eating is something that doesn't get a lot of priority for me, so I need to finish the whole process with decent speed.

After about 15 minutes, the first veggie lasagna came out of the oven. Right after that, the guy extracted what I swore was my meat dish, and who tried to claim it but the amazing miniature woman who had slithered in front of me, still trying to pretend I wasn't there. I wasn't about to be wronged like that. I walked up and leaned in, essentially over her, reaching for the plate while confirming very loudly and clearly, "Meat? That's meat right?" Both the little woman and the Cafe guy said in unison, "Veggie." Hmm. Okay. That's just dandy now, isn't it. I was just annoyed. Now I was getting irritated.

As soon as that second lasagna was served up, though, the Cafe dude immediately started helping some pizza line folks who had been queueing up. Being the nice guy I am, I waited, knowing it would only take a matter of seconds for them to place their orders and for their pizza slices to be flicked into the oven. Well, another several minutes went by, and finally I practically jumped over the counter to interrupt one of the Cafe guys from his rounds of ignoring me. "Can I get my lasagna? I've been waiting for an unbelievably long time." He says "Oh, okay, meat or veggie?" You've got to be kidding me. Alright, maybe he has some sort of short-term memory loss. I'm going to maintain my composure, though. I'm determined. I respond as calmly as I can, "It's meat, I ordered it over 15 minutes ago -- it's right there in the oven." There was only one lasagna left in the oven. It wasn't hard to figure out. He took it out, boxed it, and sent me on my way. I paid at the checkout counter, and off I went back to my building, my floor, my desk. I opened the box expecting to have the best meat lasagna I've ever tried (made so by the fact that I was now starving, which tends to make everything taste 2x as good as it actually is). What did I find inside? Why, if it isn't a veggie lasagna. Freakin' A. That tiny vegetarian lady probably got herself a nice surprise by now. That'll teach her for trying to pull a smooth move on me & take my place.

Ah well, this veggie one smelled good anyhow, and like I said, I was starving, so this was going to be good. I carved out a nice round bite with a little bit of everything and dug in.


But something was not right.


What was this sensation I felt on my tongue? It was strange. Very strange. It felt a bit warm, but at the same time, a bit cold. Oh, no, was I burning my tongue? You know how if you've ever accidentally put a finger into really hot running water, it first felt cold for a fraction of a second? It was that sort of feeling, only the excruciating pain and fear that normally follows, wasn't following. I chewed it down, and took another bite, carefully this time right from the core. As I closed my mouth, I felt cold air inside. As I chewed, my teeth were chilled. Not only was it the wrong type of lasagna, but it was literally refrigerator cold, except for only the outermost 1/8th of an inch.

I ordered a quick hot premade meat lasagna, and walked out 20 minutes later with a cold veggie lasagna.

Worst food service experience, Ever.

Blast from the Past

Today PayPal successfully brought back a UI designer who had gone off to work at Yahoo for a bit shy of a year. He used to be on the team I'm now on, and he stopped by to chat it up with folks, vets and newbies alike. In talking with me privately for a short stint, he noted that I had built up a solid reputation at the company.

Huh??

Many thanks but, do I know you? I know you can't know me. What's goin on here...

Don't tell anyone but...

At this very moment, one of my coworkers is watching The Bachelor instead of finishing an IPP report...

Son of a...

(an actual reminder that showed up today for a real meeting, I kid you not)

OOoooooh am I mad. I set my alarm for 6am this morning right, versus the ~8ish I usually have it set at. That gave me time to toss & turn in protest of having to get up early, finally lumber out of bed, get ready to go, and be on the road before 7. That was so that I could be at work by 8am for the surprise meeting I was added to late yesterday evening. All of that worked out just fine. I got to the office and naturally the place was pretty empty in comparison to what I'm used to, and that was fine. It as also still dark because none of the early-risers ever turn on the full bank of lights (and I don't mind). So I check my email, verify what room the meeting is in, undock my laptop, and head upstairs. I get to the conference room, and it's completely dark, completely silent, completely empty. Every chair is at the same height, perfectly arranged around the long conference table. Five minutes go by. Not a soul in sight. I pull up the meeting invite and dial up the teleconference number they had for the India folks to call in, and lo & behold, the meeting is in progress; everybody's there. On the phone. Calling in. Because little did I know, "folks usually just dial in to these things." Freakin. A.

Big things, little things

Ah, progress. It's a good thing. At times I've felt like I was trying to take down brick walls by throwing toothpicks at them, but now I'm actually starting to see some results. I'm getting through, to my peers, to the directors, and to the VP. I'm starting to see that when I raise a valid concern and suggest a course of action, something actually happens. When I first joined PayPal UED a little over three months ago, literally almost every project team I came across was building something a page or piece of a page that looked noticeably different from the next, creating what I called "the quilt effect." Today, the days of the quilt effect are numbered.

It's been interesting for me, being the bad guy, going around everywhere saying "no, don't do that" or "wait, hold on, that's not a standard, use the standard," especially since as one of the newest members of staff, I hardly have a right to. Sticking to my guns, though, I've managed to reaffirm the notion that no matter who you are, you can make a difference if you put your mind to it.

I had an especially sweet experience just this week. At the color printer I happened upon yet another feature that was being created with a brand new set of design rules, but by the time I investigated it and flagged it to the standards initiative lead and our creative director, the two of them had already seen & synched up on the project. The next day, a I found an updated version of the mockups on the network, following our current de facto design standards. Sweet, indeed.

Since I last wrote, I inherited a new project that had an insane timeline, and after busting out a draft design spec, I got to play bad guy yet again, pushing back very hard on a scope increase that was accompanied by too many unknowns for my liking. The push-back was approved and we delivered a design that met the original goals of the project while enhancing the user experience in a few more ways than expected.

Today I had my annual review, presented by my manager of old and attended by the new. The fact that I had an annual review after a little over 3 months of employment was fairly comical, but not as much so as the fact that the review itself actually covered just one single holiday-studded month. Much to my surprise, I picked up a raise! Given my extremely limited tenure, the amount didn't add up to much, but the thought certainly counts. Plus, I got a bonus equity grant of a very respectable size. It's like as if the company wanted to keep me or something. Hrmph.

Oh, I almost forgot, I picked up a new RC helicopter and took it in to work to show off. The first coworker to have a good look got his hands on the controller (my fault) and immediately proceeded to play with all of the very sensitive trims that take half of a battery pack to get just right. In the evening, I took the thing to a semi-secluded area outside to get the trims back in shape, and when I came back in and was walking past the main lobby, a coworker yelled out from the elevators, "DUDE! I've GOT to see that thing fly!" I gladly obliged, setting it up in the middle of the floor and heading up one story to the PayPal logo hanging from the high ceiling and then flying around the deserted lobby a couple of times. The security guard at the front desk turned around to see what the noise was and oh, how his eyes lit up and a smile grew from ear to ear. After getting over the initial shock of how cool the thing was, though, he remembered his duty to protect company property and the safety of the employees, blah, blah, blah, and kicked me out. It's ok, though. I took it up to my floor and flew it around up there to the delight of a bunch of onlookers. Friday evening I'll meet up with the Platform UI manager in our conference center a couple buildings over and fly with him -- he recently picked up a similar heli, following the lead of the same visual designer who inspired me to get mine after bringing his in.

Lots of work and a little play on the side. I can't complain.

Friday Tieday & Other Silliness

During the Omaha trip, one of the random topics of conversation that came up was my experimentation with an "anti-Casual Friday" dress routine at my last company. Places where dress is always fairly casual, I figured the concept of Casual Friday was pretty moot, if not a total sham, so from time to time I would actually dress up on Friday. Someone mentioned that we should try that with the coworkers in our cubicle row. Rather than going to the extent of recommending a full style of dress, we decided to just ask everyone to wear ties, one way or another.

Well, this past Friday was our proof of concept, and it worked. About 2/3rds of us actually took the plunge, far more than I honestly expected. Rather than laughs from folks on other teams that didn't know what was going on, I actually got complements, and even a couple requests to extend the newly founded tradition to the entire user experience team (most of the floor of our building). I don't think we're ready for all that just yet, but maybe we can find a second small team to combine forces with and extend our pilot test.

"Help! It's attacking my neck!"

Speaking of combining forces, my team underwent a merger this week with another group of equal size. The other team worked on a slightly different aspect of the application than us, so the biggest real change for us is that now instead of having three sorta-managers, we will have one. Well, at least we will once our new manager gets up to speed with what we do and how we work. Good stuff there.

The big fire recently enveloping my old project continued to burn heartily, and this week some of the swirling embers congealed into a new page flow, labelled #12 (out of the 2 originally planned). I managed to get that stomped out, but there are still flames everywhere. Thankfully my newer major project is so far behind due do delays upstream that it will probably have to be pushed back a release. However, delay or no delay, I'm still lined up for an executive design review on Wednesday, so here I am, midday on a holiday, merely taking a break before going back to work on these darn mockups.

Omaha Trip Report: Friday 2/9/07, and Summary

We were checked out of the hotel by 6:30am, and in the airport lobby by 7 after a very cautious drive that finally let me get a tiny bit of use out of that whole 4WD thing. My flight path included a stop at Denver, Colorado, and oh, how I was pleasantly surprised to see a wolf (yes, a wolf, not a coyote) out on the runways as we taxied in to the terminal! Incidentally, half of Thursday's summary as well as what you're reading right now was written in Denver terminal A, between gates 42 & 44, while I watched this plane get de-iced:

The rest below was pencilled in on the plane to Oakland.

Trip Summary

I've got to level with ya. I was absolutely dreading this trip. I've travelled by air only 4 times before and I hadn't gotten comfortable with the potential complications of airports & baggage claims, packing appropriately, and getting around in unfamiliar territory. On top of that, the consistently subfreezing (and sometimes even subzero) temperatures in Nebraska this season had me, a person who had touched snow only once in his life, imagining the agony of frostbite & inner-nose icicles. Oh, how I was pleasantly surprised by reality.

First off, the flight, hotel, and car rental logistics were a piece of cake. Secondly, the weather/climate wasn't so bad after all. On the first day I was keeping my brand new down jacket zipped all the way up, and of course when it was snowing I put the hood up. Gradually it got to where I would only gently pull the front closed for walks of a few blocks or less outside. By Thursday night I was going to & from the car in a regular shirt & slacks. I told my colleagues it was a 50-second rule. I could go 50 seconds without my jacket before the body heat buffered in my clothes got used up. This usually helped us get around faster. Usually.

Next up, the folks in Nebraska were the warmest, friendliest, most welcoming hosts I could have asked for. They truly made us feel right at home, and I didn't get the slightest bit homesick even once. For the first time in my life, I feel open to the possibility of moving out of California some day. Shocking? Well, to me it is!

Lastly, but most importantly, there were my three coworkers from the California office. Together, we had an absolute blast, and the trip was an opportunity to do a bit of bonding that I'm sure will make work-life back in San Jose ever more enjoyable. We were laughing & joking pretty much from the beginning until the end and were always watching out for each other & helping each other out.

I never expected to see myself write this, but I sincerely look forward to the next trip...