Tank, my 2005 white Volvo V70 station wagon, is nearing 200,000 miles. It is still a great car to drive to work or to load my bicycle in the trunk on the way to the group ride. There is no need to disassemble the bicycle. Open trunk, slide in the full bicycle with room to spare.
Yet, I’ve been slowly looking for a new car. I need something that I can reliably drive to Lake Tahoe or even across the Santa Cruz mountains to Half Moon Bay. In other words, “I am in the market”.
Yet, when I visit the car dealers, my experience has been the opposite of somebody looking to buy a car.
A month ago, I pulled my aging Volvo into the Audi dealership at the Fremont Automall. I figured an old car may gave the impression that its greying driver may be in for an upgrade to a new car. I was completely ignored by the sales team. Nobody came to even see us when we were checking out the Audi A4 station wagon in the showroom or when we walked the lot outside. It was a very odd experience.
At Mercedes, it was clear we were not their clientele. We lacked the bling. I wasn’t offended. It was more a badge of honor to be ignored by Mercedes.
Yesterday, at AutoNation Volvo in San Jose, AT VOLVO (!), with my entire family in tow, nobody batted an eye for us. I appreciate allowing the customer to meander. Yet, after 10 minutes, or upon entering the showroom, one expects a friendly “How are you doing today” or “Can I help you with anything?”
My theory at Audi was that few folks buy a car without their wife present. So a smart salesperson may just skip the dad and his son ogling cars. That theory didn’t hold water after our visit to Volvo with my wife and kids.
Is the car business this good these days that one can ignore the customer?
December 30, 2023
Guns in America
In a six-part Revisionist History podcast series, Canadian Malcom Gladwell, dives into the gun debate.
The way America deals with guns is absolutely bonkers
No kidding. I’ve had plenty of long discussions with my NRA card carrying and gun enthusiast neighbor. I love those conversations as they are always cordial. However, our discussions often end with “That doesn’t make any sense”.
Fourteenth century Bristol merchant John Knight is one of main characters in episode one. Right away, Gladwell lives up to the name of his podcast: history is not what you think it was. Episode one also covers one of my favorite topics, the Supreme Court, in a case New York Rifle and Pistol (the Bruen case). A double whammy.
I wont’ spoil the broth here. It is fair to say that the ending won’t surprise the regular listener of Revisionist History.
Episode 2 gets into the topic of assault weapon regulation. Also here, there is a major surprise.
The assault rifle is not the most lethal weapon in mass shootings. Sarani’s group found that more people were shot by rifles than handguns, but those differences did not translate into a higher percentage of people killed. The people most likely to die were the ones hit by handguns.
And therefor,
There shouldn’t be separate laws for rifles than for handguns. We think there should be just common laws that apply to both types of weapons.
Convictions, incarceration, and survival rates depend a lot on how far you are from a trauma center. Further, trauma centers aren’t built in poor areas as they are expensive to run and few carry insurance to pay for the services. So crime-ridden poor areas both see more gun-related crimes and are further from trauma centers. The odds are stacked against folks here. Bonkers, but no surprise.
I am glad that in season 8, Malcolm Gladwell, is back to his usual detective self. It makes for great podcasts, and surely a new book soon.
December 27, 2023
2023 Fitness Year in Review
This year I set out to cycle 2023 miles and complete the AIDS Lifecycle Ride. What a blast it was in June to cycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles with my teammates from the South Bay Blaze and a few thousand other riders. A huge thank you to my sponsors and supporters.
I ended up 2023 with over 2700 miles in the saddle, and 107250 ft climbing the California hills. I forgot to count the punctures, although switching to tubeless tires dramatically changed the number of flats.
Towards the end of the year, I switched to a more varied workout regime with lots of swimming, indoor cycling, strength exercises, and a variety of group exercise classes. I swam 23700 yards in the pool. My toughest class is Body Pump which is a varied list of weight exercises. I enjoy BodyCombat or shadow kickboxing the most. That class has so much energy.
With 166 active days, I am quite happy with my achievements in 2023.
December 27, 2023
A Simple Corporate Presentation Template
I am a big fan of simple designs. That is also true for the design of corporate presentation templates. These templates should convey a brand, a level of professionalism (aka no comic sans), and include some necessary markers (i.e., logo, copyright). My preferred and simple corporate presentation template has:
- the company logo only on the first slide. There is no need to keep repeating it on subsequent slides. The audience didn’t forget the name of your company after slide 1.
- a copyright notice is a must on every slide. Ideally it is small, fades into the background similar to a watermark, and is out of the way. I put it on the right edge of the slide at a 90 degree angle.
- one color set. No dark and light version of the slides. It is a mess converting between them. This is especially problematic when you borrow and steal slides from other slide decks. Stick to one color scheme using corporate colors. Don’t overdo the colors.
- a simple background of singular color and no texture. I prefer a white background so that you do not need to remove the white background of pictures.
- no borders nor lines limiting the canvas. To give the author lots of options, provide them with a large unrestricted canvas. Don’t separate the title with a line. If your title requires two lines, no problem. If you need more space to put a diagram or call out, no problem.
Good design doesn’t interfere with the content. It adds to it. For a corporate presentation template this means copyright, a minimum of brand identify, and highlighting.
December 26, 2023
Google Docs Lacks a Merge Feature
Google Docs is great for collaborating on a document. Yet, once a document is released, Google Docs provides few tools to manage change. Sure there is Suggest Mode, which allows up you mark up changes to the existing document. Yet, until the changes are accepted, they do not reflect the truth. In the process, the document is all marked up and sometimes even hard to read.
To work around these limitations, I make a copy of the original document and mark it up, get it reviewed and revise it a few times. This approach has several issues. First of all, merging the changes is a cumbersome manual process. You could do a Replace All, assuming, that nobody else is taking the same approach. Yet, that approach messes up the change log of the original document. This workaround isn’t very practical.
What I really want is a Branch, Pull Request, and Merge capability. I’ll settle for Merge. Microsoft Word has the Combine feature. It has been a while since I used Word, though I seemed to recall it provided features to merge changes.
There are some add-ons to bring Merge to Google Docs. I haven’t tried them yet. Generally, I shy away for these add-ons to our company documents. It would be great to have Merge as a native Google Docs capability, wouldn’t it?
December 21, 2023
Love Is Awesome
Judd Apatow and Paul Rust’s Netflix Series, Love, is awesome. It reminds me of Reality Bites, where the dialogue is the true star. The conversation pulls you both in and repels you. You love it and get anxious. Nothing happens and something may happen. I imagine Curb Your Enthusiasm has similar qualities, although I haven’t seen more than a clip or two.
A scroll to the review headlines gives you the same vibe.
“Love - hilarious, annoying, addictive” - The Guardian
“A Dark romance about terrible people” - The Atlantic
“Liking the unlikable in Netflix’s Love”
“Netflix’s ‘Love’ is not worth your binge time”
“Netflix’s Love makes a strong case against creating TV with binge-watching in mind”
“Love takes its sweet time to get anywhere particularly interesting”
It is how I remember Reality Bites, minus the romance.
In the adorable section, please chalk up the date to the magic castle and the regular get together of Gus and his friends, writing themesongs for movies without one. That is just brilliant! It is something I wish we would have done growing up.
December 15, 2023
The Big Terrible Thing
I enjoyed reading Matthew Perry’s memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. If you are looking for lots of Friends’ stories, you will be disappointed. This book is about Matty’s struggles with addiction.
Because I do not read the tabloids, the depth of his struggles was news to me. I had heard of drugs during one of the seasons of Friends. Which famous actor or musician overindulge in alcohol or drugs from time to time? Could it be more cliche? Reading this memoir, his addiction was at another level. It was hell.
The New York Times headline was on point: The One Where Matthew Perry Writes an Addiction Memoir.
December 8, 2023
In Spain, It Is Not About the Food or the Drink. It Is About the Company and the Conversations.
On a recent trip through the South of Spain, it struck me how one just orders a red wine or a beer. You don’t order a Rioja El Diablo 2015 or a Tripel Trappist beer from the monks in West Malle. You order the type of drink and that’s it.
In Sevilla, a red wine is often a basic Rioja and a beer is definitely Cruz Campo, a local brew. There aren’t many other beers on the menu. Belgian beer conglomerate InBev must be scratching their head why there incredible beer selection hasn’t found any footing in the South of Spain.
The answer is becoming more clear to me. It is all about the people you meet at the bar, and not about what your drink or what you eat. Just order some tapas and something you like to drink - beer or wine. The main course is the conversation of what happened last week or last night.
Luckily you don’t have to settle for cabbage rolls and vodka here. Gambas al ajillo, patatas bravas, or boquerones aren’t too shabby. Add a cold beer or any Spanish wine and you have a great starter menu.
And thus, many conversations and night adventures commence. Until around midnight that is, when for some local ordinance, this place closes down faster than a restaurant with rats in the kitchen.
November 4, 2023