Andy Rankin

For the past several weeks a dedicated team of folks at Viget have been working on updating the web site. We set a target launch date when we started and they managed to make the deadline! A lot of hard work was put in by a few key people and many others chipped in along the way too. I think it turned out great (although I am obviously biased).

In addition to the home page, which I think looks sharp, there are a couple of other sections that I think are a lot of fun. One is the team page where everyone gets to have their smiling faces up on the web. Mouse over the serious faces and you get something fun. Fun!

I also like the new Say Viget site. Now everyone will know how to say the name - no more excuses. Mouse around the page and see and hear people saying the name. More Fun!

Health insurance is a huge pain - in many ways.  The entire health care industry is a bit screwed up.  Don’t get me wrong, I have had the good fortune (depending on how you look at it) to deal with quite a few very competent doctors and nurses over the past several months so I’m not criticizing them.  In fact, they probably have bigger headaches than I do because of insurance.  I guess I should also point out that I wouldn’t trade my health insurance for a life without the headaches of dealing with health insurance.

That being said, I find the following to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen.

Hopefully that image isn’t too small to read.  It says that Anthem.com, their web site, is closed.  This isn’t due to scheduled maintenance or a server crash.  This web site has “hours” - as in open or closed.  What?  Do their computers need a break?

Really, this is insane.  I’m trying to do a little health insurance maintenance and it is 10pm on Saturday (I know, great way to spend a Saturday night).  I obviously can’t call to talk to anyone - but apparently they don’t pay their web site to work nights either.

The talk over the past couple of weeks has been about the Microsoft bid for Yahoo! Other than Flickr, does anyone still use Yahoo!? Okay, I’m sure plenty of people do - actually my wife and I use the Yahoo! address book because we’re still waiting for Google to come out with a viable alternative.

Today, I sat down to create a Yahoo! account for my three year old. Acutally, all I wanted was a Flickr account - but of course that requires you to create a Yahoo! account. No big deal, I can live with that. From the Flickr page I clicked on the Create Your Account button (which it claims, “only takes a moment with your Yahoo! ID). That took me to the Sign in to Yahoo! page. I tracked down the “Don’t have a Yahoo! ID?” section and clicked on the Sign Up link.

That took me to the Yahoo! home page, which seemed a bit odd, and annoying, to me. From there I didn’t see any obvious “sign up for Yahoo!” links but there was one that said, “Free mail: Sign Up.” Not exactly what I wanted (I don’t want or need a Yahoo! email account) but I figured it would help me get a Flickr account. Click. Back to Yahoo! home page. Click again (maybe I blinked). Back to Yahoo! home page. Are you kidding me?

This is a company that is supposed to be worth $50 Billion? Either they’re assume everyone on Earth already has a Yahoo! account or someone is asleep at the wheel. How could an error like this ever make it out onto the live Yahoo! site? How could it sustain on the live site for more than a few minutes?

Update: Well, the link seems to be working now. I’m not sure how long it was busted - I tried several times over the course of about 30 minutes.

When you get cash from an ATM do you count it?

Yesterday we got our laptop and I had a chance to play with it a bit last night. Pretty dang cool! It’s not the fastest thing in the world (I think it’s not quite as slow as my TiVo but it’s close) and it certainly has a keyboard made for child-sized hands - but it’s a really cool machine.

I managed to get it connected to my neighbor’s open wireless network so I could update the OLPC operating system which then allowed me to connect it to my wireless network. I poked around a little with the applications (they call them “Activities“) and even downloaded and installed some new ones.

The thing comes with a handful of educational games and some other things. It has a cool little program that lets you play around writing programs in Python. It all runs on a Linux base - which again makes me wish I’d find the time to ramp up my Linux skills (and my programming skills for that matter).

Most of the time I spent admiring, or at least thinking about, the design decisions that were made when putting the machine together. It seems pretty rugged - maybe my 3 year old would have trouble destroying it? It doesn’t seem “cheap” - so that’s nice. I’m not sure what I’m going to actually do with it. Maybe Jackson will bring his into the office and we can form a mesh network… but then what?

I’m trying to decide if my kid (the previously mentioned 3 year old) could actually get any use from it right now. She’s pretty handy with a mouse on a real computer but last night she seemed kind of stumped by the trackpad - especially since it comes in three sections and only the middle section works with your finger. But she’s a kid and would probably figure that out pretty fast. Maybe we should get another one for her cousin?

I know the goal of the program is to get these laptops into the hands of kids in poor countries. I know there’s also debate as to whether or not that’s a smart priority for those kids. I’m not sure where I stand on that issue - but after using this laptop for an evening I’m wondering if it might impact regular kids here in the US. I don’t know if my 3 year old could master this thing now but certainly by the time she’s 5 she would be able to get a lot of use out of it. The OLPC idea of “school servers” and these mesh networks I think would be great for any kid - poor or otherwise. I’d much rather get my kid a rugged laptop designed to help kids learn than the latest Windows machine from Dell or a MacBook Air. If all the kids in her school had one too then it would be even more compelling.

However, I think the thing that struck me the most about this machine is that my dad would have loved it!

This isn’t a post on how to buy a car online - maybe I’ll write that one later.  I need a new car.  I’m not a car guy and really don’t enjoy shopping for cars.  My wife and I decided on the car we want, the options we want (thankfully this model has limited options available), and the color we want.  I have used Edmunds and Consumer Reports so I have a pretty good idea of how much the car costs.

I’m sure I’m not the kind of customer a car sales guy wants to see - but this is easy.  I can tell them the exact car I want.  Exactly.  No questions to be answered on my part.  I’ve asked six area dealers what their total price is for the exact car I want.  I’ve been up front that I’m shopping around.  I’ve been clear that I know exactly what I want.  Whoever sells me this car isn’t going to make much money - but if they do it right they won’t spend much time either.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised but it’s taking quite a bit of effort to get the price from most of the dealers.  It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

Anyone want to coach the Washington Redskins? According to the AP the Skins have fired Gregg Williams and Al Saunders and promoted Greg Blache and hired Jim Zorn. I can’t be sure but I’m guessing this means Gregg Williams won’t be the next head coach (which seems to be confirmed by Jason La Canfora from the Post). It also means that the next head coach probably won’t get to pick his assistants.

From my perspective that might be good - I doubt Jim Fassel would sign up for such a gig. I’m hoping this points towards the Skins looking for an up-and-coming coach who wouldn’t mind having a staff pre-assembled for him. The least interesting thing to me is to hire some so-so coach on his 2nd or 3rd go around - let’s give someone new a shot!

Unfortunately, with Williams out of the running I haven’t heard any names that get me at all excited. Maybe the young guy from the Pats? I’m certainly not excited about the defensive coordinator from the Giants (who I think was with the Eagles before that) - lame. What about Mike Singletary? That would be interesting.

I can’t help thinking that if Sean Taylor hadn’t been killed this all wouldn’t be happening. I think the Skins would have won another game or two and maybe gotten further in the playoffs. I think Gibbs might have stuck around another year. For some reason I even think maybe Gregg Williams would have had a shot at head coach. Maybe I’m wrong about all that - but if you look at the Skins before Taylor’s death and you look at them now it is two totally different pictures.

I’m having problems with my TiVoHD unit (second unit, same problems). After tinkering with things I finally decided to go to TiVo for help. While I was bummed to see that they don’t offer support via email (”at this time”), it was nice of them to at least come out and say it. It is really frustrating to spend several minutes poking around on a site looking for the email support option only to discover that the option doesn’t exist.

Why doesn’t TiVo offer email support?

Shortly after the Skins lost to Seattle a few weeks back, Coach Gibbs let us know that he wasn’t coming back next year.  On the one hand this was a big shock - it seems like next year could be a big year if the team can keep the injuries under control.  On the other hand, anyone who saw Coach Gibbs leaving the field after their last game at FedEx must have known something was up.

One thing I found to be interesting was that Coach Gibbs said that he hadn’t thought too much about his plans for next year until after that loss - and that he though that they were going to go all the way to the Super Bowl!  If pretty much anyone else had said that you would have laughed at them but I believe that Coach Gibbs really thought he would make it to the Super Bowl.

While I’m very, very disappointed that Coach Gibbs is leaving I had assumed that Gregg Williams would be the next coach - even if they went through the motions of interviewing other folks.  Well, as time drags on it seems less and less likely that he’ll get the job.  Heck, he has worked for the team for the past four years - what on earth do they need to ask him about before they can decide if he’s the guy for them?

The other day I read that there might be a new, mystery candidate in the mix.  Hmmm, that could be interesting but unless the mystery candidate is Darrell Green or Richie Pettibone (can you believe that there is no Wikipedia page for Richie Pettibone!  I’ve never contributed to Wikipedia or had much interest to but this might change that.) then I’m not interesting.  Okay, I could live with Riggo - that would work too.

Then today I’m reading about Jim Fassel being in the running.   You have to be kidding me.  It was bad enough when they were talking about Brian Billick - but Jim Fassel?  Give me a break.  Marty was a better pick.  Spurrier was more interesting.  Heck, even back when they had Norv at least you kept thinking maybe he would become a great coach.

Getting someone who has been an okay coach before, maybe even pretty good, but who ultimately failed is just not very exciting to me.  I guess I could live with a big name like Cowher but my preference would be to find some up and coming dude - the next Joe Gibbs - and give them a shot.  If an unknown tries and fails it was at least interesting.  If a re-run coach, like Fassel, tries and fails then it’s lame and boring.  What if a re-run coach tries and succeeds… well I guess I’d have to cross that bridge when we never get to it.

At least if they stick with Gregg Williams for a year we have a shot at keeping the team and the momentum together - bringing in a new guy will wreck everything.

There’s a new Computerworld article out about Rock Star Coders. Several folks at Viget talked with Mary Brandel, the author of the article, about the concept of rock star coders. Our connection to the “phenomenon” is that Emily used the term in one of our recent creative job postings. Overall the article is a good read and it’s interesting to see the reaction people are having to the term “rock star”.

Brian’s recent post about the article does a great job of explaining our take on what makes a great coder - whether you call them a rock star or not. In the article, and associated comments and blog posts, people seem to be getting caught up on the idea that a rock star coder must be a jerk. Obviously, at Viget we’re not out looking for jerks. In fact, if you read the original job posting, or if you know anything about Viget, you’d see that we’re all about building a great team - dare I say rock band? And really it’s more like an orchestra. Okay, enough with the dumb metaphors. We use the term “rock star” with our tongue in our cheek. Overall, we’ve had great success with our new approach to creative job postings so something is working right. In fact, we have recently added almost an entire new string section to the Viget Orchestra!