According to a USA Today article, how you treat a waiter says a lot about your character.

“Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with,” “Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles.”
Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson

This makes me want to start 3rees.com. This one made me laugh:

Five things I currently have no intention of doing:

Well, not yet, but if this technology is widely implemented my TV is heading to the curb. Any broadcasting company would do this to its customers would have to be as stupid as the RIAA and MPAA.

Fortune Magazine interviews software guru, Ray Ozzie, creator of Groove.

Shopping with young children should be avoided at all costs. Yet sometimes there’s no choice but to bring them along. We took our 5, 3, and 2 year old to Macy’s for a little easter shopping today. As usual they kids ran wild a few times but overall, they were pretty well-behaved.

I noticed two things that Macy’s does to make shopping a little easier: They have LCD screens showing Nickelodeon near the changing rooms, and they provide “price check” kiosks throughout the store. The LCD screens are great for dad and the kids while mom tries on clothes. And the price check kiosks are a big time saver when you locate an item you’d like to buy, but the tag is missing or you’re unsure of the sale price.

We also managed to get out of the store without our kids breaking or stealing anything which is a nice change of pace.

I’ve purchased my share of electronics this past year and have noticed a disturbing trend. Almost every new gadget I’ve bought comes with either way too much documentation or far too little. Here are three examples from recent purchases:

1. Motorola E815 – Great phone but the manual for this phone is downright user-unfriendly. The manual is small in dimension yet numerous in pages which makes for a very frustrating experience when all I want to know is how to dial to voicemail. At least with a manual that’s too small I’d just move on and call Verizon for voicemail instructions, but this manual was so big I figured the answer to my question just *had* to be in there somewhere. Yet it wasn’t.

2. Creative X-Fi Soundcard – This is a $125 soundcard yet Creative acts like it’s selling me a $15 POS model. Instead of an actual manual I’m given this huge poster of sorts which requires a good 5×5 foot area to read! I’ve seen the “poster manual” a few times now and it’s really annoying. The poster usually only has enough information to get the item installed yet leaves little room for anything else.

3. Canon ZR500 – For an entry level camcorder I’d expect Canon to include very clear and comprehensive manual, but that’s just not the case. The manual is clear but is severely lacking in several basic areas of operation. For example, I’m like most people that would expect to be able to transfer video from the camcorder onto my PC. So I break out the manual to see how to accomplish this and Canon includes a whopping single paragraph of help. Canon actually says, “See the instruction manual for the software”. Canon basically pawns off the responsibility to someone else which is little help for a beginner.

The only electronic item I’ve purchased lately that included a comprehensive yet clear manual is the HP OfficeJet 4215 “All in One” Printer. HP did a nice job of organzing the manual so I’m able to find the answer to most questions very quickly.

Some of these are fascinating and complex. My kids love to watch this type of stuff.
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According to Money Magazine, the best job in America is Software Engineer. This is great news for those of us involved in creating software and all the support positions it takes to release a stable and successful piece of software. 10-year job growth forecast is 46% with an average salary of just over $80,000. That average pay seems quite low at least for the Seattle area.

Here are the jobs that round out the Top 10 (ave. pay/10-year growth)

1. Software Engineer – $80,500/46%
2. College Professor – $81,500/31%
3. Financial Advisor – $122,500/26%
4. HR Manager – $73,500/23%
5. Physician Asst – $75,000/50%
6. Market Research Analyst – $82,500/20%
7. Computer/IT Analyst – $83,500/36%
8. Real Estate Appraiser – $66,000/23%
9. Pharmacist – $92,000/25%
10. Phsychologist – $66,500/19%

But this guy has the best job in America

A Dilbert strip this week reminded me of many friends who head over to Microsoft as contractors with the hope of “going blue” down the road.