I’ve been using Windows Vista since the early beta releases and, for the most part, it’s not given me many problems. I normally leave my computer running but needed to reboot it today. I figured this was a simple task. Surely Microsoft would make this very easy to accomplish.

So I click on the Vista logo in the down in the far left corner and am presented with the following screen. (Click graphic to enlarge)

I believe I’m supposed to select one of the three buttons I’ve gone ahead and labeled. Which of these three buttons would chose to reboot your computer? After a few seconds I chose the prize located behind button #1. But when I mouse over it I receive this message from Microsoft: “Saves your session and puts your computer in a low-power state so that you can quickly resume working”. Well, it sure looked like a POWER button but I guess not. I’m not even sure that that sentence means.

Button #2 actually does what you’d think it would; it locks your computer.

Now here’s where things get interesting. When I click on button #3 I’m presented with a menu filled with another SIX OPTIONS! You’ve got to be kidding. (Click graphic to enlarge)

How many meetings within the Vista group did it take to put this work of art together? I can now do the following:

Switch User – Nice, but not what I’m looking to do
Log Off – Is this like reboot or more like shut down?
Lock – isn’t this what button #2 is for?
Restart – I *think* this is what I need?
Sleep – What?? How is this different from button #1and its “low-power” state of slumber?
Shut Down – Whew! By the time you get this far, you’ll probably want to just shut the thing down!

All I wanted to do was reboot my computer.

I just finished reading an article in this week’s Fortune Magazine where Google design guru, Marissa Mayer, is interviewed. She reviews hundreds of new ideas and is responsible for maintaining the simplicity and ease of use of Google homepage. After watching one review she felt the team had some good ideas but was trying to do too much. She remarked: “If you give users more to choose from, they’ll actually chose worse”.

One of my coworkers has a mantra that he’s done using software products that make him “feel stupid”. That’s how I feel as I try to accomplish one of the easiest task an operating system should handle. Do I really need to decide between nine options when it comes time to reboot my computer.

Microsoft, sometimes you make me feel stupid.

I hate it when simple tasks don’t work. Even more frustrating is when Microsoft makes changes to their products that make it harder for the consumer and easier for the large media companies to slip DRM into ever nook and cranny of our lives.

I popped a legal DVD I received from Netflix into my Sony DVD-ROM drive on my Vista machine and it tells me that I need to update my GRAPHICS drivers due to some DRM scheme on my machine. This is really lame. I need to take a screenshot of the exact error message but it did it a few times before I gave up. I rebooted my machine and now the DVD just hangs for a minute and the drive door opens.

I’m not sure what’s going on but if this is Vista’s way of welcoming me into Microsoft’s vision of DRM on the desktop, I’m bailing out very soon.

Update: I’m still having problems but I’m not sure if it’s Windows Vista. I’m still confused by the error message it gave me about having to update my video card drivers which makes so sense. I tried another couple of DVD and did get them to play. This leads me to believe that it might have something to do with the DVD (Netflix supplied “All the President’s Men”).

I experienced three very different ways companies market and advertise their company and service.

Example 1: A radio ad for a petroleum company where an excited guy pitches this company’s products. Everything sounded fine until the end where he lists off a number of reasons to chose this company. One of the reason’s he gives is a “new company logo”. Initially I thought it was a joke but it wasn’t. I dunno but a new logo is about as effective at getting me to try your products as an “Under New Management” sign is. Not very.

Example 2: Another radio ad. This one for Home Depot although it’s sneaky. This time a guy with a very menacing voice (queue the mood music) tells us about a free seminar we’re all invited to to learn more about how to “earthquake proof” our homes. He goes on to explain that this seminar, held at at Home Depot, will show us how to bolt our homes firmly to the ground. The guys voice and the music make it sound like an old movie where you can tell there’s danger around the corner. It’s so corny sounding but I can elderly people freaking out after hearing this ad. Do you think that any of the products you’ll need to secure your home will be conveniently available for purchase at the Home Depot? I want to attend just so I can ask them if the same stuff is available at Lowes.

Example 3: This last example of creative advertising is my favorite. As I was walking near King Street Station in Seattle I looked up to see an older hotel with yellow brick. On the side of the hotel, in huge letters, was the name of the hotel and then what I assume to be the three primary reasons to chose this hotel above all others:

Great Rates
Modern
Fireproof

Huh? The last time I checked into a hotel I remember asking about the pool or gym hours but have you ever asked the front desk if the hotel was fireproof?

These examples reminded me of the the funny ad in BBC comedy called “The IT Crowd” about the new emergency services number. Here’s the clip.

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Each morning I take the train into Seattle. I get off the train at King Station which is located right next Qwest Field where the Seahawks play the Dallas Cowboys this Saturday in the playoffs. (Go Hawks!)

I take a steep set of stairs to the street level and then walk four blocks where I catch a 10 minute bus that takes me near the Space Needle in a neat neighborhood in Seattle called Belltown. But over the past few months I’ve decided to walk the 2 miles from the train station to my office. With the many traffic lights, cross streets and crowded sidewalks it takes me about 40 minutes walking at a brisk pace.

It reminds me a bit of being in Germany and having to walk most places. There’s something about walking through a city that you don’t get by driving. I like to listen to the hustle and bustle of the city. I like to listen to the many local musicians playing music on the busy corners, hat on the sidewalk, full of dollar bills. I like to smell the cinnamon rolls coming out of the oven at the local bakeries. I enjoy walking by the various ethnic restaurants and seeing the families preparing for the day. I even walk by a dry cleaners that’s run by a Korean family and I like the scent that’s coming off the pipes on the roof.

The busiest intersection I pass leads to the ferry terminal going to Vashon Island. Thousands of commuters come off the ferries every morning. It’s a mix of ages, nationalities and economic levels and it’s fascinating to watch. A huge sea of people. But what I find the most interesting is a single, middle aged man who stands at the corner every morning. He stands there, holding a sign, with a big smile on his face. He doesn’t ask for money and he won’t accept money. He’s not selling anything either.

His simple cardboard sign says, “SMILE”. When I pass him each morning, I can’t help but do just that.

I’ve read several books detailing the fall of Enron including The Smartest Guys in the Room, Conspiracy of Fools, and Power Failure. I’m fascinated by the personalities involved in the collapse of what used to be a universally admired company. A good friend of mine worked for Enron right out of business school and I recall how he described going into work one morning only to find the company he worked for no longer existed. A few personal items stuffed in a box were all he took home.

I was thrilled to find this article in the New Yorker from one of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell, where he questions the theory that more information could have helped us see the trouble at Enron before it was too late.

“There have been scandals in corporate history where people are really making stuff up, but this wasn’t a criminal enterprise of that kind,” Macey says. “Enron was vanishingly close, in my view, to having complied with the accounting rules. They were going over the edge, just a little bit. And this kind of financial fraud—where people are simply stretching the truth—falls into the area that analysts and short-sellers are supposed to ferret out. The truth wasn’t hidden. But you’d have to look at their financial statements, and you would have to say to yourself, What’s that about? It’s almost as if they were saying, ‘We’re doing some really sleazy stuff in footnote 42, and if you want to know more about it ask us.’ And that’s the thing. Nobody did.”

–Link to full article

Our family already has two Nintendo DS Lite. But our youngest child has began playing Nintendogs for the DS. I’ve been looking to pickup another DS but haven’t been able to find one. They are sold out at the Target, Fred Meyer, Amazon and even New Egg stores I’ve checked. I’ve heard it was a popular gift for Christmas, but didn’t realize it would be this difficult to locate.

I started a MyFamily website back in 1999. Over the years it’s become the central hub of news, pictures and communication among my many family members. The site has made very few changes over the years and the look and feel is quite outdated. But it has enough features and is easy enough to use that it’s been worth paying $109 annually to continue the site. My family has posted more than 1000 pictures and 500 news articles so far. Everyone in the family really enjoyed the site.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email invitation to sign up for the latest version of the MyFamily website which is still in beta. But here’s the big problem: In order to use the beta site I’d have to start an entirely separate website from the one we all already use. Why on earth would I want to do that? It would be confusing to maintain two different websites. I’d really like to try out the updated version of MyFamily but they need to find a way to port my existing site over to the new version rather than telling everyone to create an entirely new site. Sure, I can sign-up and preview the new features, but the whole point of the site is the communication with other family members.

I went to Beta MyFamily tonight and found the contact form asking if it was possible to move content from an existing site over to the beta version and here’s the message I received after I hit the submit button:

“Contact Us. We’d like to hear from you. Let us know what you think, or if you’re having trouble with our service. While we can’t respond to every message, we read each one”

I sure feel better knowing they may not respond to my inquiry but they will at least read it!

You’d think MyFamily would want to gather feedback from their most loyal customers. But this new beta program only seems to court those who are not existing users of their service which is a mistake. Someone who has used the service for over 7 years is most likely going to provide better feedback compared to a new user.

Having setup the Nintendo Wii for our kids ages, 2, 4 and 5, I was excited for Christmas morning to arrive. My 4 year old son loves the Zelda games (Ocarina, Windwaker) so I figured he’d love Twilight Princess. Well, Christmas morning arrived and so did the frustration of learning the new Wii controller. The included Wii Sports was fun, especially the bowling, but not very deep.

If our kids were a few years older I think they’d really enjoy the Wii. But getting used to the new controls provided more frustration than fun over the next three days so I decided to put everything up for sale on Craigslist. Maybe when the kids are a little older it will be worth trying again. But for now, they really like the Nintendo DS Lite as well as the Gamecube and even the N64 for Ocarina and Yoshi.

I did buy Zelda:Twilight Princess for the Gamecube which looks exactly like the Wii version. I like pushing the buttons to swing Link’s sword a whole lot better than swinging the Wii remote too. The game is much easier for my kids to play compared to the Wii version.

A few weeks ago I wrote about keeping my grandma in the loop with the HP Printing Mailbox. Well, it arrived this past week and my father got it setup for my grandma this afternoon. I setup the Presto service online so it was ready to go by the time my dad plugged in the printer.

The sign-up process was very easy to understand and took about 15 minutes. I spent a few more minutes yesterday adding approved users to her friends list so she can receive email from them. Any email address first has to be approved so that her mailbox doesn’t fill up with spam. It’s a very basic “whitelist” that will be easy to manage.

I haven’t seen the printer itself but my dad said it’s nice looking and very quiet. It’s set to dial in three times a day, download and print whatever it finds. I tested sending an email with an attached picture of my kids and it worked flawlessly.

So far so good. The real test will be to see if she’s still excited about it a few months from now. But the out of box experience thus far has been very positive. The only confusion arose when, during the sign-up process, I was told that the printer unit wouldn’t work until it was plugged in and printed out a “security code” which I then would enter into the account information on the website. My dad plugged in the printer and a security code never printed. But it’s printing properly so I guess nothing else is needed.

I finally got around to watching “The Lake House” over the holiday break. Kim and I weren’t expecting much although the reviews I’d read were very positive like this one from Roger Ebert. But we enjoyed the movie quite a bit.

At the very beginning of the movie this song is played. I looked on iTunes to find the name of the group is The Clientele and the name of the song is “I Can’t Seem to Make you Mine”. I quite like it.

[audio:clientele.mp3]