Mike Industries

You know the feeling. The plane has just reached cruising altitude, you're about to whip out your laptop, and bam... the person in front of you reclines their seat all the way back and effectively reduces your personal space by about 20%. I'd estimate it only happens to me on maybe one out of every five flights, but when it does, it can really ruin the chance to get any work done. This weekend, on an Alaska Airlines flight back from the Future of Web Apps conference, I found myself in an extremely tight row and the guy in front of me reclined his seat all the way back before the plane had even finished its climb. Great. This was a sub two-hour flight and it wasn't even at night so why the need to assume the position like this? I lowered my tray and placed my compact 12-inch Powerbook on it thinking I could at least get some work done, but upon opening the lid, I found that it was physically impossible to place the laptop in any open position and type on it at the same time. This is a tiny laptop and it was hanging halfway off the front of the tray and into my abdomen. Unbelievable. I know I've been in a similar situation before and it wasn't this bad so I assume Alaska has eliminated some legroom or I was just in a really bad row. The distance from the front of my headrest to the back of the other person's headrest was only about 20 inches. The situation continued to irritate me throughout the flight. The guy in front of me was even leaning forward for most of the flight! His only saving grace was that he looked a little bit like Stan. I actually pretended he was Stan for the duration of the flight in order to reduce my anger towards him. Other things I did during the flight:

• Used my tray as a drumset for a minute
• Issued random kneejerks into the seatback just to interrupt his train of thought, whatever it was
• Whipped out my camera and took a few pictures (with the autofocus assist light on "high") from right above his head

(Update: Yes, yes, I know this doesn't really help the situation.) All in all, I'm not sure any of this had much effect, but it really got me thinking about proper airplane seat etiquette. I personally only recline my seat under two circumstances:

1. If the flight is over 5 or 6 hours and the person behind me isn't Jeff Veen or Tom Watson size
2. If there is nobody or a small child behind me

Old guy (right): leaning back with the seat upright... good. Jason Santa Maria lookalike (left): leaning forward with the seat reclined... bad.In other words, I only recline my seat if it does me a material amount of good and it doesn't do anyone else a material amount of bad. I had a debate in the office with someone else about this and he felt the opposite. He said "when someone in front of me reclines, I recline also". To me, this is like child abuse. Someone else does it to you so you just continue the cycle of abuse. Bad.

I suppose the ideal thing to do would be to just ask the person in front of you to kindly move their seat back upright, but as average sized 5' 11" guy, what are my grounds for expecting this courtesy? In the midst of my ruminations, I remembered a product I'd heard about several years ago which actually prevents airplane seats from reclining: The Knee Defender. I remember thinking at the time that it seemed like kind of an inconsiderate device to use, but I'm changing my attitude about that now. I'm buying one, although I will only use it on appropriately short flights and only if I'm in a tight row. There are really only two drawbacks to the device as I see it:

1. They must be applied with the tray down and before any reclining takes place (wouldn't have worked on my flight because the Stan lookalike was so trigger happy with his recline button).
2. They are kind of conspicuous so the flight attendants might notice and the people next to you might give you weird looks and/or think you're a jerk.

What is everyone else's policy towards seat reclining? Am I alone in my conscious restraint of the recline button? Interesting note: On the Knee Defender page, there is a quote from the Washington Post that says "If the guy won't compromise, whip out your Knee Defender." I don't see how this would work since the attempted "compromise" would appear to occur after the seat is already reclined and thus not subject to the Knee Defender. C'mon Washington Post... do some actual reporting! :)

I’ve wondered for at least ten years now why Volkswagen never made a Jetta-like car with a retractable or convertible top. I owned a 1999 Jetta VR6 once which I loved but ended up moving up to a Saab 9-3 because I just love convertibles. I really only had five requirements which led me to the Saab:

1. Manual transmission
2. Usable back seats
3. Under $40,000
4. Probably not American
5. At least *reasonably* masculine

Volkswagen seemed like the perfect company to build a car like this but the only ragtops they had in production at the time violated the last requirement: The Cabriolet and The Beetle.

A few days ago, I happened to be driving by a VW dealer and saw what looked a little like some sort of Jetta convertible. Holy crap! A quick check online revealed that this new car is the Volkswagen Eos. And it’s not just a convertible! It’s a retractable hardtop!

Starting at $28,000, this is the car I would be buying right now if I drove more than 30 miles a week and was in the market for a car. It’s fast but not too fast. High-end but not so expensive that you’d worry about a door ding here and there. And how can you not love the retractable hard top? I haven’t even driven one yet but if it drives like a typical Volkswagen, it’s probably money on the road.

UPDATE: Apparently, this thing has a power sunroof too. I’ve never seen that in a convertible or retractable hardtop before. It’s also reportedly the top-selling convertible in Europe right now.

I just got totally screwed in our ESPN.com employees-and-alumni fantasy football league by the worst keeper rules I’ve ever seen. It’s a $200 $300 league too so it hurts twice thrice as bad. I don’t even want to get into the specifics, but let me just say, if you participate in a keeper league, be damn sure the people making the rules use standard keeper rules and don’t make up their own on the fly.

I feel crippled. And yet… I will still dominate.

If you’re already in enough fantasy leagues or you’re looking for a less “effort intensive” way to play some fantasy football, head on over to the Newsvine Hi-Lo Fantasy Football Challenge. The Hi-Lo Challenge is much quicker than full-roster fantasy football in that all you need to do is pick two NFL teams each week: one that you think will score a high number of points and one that will score a low number. The difference in their actual scores is your score for the week.

The catch — much like a “survivor pool” — is that you can’t pick the same high team or the same low team more than once during the season.

You can create up to 8 different entries and join a different group with each so as to play against different friends, colleagues, and people you’ve perhaps never met. So head on over to the Hi-Lo Challenge and test your football prognostication skills…

Old Fogey working the phones in Coshocton CountyPeople often tell me that we don’t toot our own horn enough at Newsvine. Record traffic, record unique users, a rapidly expanding groundswell of contributors, and we don’t issue press releases, pump our chests out, or thumb our noses at competitors every time something cool happens over here.

Every so often, however, something *really* cool happens, and one of those somethings just happened.

Newsvine writer and community favorite Jerry “Old Fogey” Firman has just worked his way onto the Ohio ballot in the race to replace embattled Congressman Bob Ney in the U.S. House of Representatives. For those who aren’t familiar with the situation, Ney has been implicated by witnesses in the high profile bribery case involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

So who is this “Old Fogey”, you ask?

Well he’s a 70 year old retired Army aviator and newspaper man who provides some of the most enlightening and insightful commentary you’ll see around Newsvine. Although we think he’s giving the site a bit too much credit, he says in his column:

“I must admit that running for any office or even thinking of politics was very far from my mind when I first started to write on Newsvine. Newsvine got me off my duff and made me realize I should be doing something for my friends and neighbors instead of mowing grass and going to Texas for the winter.”

Although Newsvine is not in the business of endorsing political candidates, we’re more than happy to help spread the word of Firman’s candidacy. It’s a shining example of the positive effect online communities can have on individuals. Sometimes you don’t know what you’re capable of until you find the right environment.

No one knows how successful this underdog citizen’s bid for an Ohio congressional post will be, but win or lose, we’ll learn a lot about the civic process from his candidacy and his column.

It’s fantasy football time again, and this year, we’re expanding the Industry Know-Nothings League (IKNFL) to a whopping 26 people. That’s 260 fingers worth of trash-talking… or trash-typing, as it were. The good news is that we have exactly ONE spot up for grabs, and now is your chance to win it. First there are some things you should know about the league:

1. Don’t join if you don’t know football. We already have one of those and it’s a bit aggravating to hear cries of desperation throughout the entire season, and even during the draft.
2. This is a $40 buy-in league with weekly payouts and end-of-the-year payouts, so please make sure your religion doesn’t frown on gambling before joining.
3. We draft offensive and defensive players and the scoring is fairly normalized so that every player on the field can make an impact.
4. We will be drafting live, online, in a couple of weeks.

So there you have it. If you’d like to claim the final spot, you need only do one thing: Write a haiku about Croftie (pictured to the right), who was the winner of last year’s league. Post your haikus in the comments. The league will pick a winner on Wednesday, August 9th.

I love my condo building. I really do. It’s located in a great area. Most of the residents are nice people. I have the top floor corner unit. My next door neighbor is hot. I could go on and on.

But someone spilled powdered laundry detergent in our one elevator over a week ago, and despite probably every single one of the building’s 50-odd residents using the elevator during that time, no one has cleaned it up. It’s like non-lethal Genovese Syndrome.

Someone took the time to write a note with a bold red Sharpie asking the perpetrator to take responsibility for their spillage. Another person took the time to take that note down. And just today, I saw that the words “clean me” had been scrawled in the powder. Cute. Kind of reminded me of an extremely dirty white Honda I saw once, with the words “Also available in white” written on the window.

So today I finally broke down and vacuumed the stuff up. As one of the only renters in the building, I was probably the least likely candidate to care enough to do so, but what can I say. It wasn’t even the detergent itself that was killing me. It was the constant reminder that I live in a building of people too wrapped up in their own lives to deal with even 30 seconds of pro-bono energy exertion… myself included.

Without looking it up, please answer the question on the right.

Some possibly interesting items from the month of July:

• A follow-up to the Subjective Group Decision Making and Carpets post is coming soon. The choices are narrowed down to two now and I should know what the final decision is in a few days. Such drama.
• I’m heading down to Portland for WebVisions today. Will be speaking about “Designing for Community Interaction” and participating on another design panel as well on Friday. Come say hi if you’re in the Land of Port.
• Lord Byron’s new book “Publish and Prosper” is out. If you’re running a business and thinking about maintaining a company blog for it, you should read this book for an overview of the important issues involved with such a thing.
• Tivo Series 3 boxes are allegedly very close at hand. Comcast, you may have just been spared the gallows. We’ll see.
• I’m thinking about getting a Slingbox, just for kicks. Anybody ever use one? Is the quality any good?
• The new season of Reno 911 has begun. Rejoice.
• I went coldwater diving in a dry suit for the first time last week off of Alki Beach. Not sure I’m going to do that again. There is some beautiful stuff down there, as is evidenced from my friend Calvin’s great photography, but man, it’s just too much gear. My idea of scuba diving is throwing on a shorty, hopping on a boat, and jumping in the 80 degree waters of a tropical island destination.
• Has anybody else noticed a style of commercial on TV lately where a company will spend the first 25 seconds or so describing the product and then during the last 5 seconds, they will actually repeat a specific line mechanically three times in a row? One I saw yesterday said “Apply directly to the forehead. Apply directly to the forehead. Apply directly to the forehead.” Really weird and disturbing. I’ve seen a few more of these as well, all for different products. They seem to run a lot on cable news channels like MSNBC.
• This is one of the best user experience design quotes I’ve ever read and it’s not even a user experience design quote.

Pink Comic Sans. A perfect indication of how this process has gone so far.I live in a condo building with four floors and 40 units. The time has come to replace the carpet in the hallways and all common areas. It is a pretty big job that will cost $20,000 or so and obviously affects everybody’s living experience. It is slightly complicated by the fact that the walls are a light mauve and the current carpet is a dark mauve and painting the walls is not part of this project.

Certain things have happened already in the selection/replacement process which, in my opinion, have been an unmitigated disaster. So without revealing the details of the situation, I’d like to ask this question:

If you were either the president or a member of a condo board, what exact process would you undertake to select new carpeting? It can be one sentence or one paragraph. Dictatorial or democratic. Or anything in between…

The halogen torchiere. You know it well. It was the portable upright lamp seen in every living room, dorm room, and bedroom during most of the 1990s. Available for not much more than $15 at any home and hardware store during the height of its popularity, this ultra-soft source of light was a staple of urban living.

Has anybody noticed, though, how difficult it is to find one of these badboys today? Everywhere you go, it seems this bastion of illumination has been replaced by either an awful flourescent bulb version or a weak incandescent model, both usually with the dreaded “three-way switch” instead of the full-range dimmer. What gives?

I went into my local Lowe’s Hardware Store to find out.

As it turns out, there have been a rash of accidents over the last several years resulting from the use of these lamps. Apparently, the bulbs burn extremely hot and if the fixture tips over or some moron throws a shirt on top of it, a fire can start. Hmmmm, seems like a reasonable cause for alarm, but my halogen of 15 years just went out and I need a new one! How prevalent could this safety hazard really be?

After work today, I went down to the last place I knew of which carried something resembling my current model: Fred Meyer in Ballard. Fred Meyer is a combination hardware store/grocery store and they have a ton of stuff. Sure enough, I spotted a Holmes 300 Watt Halogen Torchiere with full-range dimmer!!! And better yet, it seemed to have all sorts of new safety features built in like auto-off and a cage around the bulb. According to the packaging, its “new technology and design exceeds new 1999 UL 153 Safety Standards”… whatever that means.

So I threw two of them in the cart and went over to the food section for some groceries. No sooner do I run into Keith’s wife and start talking about how Disneyland beats the crap out of Disneyworld, than a woman interrupts our conversation and politely says the following (pointing to the torchieres in my cart):

“Sorry to interrupt you, but my entire house burned down because of one of those lamps.”

Apparently it’s kind of prevalent!!!

I went on to explain that these new lamps were safer than the ones from the past but she didn’t seem impressed. I don’t blame her.

And so with that, I proceeded to the checkout to purchase my death torches. I’m taking the Holmes company at their word since they are a reputable manufacturer, but if my condo or the Newsvine offices catch fire and kill me, somebody please hack into my server and delete this blog post.