Hot Koehl

I hear Toyota is contemplating a quick makeover to their current logo and tagline…

Wish I could take credit for it, but at least it comes complements of fellow PSL member Eight Eleven.

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My wife says I’m too much of a cynic. That may be true, but this is one beef that, after 100,000+ flight miles, I simply cannot ignore any longer. Why should anyone suffer needlessly? I spent the last week visiting my sister out in Denver, thus necessitating the need to fly out and back into Philadelphia International (PHL).

I’ve had bad experiences, but after this last trip, I’m going to do everything in my power to avoid this travelers’ hell-hole in the future.

I flew out Monday morning, which is one of the most popular days for business travelers. That’s not necessarily a problem, as these types of travelers are experienced and jump through the check-in and security hoops with relative ease. However, PHL has recently made the genius decision to consolidate their security checkpoints in the various terminals down to a single checkpoint.

Many airlines use this layout, but do so in buildings designed to handle that type of arrangement. The PHL terminals are like unique islands, without one main entry. None were intended to handle all the passenger traffic, so to force everyone go through one is pretty shortsighted. The space they chose, outside Terminal C, can only accommodate 3 scanners, and the inevitable line extends across a walkway back towards baggage claim at Gate C.

To make matters worse, they decided it would be a great idea to break convention by redefining the security lines. Most airports have a separate, faster line for first class passengers and employees. Everyone else gets into a general line. PHL breaks up the “general” line into two subdivisions: “expert travelers” and “newbie/families” (my terms). The difference here? Absolutely none: anyone can get in either line. However the “expert” line layout is shorter, so it typically goes faster, but you can’t see that until you’re in line, since the expert one sneaks around back of the snaking, Disney-ride-like “newbie” line. I learned this the hard way.

Let’s put this silliness in perspective: My destination, Denver International Airport (DEN), has a massive entrance atrium with no less than 12 security positions, and they separate the waiting lines into the usual “Employees/First Class” and “Everyone else.”

I fail to see the efficiency improvement, how about you?

Fast forward to my return flight, which was completely painless up until we landed on the tarmac at PHL, at which time the pilot told us that our gate was “occupied.” He put it best: “I don’t even know what to tell you about that, folks.”

Anyone who’s flown anywhere other than PHL knows that this is a prime situation for a fancy technique called the “gate change.” We were slated to go into Gate C28, but I could see from my window that C27 and C29 were available. I’m pretty sure they can make the same observations from the control tower, seeing as how it’s, y’know, a tower. With huge transparent windows.

Instead, we cruised the tarmac, past untold empty gates, for about 30 minutes. Again to put it in perspective, 30 minutes after my arrival in Denver, I was in the car, out of short term parking, and on on the highway with my sister.

Oh, but they saved the best for last.

If PHL is generally lackluster, they become out-and-out incompetent when it comes to baggage claim. Let’s start with the comparison up front: Denver had my bags on the carousel within 15 minutes, including oversized ski gear. And I had to take a tram to get to the baggage area.

PHL made me wait 70 minutes for my bags.

Let that one sink for a moment.

Fun with math: My entire flight was 3.5 hours, or 210 minutes. That means my bags essentially “flew” an extra 1/3 of the flight I just finished.

It seems almost non-sequitor to even mention the fact that the newly-installed LCD’s over each baggage carousel weren’t updating the flight numbers, instead showing flights from hours earlier. Hey guys, that fancy new technology is only cool if it’s actually working. Oggling flat screens simply because they are flat stopped being cool 5 years ago.

It’s a damn shame that natural market forces are unable to correct this problem-child of an airport. In a sane world, PHL would be bankrupt and/or under new management. Instead, regulation and lack of competition have allowed this wreck of a business to limp along, disappointing passengers and providing a horrendous first impression to Philadelphia visitors. Between this place and Newark, an airport located in South Jersey or northern Delaware would do awesome business.

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We all know most TV is pretty banal, but every now and then something comes along that provides insight, makes you think. So if you ever wondered what it’s really like to be the boss, you need to watch the latest episode of House. They’ve done an excellent job (based on my experience, anyway) capturing the reality of being in charge. Everyone looks to you to fix problems they can’t handle, and everything that goes wrong is ultimately your fault. It also gets really lonely at times. If you’re one of those people who think that the boss just sits at his/her desk and collects a big paycheck, this is a must-see.

The show’s writers and producers get extra bonus points from me for taking on the issue of healthcare, and having the stones to come right and say, “This is a business, and we need to make money.” They even couch the message in a scenario that most people should be able to appreciate from both sides. Very timely given all the discourse surrounding healthcare reform.

44 minutes, well worth it.

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If you’ve read this blog before, you know I’m a big Firefox fan. But the one problem that has dogged me is the inevitable bloat that Firefox suffers when open for long periods of time. I work in my browser all day, and after 8 hours it has usually gobbled up all the available RAM, and sucks processor cycles like a Dyson. Fortunately I’ve finally pinpointed the cause and several solutions.

Let’s start at the source. The Firefox team made a crucial usability decision, which is at the heart of the problem. They wanted to allow the user to recover any page that may have recently opened. So by default, Firefox keeps navigation history for all your open tabs, plus the last 10 tabs that you closed. The navigation history for each of those tabs — both open and closed — can hold up to a maximum of 50 pages (i.e. the number of URLs you can traverse purely through the Back/Forward buttons)

With no limit to the number of open tabs, plus the high limit on the Back/Forward navigation, it’s easy to see why Firefox slows to a crawl. If you do a lot of browsing in a lot of tabs, your memory disappears in a hurry. Managing all that extra memory causes the processor to work overtime to keep Firefox hippo moving.

There are two ways to fix this issue in a pinch. First you can simply restart the browser, making sure that it doesn’t save your tabs (you are prompted to save tabs at close by default). Second, you can clear the Recently Closed Tabs to eliminate a portion of the tab history bloat (History > Recently Closed Tabs > Clear Closed Tabs List).

For a more long-term solution, we need to mess with the system settings. Type about:config in the address bar to bring up Firefox’s complete configurations list. The latest Firefox versions present you with a warning before opening the page.

A warning: this page handles everything in your browser. Everything. Don’t mess with stuff if you don’t know what you’re doing.

In the “Filter” textbox at the top, enter

browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo

This setting controls how many closed tabs to track. Less old tabs = less memory usage. Double click the lone entry in the list and change the value from “10″ to “5.”

Back to the filter box, enter

browser.sessionhistory.max_entries

This setting controls the navigation history limit. Double click the entry and drop the value from “50″ down to “25″.

Close the about:config tab and restart your browser.

Your mileage on these tweaks will vary depending on your system specs. If you can go a day of heavy browsing without hitting the creep, slowly increment the settings back up, until you hit the sweet spot.

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Reviews for Apple’s iPad are all over the place. Personally, I feel that tablets have tried and failed enough times in the general consumer market to call the concept dead. iPad will likely find adoption in the same niche’s as its predecessors: hospitals and other similar venues where it can effectively replace a manilla folder of documents.

Instead, I find the lack of Flash support more interesting to consider. This seems like a terrible omission for a device that Jobs touts as “the best browsing experience you’ve ever had” (around 0:30). I don’t know about you, but *my* browsing experience would be far less than perfect without access to the de facto standard video streaming technology.

The decision was apparently made due to compatibility problems…

Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.

That may be where the web world is headed, but the iPad is entering a market nowhere near that reality. This just screams classic Apple mindset. They may share the mantra “Everyone else’s stuff is crap” with Microsoft, but Apple tacks the phrase “and that’s why you can’t use it,” onto the end.

I thought that Apple had figured out the market, how to balance a closed platform in order to maintain stability and skyrocket profitability. The Flash decision definitely throws that balance off kilter, and now I’m curious to see if they’ll fall back into the decision-making style of the PC wars in the late 80’s and early 90’s (Note to the kiddies: Mac wasn’t always “cool.” They lost a lot of weight and their acne cleared up just as you entered buying age).

They can get away with dictatorial control over platforms like the iPod and iPhone because they are very focused devices. However iPad is a closer technical cousin to the laptop than the smartphone, and the last few years of App Store and iTunes revenue may be skewing their vision on this one.

My gut tells me they are using iPad to push public perception away from Flash and toward HTML5. There’s no way they’ll make such a play on the Mac platform, but the iPad offers very controlled environment to test the waters. If people (continue to) complain, they’ll publish the iPad Flash patch that they’ve already got sitting on the shelf. Trust me, it’s there.

Update: This image sums up the problem for me quite nicely.

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Today is something of a landmark for me. Just a few minutes ago, I launched my first full-time commercial venture when I flipped the switches and took Fwd:Vault out of beta. There’s an announcement over at the official blog if you’re interested in the details. Here I’d rather talk about what’s going through my mind, lest any of you are proceeding down a similar path.

First off, this has been 14 months in the making. I started working on this shortly after the startup I was working for went belly-up in November 2008. Like so many people these days, I found myself facing a lean job market. Starting a business has been a lifelong dream of mine, so after talking it over with my wife — a world-class vet with double my brain power — we agreed that the timing was right for me to pursue my dream.

So many startup publications talk about “taking the plunge,” of overcoming the fear that holds people back from getting started. This was not the case for me, and I’m not sure why it has to be the case for anybody. If you think and plan ahead, you can avoid the worst of the action-paralyzing fear. I wanted to run my own business since I was a kid, which instantly diffused fear around the general concept. I kept trying to come up with viable business ideas until I had one that stood up to scrutiny, decreasing some of the fears of failure. I worked on it in my free time until the opportunity to go full-time presented itself, removing the fear of having no income. Knowledge and understanding are they key. If you fear the unknown, know more.

Other people on the entrepreneurial road falter when they look at the work involved. Admittedly, looking back on the last year ‘n change, I’m astounded at how much I’ve done. My subversion repository had 700 commits when I launched. The site and service cover 1200 files in 175 folders (that doesn’t include framework stuff, I wrote every one of those). I taught myself a library’s worth of new tech, including automated recurring billing, search engines, email syntax, Amazon S3, daemonizing, undocumented PHP functionality, and even more HTML/CSS/JS techniques. On the business side, I registered an LLC, got a business address and phone number, bought servers and domains, began proper bookkeeping practices, won a competition, dealt with consultants, performed basic market research, investigated advertising venues, taught myself basic SEO/SEM, and learned to analyze traffic.

That’s simply a staggering amount of work to think about at once, and I never would’ve gotten any of it done if I tried. You simply cannot look at it as a whole all at once and keep your sanity. Every day was just one or two tasks: get a page working: fix an email processing bug, and so on. You know where you and where you want to go. In between is simply a mountain of very tiny to-do’s. As long as you keep an eye on the prize — launching a business — the task list sorts itself.

Finally, I put the most important exercise in the title of this post. Every time you complete a page, add a feature, piece together another part of your business structure, celebrate it! Relay your latest conquest to your wife, family, friends, whoever will listen. Write a blog post about it (you’ll find tons of posts on this site inspired by my startup efforts).

Even if they don’t care — my wife glazes over every time I get into technical stuff — or nobody listens — this blog averages less than 100 hits/day — you’ll feel energized knowing that you were able to proclaim “I finished something, I took a step.” That’s so crucial, because of all the naysayers you will meet, the worst one is your own self-doubt.

Then, when you finally reach your big goal, mark the calendar, and celebrate that day every year. Savor it when facing your next mountain. And write a blog post, leave a mile marker for the next guy.

My next hill starts tomorrow. For now…

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…I suggest you do so immediately. We’ll have a major announcement by the end of the day, and the perks that come with signing up beforehand will go away at that time. Basically this is your last chance to get into the Fwd:Vault Beta, and enjoy the perks we have planned for our beloved early adopters.

Not-so-subtle hint: Beta users will have the chance to enjoy a serious lifetime discount.

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I typically hate the random flash games that go around the web, but I stumbled on one today that’s actually pretty fun, if only because of the mechanic at work. It’s called Invisible Cursor.

The game randomly spawns targets for you to click, but you can’t see the mouse cursor, forcing you to “feel” your way to each target. You do get a quick highlight of the cursor location each time you click, but it’s really brief and is accompanied by a screen flash and the target shattering. Oh and you only have a few seconds to shoot your next target.

It’s got all the depth of most web games (i.e. none), but the effect of trying to hit targets without seeing your cursor is very similar to playing a first person shooter. Lots of motion on the screen and you need to be accurate, thus demanding fast response times and a lot of eye-hand coordination. If you suck a sniping, I suggest you play this for a while to improve your aiming skills.

My top score right now is 164 408. Feel free to brag in the comments if you beat me.

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I had an interesting experience the other day at my local BJ’s (it’s like Sam’s Club and Costco). I had finished loading my items into my car, and was returning the cart to the corral, when I passed an employee gathering carts to reload the stack at the entrance. He had already gathered the carts from my nearest corral, so I figured I’d save him some work and tucked my cart onto the end of the line.

My good intentions were met with a lot of headshaking and a terse, “No, line’s full.” I apologized, and started to explain that I was just trying to help him out, and he repeated the same answer in the same cold tone. I took the cart off the end of the line, put it in the corral, and headed back to my car.

I didn’t even get to the car before I decided that, had that been one of my employees, I would have fired him on the spot.

From my perspective as the consumer, this gentleman couldn’t have done more to make me awful. He pointed a mistake I made, and blew off my explanation. I even apologized to him, and he still chastized my actions.

I walked away feeling like I had done wrong, like I had acted foolishly. No one likes making a mistake, but he only exacerbated my feelings by dismissing me again when presented with my explanation.

Having moved passed the experience, the business owner in me kicked into gear. I would be utterly mortified to know that one of my employees has left a customer feeling the way I did.

In this age of abundance, every consumer knows that they have a million options when it comes to just about anything. As a vendor, you simply cannot afford to give them excuses to look elsewhere. Forget being the stellar standout in your field, this is a minimum requirement simply to compete.

There is only one right answer for the employee in this situation: just say “thank you.” Wait for the customer to walk out of sight, pull the cart off the end, and go back to your job. I don’t care how much work they create for you, the customer has zero clue when it comes to the intricacies of shopping cart retrieval. And justifiably so: it’s not his job. I use the term “intricacies” here in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, but the same reality applies to almost any job.

The road to market failure surely begins where good (or at least neutral) consumer intentions meet employee apathy and negativity. If you can’t save the bad apple, cut it off.

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Avatar was a fantastic movie. A feast for the eyes and a halfway decent storyline, Hollywood actually got it right. But I don’t think that I was as amazed at the imagery as the larger population, and I can trace that disillusionment back to one place: my time in the World of Warcraft and a lifetime of gaming in general. So if you thought the stuff you could do and see on the world of Pandora was bad-ass, take a short walk with me through Azeroth.

Let’s start with the whole concept of an avatar. The Dictionary.com definition lists its use in computer circles as “a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet.” Geeks use the term to refer to the icon next to a forum post, or to describe the polygon representation you control in a gaming environment. James Cameron’s movie takes that concept to the next level. So to get started in World of Warcraft, you need to build your avatar.

And unlike the movie, you don’t have to grow them in tanks, and you get an even wider selection of far less human forms to choose from. Fans of the Na’vi will want to go with a Draenei. They’re big, blue, have tails, and actually are aliens in Warcraft lore.

Another big part of Avatar is the connection that the Na’vi have with the environment around them, flora and fauna alike. WoW’s got you covered there as well. Every WoW avatar plays as a certain class, which dictates all the battle actions you can take. Mages cast spells, Warriors hit stuff, you get the idea. There are 10 classes in all.

A Na’vi fan will want to choose a Hunter (“at home in the wilderness and have a special affinity for beasts”) or a Druid (“shapshifters with an affinity for the plant and animal kingdoms”). Hunters can tame and train nearly all the wild animals they’ll come across in Azeroth to fight by their side, and fight primarily at range with a bow. Hunters also have the ability to track any living thing: animals, beasts, even undead. Their training would do Neytiri proud. And some of the beasts you can control look like they belong on Pandora, like the Warp Stalker.

Meanwhile, Druids use nature-inspired abilities to attack enemies and heal allies. An “attack” druid will transform into a cat or bear, while a healer-style druid will transform into the Tree of Life. That’s right, a walking, talking tree.

And you though the voices in the Tree of Souls were cool.

You do have a bit of a decision to make, though. If you want your big blue Draenei, you can be a hunter, but not a druid. If you want to go the druid route, your choices are limited to the Night Elf (who’s big and blue without a tail), or Tauren (Huge! With horns and a tail, but not blue).

To finish off the “connection with the environment” motif, I would consider skinning and herbalism for your professions.

Much was made of the colorful settings that we saw Jake Sully and Neytiri stomping around, but again, WoW has left me jaded. Everyone thought that the floating “Hallelujah Mountains” were cool, but I’ll be impressed when they build a city on top of those rocks, like Dalaran.

Of course you need a way to get up to Dalaran, and Azeroth natives don’t have access to banshees. No, instead we just use dragons

…and hippogryphs

…and gryphons

…even a phoenix

And there’s plenty more. Personally, I don’t think Turok has a prayer.

Of course Dalaran is just one of the locales you can soar around, and some of the destinations in Azeroth would give Pandora locales a run for their money. Avatar fans will particularly enjoy exploring and questing the alien landscapes of the Outlands, especially Zangarmarsh and Terokkar Forest.

Finally, there’s one aspect of Pandora and Azeroth exploration that is identical: the smell you have from spending way too much time wandering around either one. To that end, Dr. Augustine and I provide the same advice: get up, shower, have a bite to eat.

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