Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Crissy and I don’t drink beer, but we do buy some when we host a party. And then, since our friends know we don’t drink, they bring beer to the party assuming we don’t have any. But our guests never consume more than they bring. Either we have generous guests or boring guests. :-)

So, anyway, over time, our beer stash grows.

Last night, I was cleaning out our second bedroom (the office / guest room / storage room) I realized that we had over 50 bottles of beer. This morning I carried them all out to my car and brought them to work with the goal of giving them away.

As luck would have it, one of my colleagues is having a party in 2 weeks, so she is inheriting all the beer. Yay! 50 fewer things to take to Colorado!

So, ignoring the unnecessary reference to Boyz to Men… it’s really sad leaving Seattle. Crissy and I will be flying to Colorado next week and, by my count, I will have lived here for exactly 6 years and 6 days — I wonder how many hours… hmm… :-)

This week started with a little party when it suddenly hit me that while all this time I’ve been thinking, “we’re moving in late June”, it was suddenly late June. And that put me in a really sad mood.

And to make matters worse, this whole week has been a series of goodbye lunches and coffees. Also every time we go out, there’s the “this is the last time I’ll eat here”. It’s pretty weird.

This weekend, we’re going to try to go to the Fremont Solstice Parade, this was the first Seattle event I attended (thanks Sapan!) 6 years ago when I moved here, so it seems logical to attend go again as we leave. :-)

All these goodbyes remind me of college, where guys fell into 3 categories of goodbye-ers:

1. Scared to be emotional - these guys would say ‘um’ a lot and finally just shake hands or hug at the end
2. Avoiders - these guys would either just avoid everyone or say goodbye as if it weren’t a moving away event. Just a “see ya” and turn and leave.
3. Stoic manly man - firm handshake, good eye contact and a heartfelt “good luck”.

So far, I’m category #3. I imagine I’ll be #1 by the end.

I’ve been thinking it through in my mind over and over, and even though it’s hard, moving to Boulder is the right thing for us, our families, and eventually the family we’ll start — Colorado will hopefully have lots of little Vijay’s and little Crissy’s one day. :-)

After I posted this morning, I remembered the buzz a while back about how airlines would start weighing passengers and charge based on their weight. This is something that seems like it would never happen.

My guess is that some “expert” sarcastically said, “Next thing you know, they will charge passengers by weight.” And then the talking heads took the story and ran with it. And kept running.

There’s a huge overhead and headache of weighing all the customers and then charging them. Check-in times would be longer and more staff would be need. Plus, there would be all sorts of privacy concerns and lawyers would have a field day with discrimination lawsuits.

It’s much, much easier to “socialize” it and just spread out the cost across all the passengers. Which is what airlines do today anyway.

If you’re not convinced, think of this: who are the airlines’ most profitable customers? They are the guys in first and business class. And let’s be honest, most of those business guys are pretty big. How do you think they would feel about being weighed at the airport in front of everyone?

Charge for luggage? Sure, the business traveler is annoyed, but not that much; after all, he just expenses it. But you start weighing him, and you just lost a really valuable customer. Unless all the airlines start this at the same time, you’ll see a significant amount of people that go to the airline that doesn’t completely treat them like cattle.

Everyone is all abuzz about airfares. Not only are they going up, but suddenly we have additional fees for checked bags. And now some airlines are charging for things like sodas and snacks while on the flight.

The big airlines have consistently been backing themselves into a corner, by signing untenable contracts with unions, having an unnecessary diversity of equipment, and using the hub/spoke model in order to get subsidies and, in many cases, be granted a near monopoly from hub cities.

Add in rising fuel costs and the airlines can’t adjust. So they need to raise fares. This completely makes sense, if the price of one of your “raw materials” go up, sure, end-consumer prices will go up to compensate. There’s no mystery there.

What I don’t understand is adopting an a la carte pricing model while prices are going up. (A la carte pricing is when the customer purchases only individual items instead of a fixed group of offerings.) I’m not debating the merits of a la carte pricing, just the timing.

Of course, It’s very likely that if the luggage wasn’t charged extra, the basic fare would go up more to compensate. But that’s not the point. The consumer see prices going up and quality of product going down; so we have to pay more to get less.

Now if just prices went up and quality was the same, the consumer would “pay more for the same” and the consumer anger could be easily deflected to the rising oil prices.

And I don’t understand the reasoning behind charging for soda. The justification is the weight. Well, if I’m not going to get a drink on the plane, I’m going to bring my own with me. So the weight is the same. The only difference is instead of the airline paying wholesale for the soda, I pay retail in the airport. And the airline wasn’t giving me that soda for free, you can count on that being a piece of the total airline fare.

Maybe, the airline can now staff the place with fewer stewardesses? Unlikely, those are union employees. So where’s the savings? The airline at most dropped the wholesale cost of soda on the fare. Wow, 15 cents cheaper fare. Probably not worth the PR hit in the first place.

Consider one of the orthogonal cases: suppose that airline fares were steady (or dropping). An airline could introduce a la carte pricing on rarely used things like the 2nd bag of checked luggage. Then they could drop the price and get some more business.

Alternatively, the airline could do a refund based system. When you check in and don’t have any checked luggage, the customer gets a $25 voucher for his next flight.

Both of these approaches would give you a la carte pricing with good to neutral PR.

So why did just about everyone do a la carte pricing? Because one airline did it first and was able to raise its base fares a little less than everyone. So everyone scrambled so their base fares would be inline. Stupid first mover.

Of course, every first year business student’s favorite airline, Southwest, is still doing fine and expects to make a modest profit despite the economic climate. And guess what, they don’t charge for checked luggage. Way to be a rebel Southwest! :-)

As I was thinking about my last post, I realized it was a bit of a downer. I had intended for it to be humorous instead. My personal take on the topic is that, while the sword is probably mightier than the pen in the short term, I completely agree with Victor Hugo, who says,

No army can stop an idea who’s time has come.

I can’t explain it, but not only does that sound right, it makes me feel good. :-)

For some reason, I was thinking of the old saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” I’ve never been a fan of this saying, since it seems wrong. Granted, written word can win “hearts and minds” better than a sword, but it’s the guy with the sword who decides which words get to be used.

After all, “history is written by the victor”. Whoever is in power generally controls the media and information flow. It doesn’t really matter that someone writes something, if it never gets distributed.

Maybe it’s more appropriate to amend the saying to be: “The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the guy with the sword decides who gets the pen.”

(I read this book a little over a year ago and am now finally getting around to reviewing it.)

Shortly after it came out, I read Tim Ferriss’ widely popular book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. And then I felt slightly ill. Suffice to say, I didn’t care for the book at all. I’m really happy I got the book from the library, instead of paying money on it.

The first part of the book is reminder that life is short, so don’t worry so much and have some fun. Not a very original thought, but I suppose lots of people always forget this. He also tells us to read Thoreau, doing which would essentially makes this whole section of the book incredibly redundant.

And yes, “live your life now, don’t wait until later” is great advice, but just about every philosopher and good parent has been saying this for years upon years.

The rest of the book is basically a get rich quick type plan sprinkled into self-promotion and tips on how to eliminate wasteful time-consuming activities from your life. Basically he says, working a job is stupid, you should just sell something online and outsource every piece of the business so you can do whatever you want.

It’s good strategy, but let’s be honest; it’s not at all original. “Absentee ownership” is a tried and true income making method. The trick is that you need some income producing property or product. And that’s the tough part. Anyone can profit from an income generating asset. But how do you get one? Ferriss doesn’t really talk about how to do this.

Ferriss’ product (aside from the book) is some unregulated dietary supplement that body builder types use. So far, he’s a one hit wonder. Lots of of people hit it big once. I want to hear from the guys that do it more than once; those guys have real experience, skills and knowledge; they weren’t just lucky once.

A lot of the book is about how to use outsourced personal assistants to do your busywork for you. Generally this is a reasonable idea, but Ferriss takes it way too far. He basically says, “Why send your mom a birthday card like a sucker? I just have my assistants sign a card and send it with flowers.”

Sadly, I’m only barely exaggerating.

The other concept of the book I wanted to discuss is the idea of a “low-information” diet. Ferriss talks about having “selective ignorance” so that you ignore and don’t seek out information. For voting for president, for example, he ignores everything and then a week before asks some of his friends who to support, reads some news for an hour and then decides.

I’m really disappointed in this. This is basically voting for whoever is more popular. Instead of using your god-given ability to learn, reason, and be an intellectually curious individual, you’ll just go with whatever most people think.

What about learning, self-exploration, development of a value system and then acting on it? Nah… it’s easier to hang out at the beach. That’s just sad. If there’s ever a time to listen to Mark Twain, it’s in today’s world:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Lastly, Ferriss’ own auto-biographical elements make him seem like, well, a jerk. He brags about winning a big kick-boxing championship with basically 4 weeks of training. He explains that he lost nearly 30 pounds for the weigh-in and gained it back before the tournament. This way he was about to compete three levels below his weight bracket and got to beat up on those “poor little guys”.

Also, he exploited a loophole in the rules that said, if his opponent “falls off the elevated platform three times in a single round”, he loses. So Ferriss just basically shoved guys 3 weight divisions below him out of the ring and won the championship.

I’m not sure I’d brag about that.

So if you want to get rich quick, Tim’s got a great book for you. All you need are some affiliate marketers, a drop shipper, and a website. It’s so easy! And if you call now, he’ll even throw in an AbTronic!

In summary, don’t read this book. I think I lost 10 IQ points in the course of reading it. :-P

I used to be good about blogging about books I read, but for about a year now, I haven’t reviewed anything… so there’s some weirdness that I’ll start up again by writing about a book I’m just a few chapters into.

The other day while hunting for something to read, I picked up my copy of A Game of Thrones, fully intending to re-read the series.

But then I noticed a recommendation on the back cover that said, “Reminiscent of T.H. White’s A Once and Future King…” and thought, “Wait I have that book and still need to read it!” I bought the book two and a half years ago, using a birthday gift certificate from Crissy’s parents and still hadn’t read it. That’s pretty sad. :-(

So I started reading it last night and it’s really really good! I can’t believe I’ve never read it before. For tonight, I had planned a quiet evening reading, but after about 2 weeks of cold, cloudy weather, the sun finally came out.

As a result, we’ll probably go out somewhere. After all, sun is so rare in Seattle; you have to go out and play when you get the chance.

(And if you’re keeping count, it’s now less than two weeks before our big move to Boulder! 300 days of sunshine per year, here we come!)

Sometimes I wish that there would be a tape recorder running when Crissy and I talk. We always end up cracking each other up and later can never remember what the joke was.

The other day, I was almost hit by another stupid Seattle driver and I swore rather profusely (years of playing hockey make me excellent at this). For some reason Crissy dislikes it when I swear, so in addition to giving me a very disapproving look, she asked me,

“Why don’t you use the Hindu gods’ names in vain instead? Wait, what’s Ganesha’s last name anyway?”

“Um, Ganesha doesn’t have a last name. He’s like Cher.”

<pause>

“Does he believe in life after love?” (referring, of course, to the very popular Cher song)

This of course devolved into us trying to decide the funniest Cher song that Ganesha could sing.

The whole “using God’s name in vain” thing is a little weird to Hindus. Our Gods love it when you say their name. In fact, our gods even have lots of names; the more names you use, the happier they are.

But I suppose if you said, “Parvarti! That soup is hot! I burned my mouth!”, even the easy-going Hindu gods wouldn’t be that happy. :-)

Hulu is an online video-on-demand service that offers streaming video of lots of popular shows. Since Hulu is joint venture between NBC-Universal and NewsCorp (parent of Fox), it’s not surprising that the site is dominated by their content.

Hulu seems to be designed to make money on the ads that are inserted into the shows. Each “commercial break” has one 15 to 30 second ad. Though they also have a syndication model, presumably the bulk of their money does (or should) come from the in-show ads.

Hulu has a large selection of shows and until recently they would post new episodes the morning after they originally aired. I alway thought this was a great idea, they can pick up a viewers that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

People who watch the broadcast either watch it live or Tivo it . People who’d watch Hulu either missed the episode on TV, don’t have a TV (or access to one), want to watch it again, or were watching something else. So Hulu picks up audience that the live broadcast can’t get.

So the services are complementary. And since the content is paid for by the broadcast, Hulu just needs to make back operating expenses. It’s a pretty good plan.

Now let’s go back to who the target audience of Hulu is: people who missed the episode on TV, don’t have a TV, want to watch it again, or were watching something else. What did these people do in the past? A lot of them downloaded it illegally.

So Hulu also cuts down on illegal downloads and recovers some of that “lost revenue”.

Now, Hulu did something I can’t understand. The only show I watched regularly on Hulu is Battlestar Galactica. Crissy and I just get limited cable, so I can’t see the broadcasts on the SciFi network (which is owned by NBC). So, for me to see it, I have to watch at a friend’s place or rent/borrow the DVDs when they come out.

Since the show is on Friday night (seriously, what’s up with that?), I miss episodes frequently. Since the show is a serial, it’s tough to miss episodes and really annoying to watch out of order.

Now with Hulu, if I miss an episode, I can watch it online the next day. Everything is great: I get to see my show and Hulu gets to show me ads.

Just recently though, Hulu changed their policy. New episodes are now posted 8 days after the broadcast. I’m fine with a delay before the show is online, but 8 days just seems stupid: by the time an episode is posted online, the next episode has aired.

So I can never catch up! It seems like it’s in NBC’s better interest if people are watching the broadcast version, so why would they prevent me from doing this? It’s a serial! I don’t want to watch it out of order. So now I’m stuck watching it on Hulu.

Aside from being annoyed about the delay in watching my show, I don’t understand the business model.

Let’s assume that Hulu viewers are less profitable than broadcast viewers. Why 8 days instead of 1 day? Let’s look at our use cases again:

• People who missed the episode on TV - now they are going to miss all the episode broadcasts, unless they watch episodes out of order
• People who don’t have a TV - doesn’t matter what the delay is, they will never see the broadcast
• People who want to watch it again - they already watched the broadcast, so you made your money already
• People who were watching something else - still not going to get them

Now the major downside, people will start downloading it illegally again! In fact, that’s exactly what the comments on the Battlestar page on Hulu say.

What if our assumption is wrong and Hulu viewers are more profitable than broadcast viewers. If that were so, NBC would try to put content on as soon as possible following the broadcast, if not earlier. They certainly wouldn’t posted it later!

Last, let’s consider DVD sales. If NBC was worried about losing DVD sales, the time gap doesn’t make a difference. It’s solely the availability that matters. Currently, NBC only has 4 episodes posted, so that shouldn’t affect future DVD sales.

I wish I knew that the reasoning was here. My guess is that someone thinks that Hulu is cannibalizing broadcast viewership. I think this assumption is wrong; plus it’s really tough to measure, for example, how do you know that a Hulu hit isn’t someone who also saw the broadcast? After all, broadcast viewership is really tough to measure for medium- and long-tail programming.

And what about conversions? Someone may see the episode on Hulu and then start watching the broadcast.

Oh well… and please remember, I haven’t see last week’s episode yet. Don’t tell me what happened. :-)