2008-07-30

Secrets of the Starbucks Coffee Nazi

How Hard Could It Be?: Good System, Bad System - Starbucks - company culture

One morning last week, I walked into a Starbucks on 58th Street at precisely the peak of the morning rush, to discover that this particular Starbucks had deployed a new type of employee. This employee wore a radio headset. Her main job was to go down the line of people waiting to order and ask them what they wanted in advance of their arriving at the cash register. There, they would be asked to repeat their order before paying and finally joining the line of customers waiting for their drinks to appear.

This premature order taking did not appear to improve the store's productivity. The cashiers still had to take the same number of orders, wait for the customers to fiddle with their purses for the correct change, and so forth. The coffee producers -- known theatrically in the trade as baristas -- still had to make the same number of drinks. The biggest benefit of the procedure, I thought, was that the barista got started on a drink a few seconds earlier, so people got their orders filled a little bit faster, even though the overall rate of output for the store was the same.

A network engineer would say this was a situation of "same bandwidth, lower latency" and then probably launch into a story about how the post office, mailing millions of DVDs (and a few letters) around the world every day, has the highest bandwidth of any network on earth, with far greater capacity than the biggest fiber-optic backbone, but with high latency -- so you wouldn't want to use it for, say, telephony. And this would be extremely hilarious to the network engineer. That's the kind of joke they tell.
I recommend the entire article. It goes into some detail about what the Coffee Nazi's job is and why such an annoying person would exist in your friendly neighborhood Starbucks.

I recommend you just tell her you prefer to make your decision when you reach the register. You will probably have to repeat this statement a number of times - in fact, possibly until you reach the register - by which time you will have totally fubar'd her system.

Oh, and Starbucks posts its first quarterly loss.
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2008-07-28

Cuil'ing Cuil doesn't work but Googling Cuil does

Cuil'ing Cuil

-vs-

Googling Cuil

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Former Employees of Google Prepare Rival Search Engine - NYTimes.com

Former Employees of Google Prepare Rival Search Engine - NYTimes.com

Cuil! I mean, cool! Another search engine suitable for vanity searches.

(I like how it filled in my name as I typed it. That was pretty cuil, I mean, cool.)

(More info on cuil.)

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2008-07-22

Veronica Star Trek

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@THErealDVORAK @Veronica wants to know where her Star Trek uniform is!
This tweet flew by today. I'd about given up on the Star Trek outfit but it's good to see there's still a chance of it!

I suspect the main obstacle is Dvorak's wife. "You want to do what?"

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The Best Jack Thompson Clip



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2008-07-19

Map of Starbucks that are closing

Map of Starbucks Scheduled to Close

These are the ones in WA:


355 TOP FOODS WENATCHEE 10 GRANT RD EAST WENATCHEE WA
338 TOP FOODS FEDERAL WAY 31515 20TH AVE S FEDERAL WAY WA
3317 KENT HAGGENS 26015 104TH AVE SW KENT WA
10532 ORTING RETAIL CENTER 211 WASHINGTON AVE ORTING WA
13676 HWY 101 & DEL GUZZI DR 108 DEL GUZZI DR PORT ANGLES WA
3207 15TH AVE E 328 15TH AVE E SEATTLE WA
3241 DENNY & AURORA 620 DENNY WAY SEATTLE WA
3308 MET PARK II 1220 HOWELL ST SEATTLE WA
8739 23RD & MADISON 2201 E MADISON AVE SEATTLE WA
13508 45TH & STONE WAY 1218 N 45TH ST SEATTLE WA
13777 NORTHGATE MALL II 301 NE NORTHGATE WAY SEATTLE WA
14350 42ND & SW ALASKA 4704 42ND AVE SW SEATTLE WA




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2008-07-17

Speed Blogging

Someone at worked asked me how I have any time for blogging.

The answer is ... Google Toolbar! Without Google Toolbar's "Send To" blogging grinds to a halt. I know because it was disabled for awhile when I upgraded to Firefox 3.

It takes all of about three minutes for a typical pithy remark blog post. Someone sends me a link or I see one go by on Twitter or some newsreader feed and I think of a pithy remark and so I just select some text, hit Send To Blogger, add a remark, and hit publish. I read it, see (almost) all of the typos, fix 'em, and I'm done.

Most blog posts have something to do with real life. For instance, E3 just happened and a ton of video announcements were made. There was just another one today about Amazon switching to a browser-based streaming model for video. This is interesting to me in general as a guy whose major career points have involved digital media; but also because I just installed DD-WRT on my brand new Linksys WRT54GL routers. Besides rock-solid performance, the DD-WRT software keeps track of your bandwidth, and makes cool bar charts. So I know we've been using 2-5 gigabytes of bandwidth a day; and in the context of Comcast suggested that 40 gigabytes a month is plenty ... I'm thinking NO! But I know Comcast is basically right - there's too much video being downloaded. They like to blame the P2P people but seriously the issue is video. So without doing anything special other than using YouTube a lot, I find that my family is allegedly at the outer limits of what Comcast thinks is reasonable bandwidth usage.

So I'm very interested in these video announcements, because video downloading and streaming is only going up! up! up! and my family is already using a ton of it.

So this post is quite a bit longer ... but then I'm writing it at night 'cause I couldn't sleep. But most posts are short and really only take three minutes to create. I've been doing this since (I think) 1997 and so I've had a lot of practice at creating pithy remarks.


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TiVo Launches YouTube Partnership Early - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

TiVo Launches YouTube Partnership Early - News and Analysis by PC Magazine: "LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Just what the television industry needs, increased competition from those wacky YouTube videos that 68 million people watch every month.

Only now, it will be easier than ever to view them on television screens.

Beginning Thursday, TiVo will offer thousands of its subscribers the ability to stream YouTube videos onto their television sets through their broadband-enabled TiVo boxes."

Just great. More video downloads! We're downloading 2-5 gigabytes a day on normal days - just YouTube and a new site my kids found called Let's Play, and yesterday when I tried out the Sony PSN movie store, I downloaded Die Another Day which was 8 gigabytes in hi-def just by itself!

You can see why the Internet Server Providers are freaking out about downloadable video and net neutrality etc.

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2008-07-15

What Microsoft wants from Yahoo

What Microsoft wants from Yahoo

This is an article The Real Dvorak has been talking about describing what Microsoft really wants from Yahoo.

It's a great conspiracy tale. It might even be true.
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Schneier on Security: Encrypting Disks

Schneier on Security: Encrypting Disks

Apparently a company that stores stock certificates called BNY lost some data tapes.
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2008-07-14

DNS Poisoning Checker

Visit DoxPara Research and click on the "Check My DNS" button to see if the DNS server your ISP uses is patched against the potentially horrific DNS Poisoning attack.

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Amazing videos shot with consumer grade HD video cameras - Boing Boing

Amazing videos shot with consumer grade HD video cameras - Boing Boing: "Amateurs are doing amazing things these days with consumer-grade high-def camcorders, especially Canon's HV30 MiniDV unit (which retails for about $800) and its predecessor, the HV20. [This] impressive clip is the work of a Memphis college student named Kyle Shields, who acquired a new audio library and wanted to test out some of the gunshot sounds."

Mega cool.
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Netflix Coming to Xbox 360 With Live Content Sharing

Netflix Coming to Xbox 360 With Live Content Sharing: "Netflix is coming to the Xbox 360 this fall. Netflix subscribers will have instant access to over 10,000 movies and TV shows, streamed directly to the Xbox 360 console.

What’s more, with the new Live Party feature coming to the Xbox 360, you’ll be able to stream whatever Netflix content you’re watching to the rest of the people in your Live Party group — groups can contain up to eight people and everyone will be watching the movie or TV show at the same time, which oughta further alleviate the need to actually leave your house to interact with people face to face."
Is that not the dream of the digital future? We're all just wired up together?

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Half way there? iPhone Sales

Way back when iPhone 1.0 came out, Jobs said he wanted to capture 1% of the one billion unit a year global phone market. That would be about 10 million iPhones a year.

How's he doing? I had trouble finding complete results for iPhone 1.0 sales, but it looks like about five or six million iPhones were sold last year, which would put Jobs halfway to his goal of 1% global domination. On the other hand, Apple sold one million iPhone 2.0s over the first weekend, so things are on the "up". He might get to his goal this year, especially as the iPhone is getting rolled out internationally at a much higher rate.

Good job, Jobso!

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2008-07-11

Short and Sweet - and Painful

A short and sweet - and painful to watch - movie of an idiot. I guess it's not that painful unless you're the guy that owned the gas station!


http://view.break.com/534959 - Watch more free videos

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2008-07-09

BitStrips - Fart and Poop Jokes

Fart and Poop Jokes created using BitStrips.com.

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Tub Eye Works

YOUR QUESTION
While at Walt Disney World this past September, I was told that Ub Iwerks' name was pronounced to rhyme with tub. I had assumed it rhymed with "you be." Which is correct, or are both depending on which spelling is used, Ubbe or Ub?
- Marc, 65, Broken Arrow, OK
Ask Dave Submit a Question!
DAVE'S ANSWER
The first name of Walt's friend and key animator in the 1920s, Ub Iwerks, is indeed pronounced to rhyme with tub. However, Ub is a nickname for his full name Ubbe. Ubbe is pronounced to rhyme with tubby. Iwerks is pronounced eye-works.

I'd always heard his name was pronounced "U-B". Now we know the definitive answer.

BTW, this article came from the Disney Insider email I get from Disney. And I just pasted it into blogger and the formatting and the image copied right over! Since when did that start working!? Awesome.

(I think the image worked because it is a link and not embedded. Still, pretty cool.)

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2008-07-08

Video Games Live CD!


I'm looking forward to this! The Video Games Live concert in Seattle was a blast!

EMI Classics and Video Games Live today announced that they will be collaborating on a CD. Titled Video Games Live: Volume One, the album will feature songs from Kingdom Hearts, Tetris, Castlevania among many others. The CD has been compiled by Video Games Live co-creators Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall with performances by the Slovak National Orchestra, The Crouch End Festivaal Chorus and Martin "The Video Game Pianist" Leung.

"If Beethoven were alive today, he would probably be a video-game composer... he was always ahead of the curve," said Video Games Live co-creator Tommy Tallarico. "One of his goals in creating music was to control the emotions of the person listening to it. This is exactly what we as game composers are constantly trying to accomplish."



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2008-07-07

Disney World in 3D

Google and Disney together have added a ton of 3D geometry to the Google Earth view at Walt Disney World.

Unfortunately, it bogs down just about every computer I've tried it on, so it probably barely works on yours as well. Luckily I found this video of WDW in 3D that anyone can view. The level of detail is amazing.

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Dave Perry - the Spielberg of Video Games

A 2003 BBC news report went so far as to say: "If video games are the new Hollywood, David Perry is a bona fide Spielberg."

Dave Perry worked for me at Virgin Interactive. Well, "worked for me" is a bit of an overstatement, since Dave has never really worked for anyone but himself. Still, it was that way on the org chart.

I do not believe that in the history of video games there is a single programmer who has ever had as much support as Dave Perry. We built special tools just for Dave. We built the entire art pipeline and network around Dave. Dave, in turn, worked his ass off. His put art and design assets into whatever game he was working on as fast as possible. Remember, back in 1992, it was a big deal to see your sprite moving on a Genesis, so, in reciprocal fashion, the artists worked really hard to get assets to Dave to plug in, so they could see their work playing on a Genesis.

After Aladdin, Dave wanted to start his own studio. I was all in favor and I supported getting the budget for it. Unfortunately, this was one of the few times a budget request from me was denied. So Dave formed a studio anyway, and went off to make Earthworm Jim. Astoundingly, he also licensed the game as an animated TV series, which I watched with my kids, and I probably still have on video tape somewhere.

Anyway, congratulations to Dave on his honorary doctorate.




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