Last Wednesday, I went to my mailbox and pulled out some mail. After quickly flipping through it, I took the whole pile and dumped it all in my trash can, even before I got to my front door.
How ridiculous is this. I take 15 minutes of my valuable time to check my mailbox, only to find that it’s filled with stuff I don’t need or want, and has no importance to me whatsoever. Isn’t mail about sending important stuff to me and not junk someone else thinks I need?
I travel a lot, so I put my mail on hold quite a bit at the post office. When I come back from a long trip, I go to the window where we get our vacation hold mail. The lady there recognizes me because I hold my mail often. I give her my driver’s license and she goes into the back room to get my mail. After a few minutes, I (always) hear her puffing and struggling back to the window and then she puts this crate full of mail, sometimes two crates, onto the window ledge where I pick it up. Sometimes it’s so heavy that she drags it along the floor to me. I just merely take those crates to the other counter and take another 15 minutes of my valuable time to go through it and throw all the junk mail into the trash at the US Post Office before I get home. I generally throw away about 80% of the stuff in there. What a waste!
So finally one day, after seeing her struggles for the Nth time, I ask her why doesn’t the US Postal Service do something about junk mail? If they would do something, then she wouldn’t be breaking her back every time with this huge crate of mail. Of course she responds back that it’s a business thing and that their revenue depends on more mail being sent. I relate to her the similarity between junk mail and email spam, and that huge battles are being fought to remove email spam. I say to her, shouldn’t the US Postal Service treat its customers the same way and help improve their experience with snail mail? No wonder people are doing whatever they can to remove dependence on snail mail.
As more services move online, I try to take advantage of paperless billing as much as possible. These bill statements just clutter up my house and I end up shredding them anyways. If the world goes the way it’s going, soon I will get NOTHING BUT JUNK MAIL in my physical mailbox. In fact, I should build a radio controlled door under my mailbox which just drops the mail into my trash can, so that I don’t even have to walk out there any more.
If someone really wants to send me a wedding invitation, they’d better do it via email. Or else I’ll just dump that fancy envelope in the trash.
And then “Vacation Hold” really means “US Post Office dumps my trash instead of me”.
Wake up US Postal Service. You’re a monopoly but you’re also missing the way the world is going. You’ll be a dead monopoly in a decade if you don’t do what every other business should be doing, which is listening to and taking care of your customers.

About 2 months ago, I installed and brought on-line a brand new Humax DVD burning Tivo. And I discovered that the new version of Tivo burned into the current machines had different features than my old Sony Tivo which was now at least 5-6 years old.
I immediately set my Tivo to record some of my fave shows. And then I started noticing that in my Now Playing List, my Tivo was actually recording semi-random stuff. Well, not so random. It was taking my Season Passes and inferring what I might like, and then randomly taking up my extra hard drive space with related shows and movies.
And then…in a moment of boredom, I start watching some of the shows. I then realize some of this is pretty good. And that I’m glad that I’ve got a list of shows/movies that there is a good chance I’m interested in watching. And it’s now TIME INDEPENDENT. I don’t need to watch the channel guide and then leap to the TV at the time a show I want to watch is being broadcast. Sure I had licked the time dependence thing by setting Tivo to record shows I knew I wanted to watch. But now, I’ve got a whole universe of shows which I am not sure I want to watch, but it’s there if I wanted, all 500 channels now pre-filtered and sitting there waiting for me to watch WHENEVER I WANT TO WATCH, not when the networks want me to watch.
I remember an article about Yahoo! in the New York Times a few weeks back, Terry Semel was talking about the millions of channels that he wants to make available to everyone. But I think Tivo’s solution is getting closer to the real answer. We’re talking about MY CHANNEL. A (semi) personalized experience of all possible TV shows out there filtered to what I want to watch with a bit of serendipity thrown in. Here I sit, experiencing a bit of the future of video media.
O’ the battles the person who put this feature into Tivo must have fought! How could that person have gotten past all the Requirements Documents and reams of consumer research, internal politics, trying to get it prioritized high enough on development schedules. Is this person drained of all energy fighting those battles or working on? Or was it the CEO who demanded this feature and gotten it in as boss?
When I encounter great features and services, I can’t help but think about how these features and services come about, and the struggles people go through to get them built. After living in that world and watching it get harder and harder, I applaud when I see truly great stuff get out there.
The future is coming. Even if it takes screaming and kicking to get there.

I am back to basics in my piano lessons.
We started getting into learning some songs to break up the monotony when I realized that I just could not play these songs effectively.
The way I was playing these songs was literally memorizing them and the chords associated with them. I would play the melody with my right hand and then attempt to hit the chord symbols with my left.
However, not having the chords in my brain meant that I had build each one from scratch, and then memorize it in context of the song. Very unproductive and not very applicable to easily learning new songs.
And certainly not good for jazz improvisation which was the road I was going down.
So I’m back to basic training – boot camp for piano.
I’m drilling chords over and over and over and over until they stick in my brain and I can hit them instantaneously. Need to drill on them continuously and use repetition to burn them into my brain and my hands.
I think about what it takes to burn something in one’s brain. I think about my jazz piano playing and the need to memorize all the chords. I think about the triathlon training and doing all those workouts over and over again, drilling on form for swimming, biking, and running. It gets monotonous sometimes, but you have to do it so that your body and mind learn new things and destroys bad habits and infuses new better ones.
Sometimes you just need to stick with something for a long time, and it WILL get monotonous…but that’s what stamina and commitment are all about. In this fast-paced-low-attention-span world, people want things too quick and don’t want to put the effort in to really master something.
Mastery melds innate skill with stamina to stick it through the monotonous, repetitious, bad-habit-breaking parts. So next time you really want to get good at something, brace yourself for the monotonous parts and enjoy experiencing them rather than succumbing to their monotony. You’ll definitely enjoy the end result.

Today, the power cut out in my Marina Del Rey apartment. A few minutes later, I get up to go out thinking this is no big deal.
So I go out to the hallway and realize the power is out everywhere in the building. And the elevators aren’t working. I then head for the stairs and realize there are NO emergency lights in the freakin’ stairway! I make my way down in pitch darkness to the 2nd floor and feel around for the door handle and open it. I breathe a sigh of relief as i cross the 2nd floor to the other side where there is a stairway leading to the lobby.
There I find still no power and the building employees scrambling around trying to figure out what to do next. I go to complain to one of them that there are no emergency lights in the stairways and that I made my way down in darkness. I tell them that if there was a fire, we would be dead.
I then realize that the powered garage doors are also dead and my car is trapped in the underground garage. Wonderful. I need to go pick up my daughter from school and can’t get my car out!
Outside, one of the employees is on her cellphone with 911. She called to get help for people trapped in the elevators (also in pitch darkness) but was put on HOLD by 911! Geez.
I then contemplate trying 911 myself so i reach down to my cellphone and notice it has no signal whatsoever.
I think about the New Orleans hurricane disaster and how poorly this nation, with all its high tech wonders and wealth, still could not deal with a natural disaster. I think about the fact that if the San Andreas fault were to give way right now, the whole California coastline would be reduced to lawlessness as people go to survival mode, while an inadequate government response plan is put into play. I also think about the events of 9/11 three years ago and how we still haven’t learned and allowed politics and procrastination to delay what needs to be done.
And then I think about my own mini crisis here in my apartment building and we can’t even get that right.
So here’s the scorecard:
– No power
– People trapped in total darkness in elevators, probably scared shitless.
– Cars trapped in garage
– Cellphone has no signal
– 911 puts you on hold (imagine if you were having a heart attack, called 911, and were put on hold)
– Building doesn’t bother with safety codes, and has no emergency lights
We’re dead as a nation and society.
Time to start hoarding batteries and solar panels, and learning how to trap and skin wild animals. Did someone say that you can’t actually start a fire by rubbing two sticks together…?

The other day I was on the beach with my daughter, her cousin, and our nanny. Under the rays of a beautiful sun, we exercised our architectural skills to the utmost by building the biggest sand castle on the beach that day.
It had a moat, tall walls, a gate through the wall, and a long canal to the sea. It was also decorated with a row of kelp and had a seagull feather, flapping proudly in the wind as the castle’s flag. (Actually, this huge castle really looked like an overgrown bathtub but it was fun to build nevertheless.)
The castle and its construction soon attracted several other kids who cheerfully asked if they could help build it with us. We gleefully said yes as our backs were aching and if they were going to dig and haul sand for you, why not?
During the building, one boy came up to me and said to me that this was fun and cool that we were building this huge castle. And then, he said to me that it was cool to see me building it and that his mom and dad never helped him build sand castles.
My moment of architectural triumph switched to feelings of pity for this boy. Why was it that his parents did not build sand castles with him?
It also got me thinking about the times I went in to my daughter’s class and read stories to them before class officially started. I asked her teacher about how many kids’ fathers go in and read, and it turned out to be about 5 of us who did it, and only 3 of us who vied for the position of number one Dad for the class. And this out of a class of 20+ toddlers.
In my observations on people, I have noticed many things. People get really caught up in their careers and their personal interests. And they won’t let them go, even for their children. I can’t help but think about children who don’t get a deep involvement from their parents. There is a less of a connection with them as the parents are too busy to play or interact with them. There is no time to read to their classes or build sand castles with them.
I can only say that life is tough sometimes and I’m not saying we need to give up our individuality or our interests as people and parents. But I for one am not going to miss some of the best formative and loving years with my daughter, and being involved in her life is something I strive to do always.
When was the last time you built a sand castle with your kid?

spoof@ebay.com
Somehow I’ve gotten on some phishing spam list somewhere and now I get these ridiculous emails saying so-and-so has been added to my email list.
I get about 5-10 of these each day. And then I just forward them to spoof@ebay.com. What a waste of time…

Want to be a UED guy at an online payments ecommerce firm? Email me and let me know!

OK Jobs at startups available:
SR. Dir of Eng – search engine marketing firm
Interaction Design, Ad Design, Web Developer – social networking community firm
Interaction Design – Photo sharing and hardware firm
Head of Design/Interaction/Visual – Korean online games company
Interaction Design – online music licensing/download firm
Valid as of 8-8-05 – email me at dshen at yahoo.com if you are interested..

Yesterday I had coffee with my colleague Adam and we got to talking about people upgrades. Not software upgrades, mind you, but something similar.
We all get software upgrades every year or so. We see a new version of it that has just come out and we need it for a variety of reasons. It may be because it has a whole new set of features. Maybe it calculates faster and better. Maybe it does more things that you need done. Maybe it won’t work with the new version of Windows or Mac OS and if you don’t upgrade, you’re screwed.
Adam tells me about women in NYC who regularly upgrade their men. They acquire a man because this man has a set of features they need or want. Maybe lots of money, maybe good looks, maybe connections, maybe all of the above. Then, when they meet a man with better features, they upgrade. They uninstall you from their minds and hearts and start up with the new man. This man has better features, better looks, better bank account, better connections, better social status – some or all of the above or more – until they meet an even better man. Off to the Add/Remove Programs icon in their brains and they uninstall you like the outdated version 2.0 that you are. Version 3.0 is out and it’s time for the bigger and better piece of man-ware. That is, until they find 4.0…
But is bigger and better truly better? I remember when Microsoft Word was a few hundred Kbytes and was very fast and svelte and allowed me to write documents, format them, make them look fairly pretty, and print them. Today, Microsoft Word is a hundreds of megabytes monstrosity with way too many items in its menus, takes up way too much hard drive space, does way too many things that I don’t need. I still open it up and just write my fax or letter and then print it. Sometimes it’s too easy to keep adding features as a panacea for a better product. You just keep adding more features and menu items until pretty soon the product is just a confusing mess when all you really need it do is write letters and print them.
Perhaps upgrading isn’t the answer. Isn’t it the same with people when it’s really the basics that matter?

These last few weeks have been fruitful in that just about everyone is looking for good design people. Visual designers, interaction designers, design managers, web developers. If you read my blog and want to explore other options, there are startups out there looking for great talent. Email me at dshen@yahoo.com if you’re interested…