I had some free time on my hands yesterday after dropping Asha off at a birthday party held at Nickel City (an arcade-type place in a nearby mall). There were a couple of accessories that our family needed in the electronics area, so I made a rare stop at Circuit City. The items we needed were a mini-usb cable for an MP3 player we own, and one of those DVD lens cleaner thingys. These are extras that make the stuff we own work. They are also items that a person is likely to only purchase once or twice in his/her lifetime. I would assume most people are like me, and have no frame of reference for what these things would cost. Marie's guess on the DVD cleaning thingy was $4 - after all, it's just a disk with some wispy brushes shoved into its underside at strategic places. I walked into the store, and found my way to the USB cable. Price = $30. Wha--? I walked away and found the DVD lens cleaner. Price = $15. Double wha--? I can't bring myself to pay that for 2 items that were probably made for under 20 cents. It got me thinking - when a retailer prices an item, they have a few choices. First, they can give you a fantastic price and make you genuinely glad you hauled yourself into their wonderful establishment. Next, they can go for not good, not bad pricing. Also, they can go higher than that, and make sure people buy the item even if they're not crazy about the price. Lastly, they can try to sell a stupid USB cable for $30, causing them to end up in my blog where I will make snide remarks like "it's no wonder Circuit City's stock is down over 90% since the year 2000". I came home and bought a mini-USB cable on ebay from a nice fellow in Longview, WA for $6.89 (including shipping).

The Japanese have a phrase that I've always liked - "gatsu pouzu" - (literally "guts pose") it describes the feeling or appearance that accompanies the moment when a person knows he or she has won. This week, I had a rather lengthy road to a gatsu pose which I will now bore you with. My company moved locations in the fall of last year. Our new building is fine, but is roughly the size of Mall of America, and has only one "employee entrance". Every day I waste about 10 minutes (roundtrip) getting from my car to my desk. Over the space of a year, this represents roughly a total of 284 man-months of wasted time for the 1500 employees at the building. I began riding the kid's razor scooter between the car and building in protest, but soon found a better way in. On the ground floor of the building, there is a trash compactor the workers are always using, which leaves an open door. It's open in the morning, but closed at night, so I started going out an adjacent exit that you can't get in via key-card. This route takes only about a minute, so it saves a lot of time. A couple of weeks ago, all employees received an email saying that starting that day, all exits except the employee entrance would be "alarmed" to keep us safe because tiles were falling off the side of the building. All doors (including the one I used) had signs on them - "THIS DOOR IS NOW ALARMED". I was mad.

Around that same time, I became frustrated by the inability of my company to make new products. The problem is now so bad that our competitors are making us feel the pain on a routine basis. In spite of this, we continue to devolve into the gang that couldn't shoot straight. I resolved to write a letter to my superiors telling them this, and making a few dire predictions about what would happen if we get to the end of 2009 and still have a losing product. This last Friday, I ran the letter by my boss, who was supportive, and then sent it to the SVP dude who runs our business. I really didn't pull any punches - the letter was accurate but gory - the kind of thing that I may look back on in a few months and say "there are few exceptions to the "honesty is the best policy" song, but that letter was one of them". Having sent the letter late Friday afternoon, I decided to make a hasty exit, and a thought popped into my mind. Those signs on the exits are probably lying - there are really no alarms. If there was any time to test this little theory, it was then. I mean, if the man fires me for my too-honest letter, a little incident with the emergency exit really won't be that important. So I jogged down the stairs, pushed the bar to open the door, and left the building. No alarm - GATSU POUZU!

This week I was labeled a gross polluter. I had taken my car into the test-only smog center because in California, you have to get your car smogged every 2 years. The name of the establishment was "15 minute smog test". After 50 minutes and no sign of any results, I asked why I was still waiting. After all, it seems that if I have gone to an establishment named "15 minutes smog test", this outfit should have only 1 purpose in life - to get my car tested in 15 minutes. So anyway, the guy came back with the bad news about 5 minutes later - there was something wrong and I was probably responsible for many of the pollution-related instances of respiratory failure in the greater San Diego area. The test results spelled out this conclusion in no uncertain terms: "gross polluter". I somehow find this hard to believe. Every day I spend my commute jockeying for position with scores of Escalades, Suburbans, and Hummers that have brontosaurus-sized carbon footprints, and I'm the gross polluter? I also find the label interesting. Whenever I hear of some company that's been sued for negligence, I assume they probably made some ill-advised decisions. If they are sued for gross negligence, however, I'm forced to conclude that the company in question is staffed entirely by irredeemable mouth-breathers. My car apparently had a bad O2 sensor, which my honest mechanic Ivan replaced, getting my ride back on the right side of the law for $250. I'm not joking about my mechanic being honest, though. He really is good, and has never upsold me on anything.

That's about all for this week.

This week I had the misfortune of being summoned to a training meeting in Houston for my company. By training, I mean that I had to give some training on our competitors to a group of salespeople whose roles are shifting to higher-level sales. I almost didn't make it. I was confused by the emails about the training, since it said it would be held in Houston, but I later was told Dallas. Turns out that there are 2 different training sessions, both attended by the same folks. By sheer coincidence, I happen to be the the only person giving training at both sessions. Anyway, I hurried and made reservations. My training module was only 2 hours long - seems a waste to fly for over 1000 miles for 2 hours. The schedule was complicated by the fact that I needed to attend a late-day meeting on Thursday before getting to Houston where my section started at 10am the next morning. I ended up flying out at 7:30, arriving in the lone star state at 2:30am. I rented my car, got lost, and found my hotel by 3:30am. Everything went smoothly with the session the next morning, except that my opinion of our Sales staff took a hit. About 1/3 of the way through, the group of about 20 started to trickle out - "gotta catch a flight" they said. In the end, there were 5 left. Salespeople are great - if nothing else, they have sold the heck out of our dated product line, and for that I'm grateful. However, the experience reminded me that 1 - you never want to be last on the schedule for an off-site meeting, and 2 - salespeople often behave like inconsiderate middle-schoolers. This last point was reinforced when I boarded the flight home at 3pm and ran into a sales guy who had excused himself and 2 buddies at 11:20am (gotta catch a flight).

The trip also reminded me how much I hate the Texas freeway frontage road set-up. This is one reasons why Texans are so religious - they must pray fervently that all their destinations lie to the right of them as they tool down the freeway. If they need to go somewhere that happens to be on the left side of the road, they must find a way to flip a u-turn and back-track, which invariably requires driving to Amarillo. The trip also reminded me how much I love Jimmy Johns. It is a chain/franchise sandwich joint. For the 16 months I worked at my last company, I conservatively estimate I ate 178 Jimmy Johns sandwiches. 175 of those were the "turkey tom, no mayo", which I was gleefully reunited with when I happened upon a Jimmy Johns on my way to the Airport in Houston. The bread is maybe 50 times better than subway, and the sandwiches are made in 15 seconds. It's really amazing. Anyway, some videos to upload. The first is of Kai "reading" his favorite book - of course he's not really reading, but it's kind of funny. The second is Asha doing tricks, but she's interrupted by Kai who has other ideas.