past

We started watching the tv-show lost a while ago on netflix streaming. This is great because we can watch episodes back to back which gets rid of the anxiety over what will happen "next week."

We found a few occurrences that were uncommon enough that they could be used as a pretty decent game.

• If Jack or Kate cries, drink a sip
• If Sawyer cries drink the whole bottle
• If someone says "Don't tell me what I can't do" drink a sip
• If someone gets knocked out with a rifle (or anything) drink a sip
• If Sayid says "Now why would I do that" drink a sip

I am an early adopter, packrat. When people need an extra phone charger or connector cable they come to me.

So if I throw something out, that means it must be old as dirt. Here is a list of things I threw away today.

• A Dell PS2 keyboard I got for free with my computer in 1997
• Palmrests for two keyboards I'm not even sure I own any more
• A Belkin vga/ps2 KVM switch I purchased in 2004
• A IEEE1394 (Firewire) PCMCIA card I purchased so I could connect my first generation ipod to my Windows XP powered 2003 HP laptop (I'm keeping the laptop)
• A PCI E-Sata connector - I think I got this with a 2.5" hard drive enclosure that ran on USB2.0 or E-sata (actually, I'm so keeping this if I can just find the e-sata cable!)
• 2 RJ11 (yes, 11!) cords - one approximately 10 feet, one 20 feet. Wired telephones??!?! Ha!
• A 6 foot long USB extension cable (i.e. male to female) that we bought in 2002 so we could put the computer behind the couch and the monitor on the side table like a TV
• A serial to ps2 connecter that I got for free from upenn.forfree so I could plug in a serial mouse I got somewhere...I don't even remember how this story ends
• A plug that goes from UK to standard power supply - WTF did I need this?
• A USB to Sony Ericcson T-9(?)00? connector cable I purchased in 2004. The software it came with sucked
• A PCMCIA adapter for compact flash I bought in 2000. This was awesome. But, it turns out that compactflash is the biggest kind of flash. Also, I have another 9 way flash adapter that has compactflash in it! :)
• Not one, but TWO power chargers for mini USB phones. Too bad the industry just standardized on micro USB.
• An adapter that takes USB/PS2 power and uses that to give energy to an external 2.5" hard drive enclosure just in case your USB1.1 doesn't give the drive enough power. (Yes, USB 1.1!). I bought this in ~2005.
• A PS2 mouse from a computer I bought in ~2005

So, I'm a Drupal fanboy. Naturally. But there's been some amazing work recently by the Drupal Accessibility Team that I wanted to highlight.

Accessible CMS: Drupal!

According to Drupal's Statement on Accessibility:

This initiative started with advancements with Drupal 7 accessibility. We have committed to ensuring that all features of Drupal core conform with the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines: WCAG 2.0 and ATAG 2.0. Where possible we will also update the previous version of Drupal core, version 6, to enhance its accessibility.

That's a pretty bold statement. Perhaps even more exciting is the Drupal Accessibility Pledge where the maintainers of the thousands and thousands of contributed modules and themes agree that they are willing to work to fix problems if those problems are brought to their attention.

But who can bring the problems to their attention?

CMS Accessibility Team: Groups.drupal.org

Drupal has a large team of accessibility professionals who coordinate their efforts on groups.drupal.org and in irc and other community methods. This group of 374 individuals has been working since 2006 to make Drupal core and it's modules/themes more accessible. The group has over forum threads and hundreds of comments discussing ideas on how to achieve this. It's truly amazing work.

As one of the folks who helps make groups.drupal.org function I'm always inspired when people point to that site as the home of their team.

I like to keep track of things. For halloween this year I tracked when people came and what their costumes were. You can see the google spreadsheet or download it as an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet.

For me, the interesting things were:

• We had 61 people total over a period of 2 hours and 20 minutes. They started in the early period of dusk as daylight faded and there was a pronounced slowdown as the night got darker.
• The most popular costumes were ninja, vampire, and geisha, but Geisha is just because a whole family did it.
• I was tempted to tell the family that Geishas are sometimes synonymous with prostitutes and are a somewhat outdated idea that is frequently seen as sexist. I skipped it. (See what my friend Heather said about Memoirs of a Geisha for example).
• My favorite costumes were the creative ones and were all girls: Facebook, Jessie from Toy Story, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Snookie, Bubble bath (but credit for that has to go to her parents as she was only 3).
• My least favorite were consistently boys: A guy in normal clothes who drew a blue mustache on his face on our front porch and said his costume was "the creeper", two boys in relatively normal clothes with masks in hand. Weak!

A few years ago I started a company to do some website building (gvs). When it was just me we didn't have any "HR" or "Accounting" process really because it was...just me. Our project process was really messy and I didn't necessarily bill hourly, nor flat fee, nor...whatever. Now we're a little more serious. We've got serious benefits, it's a team of 5 people, we do pretty solid work for a lot of different top tier companies.

That said, I found these two documents as I went through some old files today. These are from a company I worked in 7 years ago that was a startup, but had some serious "process" so they could feel like they were a real company. GVS is not now and probably never will be this kind of "serious."

I mean seriously. Look at how much time must have been wasted on that. And I get that a "holiday" list without some sense of design input is just plain depressing, but I don't think the clipart really got anyone into a festive mood.

My mom is wicked smart. When I was a kid I would often say "I'm sorry" in a manner that wasn't good enough for her. She had a formula for how to apologize and amazingly enough it has proven enormously valid and useful. One drawback for me is now that I've been trained in how to apologize I insist on receiving apologies in this format from other people. They're not always so ready to do this and are sometimes genuine in their apology without doing the whole system, but usually I can recognize that and move on. Usually.

1. Look them in the eye

This is good advice whether it's about a handshake or an apology, but when you see kids apologize they will often look down when they do it. That's not good enough, you should look people in the eye. Perhaps you can't always look someone in the eye, but the real point here is to be genuine in tone and delivery.

2. Say I'm Sorry for X

Don't couch it in "I'm sorry for X, but..." or "I'm sorry for the misunderstanding." If you're really sorry you'll say what you did and not reduce the sincerity with limitations like "but." If you don't fully understand what you did wrong and why it was wrong from the perspective of the people you are apologizing you can never get better, and getting better is step 3.

3. Give your best assurance it won't happen again

People don't like being tricked twice. Give your best assurance that you will not let the event happen again. If you were careless offer to pay more attention. If you made a bad judgment call offer to get their advice.

4. Offer solutions and ideas to make them whole

If you can do something to fix the situation offer to do it. It's that simple. If you can't fix it you should at least acknowledge that it can't be fixed and offer to do something else to try to make it up to them.

This is great advice whether it's person to person or a company apologizing to their customers for a blunder or anything else.