Chris​Hubbs​.com

OK, rarely will I write a full post to recommend someone else’s post, but the latest from software-manager-par-excellance Rands is just too good to pass up. He has me nailed. In his latest post, Rands lists off his “Nerd Handbook”. Becky had only to read the first two sentences and she was chuckling in the knowledge that this guy was describing me:

A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.

Guilty as charged.

A few other priceless bits:

Understand your nerd’s relation to the computer. It’s clichéd, but a nerd is defined by his computer, and you need to understand why.

First, a majority of the folks on the planet either have no idea how a computer works or they look at it and think “it’s magic”. Nerds know how a computer works. They intimately know how a computer works. When you ask a nerd, “When I click this, it takes awhile for the thing to show up. Do you know what’s wrong?” they know what’s wrong. A nerd has a mental model of the hardware and the software in his head. While the rest of the world sees magic, your nerd knows how the magic works, he knows the magic is a long series of ones and zeros moving across your screen with impressive speed, and he knows how to make those bits move faster.

Yep, that’s me.

Your nerd lives in a monospaced typeface world. Whereas everyone else is traipsing around picking dazzling fonts to describe their world, your nerd has carefully selected a monospace typeface, which he avidly uses to manipulate the world deftly via a command line interface while the rest fumble around with a mouse.

The reason for this typeface selection is, of course, practicality. Monospace typefaces have a knowable width. Ten letters on one line are same width as ten other letters, which puts the world into a pleasant grid construction where X and Y mean something.

Ah, monospaced font, how I love thee.

Humor is an intellectual puzzle, “How can this particular set of esoteric trivia be constructed to maximize hilarity as quickly as possible?” Your nerd listens hard to recognize humor potential and when he hears it, he furiously scours his mind to find relevant content from his experience so he can get the funny out as quickly as possible.

Got me again.

And the most painful:

Your nerd has built an annoyingly efficient relevancy engine in his head. It’s the end of the day and you and your nerd are hanging out on the couch. The TV is off. There isn’t a computer anywhere nearby and you’re giving your nerd the daily debrief. “Spent an hour at the post office trying to ship that package to your mom, and then I went down to that bistro — you know — the one next the flower shop, and it’s closed. Can you believe that?”

And your nerd says, “Cool”.

Cool? What’s cool? The business closing? The package? How is any of it cool? None of it’s cool. Actually, all of it might be cool, but your nerd doesn’t believe any of what you’re saying is relevant. This is what he heard, “Spent an hour at the post office blah blah blah…”

Cool. I mean, ouch.

There is a lot of good stuff that I didn’t quote here, so if you really want to get an insight into me, yeah, go read the article. For my sensitive readers, yeah, there are a couple bad words in the post. Ignore them. Read the rest of it. Well worth it.

After running the numbers and looking at likely use scenarios over the upcoming year or two, we finally decided to switch our cell phone service from US Cellular, our provider of the past seven years, to Verizon. Their plans are fairly similar, but when it came down to it, the employer discount that Verizon offers was enough to sway the balance in their direction.

So last night Becky and I had a couple hours while the girls were at a friend’s house, and we headed to the local Verizon establishment to get things set up. We had researched phones already, so it was just a matter of getting the phones and setting up the service. Some observations:

Good things:

Welcome/Service: Verizon gave a very good first impression. The manager greeted us as we entered the store, asked a few questions to find out how he could help, then took our names, double-checked that our existing phone numbers were portable (they are), and answered a couple questions while waiting for a member of the sales staff to get free. Well done, sir.

Ease of signup: We made this pretty easy because I already knew exactly what plan I wanted. I told the sales guy that we wanted that plan and those phones, and he pretty much took care of the rest. He was able to scan the bar code on my Iowa driver’s license to get all that pertinent info (no possibility of transcription errors!); the only thing I had to give him was my SSN and my email addresses (work email to qualify for the employee discount, home email for account correspondence).

Not-so-good things:

Phone availability: Our salesman went to the back to grab the phones we wanted and seemed to take a while. Finally he came back empty-handed and asked his co-worker if they were, in fact, out of the Nokia phones that we were looking for. His co-worker’s response: “I haven’t seen any of those in a long time.” Not an exceptionally heartening reply. However, Verizon will Fedex us the phones for free and we can activate them once they are delivered. While this didn’t allay the disappointment of not being able to walk out with a new phone, it’s at least a reasonable solution, and we’re getting good phones at a good price.

Communication: A couple of things here. First off, while it was clear I was getting some sort of employee discount on the service, it wasn’t clear that I was getting a similar discount on the phones. The phones that we were getting were listed on the placard as $80 with a $50 mail-in rebate. However, when they were rung up for sale, I was only charged $20 each; no rebate necessary. While I’m not complaining about the lower price, had I known that I was receiving a 30% discount on the phones themselves, I would likely have considered buying a slightly more expensive phone. But I’m happy with the one I’m getting, so that’s mostly their loss of a sale.

Second thing: I never once saw a piece of paper with the cell contract, details, or my contact information on it. I found this to be a bit odd. In past signups with US Cellular, I had to sign multiple copies of a contract, verify that all my information was correct, etc. This time: nothing. Now I know there’s a 30-day money-back period where I can go change things if they really messed something up, it would’ve been more comforting had I at least been given a one-page printout summarizing my purchase; something for me to verify that they got my name and email in the system correctly, that they had signed me up for what I wanted, basically just a receipt of sorts.

Which leads to the third issue - my email addresses. I had to dictate the email addresses to the salesman. He got the work email address correct; I had that email waiting for me this morning. But I have yet to receive an email to my home address; I was supposed to get one welcoming me to Verizon, giving links to log into the Verizon customer website, etc. I can only imagine that the sales guy transcribed it wrong, and of course, I had no way to verify it. (See above.) For future reference, how would you dictate ‘chris.hubbs’ as part of an email address? I said “chris dot hubbs” and assumed it was obvious, but I have a bad feeling that there’s an email floating around in cyberspace this morning looking for the ‘chrisdothubbs’ email address. :-(

Conclusion: I guess I’ll have to wait until we get the phones here later in the week to make a final decision. (Oh, another thing that would’ve been nice: a Fedex tracking number for the phones. Probably also emailed to chrisdothubbs.) Overall, it was a pretty good, easy experience last night; a one-page confirmation sheet, though, would’ve taken it from “pretty good” to “excellent”.

I’ve carried a PDA pretty much everywhere with me for the past several years; I think I’ve been through three different Palm models. My current one is a Palm Tungsten E2. I don’t use too many features on it, really; my primary uses are the calendar and a few games. The calendar is the biggie for me - I need something to keep all my work meetings and outside meetings lined up. The past few weeks my PDA has had trouble holding a charge. It doesn’t matter whether I charge it via USB or from the wall charger; within 10 minutes or so it complains about the battery being low and starts disabling functions. I’m assuming it’s nearing the end of its life - I’ve had it just over two years now.

Second upcoming event: our cell phone contract is just about up. I haven’t completely decided yet, but I’m thinking we’ll abandon US Cellular in favor of Verizon, for a number of reasons. With the new contract comes the opportunity to purchase a new phone at a reduced price. So I have a convergence here which might allow me to start consolidating electronic gadgetry. So I want to explore my options.

Desired operations:

• Basic cell phone operation
• A usable calendar that allows for easy entry and reference. My employer uses an antiquated Lotus Notes system for email and calendar, so I’m not counting on the ability to sync things up.

Heck, I think that’s basically it. So what are my options?

Geof was the first to respond to my tweet on this topic. His words: “this is God’s way of getting you to buy an iPhone.” Geof was an iPhone early-adopter and has had nothing but good to say about it. And I will admit that I’ve drooled over the iPhone a time or two. Who can’t love its wonderful touch-screen interface and Apple styling?

I have a few issues with the iPhone option, though. I’m not crazy about the price, but hey, if I’m replacing a PDA, the iPhone isn’t really any more expensive. Does the iPhone even have a calendar feature? Surely it must. But I don’t really want to use it to replace my iPod - I want my iPod to be able to hold my entire music collection, and they don’t make a 40 GB iPhone yet. :-)

The other issue, which will be an issue for all web-enabled phones, is that I don’t really need full connectivity all the time. Goodness knows I check my email often enough as it is, I certainly don’t need another way that I can be distracted. And the data plans that come hand-in-hand with these smartphones end up adding $30 - $40 per month to your cell plan. For the type of plan we’d have, that’s almost a 50% increase, which is too much.

There are other cell/PDA combos out there; you can get a Palm Treo, any one of several models of Blackberry, and some “smartphones” that the cell providers offer. But again, I don’t want/need the data plan. I just want something that’ll give me phone capability and help keep me organized.

So what’s a guy to do?