iThankYou

‘m watching a retrospective on Anderson360 less than an hour after Steve Jobs death announcement was made, and the impact Apple has had on my life is hitting me full force.

I am only 10 years younger than Steve Jobs. I was 15 and in Grade 10 when I heard of Apple Computer the first time (although Jobs had a hand in Atari, which I was familiar with). I heard that my high school was building a computer lab using Apple IIc’s to replace the card-reader Fortran lab. That was 1981. I learned Basic programming in the next year. In 1984 I saw the original Macintosh ad – although on the news, not during the Superbowl. I watched with jealousy anyone who had, or had access to, the original Macintosh. I didn’t know it at the time but I already had an acute aversion to PCs (as in “IBM compatible”), and an allegiance to Apple.

It would be ten years before I was able to afford my first Mac, but in the meantime I studied them, pined for, longed for , dreamed of, a new Mac. In my 1985, my second year of college, PC’s were starting to show up at school. My mom bought me an electric typewriter, and instead of backspacing my mistakes, I went through gallons of whiteout. After college I got married, and in 1994, together with my wife, we bought our first Macintosh – a Powermac6100/60AV, a Mac made during Apple’s “down” years. It was too late to use it for college, and to be honest, we played with it for a few days, and thought – now what? I was a little disillusioned with the computer and had trouble finding things to do with it. It took a few months to explore the possibilities, and found that it was most useful for communicating with other people – but how? I signed up for a Compuserve account, using those free floppy disks they used to mass mail to everybody. That was fine for email – but for fun I signed up for Mactropolis, a local Winnipeg Bulletin Board Service (BBS). In Mactropolis, I joined online games, had access to Mac programs not available anywhere else, and chatted with fellow Mac users.

In the same year – 1994 – Mactropolis sent out a notice asking its users if they intended to stick with Mactropolis when the Internet came to Winnipeg. I replied ‘of course, why not? This is a great place to be’. I did ‘subscribe’ to the internet when it came – through the new public ISP WpgOnRamp.ca – and that became my first real internet email address – sawatzky@wpgonramp.ca. The Internet was small then, but confusing with Gopher terminals, FTP sites, USEnet, and more BBS’s than you could shake a stick at. To make sense of all this I sunk hundreds of dollars in internet magazines – MacFormat with the software CDs, and YAHOO! to discover new URLs, and I signed up for yet another Online service – eWorld, an Apple only web service to rival Compuserve and the new AmericaOnline. eWorld had it’s own email service, but it collapsed soon after its birth. With the Internet growing steadily I found Compuserve to be redundant, so I dropped that too. Mactropolis quietly left the scene. WpgOnRamp got swallowed up by someone and I changed my Internet Service Provider to a new startup – escape.ca. Rates were low at $20 month for more hours than I needed, so we stuck with them for several years. Eventually they got swallowed up by Manitoba Telephone System, and they still service that domain. With the rate hikes, we moved on to the new internet giant in town – @home.com. That was our third real email address. One more change would bring us to our present address – the buyout of @home.com by SHAW Communications. All of this happened on our Powermac 6100/60AV.

When the newness of the internet wore off (around 1998), and it became a necessary part of life, and when we could finally afford a replacement, and when I went back to school for training for a ‘second’ career (as if you could call my previous job a career), and when Steve Jobs returned to Apple from a too long hiatus, we bought our second Mac – a ‘Dalmation’ (spotted blue) 600mHz iMac with USB and no floppy disk drive.

I have to stop – Steve Wozniak is on TV.

OK, So the Dalmation iMac died – but only the tube. The electronic guts are hanging in my backroom ready to sell or turn into a – something or other. We replaced that with a Mac Mini with Intel duoCore, which is still in service, and then with multiple MacBooks and iPods… So with the prices falling and number of devices rising, our contribution to Apple has been substantial.

I can attribute my second career directly to Steve Jobs. Because of the Apple, and the Apple IIc in high school, and Adobe Photoshop from the first version on, and other great applications for the Mac, I wanted to get into computer programming. I didn’t aim for business programming – which is where I’m working now, but I work for a great company, I’m happy here, the the end of my story has not yet been written.

I learned about the death of Steve – on a device he created (those were President Obama’s words actually). It really tears me up to think of a future tech world without Steve Jobs to steer the ship. Perhaps this is the beginning of the end, but maybe, just maybe, it’s a chance for someone else to shine.

Saved

Aqua books will be around for a while though as a registered non-profit and with less books. The only thing I go for is the books, so that pretty much paints me out of the picture.

Aqua Books – RIP

his just in:

“
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Anyone who’s had a crack at Grade 11 English will be familiar with the first line of A Tale of Two Cities. It also fits as an opener for what I have to tell you, with apologies to Mr. Dickens, and apologies to You.

Candace and I are, quite honestly, pretty devastated to announce that the doors of Aqua Books and EAT! bistro will be closing forever. We’ve had a great ride, but unfortunately the financial burden has become too much.

…
“

This is really a blow to the “neighborhood” and to the book business in general. I mean, if a used book store can’t make it, what does that mean for new book bookstores? Can Chapters be far behind? Will they turn into large Starbucks with a small selection of books in the corner? When I got the email from Aqua Books, I immediately looked at the calendar. No, it’s not April 1. Still, maybe it is a ruse, to find out what their customers really feel about them. Well, here’s my 2 cents:

EAT! Bistro had good food, but served a niche market. I found it difficult to persuade my friends to eat there after the initial novelty wore off. The biggest culprits were portion size and unwillingness of EAT! to broaden the menu to serve the husbands of the women who eat there (face it – it was kind’uv a girly place to eat…)

I feel that I did my part to keep Kelly in business. I must have bought a hundred books from him that I will never read. I have thrown out my own old books to make room for his.

I have had my own issues with used bookstores, and I think that if I ran one, I would run it differently than Aqua books. I have paid over $10 for books I wanted, knowing full well that I could find the same book for the same price at Chapters on the 80% off table. My book prices would be closer to used book prices, and I would offer volume discounts. I would encourage hoarders like me to take inventory off the shelves to keep the cash flowing. Like the Prada store I think Kelly thought he was selling a premium product – hardly used books – and therefore could charge premium prices. I regard used stores like organized garage sales. Charge too much and I usually walk away empty handed. I think it hurts business to sell a few used books for a lot of money vs. a lot of books for little money. I think it hurts many business to operate that way.

What impact will this have on me? I am highly unlikely to be going out to find a new bookstore to fill a need for new books. In the past I have found that when I have a local used book store I go nuts collecting books in my current subject of interest. That used to be Star Trek books. Now it is philosophy and more general Sci-fi books. When the source dries up (or I move away), so does my interest in those areas. I have a collection of 200 or more Star Trek books for sale if anybody is interested. I think that in the near future I’ll be collating a shelving unit of my real keepers, and will send a thousand or more books to the curb. Or to the Children’s Hospital Book Sale.

Maybe I’ll wander over to Into The Music, and focus on used records!

Snobs

‘m writing this here because I don’t want to rain on a Facebook friends parade… but this latest post really steams me:

Digital Sucks
Neil Young once said:
“Sound is like water. Analog is a warm bucketful slowly poured over your head and digital is the same water, same bucket only this time it’s ice cubes dumped quickly. I know which is more pleasing to me.”

He went on to argue the superiority of tube audio amps and vinyl vs digital music (mp3′s in particular which is like Superman picking on a 90 lb weakling), tube guitar amps vs solid state amps, and film vs digital photography. I could argue for both sides… Ice cubes are real, and crisp and vibrant, while warm water is just ice cubes that have lost their shape and form, and have been sitting in the sun too long… but the bottom line is this…

Snobs annoy me.

They annoy me because the subtext is always – “anyone who settles for less is an idiot”. And they buy into that thinking. And when they buy into that thinking, then they can’t settle for “less” (or different) because they’ve proclaimed that they are above that, and so condemn themselves to a lifetime of throwing money away in the pursuit of “perfection”.

I think life is too short to chase “perfection” – because perfection doesn’t exist. Sooo you think your analog is degrees ahead of my digital… big deal – It’s still miles away from perfection. In fact I’d be tempted to think that it’s the imperfections in analog you find so alluring… the 60hz hum, scratching needle on vinyl, the film grain, the melted warm ice cubes, the flicker of picture on film screen… PAH! Wait till you hear perfection of the choirs of heaven – and then you’ll know how idiotic it was to worship the vacuum tube.

Some might ask me “well aren’t you a Mac snob?”. To which I would reply “It’s not perfect but it’s the operating system I prefer. If you want to use Windows7 or Unbuntu, knock yourself out!

The Internet Is Dead!

rince has declared the internet is over (see here) and has banned all distribution of his music through online channels. In fact his new album, which is said to be his best ever, is being released inside the UK newspaper, the Daily Mirror, in CD form… I think I’ll wait a while before selling my 8mm projector. While you’re waiting for the internet to end, look for Prince’s new music at your favourite pirate websites hope Prince has a similar deal with the Globe & Mail.

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Magazines – the Power of Print

Magazines – the Power of Print,
originally uploaded by Omega Man.

h, the power of Positive Thinking. The magazine industry is full of it. Positive Thinking I mean. But it won’t do them any good… if I am any kind of canary in a coal mine, the magazine industry is about to suffer a major calamity.
I have been an ardent collector of magazines since 1978 – when I subscribed to a brand new magazine called American Photographer. I have every issue of American Photographer, plus every issue of American Photo, as they have been called since 1990. I have every issue of WIRED magazine since I discovered that they were not a drug magazine in 1994. I have most of the issues of Taunton’s Fine Woodworking since 1984, and good sized collections of many other magazines in various disciplines. I am loath to throw a magazine away, unless it is a 10 year old home decorating magazine, and have a compulsion to save anything that says “Anniversary Issue’ or ‘Special Collectors Edition’ or ‘Premier Issue’.
In recent years however I have found that my new issues are not being read. Editors have found that they can still have a large variety of content in a smaller space if they off-load much of the content to their website. The magazines are getting thinner, the cover prices are getting higher.
Subscriptions are rising, I believe, because of motivated pricing. I refused to subscribe to WIRED as long as the Canadian subscription price was within a dollar of the shelf price. I held out for years until WIRED offered me a subscription for $24. How could I refuse that? Now I receive in my mailbox a folded-in-half and sometimes ripped copy of WIRED every month, which I flip through for 10 minutes, then add to the giant stack of WIRED in my basement. Even that $24 is a waste of money. I can get all I want from WIRED on their website. Why am I doing this? Things have changed since I started subscribing to American Photographer in 1978, and started reading WIRED in 1994.
A lot has changed in fact. In 1994 the addition of a CD to a magazine was a wonderful alternative to searching for and downloading 20 MB programs on a 14400 baud modem. In 1978 the only way to get current information was through magazines and yearbooks. There was no internet, you had to write to companies and ask for literature on things you were interested in. Store employees were the experts. Not any more. Today Google and twitter are the experts. We consume data as fast as magazine editors do, and when we finally get the new magazines in the mail, the news is a month old.
So… I’ve had it. I’m purging my magazines. The only magazines I’ll buy will be through cheap subscriptions. If cheap subscriptions are not available I won’t buy the magazine. The subscription rates might increase, but don’t be fooled… off the shelf sales are falling, and there’s nothing the industry can do about it.

Canada Post Going the way of the DODO

anada Post needs friends… but they won’t make ‘em this way…
I don’t understand Canada Post. On one hand they put so much effort into customer services and good PR, and on the other hand they act as if we owe them a favor:

I had to mail a time-sensitive letter. The #10 business envelope was a little thick so I brought it to a Canada Post outlet to get the appropriate postage. They weighed it, they measured it, they put the stamp on it, and they mailed it. All I did was pay for it.

Two weeks later I’m talking to the people I mailed the letter to and they told me they hadn’t received it yet. I said two weeks was a little unusual for a Winnipeg to Toronto letter since there were no mid route stopovers… but whatever. I had sent the same thing by email, as a preview of what I had mailed.

Three weeks after I mailed the danged letter it came back to me, with an insufficient postage sticker on the front. Canada Post had told me what the postage was supposed to be, and now they were telling me that it wasn’t enough!

Canada Post listen to me! If the call for more postage was so close that even you, the post office got it wrong… why not just put it through? How many times have I overpaid just to make sure that a letter got through, or because I only had big stamps? How many hundreds of dollars sit in my collection of collectible Canadian stamps? In other collectors collections?

Canada Post does not offer refunds when we overpay do they? No. They want us all to overpay. But if we’re even one penny short, you can bet that no matter how important the document might be, they will sit on it for a week, and then turn it around. IMHO Canada Post needs a good slap for this behavior. In the olden days of the Federal Post Office, insufficient postage was met with kindly “Postage Due” stamps that the receiver would pay to receive the letter. Today’s leaner (and meaner) Canada Post takes no prisoners.

Do we owe Canada Post a favor? As a collector I think I’ve done them enough favors. Do they owe ME a favor? You better believe it! Competition from email and online publication is getting stronger. Canada Posts mail handling is atrocious. I don’t even like getting magazines delivered by Canada Post – they arrive so damaged. Canada Post is dying. They know it. It’s time to get back to half-price post card postage and “postage due” stamps.

Sales People Need Basic Training

n the interest of full disclosure I’ll say this first: I can’t stand being ignored at the camera counter. I used to sell cameras at a camera store, and I know that it IS possible to cater to more than one customer at a time… with some basic training.

Selling a camera is often a lengthy affair. First time camera buyers are often overwhelmed with all of the choices they have to make before they settle on the one perfect model. The salesperson with knowledge is often tempted to go into full education mode, explaining f-stops and ISO settings, exposure bracketing and how to avoid red-eye.  They like to show off each camera brand and explain the differences between them so the customer can make an educated choice about which brand they are going to dedicate their future to. Nikon? Canon? Sony?… the choices can be seriously overwhelming. But the one thing that camera sales people overlook is — this is not their job.

Sales people at the camera counter are not hired to be photography educators. They were hired to sell cameras. Volume. Many cameras to many people, not one perfect camera to one confused customer. This one point should be the focus point of every sales person’s Basic Training. How to satisfy the many, and how to point the confused customer to resources so they can educate themselves on their own time. But even doing that takes time. Here is what the sales person can do to increase volume without ignoring their primary target: Look at them.

Yeah, it’s that easy! When you, salesperson guy behind the counter, are with a customer, take the time to glance and smile at each new customer that walks up to your counter. Maybe say something like ” I’ll just be a minute, do you have a quick question I can answer?”. Maybe I just want a new battery and don’t want to wait an hour for you to finish with your current customer. Or a filter. Or maybe I have done my own research and know exactly which camera I want to buy from you. In 30 seconds you can grab a camera, hand it to another store employee and score a $2000 sale. You’ve just earned your keep and you can go back to educating your primary, and everybody’s happy. But this is how it always goes down with me…

Well maybe not always, but last time I tried to buy a $500 camera, this is how it went down: There was one camera guy behind the counter. He was with a gray haired customer. He had three cameras on the counter and the customer was looking each one over. I walked up and waited. And waited. A second sales guy was cleaning shelves across the checkout island, and a manager-type was by the till searching for a specific binder. I waited. Camera sales guy put some cameras away, and pulled out another. I waited. Just in case the camera guy thought I was just looking at prices, I leaned against the counter and waited … and waited. Not a glance from camera guy. Not a glance from alternate sales guy. Not a glance from manager-type. Alternate sales guy and manager-type started joking around with each other… “hey what are you doing behind our till” hahahaha. Still waiting. I really want that $500 camera, but nobody is paying any attention to me. I could have sold that old man a camera already… was he the kids dad?

By now I thought it was obvious that I was waiting for help so I un-leaned from the counter and started looking at different things. This was the kids chance to ask me if I needed help. Not a peep. So I walked away. I really don’t need to put up with poor service with so many other camera stores in this mall and in this city. I’m not a street bum or bag lady, I’m well dressed, and I have money. There is no reason to think I’m a waste of your time. I could possibly excuse the kid if he was new to sales, but there is no excuse for other salespeople in the area to ignore customers just because they have filler jobs.

This isn’t a one-time thing at this camera counter. I experience this all the time. I have a stack of Canon SD-xxx boxes in my basement and every one was bought at a competitor because I am invisible to this particular camera counter. I really want to be able to support this store. They sell Apple products, they sell Canon products, they sell big-screen TV’s and Bu-Ray and Klipsch speakers… in my mind they are the perfect store, and in every other department I have to beat the sales people off of me, but that camera department is the worst. Having a “mangers sale” won’t increase sales if your sales guys can only see one customer at a time. IMHO… Sales people need basic training. A “hello, can I help you” to someone who is obviously waiting for help is a no brainer… isn’t it?

postscript:

Today, three weeks later, this store was a different world. I felt like every single sales person in the store had read this post. After my experience today I left with goose bumps going up and down my spine, and I felt joyous tears well up. This is what fantastic retail service looks like:

This time I walked in and I really JUST wanted to buy a battery. A $75 battery. It was in a locked case and I could see it. I saw one sales guy in the camera area, and he was with a customer. In line behind customer one was customer two, and then me. When sales guy looked up from his papers he saw customer two and then me, standing a respectful distance away. He asked customer two if she needed any help. She said she could wait – and then he told her that he would be at least 15 minutes. “Oh” she said, “Then I can’t wait, I’ll come back another day”. NICE. She didn’t wait long, and she didn’t start fuming, and she didn’t storm out in a fury. Reminds me of an IKEA commercial… Then sales guy asked if he could help me. I said I just wanted a battery. When I told him which one, he said “Oh, I can do that” – and got the battery for me. He handed it to me and told me I could take it to the front when I was ready. This was BEYOND expectations. Absolutely fantastic. Almost too good because now I had a tiny $75 battery in my hand with no security sticker on it… Oh well. I went through the security gates into the computer area to pay. Computer sales guy #1 was busy with a customer, so he called Electronics Sales guy to ring up my purchase for me. SWELL. This rocks. I was in and out in 5 minutes even though most of the sales guys were busy. They made a $75 sale instead of Blacks down the hall. And I got shivers it was so beautiful.

Kona Coffee

ona Coffee sucks. If you haven’t tried it, you’re not missing anything.

I tried native Hawaiian brands. Didn’t like it. I tried Starbucks roasted Kona coffee. Didn’t like it. I got Starbucks to brew some for me. Didn’t like it. Neither did the Barista’s. Made my own, the right way, in a French press, in a Bunn, didn’t like it. Made it strong, made it weak, made it every way I could… didn’t like it. IMHO, the only thing that keeps the price of Kona high is its rarity. It certainly isn’t its flavor.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 CTV survey

OLL RESULTS Do you think the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 the day before Remembrance Day is in bad taste? Yes (64 %) No (36 %)

IMHO… If anything is in poor taste it’s the game itself. The release date is irrelevant, and assuming that war vets are OK with being released on any OTHER date, they are a bunch of snivelling whiners who just want to force people to think of them only on this day. Let me tell you something… you only have a few years left. If you want the admiration of the young folks… stop whining and start playing! You can’t force future generations to honor you if they can’t stand you.