Brian @ Wongside

This thread is perhaps what makes SmugMug such a fantastic community. Where else do you suppose you could find a community like that?

If you don’t have time to follow the entire thread, here’s the gist of it:

A photographer had taken photos of a young girl who was killed in a tragic accident. He made a post on the forum requesting assistance in creating a collage for the girl’s family. A few souls stepped forward, utilizing their Photoshop skills and produced a few poster sized images at no cost. The photographer then set out to have them printed for the family. A SmugMug employee stepped in and offered to have the prints made for free. The prints were displayed at the girl’s funeral, and then the photographer decided to make additional prints for other family members. He was going to give them the prints at cost–no markup, but again the SmugMug employee stepped in and offered to do them for free.

Such an amazing story to me! That level of customer service is quite above and beyond what I believe we can find from most vendors, whether their retailers, or hoteliers. And the desire of the community to rally and produce such amazing artwork for free is really incredible.

Granted, such generosity could easily be taken advantage of, but I suppose that’s the risk you run in building such a fantastic community of people.

To bring it even closer to home, it’s suggestive of something that Scott shared in Bible study on Friday night. He was talking about how he grew up in Small Town America. When he went to buy gas at the gas station, he didn’t even have to pay for it. Everyone knew his dad, and knew that he was good for it. Such trust and vulnerability. It would be easy for someone to take advantage of such a situation. How easy would it be to renege on the understanding of responsibility to pay? But at the same time, there’s something so friendly and welcoming about a story like that.I think it goes back to the first century church.

Come to think of it, there’s definitely something reminiscent of the first century church in all of this. The closeness, the selflessness, the vulnerability. It sounds like Acts 2:44-45

All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

Am I saying SmugMug is the first century church reincarnate? No! Of course not. What I am saying is that it’s reminiscent of that, and it feels good. There’s something so attractive about the first century church–the church of Acts 2. I think there’s an innate longing in every believer for that church. I think it’s a longing that ultimately points to Heaven. Who doesn’t long for a place and a group of people who are close-knit, selfless, vulnerable, loving, loveable, and completely giving? I sure do.

Well, I might have to retract what I said a couple of days ago regarding the Great American Food and Music Festival. Charlene and I ended up giving it another opportunity to impress, and we returned to the Amphitheatre after church on Saturday night with our friends Mike and Lani. It wasn’t great, but it was acceptable.

We were actually quite surprised at how empty it was around 7:00pm. It was a stark contrast to the madness that greeted us around 2:00pm. A few of the vendors, notably Graeter’s Ice Cream, were out of food, which I thought was pretty lame.  But I guess if they were significantly unprepared for the masses of people, it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Charlene and I got Pink’s hot dogs, and a pastrami sandwich from a New York deli. They were alright, but I certainly wouldn’t travel across the country just to eat them. The pricing was bordering on extortion. $6 for a 20oz soda, and $5 for a 20oz water. The pastrami sandwich was $12. For $12 I was expecting a footlong sandwich. Nope. We’re talking standard size sandwich bread. No more than 12 square inches of food. $2 for 4 slices of bacon. Hot wings were a $1 a wing. That’s right, 2 inches of chicken for a buck. $2 for a brownie bite. Even parking for the $20 event was $15. Extortion indeed!

I guess one redeeming quality was that Ed Levine, got up and issued an apology on stage. That made the angst mildly more palatable.

We did get to see Bobby Flay, which was somewhat of a highlight.  I’m not exactly sure what was wrong with him, but he certainly wasn’t the Bobby Flay I love to watch on the Food Network. Maybe he just had a really long day, but my real suspicion was that he was a bit drunk. We watched him make shrimp tamales and a pork tenderloin. He looked a bit lost on stage, and I don’t know where they got his assistant, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t one of the two ladies who normally help him on Throwdown. She looked lost too. By way of example, he asked her for heavy cream, and she offered him milk. Who in their right mind would try to substitute milk for heavy cream? Not on Bobby Flay’s stage. He called her out on it too. haha.

The other disappointment was that Bobby was supposed to present from 8:30-9:15. Twenty minutes into it, he must have had enough, so he finished his pork tenderloin, and said “Thanks everyone, I’m Bobby Flay” and then he walked off. Huh? No idea what that was all about. Maybe it was the alcohol.

So, all in all, the event was quite a disappointment. Way over priced; way too crowded; way too little food; way too little value. I only feel bad for the “poor” folks who paid $526 for VIP tickets, and faced the same problems the rest of us plebeians did. Long lines, no food, bad entertainment.

Since we were or unwilling to go to the (not so) Great American Food and Music Festival, Charlene and I headed to a place that comes highly recommended by the people of Mountain View: Clarke’s Charcoal Broiler.

I was aware that it had been nominated a few times for the best burger for a few years, but when we got to the store, they had posters going back at least 10 years. Pretty spectacular if you ask me. I got the chili burger, and Charlene got the turkey burger. Mine was quite tasty and definitely had a smoky, charbroiled flavor. Unfortuantely, I have to say that I’m still on the lookout for a chili burger better than the one at Johns Burgers in Bakersfield. I think the downfall of this burger was that they used processed (American) cheese rather than cheddar on top of the chili. I wasn’t looking for plastic cheese on my food. I was looking for some delicious, sharp, aged cheddar. But I digress…the burger was still delicious, just not better than Johns.

Charlene’s turkey burger was alright a bit dry to my taste. As far as turkey burgers are concerned, I think the best one I’ve ever eaten was actually at Red Robin. It’s juicy, flavorful, and a wonderful substitute to a regular beef burger. It certainly fills up those empty spaces.

Anyways, I look forward to trying other burgers at Clarke’s. I’ve heard they have a pretty good avocado burger. We’ll definitely have to make another trip there in the future.

So we showed up to the Great American Food and Music Festival with great hope and expectations.

But things turned ugly rather quickly…

As we were walking into the Amphitheatre, we heard a lot of griping and complaining. A few people yelled, “Don’t do it, it’s not worth it.” Upon asking for further clarification, they told us that there were way too many people. Supposedly, they sold 50,000 tickets for a venue that only holds 10,000 people. The lines were upwards of one hour for food. I heard tales of waits as long as 4 hours for a sandwich, and 3 hours for buffalo wings. Pretty crazy.

So we gave up and headed out to lunch.

Charlene and I are going to the Great American Food and Music Festival tomorrow. One of my favorite Food Network stars, Bobby Flay, is hosting the event at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. I’m really excited about attending.

I’ve never been to a food festival, so this will be a new experience for me. I’ll be sure to take my camera and post pictures afterwards. Here’s the master schedule of events. Our schedule looks something more like this:

As popular as he is, I’m surprised they didn’t give more time for him to do book signings. Oh well, I’m hopeful we’ll get him to sign a book for us, but there’s certainly no guarantees with only 45 minutes, and perhaps hundreds or thousands of people clamouring for his signature.

Wish us luck!

The quintessential maverick, Mark Cuban, spoke out a few years ago regarding why he doesn’t wear suits. SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill concurs.

Frankly, I’m really quite comfortable wearing shorts and a t-shirt. That’s what I wore all throughout the years of my education. I was never really preppy enough to wear a polo shirt with shorts until I started dating Charlene.

But there are occasions when I do like wearing my suit. On those special occasions, it feels good to just slip into a suit and tie. Whether it’s a wedding or a funeral, I feel quite comfortable in my suit. But I must say that those times are usually limited to wintry weather. I can’t  stand wearing a suit when it’s 100 degrees outside–heck, even when it’s in the 80s it’s often too hot. It’s miserable. All that sweat, the dark fabric, the claustrophobia. Miserable I tell you!

I’m quite glad that I don’t have to wear a suit and tie every day. My dress code for work is usually jeans and a polo shirt. I might put on the occasional long sleeve, button down shirt, but again, that’s usually in the winter. I don’t believe I’ve ever worn a tie to my current job. And to be frank, sometimes I’m more “dressed up” than the other people around me. I’ve seen people in t-shirts, jean shorts, and flip-flops around the office. So I’m rather conservative in my pants.

If I had my druthers, I would likely wear shorts and a t-shirt to work every day. They’re just so much more comfortable. And during those times that call for me to get on my hands and knees under my desk to plug in a power strip? Who wants to wear a suit to do that? Not me. I’d really prefer to be wearing jeans. It’s not even fun to do that in khakis.

Boy, I’m glad I don’t work in the finance sector!

I wonder if there will ever come a day when a suit and tie are out (of all industries) and we can all be free to wear whatever we want (provided we wear something!). A time when the man is no longer made by the suit. Unfortunately, it seems likely that as long as there are people who need to feel more powerful than others based on their wardrobe, this will never happen.

Interesting…

Apparently, my Asian brethren and I are under represented in the Board Rooms of Silicon Valley. Not sure what can be done about it, but I certainly intend to be a part of the force that changes it.

I would have to agree with their assertion regarding “the failure of Asian executives to mentor talented younger colleagues.”  First of all, I’ve had few bosses who were actually Asian.  When I was at Accenture, I knew one Senior Executive and one Senior Manager who were each Korean. The Senior Manager was a good mentor and teacher (I believe he was recognized a few times for his ability to mentor others, especially analysts like myself), but I don’t believe he ever made a specific effort to reach out to the other Asians on the team. 

I guess we’ll see.  I’ve got mentors at my current job, but none of them are Asian, and regardless, there are few Asians at my company.

If we, as Asians are to break through that “glass ceiling” we’re definitely going to need mentors and training in this area. It certainly isn’t for lack of talent or brains that we’re missing out.

Yahoo! has a great article on how to prioritize savings for college and retirement. For us, retirement most likely looms far in the distance, but children are probably coming in the next 5 years or so, with college coming about 18 years after that. So this is great for us to keep in mind, especially in light of the benefits of compounding.

As I mentioned a few months ago, I updated my website to a new theme. An unfortunate consequence of doing that was that it put these ugly borders around all my smilies:

Frankly, it made them look like they were in prison. What to do? Take a dive into the code of course!

This was actually made easier by a nifty little utility called Firebug. It’s billed as a tool for web development, so in this instance, it definitely served it’s purpose.

I right-clicked on a smiley chose “Inspect Element” from the menu, and that brought up a window that showed me that the style of this image was dictated by the style.css file, and the img selector. It had a border of 1 pixel all around:

img {
border:1px solid #000000;
}

Firebug also showed me the code that was used to display the smiley:

<img class="wp-smiley" alt=":-)" src=.../>

Ah ha! They’re all tagged with the CSS class “wp-smiley”. That’s great because it means I could customize the CSS to remove the border.

So I hopped into the style.css file and added a new bit of code:

img.wp-smiley{
border:0px;
}

That means that for each img tag with the wp-smiley class, the border should be zero pixels.

And there you have it. Smiley’s without borders! Happy coding!

Like many people, I was both thrilled and dismayed last month. That’s when Canon announced their Spring Lens Rebates. But it had barely been a week into the rebates when retailers like B&H and Adorama decided to boost the prices of lenses across the board. That meant a lens like the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM which was about $1700 prior to the rebate, and $1500 after a $200 rebate immediately jumped up to $1600, effectively cutting the $200 rebate in half to $100. That doesn’t make it a complete wash, but it definitely diminishes the utility of a $200 rebate.

So I was interested to read the commentary by Roger Ciala, President of LensRentals.com. In it, he shares a few really good points and observations:

• The markup on a lens is really quite tiny, maybe 3-5% (about $30-$50 on a $1000 lens).
• SLR lens sales only account for about 2.7% of Canon’s overall revenue. Considering Canon is the largest player in the dSLR space, that’s pretty miniscule. Apparently, their business machine (copiers?) division is significantly larger.
• We may lose a few players in the SLR market as a result of this economic downturn. He names Olympus, Panasonic, and Pentax as possiblities. (Note, these companies make most of their money in other businesses, so as companies, they’re not going anwhere. It’s just that they may no longer decide to participate in SLR manufacturing.)
• The “Department Store Bad Christmas” concept does not apply. He details what this means in his article, but the gist of it is that lenses don’t have high markups, and they’ll still be just as valuable in a few months (unlike clothing), so retailers can afford to hold onto them without serious consequences.

Great commentary, and worth the read, especially if you were in the market for a new lens like I was. For the time being, I think I’ll sit this one out.