Life of a good idea, deployment

It's out.

Here's the short, complete history of the idea, then:
- I thought about this and a couple ways to do it
- I write up a pitch idea, send it to a short list
- They flip out, give me feedback
- I go to a wider group, they flip out
- I start pushing it upwards, struggle, find allies, struggle
- Repeat that last one for a while
(- I quit)
- It gets picked up
(- I leave)
- A competitor announces a similar idea
- It goes out into the world

I knew I said I'd have longer commentary about this, but
a) Internet's really tough to come by here in Edinburgh
b) I'm finally starting to get into vacation mode and I'm just not quite in the mood

Life of a good idea, horrible moment

So the whole time I was shopping this thing, one of the points I kept pounding was 'We have to do this if for no other reason that it's cheap and the companies who come second get no benefit'

Travelocity just did a version of it, and I still haven't seen an Expedia press release.

Today, many of us recycle and walk, bike, or take public transportation when we can, but there's still no way to get across the country or ocean in time for that important meeting or family event - or to reach that great vacation spot out of driving distance-- unless we get on a plane. And while air travel is considered a contributor to the carbon dioxide emissions that lead to global warming, now there's something you can do to offset the negative environmental impact of your travel: by contributing to The Conservation Fund's Go Zero program, you can effectively offset the CO2 emissions of your entire trip.

So first-mover advantage is gone... hopefully they can still salvage some good from this.

I'll have somthing more substantial to say later, but my first reaction is (as you'd expect) 'If they'd listened to the good idea immediately and moved on it, they'd have deployed long ahead of the competition.'

It's another point in favor of working somewhere really small or, barring that, really agile. I guess my former employer wasn't it. This sucks.

MacBook Pro, day 2

I spent today wandering around the web, loading up a bunch of recommended software, and I'm really digging this thing. It's fast, it's elegant, it's hackable.

My only complaint so far is that it runs way hot, to the point of being difficult to actually use on my lap comfortably.

It's weird, I spent time using a PowerBook on and off at Expedia, but I never really got the hang of it. With a new one, I'm using some hotkeys, playing around, and it's far more enjoyable. This thing rocks. I'm going to have a hard time giving it up, if that's what it comes to.

What's next

Many of you are wondering what happens now that I've turned in RC1. Except that there aren't many of you, and you weren't wondering that.

So I talked to my editor today and here's what it looks like:
- next couple of days-2 weeks: I get the next batch of edits back, which should, hopefully, be all minor polishes. I will be on vacation, working on my hot, hot, hot new MacBook Pro, which I totally don't have the money for and am hoping to sell used if it comes to that on my return.
- hopefully this means I'm not in Toledo, sipping on red wine while I fix things. Plus my ability to do research without my books and boxes on boxes of notes and photocopies is going to be pretty limited.

Side note: holy mackeral is this MacBook beautiful. Apple, to make sure the MacBook meets Apple's exacting standards for items I buy, took special care to make the keys at the top left look a little blistered. $3,000 laptop. One of the things Apple does really well is make opening the computer a pleasure - it's all so easy and each step is obvious, like unwrapping a candy. Design makes a difference.

- then when we've agreed on a version that can go to press, it goes to the manuscript people, who give it a severe series of readings for typos, fragmented sentences, and so on. That should be about 6 weeks from now, which is a good argument for me not to hurry back to work

- I fix everything the manuscript people come up with. I don't know how long that'll take, but typos aren't that tough to do edits on. So let's say it's... first week of October.

Then nothing happens for four months while it gets printed, and then bam! It comes out in February.

Now, whether I try and get another book project together or go back into IT is another thing entirely. We'll see, I guess. If I don't, it seems likely that I'd have to sell off this sweet-looking laptop with the slightly blistered keys.

Mmm.. research

This is a box of notes, photocopies, printouts, and revisions.



Yes, it's *a* box. There's more. Been a loooong haul.

RC1 RTE

(Released To Editor)

Version 3's done and submitted.

I think I may get up and get on the bike tomorrow for the first time in ages. Hot cha cha.

two left

Early days of gambling done. Turned out to be a really easy re-write after I spent some time on the larger issues. I did realize it needs some more Hal Chase, though.

So I've got two fairly easy chapters and a lot of tidying (like the Notes chapter, for instance), some additional tweaking, and it'll be Release Candidate 1. That'll be pretty sweet.

McGraw down

That dead bastard. ~23 pages. I submitted a draft w/o those touches (and a string of other errata) if my editor wants to look over the completed rewrites. I'd call this another beta version, but a much improved one. If I had those chapters done (maybe tomorrow) I'd call it a Release Candidate.

But they're not, and I'm tired. What I wouldn't do for Lexis-Nexis access. I can't believe how much money they want for that thing. Dammit.

Under 50 left

Groundskeeping done, 40 to go. Next up is John McGraw, the horrible, no-good, very bad chapter that needs a lot of work. That scanned page was a McGraw.

"You suuuuuuck!"

Heckling/fan participation/rioting is down. ~60 pages left? Next up, groundskeeping, which I loooove.

Also got a massive list of illustrations/photo requests in Friday.

Then I slept until 3pm today, which kinda messes up my schedule. It's weird, I'm kind of vaguely aware of how stressed out and tired I am, but it doesn't really become obvious until I do something like accidentally sleep for 15 hours.

Proquest sucks, an example

June 4, 1974, was 10-cent beer night, one of the most notorious riots at a ballgame ever (along with Disco night).

Search Proquest Newspapers for any string, even as simple as "indians" between 6/4/197 and 6/6/1974

No documents found.

Search Proquest's "Historical New York Times" for those specific dates, and you'll turn up the NYT coverage.

The more I have to use search tools, the more I love Google. Type an operator, shit happens.

Life of a good idea: implementation looms

So my Great Idea, which I lobbied for and shopped, which finally started to move as I was on my way out (and which I almost stuck around for) looks like it's going to go out in a couple weeks, while I'm in Europe.

I understand that if I rejoin Expedia I can get credited in the press release, but otherwise will not be mentioned, which... I don't know, I understand that I'm not there and they're not going to issue a press release that says "thanks for the original idea and detailed implementation plan to Derek Zumsteg, who has since left" but I'd still like credit.

Anyway, I said early on that I didn't care whose name was on it as long as it got done. I meant it, and it looks like that'll happen. When it happens, if I'm around. I'll post a long discussion of what happened and how the idea originated.

Back to the book.

One down, more to go pt 2

Sign-stealing done. ~94p left, 11 days.

Automatic update nagging

Windows XP's auto update finds something it wants for you.
It downloads and installs it.
It pops up a dialogue that asks you to restart now, or later. There is a bomb timer on the dialogue, so that no input is considered consent in 4:45.. 44... 43...
Later makes it go away, only to return after a couple minutes.

I've been using PCs since you could buy one. This is one of the most annoying things ever. I've put up with it for a year, but it's entirely broken and for all of the other updates they've done, Microsoft hasn't fixed it.

Downloading a huge backup of your site's databases? Burning a DVD? Doing some massive computational task? Screw you, we're rebooting whether you like it or not. You're only human, you can't stay awake forever (and if you want to hire someone on the other side of the planet and give them remote access to your machine to click the dialogue box for you while you sleep, best of luck to you).

I'm okay with a single nag. But what's the expected behavior for the "restart later" button? It's not "annoy me again in ten minutes". It's certainly not "annoy me again and restart if I don't respond because I'm making lunch."

What you want to happen is to send it away until you're done with whatever it is prevents you from rebooting right then.

Bad design happens, and I can see where update functionality like this probably doesn't go through a quality design phase. But really, a year of people complaining - a year of everyone at Microsoft being subjected to it themselves - and no one's thought to tweak this?

(btw, how to fix this)

Chilling

If I can go another hour without working on the book, this will be the first day in ages that I haven't spent any time working on the book. I spent this morning gathering ingredients, and then a couple hours cooking and prepping, and then from five on a bunch of people came over for dinner.

So:
- I had no idea how much time it can take to entertain. I understand why people spend so much on catering now
- That felt really good
- My friends are cool
- Now that it's over, I'm about half happy I had a good time and relaxed and half overwhelmed with guilt and dread

One down, more to go

Bat corking finished.

~125p of rewrites left, and I leave for London on 8/20. Things are going to get worse before they get better.

Proquest is a horrible research tool

After Paper of Record destroyed itself, denying me access to the Sporting News, I've had to rely a lot on Proquest which I can access through my local library.

It is, without a doubt, the worst system I've ever been forced to use. I remember the bad old days of library systems when you'd have to crazy stuff like
subject:baseball +casey +stengel
hit 'enter' and hope for the best. I would love to have one of those systems lately.

If I had to sum it up, I'd say "Proquest doesn't do what you tell it to and provides radically different results given only slightly different inputs with no feedback as to why."

Here's an example. The opening Proquest "Basic Search" page looks like this:



In the search box, operators like "AND" and "OR" don't work as they're described in the search tips. More frustrating, it will not return results it obviously has.

The date range doesn't work at all. Searching within two dates always returns results outside of the range. There's no message as to why. Did it fail over? Were there no results? No clue.

The "database" dropdown allows me to select the "Proquest Newspaperes" and the New York Times. Once you've selected that, the results sometimes improve. If I search for some strings and don't get any results, narrowing it down to one paper often returns what I'm looking for.

Proquest doesn't have any of that documented or hint at it. Why would it? "Your comprehensive search failed. Would you like to limit it, search each possibility one at a time, and turn up more results?"

Gosh, that'd be great. Or, better yet, why doesn't the comprehensive search work like that?

The date limits, I should note, do sometimes work when searching individual sources. Whether or not they'll work on any given search, even if it's a source that's honored date limits in the past, is randomly determined at time of search submission.

Here's how bad this is: I've been using other sources to find references to New York Times articles and then gone to Proquest to search only the NYT only that day for that headline, and my success rate is probably 75%.

As an added bonus, at random times it will throw up a login screen which is impassable. Then I get to start over.

I'd love to use Lexis-Nexis, which I understand is far more difficult to use but 90 times as powerful. Let me at it. Except that it costs (I believe) $900,000 for an indvidual license.

Google, would you please smash these guys and hurry? Researchers everywhere are crying out in pain for a search solution that works. I'll write you a spec and everything.

The growing insanity

After a particularly hard stint of rewrites and reresearch, I had a ton of books out on my desk, and took the opportunity to order my shelves of baseball books by color. It's a pleasing look -- oddly reassuring. However, the fact that I did it makes me wonder if I've finally cracked under the stress.

Today was the Hidden Ball Trick and the nth revision of the Black Sox chapter.

Unemployment

I went to the grocery store this morning and the cashier asked me if I had the day off and I told her I was unemployed. "Any prospects?" she asked. I laughed. I don't know.

Every day I think the chances I go back into IT drop by a percent, half a percent, and I'm more likely to try and stick it out as a writer. Which would certainly make life spicier.

I got up this morning determined not to let the deadline stress get to me. I made breakfast, finished up some new material on the steroids chapter (turned out nicely), and moved on from there. All in all, I wasn't as productive as some of the other days lately, but I'm a lot happier with the product, and I'm settling in for the evening session with the M's game on, and I feel pretty good.

Surprise endings

I took on a fairly huge chapter today (it runs 50 printed pages double-spaced) which has been in pretty good shape through the whole process. It was part of the initial proposal, which means in some form I've had years to work on this.

Anyway, I run through it really quickly, happy that it's largely light work with a little tweaking, addition, and subtraction. I get to the end and there's a note that the chapter runs too long (which it does). My editor would like to see 5-7 pages trimmed (and gave some really good advice on how to get there).

I started at the note for a good minute, not really believing I'd just read that. And then I started the second pass, cutting for length.