I was looking for something on walmart.com this morning. I don’t particularly want to shop at Walmart (I personally think it is a very bad idea to economically support Walmart) but I was looking for an example of 1/4″ automotive pinstripe tape to send to someone via email, and it seemed the big-box-store sites might have what I was looking for. They don’t have it, at least not on their website. I struck out at other places too, seems this kind of product is too trivial to put onto a website. Oh well.

Then I noticed the upper right corner of the walmart.com page containing the message “Welcome back, null. Not null?” (have a look at the picture I included above, and click the picture to see the full size version). This amused me and also reinforced the notion that programming is somewhat hard. The details matter. Or at least they should. Apparently not at Walmart though. You see, “null” is a value that is is programmer-speak for “no value available.” The programmers who create the walmart.com website apparently aren’t clever enough to test for this condition and respond appropriately. Dumb.

Sometimes real-life is so much funnier than any comedy troupe could ever make it. Tonight, during the evening news on television, I caught an advertisement for Ford trucks. The pitch-man was Mike Rowe, host of the Discovery Channel program Dirty Jobs.

If you aren’t familiar with Mike or his program, the basic premise is that he tackles those very undesirable jobs. Some examples include cleaning sewers, disposing of dead animals in a factory, or cleaning portable toilets.

Yep, selling American-made vehicles probably is a job nobody else wants to do.

After a miserable start Microsoft gave up on a silly advertising campaign (and supposedly also a very expensive campaign) to have Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld explain to me why Windows was wonderful. Their next attempt was the “I’m a PC” campaign that was somehow supposed to convince me that it was cool to use Windows. Their latest attempt now tries to convince me that purchase price, rather than coolness, is the primary factor I should use when deciding on a new laptop. Uh, what?

I appreciate value as much as anyone else, but seriously Microsoft is once again missing the boat. I’m sure the Apple execs are laughing (again) at this new attempt. I certainly am. In addition to laughing I’m also quite puzzled why Microsoft seems to be funding the advertising for Best Buy and HP. Whatever.

People like their iPods and iPhones because they feel nice to use. Ok maybe people get them because they look cool. Maybe coolness is why people buy, but that isn’t why people recommend to their friends. When you ask people who have a MacBook whether they’d recommend one, they aren’t going to tell you about price or about coolness. They tell you about the joy of using it and getting things done. They tell you about the joy of having a computer that “just works” for them.

Usability has always been a key thing for Apple and it really shows. I believe this is because Apple creates a cult-like passion amongst developers and users about it. I believe that Microsoft is interested in usability, but somehow they can’t seem to make it work. You can watch Steve Ballmer run around shouting “Developers! Developers! Developers!” but is he really trying to create the passion and commitment to design? Probably not. There is even a famous email from Bill Gates where he bitterly describes his frustration with Microsoft products.

Its almost like nobody there actually gets it, but that certainly isn’t true. There are “islands” at Microsoft where usability really shows (Visual Studio is my best example off the top of my head – it is exactly the right tool for me to write solid software) but the overall consistency is lacking across Windows as well as every other application. I gotta say I’ve never believed you can have real usability without end-to-end consistency, and Microsoft’s product portfolio seems to be a perfect example of that.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been introduced to real usability concepts, and when you understand the science behind that word you can appreciate why Apple seems drenched in it but Microsoft isn’t even in the same neighborhood.

Last weekend we were chosen by a small puppy to become his new parents!

Meet Cairo, a very nice little dog who thinks we are ready for sleepless nights and endless chasing around the house.

Cairo is about ten weeks old now, and is incredibly wonderful. He is a mix of Dachshund and Yorkshire terrier – not terribly large but incredibly cute and very rambunctious. He is keeping our other dog quite busy.

I’m hoping to get some sleep this weekend. I’d forgotten how much work it is to train a new puppy!

Eileen posted a different picture and some other fun stories.

The snow is dumping down here in Vancouver again.

The weather report is predicting another 5-10cm to fall today. We have probably received something like 70-80cm of snow this winter and things are still a mess here in Vancouver. Anywhere else in Canada this would be a minor annoyance and life would move on. Not here on the “wet coast” where even a small amount of snow brings the city to a stand still.

There are people in our neighborhood who haven’t been able to drive their car since before Christmas. We’re lucky that everyone can walk to the local grocery store, though. Eileen hasn’t been able to get her Beetle out of the alley behind the house due to the snow pileup. I’ve managed to get my Altima out a few times but I’m scraping snow with the bottom of the car every time. I have had to dig my tires out of the snow more times than I care to count.

This is seriously frustrating. Just yesterday Eileen and I spent several hours clearing snow from the alley with the hope of being able to get her Beetle out by Monday. I cleared the sidewalks as well, although as of this morning you wouldn’t even know it. I don’t even a proper snow shovel as every time it snows the stores are completely sold out and I forget (every year) to buy one in the summer. Yesterday I managed to buy the very last bag of ice-melt (some fancy chemical that works like the winter road salt we used in Michigan growing up, but is supposed to be more environmentally friendly). Rona had received three pallets of the stuff and it was sold out in an hour. It was a frenzy very reminiscent of the Black Friday shopping incidents at a certain Walmart.

The last time we had snow fall like this was on December 26th, and most of it is still on the ground and streets. I’m sure everyone who owns a plowing service is making serious money right now. I’d pay a heck of a lot of money to have our alley plowed, if only I could actually get someone on the phone.

The city appears to be waiting for Spring rather than remove the snow, as none of the side streets have been plowed. The major roads get plowed a day or two after a big snow fall, but even “plowed” is a bit of an exaggeration. The comical thing is that the city will ticket you for parking too far from the curb (as if I could find the curb underneath all the snow), or not clearing your sidewalk by 10am. Ha ha ha, I’m laughing so hard I’m crying.

Our neighbor reminded me that in the 1940s it used to snow like this all the time in Vancouver. I’m sure it was a heck of a lot of fun then, but now it is just wrong. I’m wondering if I can hook the propane barbecue to the front of my car and drive around just melting the snow in front of me.

Here are some more pictures for you:
Front of the House
The Street Out Front

Sigh.