Hampton's blog

This fellow is flat out amazing. I have no idea how he did so many consecutive flips without just passing out or keeling over from exhaustion.

This is hilarious:

From the we've got gobs of money and are willing to pay department, comes this article in the Guardian in which they detail how ExxonMobil is offering $10,000 payouts to scientists who refute the recent UN study on global warming. When you follow the money trail, you find that most of global warming skeptics are actually on the dole from the oil companies, and rather than propose alternate models just attempt to sow doubt about what climate scientists have predicted.

Joel Spolsky shares his secrets to customer service success. A bit of a primer for those unfamiliar with Joel - he was previously the project manager for Microsoft Excel back in the early 90's and now runs a software business that he promotes by blogging about various software and business lessons he's learned.

A few notable points from the article:

1. Fix everything two ways

We treat each tech support call like the NTSB treats airliner crashes. Every time a plane crashes, they send out investigators, figure out what happened, and then figure out a new policy to prevent that particular problem from ever happening again.

Joel picks up on something I've noticed in work as well. When a customer makes you aware of a problem, you have two options: fix the immediate problem, or look at it as a deeper issue to resolve. Many times people will try and rush through a fix so they can get back to work, etc. However this is missing the opportunity to take a step back and examine the problem and see if there's some way to prevent it from ever becoming an issue again. When you can improve your documentation, or make your software easier to understand, or automate several steps in a process, you end up saving time and money in the long run because that problem is going to crop up again and again and again and each time your support folks get to spend time dealing with it.

2. Suggest blowing out the dust

Microsoft’s Raymond Chen tells the story of a customer who complains that the keyboard isn’t working. Of course, it’s unplugged. If you try asking them if it’s plugged in, “they will get all insulted and say indignantly, ‘Of course it is! Do I look like an idiot?’ without actually checking.”

“Instead,” Chen suggests, “say ‘Okay, sometimes the connection gets a little dusty and the connection gets weak. Could you unplug the connector, blow into it to get the dust out, then plug it back in?’

This is a pretty neat technique for avoiding a confrontation by framing troubleshooting techniques in a way that doesn't make your customer feel like an idiot.

4. Take the blame

When you win a victory with a customer by firing them, you still end up feeling riled up and angry, they’ll get their money back from the credit card company anyway, and they’ll tell a dozen friends. As Patrick McKenzie writes, “You will never win an argument with your customer.”

By taking the blame in life, you can often diffuse situations where otherwise no one could win. Often times it's better to just assume responsibility for a situation and get a little egg on your face rather than lose a customer (or friend) just because everyone wants to be right.

Local Chicoan Jessica Rios reviews the best coffee shop in Chico, The Naked Lounge and uncovers the secret of its success. This is the first piece of hers that I've read but she has a definite knack for writing.

The Lounge has an amazingly low turnover rate (no employee has ever quit), my only gripe is that for such an enormously successful and profitable business, they pay no better than any other food service job in Chico. When you do well, it's always nice to support those make your success possible (your employees). So be sure to tip all the hardworking employees whenever you're in there.

The DARPA Challenge is a competition that the government runs every year where teams from various universities built a robot vehicle to navigate an outdoor course without human intervention. The video covers some cool techniques that Stanford used to win the competition including using lasers to detect obstacles. This ended up being quite a bit more complicated than you'd think - elevation changes and switching from concrete to dirt surfaces both were big challenges. My favorite moment lies fairly deep in when they show footage of the Berkeley motorcycle going off course and jumping into a pond.

The whole thing is about 49 minutes long.

Here you go:

I discovered this show on YouTube and it's wicked sweet. The guy is a professional con artist turned TV showman, who plays his cons for the audience. This particular con centers on the the appearance that a standard beer glass is taller than is it around. I plan on using this the next time I hit the pub. Check it out...