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Girls Night Bachelorette iPhone App

My most-recently published app is called Girls Night.  It’s a bachelorette party game where you put in all the girls names and it gives you a bunch of truths and dares that you can track throughout the night.  It’s good for a general girls night out at a bar too, if you want to get rowdy.  I’ve played it a few times, sometimes including guys too.  The guys seem to like the truths the best. 

 

Check it out here: itms://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=322326453&mt=8&s=143441

   

 

   

KandyApps

I haven’t blogged in a long time.  Figured I’d share some projects I’ve been working on.  Over the past year as a side-thing, Andy and I started working on a bunch of iPhone applications.  We call our company KandyApps (www.kandyapps.com ) although we don’t have too much on our site yet.  If you search the app store for "kandyapps" you can see our apps.  I specialize in party games mostly, and Andy’s more into regular games.  We work together on all of them, but one of us is the primary dev.  I’ve learned tons the past year – it’s great to get back into coding again.  If you have ideas or requests for apps, send them our way!

Spitfire Pub on Microsoft Campus

Microsoft execs recently disappointed me along with thousands of other employees who were excited about the new pub on campus in the new "Commons" area that opened last week.  A few days before the scheduled open, Microsoft pulled the plug on the whole thing.  They decided that Spitfire would not be allowed to serve alcohol.  A pub with no alcohol.  That’s great.  The owners were completely surprised by this; they had staff, food, and supplies all ready to go.  There was some sort of compromise, and now Microsoft keeps saying in emails and on websites that any employee can book Spitfire after 3pm, but you have to book it through Microsoft Conference Services.  That’s what you use to book catering events and conference rooms.  I have been trying to find a way to express my disappointment short of emailing Lisa Brummel, our VP of HR.  On the Commons website, I found a place where they were soliciting feedback.

 

I sent mail to the Commons feedback alias (commons@microsoft.com) explaining my disappointment.  Here was their response.

Thank you for your positive feedback on The Commons in general and comments regarding Spitfire.   We’ve always wanted to create a special gathering place for employees but needed to do so in a manner consistent with our business environment and existing policies.  Any employee can reserve Spitfire after 3pm for events and gatherings by mailing Microsoft Conference Services at MSCSMail.   Your continued feedback to help improve the process is appreciated.

I am unclear on our "existing policies" and why they didn’t matter until the last minute.  Anyway, I emailed MS Conference Services to see just how easy it is to book an evening slot for our team to get some drinks.  Here’s the response I got.

The Spitfire is open for normal lunch hours from 11am-3pm.

 

The Spitfire is available to book for private events, Monday – Friday after 3pm within the following time slots: 3:00pm-5:00pm, 5:30pm – 7:30pm, and 8pm-11am. 

 

The fee to reserve the space is $400.00 per time slot. This fee does not include catering or other extended level services.

 

The Spitfire can host groups of up to 200 for a reception style event (standing room only), or up to 80 for a seated dinner event. There is a minimum of 20 attendees for after-hours events.

 

You can opt to share the space with another event, if capacity allows. This can allow for the $400 fee to be split across two events, with each event only being charged $200.

 

Spitfire is the exclusive caterer within this space. Catering can be ordered through your Conference Planner. The menu has been attached for your review. Please note that the menu does not include 20% gratuity and 10% tax.

 

Cancellation fees are incurred based on the advance notice provided to Microsoft Conference Services:

·         1 day or less prior to event = 100% of charge

·         2 – 7 days prior to event = 75% of charge

·         8 or more days prior to event = no charge

·         Cancellation due to inclement weather will incur the standard cancellation fee when the Microsoft campus is open. There will be no cancellation fee if the campus is officially closed per MS announcement.

I am not impressed. $200 and that doesn’t include food or drinks.  We just want 5-7 people to get together someplace better than Azteca.  Nobody’s looking to get wasted.  I feel bad for the Spitfire owners.  This isn’t what they signed up for.  I spoke to one of the owners, Jonathan, and he said they had followed all the rules, kept to their contract, done everything right.  So why did Microsoft wait until the last minute to squash the plans?  At the last company meething, they bragged about the upcoming pub on campus.  Which exec decided to rain on our parade?

Distribution vs. Concentration of Discomfort

Sitting in the airport, waiting for my delayed flight, I started thinking about how airlines deal with long delays.  If they have 5 flights from Seattle to NY per day, let’s say 8am, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, and 4pm, and the first one gets delayed for 3 hours, they have 2 options.  Leave all the other flights as-is and make the 8am people wait 3 hours.  Or, distribute the wait by having the 8am people take the 10am plane and make the 10am people wait 1 hour.   So I’m wondering if there’s a morally correct thing to do vs. what would be best for the business.  (I’m assuming for the sake of this conversation, all planes involved have the same configuration, so it would be easy to swap out the aircraft.) 

 

Morally it seems fair to share the wait time.  If I bought a ticket for 8am, why do the 10am people get to leave before me?  But I’m not 100% confident on that because it’s just bad luck that the 8am people ended up with a delayed flight, so why should we inconvenience double the amount of people?  From a business standpoint, it seems clear to me that you’d leave as many flights as you can as-is, so as to minimize the amount of unhappy customers.  That’s at least until the wait moves past a certain threshold where the amount of inconvenience is so much that it outweighs the minimal inconvenience that another flight of people would have to wait.  For example, once the wait is past 24 hours, let yesterday’s people fly, and work something out for the rest of the flights.

 

I’m not sure what’s right; My gut says to be fair and split the wait time if possible, but I know that could mess things like air traffic control times, flight attendant staffing, and a multitude of other things involved in getting a flight out.

 

This reminds me a little of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s blog entry on Torture vs. Dust Specks where he questions which is the lesser evil:  if a single person was tortured non-stop for 100 years, or if an incomprehensible number of people all got a dust speck in their eye.  If you’re going with minimizing the sum of discomfort, then you’d go with the torture, easily, because the ridiculously high number of people that he talks about in his entry would far outweigh just 100 years of torture for just one person.  I can’t agree with him because I think about discomfort on an individual level over group discomfort, so I’d much rather have a ton of people have dust specks in their eyes vs. anybody getting tortured.  It’s interesting how many people actually agreed with Eliezer that they’d go with the torture.  The entry generated a lot of discussion.

The Low-Carb Experiment: Final Update

Well here I am 28 days later.  The final 2 weeks wasn’t all that different than the initial 2 except that I ate lots more fruit, added these low-carb tortillas, drank a little, and cheated a whole lot.  Biggest and best cheating moment:  Tollhouse Magic dessert at Belltown Bistro w/ Craig.  It was so worth it.  If you haven’t had this dessert yet, you’re missing out.  It’s a giant gooey chocolate chip cookie hot out of the oven in a scalding little pan with vanilla ice cream on top.  It probably had more carbs than all the carbs I had in the 2 weeks prior. 

 

Second best cheating moment.  Pumpkin Pancakes at CJ’s Eatery with Dan.  They only have these things a few times a year on the special menu, so I had to indulge.  Totally worth it.

 

Third best cheating moment.  Mini-cupcake with dark chocolate icing and round little rainbow sprinkles.  Took me a good 20 minutes before I lost all willpower and had one.  Also totally worth it.

 

Mostly I kept each day down to 0 or 1 alcoholic drink.  Both Saturdays I had 2, and for some reason Monday night I went out crazy with some friends and ended up having 4 drinks.  Altogether still way less than an average 2 weeks.

 

Total weight lost: 10 pounds

Total inches lost (waist): 3 inches

Experiment Results: Success

Two Week Check-in

So today is day 15.  I’m too lazy to make the graph this week, but basically I lost about 2 more pounds with the total being 8-10 depending on how you measure.  I cheated even more this past week but have managed to still not have any alcohol.

 

The week in review:

 

Wednesday and Thursday I stayed in, so that was no problem at all.

Friday – At work we had a big meeting and after the meeting they had Champagne and a Chocolate Fountain.  This was a rarity for sure.  That was probably the worst temptation of the week.  I had no champagne, beer, or wine, but I did have one chocolate-covered strawberry.  I resisted the marshmallows, rice krispie treats, and pineapple.

Friday night – Was with a group of friends in Belltown.  Went to Viceroy, Juju, and Karma.  Turns out Adam was also doing the no-drinking thing so I had a buddy.  Danced forever at Karma.  Still had fun.  Lots of soda water w/ lime.  Basically my standard vodka soda without the vodka.

Saturday evening – met up with a friend for Sushi.  Couldn’t have a drink or wine with dinner but sushi is great for low-carb.

Saturday night – Went to a party at Nectar then moved on to Viceroy in Belltown.  Met lots of fun people.  Got a lot of shit from people for not drinking but whatever.  I was driving.  Saved lots of money on cabs and drinks.

Sunday – Had book club.  Lots of wine and desserts but I only had a few berries, which technically was cheating but didn’t matter to me.  Berries are allowed as of today.

Sunday night – Met up with Christy for Belltown Pizza.  I had their meatball sandwich which is awesome but I didn’t eat the bread.  Okay, I had a tiny bit of bread.  Didn’t have any beer though.

Monday night – Met up with Neda for food.  Went to Belltown Bistro and had a caprese salad.  Didn’t drink. Again.

Tuesday night – Went to a Mariner’s game.  Didn’t drink.  Also couldn’t really eat anything since nothing there is low-carb.  Wasn’t hungry anyway.  Then met up with friends at Viceroy.  Didn’t drink again, but bought a couple of scotches for the guy I was with as a thanks for taking me to the game.  It’s become a little weird for me to buy alcohol now that I’m not drinking.

Wednesday night – Everyone was out at Viceroy but I decided to take the night off.

Tonight – I can have a max of one drink a night for the next 2 weeks. Not sure if I’ll go out tonight, but it’s fun to not have the restriction.

 

Alcohol – I estimate that I would have had about 18 drinks if I wasn’t following the rule.  That’s at least half a pound.  Was busier than a normal week – usually I wouldn’t go out so many nights in a row, but still it sounds like a lot.  Maybe I should have a weekly limit in addition to a per night limit.

 

Food

I added a bunch of things to my "allow" list.  Dark chocolate, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, low-carb tortillas, peanut butter, sunflower seeds.  Not even sure what else but I bought a bunch of stuff yesterday.  It’ll probably take me at least the 2 weeks to eat it all.  I bought way to much meat and fish 2 weeks ago.  Still have most of it left.

 

So that’s that.  Adding the low-carb tortillas and strawberries have made me very happy.

 

Had to go to the dentist today since one of my sealant’s fell out.  I think my mouth was confused with the lack of sugar and figured it didn’t need any sealants anymore…