09:08 – Barbara is doing very well. It’s only been a little more than two weeks since her surgery, and she’s already getting around pretty well. She can’t wait to get back to work, although she’ll have to wait at least a couple more weeks for that. Meanwhile, she’s up and around the house and able to do light stuff. She cooked dinner the last two nights, and walked down the block with me yesterday to talk with Kim.
I just downgraded our Netflix account to streaming-only. Our DVD queue still has 100 or more discs in it, but they’re all low priority stuff. Meanwhile, our streaming queue is full of stuff that we actually want to watch. So, for the next few months we’ll watching streaming material and wait for more DVD-only stuff to accrue. Then we’ll go back to a 2- or 3-at-a-time disc plan and watch that stuff.
Netflix…
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/22/BUGI1LKCJ8.DTL&tsp=1
Oops!
I don’t feel sorry for Hastings. He is typical of the managers and owners I have worked for, throughout the years. They are in love with their own ideas; so in love with them that they intend to force everyone else to be in love with them, too. Focus groups are a laugh, because–as far as I know–I am the sole person on the planet who uses them to find answers to questions where we have no other way of knowing the answers. Everyone else contrives the questions to show what a great job they are doing, instead of exploring unknown territory. And 99% of the focus testing I have seen,–where there are choices to be presented,–limit the choices to only the ones management wants to see as alternative answers. This is one of the reasons–IMO–popular music today is SO awful: focus testees are presented with only 2 or 3 alternatives and asked which is best–instead of opening up the field to 100 songs, or being asked, ‘Have you heard something better than any of these songs recently? If so, what was it?’ Then the result of choosing 1 of just 3 alternative songs is touted as the new American idol hit.
Media listeners and viewers must be treated with respect. Clearly, Hastings has no respect for them. And if he doesn’t now, then he never did. I don’t care if you believe that streaming is the future of the world–I think it probably is, too,–the pulling of the rug from under millions of customers, instead of carefully implementing changes as they are willing to accept them, is dangerous–as Hastings will continue to find out.
A close friend of mine in the UK, worked nearly 40 years for London Transport (when it existed). When they built the Jubilee line, it was totally automated. No driver was needed. But London Transport–always a company that did careful and thorough research–found that people were not ready to see trains with no driver at the head of the train. So they stuck somebody in there, whose job was to just sit there, giving the impression he was driving the train. If you have ever looked at those Jubilee line drivers, they seldom to never touch or manipulate the controls–except for looks. Of course, London Transport is no more, and I have no idea what research is done these days, but the last time I was in London–a little over 2 years ago–there was still a driver sitting in the Jubilee line trains. The Julbilee line was opened in the mid-‘70’s, so apparently more than 30 years has still not prepared the public for driverless trains.
London Transport led the world in research on reading from a distance. That is why nearly everywhere you go in Europe, annunciator panels in airport, railway, and bus stations, in addition to the signs on the front of busses and trains, are almost always yellow lettering on black backgrounds–the most easily read combination in daylight or night and all weather conditions in-between. Additionally, the Helvetica typeface is the most easily read type from great distances. So almost every sign in Europe that is to be read from a distance, uses Helvetica.