So presumably you read about yesterday's bowling trip. Much fun was had by all. While the trip itself was planned several weeks ago, I couldn't help but think that it has a bit of a "St. Crispens' Day Speech" feel to it, you know, 'tonight we party for tomorrow night we may all be dead"?

You see, today was Analyst Day, which is basically the corporate equivalent of parent-teacher conference day, where the executives are the teachers, industry analysts are the parents, and Yahoo! is the student.

During the quarterly report last month, Yahoo! announced that there would be layoffs, and a one-by-one analysis of each of Yahoo!'s 44 properties (mail, messenger, classifieds, geocities, etc.) to determine its future in Yahoo!'s new direction. The details of these assessments and determinations would be announced on Analyst Day, November 15th.

I shouldn't be so melodramatic. The Gooey group (Gooey = GUI = ... Oh yeah, I did that already) is centralized, so even if properties were shut down or folded into other properties, we would (hopefully) remain relatively untouched. Still, any time the family is trimmed, it's hardly a time for mirth.

Thinking about it today, I realized that I've worked for seven computer-related companies, four of which have dot-bombed (BMUG, MacWEEK, Dantz, Casady & Greene, Ikonic, CKS (aka USWeb/CKS, reinvent, marchFIRST), and Eleven), all with massive layoffs before the end, and yet I've never worked anyplace at the time they were laying off people, so this is all new to me. Also interesting is that every public company I've worked for (with the exception of the University of California) has gone under, and every privately-owned company is still around. Interesting.

Anyhow, the stock price has been going up steadily all week, apparently because strategic layoffs of between 5 and 15% of a company's workforce is seen as a healthy thing. I feel bad for feeling good about the stock. So the news was official today: 400 people (13%) will be laid off in the next few weeks, with 75% of the cuts coming from Yahoo! Broadcast, based in Dallas, and International divisions. Also, Yahoo! will be hiring another 100 people in their core growth areas. Presumably these new 100 will have specific skills or geographic locations or flexibility that the departing 400 don't.

So it looks like Gooey is pretty safe, though I can't sat the same for fellow weblogger Jason Silverstein, whose office (the aforementioned Yahoo! Broadcast) is facing workforce cuts of 45%. The worst part is that Broadcast was bought by Yahoo! less than a year ago, and now they're letting half the people go. Ai-yai-yai.

So tomorrow is the all-hands meeting, where senior management talks to all the employees, but I won't be there, as I'm going to Tahoe for a family reunion. I'll be sure to watch the archived webcast when I get back though.

The good news is that it looks like analysts viewed the all-day presentations well, and that Yahoo! does have a good plan for growth over the next four years. If Yahoo were to bomb, I'd lose faith in the net, because we do things right, have good karma (x-10 notwithstanding), and provide core, established services people need and use every day, and we don't charge for all the basic stuff. Call me tunnel-visioned or biased, but I don't think there's anyplace else out there that you can go to for 90% of the things you use the web for, at least I can't think of one.

So that's pretty much it for today. Just a from-the-trenches look at what's going on. The ship sails on, cool things are always on the way, and maybe most of them will still get to see the light of day.

Ever wonder what water would look like if it was boiling in zero-gravity (well, microgravity, anyhow)? No? Okay, you're normal.

But just in case you're a geek, here's a story all about Shuttle experiments of microgravity boiling, with some cool MPEGs.

Check it out; Michael Jackson is actually Skeletor!

---

For a nice side-by-side comparison, check Davezilla's post.

Last Tuesday I was at work and, is bound to happen when you're working in the real world instead of a TV show, I had to use the restroom. If I'd known that going to the bathroom might have placed my life in danger, I'd have held it. I didn't have to go that bad.

No, this isn't going to be one of those stories. As you can see, Yahoo's facilities are quite clean. Nothing to be afraid of.

Or so I thought.

Okay, back to the matter at, er, hand. I walk to the men's restroom, pick a stall (which, like the nature of my business, was Number 2), and I latch the door behind me. Bip-bip! Hmm? What was that? I thought the restroom was empty (not that it matters). Bip-bip! I look over (I haven't sat down yet (TMI?) ) and see a cellphone in a leather case, double-bipping every Bip-bip! 6 seconds or so. It's just sitting there on top of the stainless steel toilet paper dispenser like a child who, when lost at the mall, has the good sense to stay put but lacks the maturity to keep the small plaintive whimpers inside.

I lean over the phone and take a look at the display. It's not ringing but it sounds like it has a really important message, and the sender isn't willing to settle for just a 'once every 5 minutes' beep and tickle. Taking a look at the display, I see it's all in Spanish and, of course, there's no signal in the middle of a stall in the middle of a bathroom in the middle of a building in the middle of the reclaimed South-bay dotcom wetlands.

That's fine. I get to be helpful! I'll take the phone out with me when I'm done and I'll send out an email to the floor and see whose phone it is. But wait. What if they come back while I'm going? The strange taint that adheres to the emergency toilet paper roll, passed under a stall from a savior to a stallgoer in need of saving, could be nothing compared to the cooties that would infect a cellphone passed from an unseen stranger's unknown hands under the stall door to the owner. This is not the kind of dirt the leather case is designed to repel. Worse, unlike a 'holy roll,' the phone would stay with the owner, if anything, holding on all the tighter for its recent traumatic experience. No. Clearly I couldn't leave it in the stall while I went (and not because I felt it would be staring at me, tittering all the while. Like I said, it's not that kind of story. While we're on the subject, why to they call it 'going'? You don't start going until you're already in the restroom, and you certainly don't leave the restroom until after you've gone. Ahh, linguistics. But, as ever, I digress...).

So clearly the thing to do Bip-bip! is put the phone on the counter by the sinks, then go, then take it with me back to my cube when I leave.

Unlatch the door, pick up the phone, put it on the counter, come back, latch, clean the seat with a sheet (YTMI!), and do my business.

Someone walks in. Is it them? No. To the urinal they go. They finish up, Bip-bip! use the sink furthest from the phone and leave, ignoring the phone (which, in retrospect, they probably assumed was mine).

I realize now (I'm referring to the 'now' of me writing this story, as opposed to the more distant 'now' that I'm relating in the story or your own personal 'now' assuming you're still reading this story, bravely trusting that this really isn't a scatological tale (or, alternatively, becoming rapidly frustrated that your own odd fetish isn't being serviced by my tale (OCTMI!) ) ), I say I realize now that the reader might be getting the wrong impression, that I'm one of those people who has to stop what they're doing whenever someone else walks in, as though the sound of bowels being voided in a restroom stall is as shocking or shameful as a muffled orgasm coming from an office stairwell (NTMI). No, I'm not one of those people, though there seem to be a lot of them here at Yahoo! (the 'don't go (void) till they go (leave)' type, as opposed to the sex in stairwells type, which I haven't encountered, though a coworker told me about a pair (I hesitate to presume they were a 'couple') who was(*) dismissed after being caught having sex in a conference room after everyone else had evacuated for a fire drill). It leads me to wonder what, given how often I see (err, sense) these introverted excrementers, happens when, inevitably, two of these people are in the bathroom at the same time? Defecation Detente? Anyhow, now that I've embarrassed myself further by trying to prove that I'm not a freak (and succeeded in demonstrating that I'm very much a freak of a different sort) (Err, meaning the kind that analyzes people in bathrooms too much, not the kind that has sex in stairwells (oh forget it. I'm getting back to the story now.) )

Right. Where was I? Yeah; so number 1 leaves, a few seconds pass, and another guy walks in to the bathroom. He walks straight to the phone on the counter, picks it up, turns to leave, and on his way out, pulls out a walkie-talkie, pushes the button and says,

"I found another one."

I am so stoked. Today the Yahoo Gooey group (Gooey = GUI = Graphical User Interface = User Interface = Visual and interaction design + research) went on an offsite, spending three hours bowling in Palo Alto.

For something I only do once a year or two, bowling is something I really like. I used to be on a league (8th grade, I used to ride my skateboard to the bowling alley seven miles away on Saturday mornings. (no, don't be silly. I had a locker for the ball)) but I was never very good. I played for two seasons and, thanks to stellar older teammates (they were 14 and 15 to my 13 years) and a dynamite handicap, we took first place with my 114 season average.

The next season my average was 122, but I got last place, on a team with less experienced (than me, even!) teammates. I still have the trophies at home.

Anyhow, nowadays I'm an inconstant bowler on my annual sojourns. Some days I'll struggle to break 90, others I'll manage 130 or even 135. I played a few months ago and fell right about in the middle of that range.

Today was simply incredible. I can't believe it. I don't understand it. I can't question it, other than to wonder if a lighter ball is what I needed all along. I played four games today. First game I couldn't hit a strike for my life. Every ball hit the pocket, but the center pin would always remain standing in the rubble. I was happy with the 119 I got that game, though it came more from picking up spares than anything else.

The next game, and I'll spare you the play by play version, saw me do something I'd never managed before, a 'turkey,' the technical term for three strikes in a row. Everything was perfect and as soon as the ball left my hand each time, I just knew.

And on the fourth ball I did it again. Four in a row. Wog.

The highest game I'd ever bowled was when I was 14, when I came up with an amazing-to-me 156. I still have the frame-by-frame account of that game kept in my bowling bag. This second game blew it away. 176.

The third game went pretty much like the second, but without a four-fer. Amazingly the game wasn't a fluke because the third game tallied up to 172.

My last game, and what might be my last game for a while, because I don't want to touch a bowling ball after that magic, I started off slow. Going into the fifth frame I had 54 points. Not spectacular, and barely enough to set me up for another 119. Then the mojo kicked in again. Four strikes, a spare, and another closing strike. 201.

Bowling 201 is, to me, like running a mile and looking at your watch and finding out that it took less than five minutes, or filling up your car and finding out that you got 100 miles to the gallon on your last tank. It just doesn't seem possible. It doesn't occur to you. Or at least to me.

Okay, taking the obligatory application of topical insights to the human condition, I'm surprised that I could be surprised; that with all my studying about how things work and self assessment of who I am, that something could jump out like that. I'm still floating from the act.

Of course, for all of you who are thinking "neat" (or "pretty full of himself, isn't he?"), there's one person (okay maybe two) who is probably steaming mad that I took her luck again.

Anyhow, this, as much as anything, is a representation of my day:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Final 8 / 9 - 9 / 7 2 7 / X   X   X   X   7 / X 201 19 28 45 54 74 104 134 161 181 201

Erik asked:

"What are the pitfalls you mention to doing a 'new to you' widget? interested because i've been thinking along those same lines recently."

Thanks for asking! It's two things mostly: First is about how you cookie. If you always cookie with a simple permanent 'last visited' cookie each time they come, then if they follow a link and then come back, all the rest of their 'new' stuff is gone because you 'just visited.'

This necessitates two cookies. a 'true just visited' permanent cookie, and a placeholder cookie with a 5 (or 10, or 60) minute timeout that says 'before this session, they last came at such-and-such a time' and whenever they hit the home page, if that cookie exists, it gets renewed with that timestamp, so they don't 'reset' the new until 5 (or 10 or 60) minutes after the *last time* they hit the home page.

That's cool, nifty, and doable, but then what if you use more than one computer? What if you want to be able to share that cookie across several computers? Well, then you have to sign in in some fashion or another, and then Fury has to keep track of modtimes, so it can share them between computers. Without this it gets annoying to see things as 'new' when they aren't really, just new to that computer, and ends up being a detractor because it's giving misleading information.

That's what makes it so complicated. :-)

I've never been in a big meteor shower before. I may not be able to say the same thing next week.

The Leonid Shower is coming to town, and by all accounts it should be huge. It's going to reach its peak shortly after midnight on Saturday night (Sunday morning) the 17th/18th.

Sadly, I'll be spending Saturday afternoon leaving one of the best places to see the event, Lake Tahoe. At that altitude, there should be roughly 2700 visible streaks per hour (or one every 1.3 seconds) at its peak at 2am. The good news is that I'll be at Crystal's birthday in Vallejo, so we won't be in the thick of light pollution, and if we're feeling motivated we can still take a short drive and get away from most of the background light and still get around 2200 streaks per hour (compared to about 350/hr in urban areas (which is still nothing to sneeze at)).

Want to find out when and where is the best time to watch? Grab your latitude and longitude (or pick the biggest city close to you) and take it to NASA's Leonid Flux Estimator. It'll tell you the best time to watch, and give you a rough idea of what you can expect.

This should be quite incredible. Just the thing for a birthday party.

I got an email today from someone who suggested I check out their friend's blog. It's a nice blog, though I have yet to get really into it. What amused me though was their family portrait.

At first glance, though I couldn't pin down why, the picture looks like 'iFamily, from Apple Computer.' Further introspection (and witty repartee from friends) identified the shiny white floor, the Steve Jobsian hallmark black shirt and blue jeans, and the Wallycleaverness of the whole tableau as primary factors. Then of course there's the fact that they're the Newtons. "They probably all play sports together during the day, and board games at night."

And you can get them in any color you want, as long as it's white.

Okay, I'm really just kidding. I'm really just sad that my family hasn't had a real family portrait since I was seven years old.

So I made a few tweaks to the timeline code. The links are now 'normal' and the title of the post is in the 'title' tag of the link so most browsers will bring up the title as a tooptip if you hover over the box.

I also moved the '?' to the left and made it 'Recently:' which should do a better job of giving the timeline a context, and hint to its meaning to the new user.

I'm probably done futzing with it for the moment. I may implement a 'new to you' piece of functionality, but that has its own pitfalls. For now I'd like to let it sit. I'll be asking in a week or two whether you actually use it. :-)

---

Fickle: Okay, I nixed the 'recently' bit because having any text at all made spacing inconsistant across browsers. That's the aesthetic reason, but the real reason is that I like how it looks without indication. I think there's something fascinating about an interface that you get to learn. Note that you don't have to 'get it', as it's perfectly usable without ever knowing that the bar does anything at all. There's an 'ooh that's neat!' quality to discovering things on your own.

Call it an easter egg.

Experiment for the week: See how many days of adamantly not listening to the soundtrack for Buffy: The Musical it takes before the songs stop running through my head. This is actually starting to get annoying...