All moved out

So, I’ve now completely moved out of the place in Santa Clara. There was way more stuff to do than I had time for, so I had to extend my return to Taiwan by a few more days. I was originally supposed to go back the night of June 9, but rescheduled for June 14 (actually 1am on June 15). I had wanted to change to an earlier date but the flights were booked. Good news is that there was no change fee for the ticket I had.

I got rid of most of the good stuff through friends and relatives. Then I posted some stuff on Craigslist in the ‘free’ section and got rid of a bunch more. Earth Care Recycling saw my Craigslist post and called about taking the rest of the computer gear. They came by and filled a pickup truck full of gear including the SparcServer 670MP beast.

After that I pulled out any remaining good stuff and took that with some old clothes I didn’t want to Goodwill in Santa Clara. That was 9 moving boxes of stuff and a big stack of clothes. That still left a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t worth keeping or donating, so I called South Bay Haul Away and they came and filled half a huge garbage truck full of stuff. The trash guys I had to actually pay for though.

In the end I had two X-Terra SUV loads of stuff to take to Santa Barbara. I did one trip down and back on Saturday and then the second trip down on Sunday. I also have a painting that Fine Art Shipping is bringing down for me in the next couple of days. That left me with four days left in Santa Barbara.

Today was my birthday which was spent doing some remaining shopping and finishing my taxes. (Foreign residents get until June 15 to file!) Tomorrow I need to mail off my tax return and some other stuff. (TurboTax says I can’t e-file for some reason or another.) Then I’ll have a couple of days to relax.

miltownkid might come up to visit. He’s hanging out in Pasadena now and said he was gonna come up here for a bit though I still don’t know when.

But anyways, done!

tcp.com: The end of an era

tcp:root % init 0
tcp:root % svc.startd: The system is coming down. Please wait.
svc.startd: 101 system services are now being stopped.
Jun 1 18:51:51 tcp.com rpcbind: rpcbind terminating on signal.
Jun 1 18:51:51 tcp.com genunix: WARNING: hme0: fault detected in device; service degraded
Jun 1 18:51:51 tcp.com genunix: WARNING: hme0: No response from Ethernet network : Link down -- cable problem?
Jun 1 18:51:51 tcp.com in.ndpd[202]: terminated
Jun 1 18:51:52 tcp.com syslogd: going down on signal 15
umount: /home/jlick busy
umount: /home busy
umount: /d busy
svc.startd: The system is down.
syncing file systems... done
Program terminated
{1} ok

Giving Away Stuff This Weekend

Open House, Sunday June 3, 12:00pm through 5:00pm! Giving away my stuff!

Hi all,

I’ve gotten rid of some of my stuff mentioned previously but there’s still a lot left. I’ve also found a lot of odds and ends I’d like to get rid of. There’s still some good stuff left like a TV, the Sun servers, a bookshelf CD/Cassette Stereo, etc.

If any of you or your friends would like to come over this weekend to see what you’d like to take, please let me know. I’m going to have an open house this weekend to try to get rid of what’s left. Please let me know if you’d like to come by earlier on Saturday.

Call me at 408-930-8474. Location is 2388 Shoreside Court, Santa Clara.

iTunes Plus Stumbles

I was really looking forward to the new DRM-free high-bitrate iTunes downloads. I’m actually more interested in the high-bitrate upgrade rather than the lack of DRM. The iTunes DRM never got in the way of anything I wanted to do, so I was quite content to put up with it.

So now iTunes Music Store has finally rolled out iTunes Plus and it looks quite attractive. There’s quite a lot of good content available, though it is still a bit limited. I was excited to about the prospect of upgrading my current library to the high-bitrate versions, so I eagerly clicked on the button to upgrade the library and then came up against a serious drawback.

The upgrade is all-or-nothing.

Now it’s not a complete disaster for me. My iTunes Music Store purchases have mostly been for things not available on CD and a few individual tracks here and there where I didn’t want to buy a whole album. So I don’t have a lot of upgradeable music. In fact, it’s only 2 albums and two individual tracks, or 18 tracks total.

But even there I face a dilemma with the upgrade. Of the two tracks, one of them I ended up buying the album on CD and ripping it at high-bitrate, so I already have a DRM-free high-bitrate version I made myself. The other individual track is one I’m a bit undecided about upgrading. It’s not one I listen to a whole lot, but I guess I’d probably do it.

As for the albums, one is a must-upgrade. It’s not available on CD, and I’d love to have a high-bitrate version of it. The second album is another one I’m on the fence about. There’s a few tracks on it I’d really like to upgrade, but the rest are so-so.

I thought maybe this was some quirk of the user interface where I didn’t understand which combination of buttons to press to get to upgrade individual tracks or items. But looking at the iTunes Plus FAQ I read, “You cannot choose which songs, music videos or albums to upgrade individually.” So, yes, this is intentional.

Thinking about it, I’ll probably go ahead and do the upgrade. The whole upgrade will cost $5.35 which is less than it would cost to repurchase the one ‘must have’ album upgrade. But this must be a huge decision for someone who has downloaded extensively from iTunes. Those are probably the people most likely to jump at the chance to upgrade, but they face my problem on an even larger scale.

If you have hundreds of tracks that could be upgraded but are like me and find that maybe half of the tracks are still well-liked enough to upgrade, you may have a really tough time deciding if it’s worth spending a lot of money when you really only want to upgrade a few things.

I can understand requiring purchased albums to be upgraded as an entire album. That’s a reasonable restriction. I can’t understand the justification for requiring someone to upgrade EVERYTHING whether they want better versions of everything or not. And as a customer satisfaction issue, I think Apple has taken a serious step backwards with this policy. They should toss it out and let customers upgrade the individual tracks or albums they want.

As it is, Apple has at least one customer who was eager to buy, but then discouraged by this policy. I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one.

New Product Test

We’re starting a product test of baked potato wedges. A couple other stores are in on the test which have started already or will start soon. The different stores are using different prep methods to test which are operationally easier and result in the best product. The method we use is one I came up with.

We started this afternoon at my Xingtian Temple Restaurant. We start with fresh potatoes, topped with a special blend of spices and then baked in our bread oven. When ordered they are toasted in the high-speed oven. A small serving is $20 and a large serving (double size) is $35. They can optionally be topped with a specialty sauce, cheese and/or bacon for an additional charge.

Because this is a test we may not be able to make it available consistently at all times in the beginning while we try to figure out the demand for the product and work through operational issues of how to prep the product. When things are going smoothly at the Xingtian Temple Restaurant, we’ll start serving this at my Qingcheng Restaurant. Please don’t be disappointed if you find it unavailable when you come in.

I’m pretty excited about this. Our snack sales are pretty low because the bagged chips and cookies aren’t very popular with Taiwanese customers. We’ve had a pretty good response to the potato wedges so far, though it is very early. Besides that though, I had a small serving with cheese and bacon to test it myself and it was quite yummy.

Another promotion we are testing which I mentioned on Forumosa but not here is allowing meal discounts with 12″ sandwiches and salads (previously only available with 6″ sandwiches in Taiwan). This is also being tested at a limited number of stores, including both my restaurants.