the ‘bee log

This’ll be redundant for a lot of people but I’ve picked this blog up and moved it over to CodeBetter.

Note that my RSS feed hasn’t changed (more on how I managed that later) so this announcement is really for friends, enemies, frenimies, and lost Googlers that come to laribee.com or thebeelog.com straight up.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program!

I’m a frequent flyer on JetBlue. My development team is located in Syracuse, NY. I’m located in New York City. I come up on average every three weeks to get face time with teammates, customers, and stakeholders. Luckily I didn’t have to fly last week, but, as a member of their frequent flyer program got an apology email from their CEO, David Neeleman, today. An excerpt:

We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.
…
Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that you experienced. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise to you last week.
…
Most importantly, we have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Rights—our official commitment to you of how we will handle operational interruptions going forward—including details of compensation. I have a video message to share with you about this industry leading action.

Again, I didn’t have to fly last week so maybe my take is a bit skewed (admittedly this post could have taken a different tone had I planned on being on a beach in Aruba last week), but they’re doing the right thing and as someone who offers a service I can sympathize; there are times when things just don’t work out, unforeseen problems, ball drops, force majeure, etc.

The first thing to do in a customer-facing disaster is to be 100% transparent: accept accountability, communicate and execute necessary repairs, and restore operations as quickly as possible. JetBlue’s reaction is an excellent case study in how to not only deal with the aftermath of falling on your corporate face, but put yourself above the competition once you’re back up and standing.

So looks like Don “donxml” Demsak woke up in the new year and promptly decided I needed something added to my to do list. He blog tagged me. Thanks, Don, but couldn’t we have done the Funky Sock Exchange?! Anyway, five random things you probably didn’t know about me… hmm… here goes:

1. Musically I’m all over the board, but if I had to bring something with me on the proverbial desert island it’d probably be Nick Cave. As the whole experience would probably be fairly depressing (being on said island alone) after the initial “cool, me time!” / corona commercial honeymoon phase wore off; Nick Cave would be a good complement to that mood.

2. Like Don, I too left college a bit early. I almost made it but as I was finishing majors in Psychology and Religious Studies (Eastern), I had a bit of a “what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-with-this” moment.

3. My professional goal prior to and during college was to procure work in the intelligence community, though I was also interested in law enforcement at the federal level. No slight to anyone in that line of work, but I’m glad life didn’t turn that way for me.

4. In my senior year a crush lead me to try out for our annual high school theatrical production. I ended up landing a lead role and playing the Pirate King in Pirates of Penzance (I know). Leading up to this I was “encouraged” to take voice lessons: a) before school, b) during lunch, and c) after school but before rehearsal. That should tell you something about the quality of my singing voice. Anyway, I took the theater phase into college and ended up acting in some “real theater,” stage managing a Mammet play, and co-chairing the student theater club, Phoenix Players. So, yeah, more of an actor than a singer…

5. In my first job as a coder, my primary tool was FoxPro 2.6 and, later, Visual FoxPro. This fact is mildly embarrassing but does serve to keep my smugness quotient in check. I will say, it will be fantastic to have LINQ back. :)

Okay, that should do it for now. According to rite, I have to select five people who have blogs I read and hopefully provoke them to do the same (e.g. “tag you’re it”) or just provoke them in general…

Andy Beaulieu | Chris Kinsman | Evan Hoff | Peter Laudati | Scott Watermasysk

Great. Backlog item complete.

Note that this post has nothing to do with technology.

I’m just throwing this link up for friends and family that have asked (or, more likely, heard me gush) about my latest, greatest toy: a custom fixed gear bike for urban riding.

It’s a fixie bike based on a Soma Rush steel frame. It has a particularly nice wheelset (Phil Wood, Velocity Deep Vs). I’m still feeling my way around the handlebar and planning on replacing it with a straight bar w/ pursuit handles. Right now I have bullhorns with a decent drop and the drop feels kind of uncomfortable. Otherwise an awesome ride; it just wants to go fast and although it’s super light, feels like a tank in terms of the construction and overall quality of the entire package.

Yeah… it’s quite nice. Check out the slide show right here.