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Author Archives: paulschreiber
Writing the DMV
I emailed the director of the California DMV to see why new license plates take so long to arrive. Let’s see if he writes back: From: Paul Schreiber Subject: DMV’s great (and terrible) efficiency Date: September 27, 2006 9:09:18 am PDT To: George Valverde <gvalverde@dmv.ca.gov> Security: Signed George, A few years ago, I moved to …
Who Killed the Electric Car?
I had the privilege of seeing Who Killed The Electric Car alongside the director back May at the Tribeca Film Festival and was very impressed. There are several good stories here, and I was particularly disappointed with the actions of the California Air Resources Board. Who Killed The Electric Car is now the 60th highest-grossing …
Vote for my SXSW interactive panel proposal
I’ve proposed a panel for SXSW interactive 2007, “Getting to Consistency: Lessons Learned from Big Cats.” The panels will be decided by an online vote. Head over to the 2007 SXSW Interactive Panel Proposal Picker and vote for me. :) Here’s the description: Making software predictable and consistent makes it much easier to use. This …
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Free Kendall Payne Concert
Theresa Ballin writes in to let me know Kendall Payne will be performing a free concert as part of St. Joseph of Cupertino School‘s “Family Fun Festival.” She’ll be on from 1-3 pm on Sunday, October 8.
best.review.ever?
So the idiots at Sprint send Joel Splosky an LG Fusic phone to review, thinking he will promote their service. Phone companies, as Joel points out, have a history of bad decisions: And it’s 2006, and I almost can’t believe I’m writing this, because way back in 2000 I wrote almost exactly the same thing …
Mixing your metaphors
One of my favourite mixed metaphors—which I had somehow internally misattributed to David Johnston—was this one, from University of Waterloo registrar Ken Lavigne: Admissions is a crap shoot, and this year we won in spades This week, Peter Lewis of Fortune may have topped it: Apple is making applesauce out of the old canard that …
Keith Olbermann’s 9/11 commentary
Keith put together an impressive, impassioned commentary on September 11, five years later.
Lessons from interviewing
As part of my job, I perform technical phone interviews (“phone screens”) for our group and a couple others. The basic phone screen is more about breadth then depth, touching on C, Unix, object-oriented programming and some data structures and algorithms over 30 to 45 minutes. During this process, I’ve learned a few things, including: …
MySpace’s math is getting worse
According to Fox Interactive’s new math 1 + 2 – 2 = 2: