Age 5

By Andy’s 5th birthday, he had completed his first full year of pre-school, as well as a couple years in a weekly Gymboree program. Between the two, he had made a lot of friends and had also had the opportunity to attend quite a few of his friends’ birthday parties. This led us to think that it was a good idea to celebrate his 5th birthday (something of a milestone) with his first real birthday party with other kids.

We live in a townhouse that doesn’t have a yard or an overall design that would really be suited to having a large group of kids over. While there is a party room available for rent in our condominium complex, it isn’t really overly kid-friendly either. We realized that we really needed to find a kid-appropriate venue for the party.

Our first thought (and Andy’s first suggestion) was Farrell’s, having spent his birthday there the two previous years. We looked into it and found that the price wasn’t too out of line, but we had major reservations about whether or not it would really work all that well for a big group of pre-school aged kids. Other than the little merry-go-round, Mountasia really doesn’t offer much for kids that age and we were picturing a party that was little more than the kids all sitting around a big table eating ice cream and pizza.

Andy was still kind of pushing for having the party there, but we were able to placate him by promising a family visit there not too long after his birthday. We ended up going up there the weekend after his birthday for dinner and ice cream, inviting a few of our adult friends to meet up with us there as well. Of course, Andy again got in a bunch of rides on the little merry-go-round.

Having recently been to another kid’s birthday party that was held at a local play gym, we realized that it would be vastly preferable to go somewhere that the kids could run around and play. As I mentioned, we had been taking Andy to classes at a local Gymboree Play & Music location since he was really young.

We checked into it and found that their prices for birthday parties were within our budget and that they had availability on Andy’s actual birthday (which was on a Sunday that year). During his weekly class, we mentioned that we were considering having his birthday party there to his teacher, who is an outstanding teacher that Andy, and we, adored. The teacher responded by offering to host and run the party if we booked it, which pretty much instantly sealed the deal for us.

Memories of My Son’s Birthdays – Part 2 (Age 4)

November 17, 2009 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Click here for Part 1 (Ages 1-3)

Continuing my look back at my son’s previous birthdays in celebration of him turning 6 this week, here are my memories of his 4th birthday. As he has gotten older, I have found that I had a tendency to take more photos, so the remaining posts will cover just one year at a time.

Age 4 (2007)

Andy’s 3rd birthday was the first that he still remembered pretty well a year later. Because of that, he decided that he wanted to do pretty much the same thing as the year before, returning once again to Farrell’s. This time, we decided to forgo the formal birthday package and instead just let everyone order whatever they wanted off of the menu.

As with the previous year’s visit, we included some play time in the game area at Mountasia. Once again, Andy used the majority of the game/ride credits that we got for him to ride on the little merry-go-round. During this visit, he did also give skee-ball a try for the first time, although I really was doing most of the work.

A couple months before his 4th birthday, Andy started his first year of pre-school. For birthday kids, the teacher had a short celebration where the child was given a birthday crown and allowed to put candles onto a felt birthday cake.

Finally, we did also do the now-traditional cake and gift-opening at home on his actual birthday. Once again, the cake was an ice cream cake.

He had received most of his major gifts during the party at Farrell’s, but we gave him a toy fire truck that I had found at a really good sale price between the two parties and he also had gifts from his grandparents to open.

To Be Continued with Memories of Age 5.

Memories of My Son’s Birthdays – Part 1 (Ages 1-3)

November 16, 2009 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Today is my son’s 6th birthday! As a celebration of that big event, I thought I’d share some memories of his past birthday celebrations in posts over the next few days.

Age 1 (2004)

To celebrate his first birthday, we attended the Disneyland Birthday Celebration that they offer a couple times a day at the Plaza Inn restaurant on Main Street. At this event, everyone gets an undecorated cupcake along with small cups containing frosting and sprinkles to use to decorate them. A character named Pat E. Cake hosts the event and Mickey and Minnie Mouse also pay a visit. Quite a few of our friends were able to join us at the park for the party as well.

The first birthday also started our now usual tradition of going out somewhere for a bigger party, but also having a little family-only party at home with cake and the opening of his presents from us and various relatives.

This was also the one time that we attempted to make his birthday cake instead of buying one from the store, but we found that we generally lacked much cake decorating talent.

First Week of Kindergarten

September 10, 2009 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Our son started Kindergarten this week, officially starting his journey through the public school system. This is definitely one of the most prominent of the well-known moments of mixed emotions experienced by parents. I am immensely proud of the smart and very personable kid and thoroughly enjoy the experience of seeing him grow and mature. At the same time, I miss the baby that he was and the ability for my wife and/or me to be there for every part of his life. Even as I write this, I know that this whole dilemma sounds kind of clichéd, but it also is unquestionably real.

I’m sure it is normal for us as parents to have quite a bit of apprehension and uncertainty as our son starts school. We have a lot of awareness of both his strengths and weaknesses and can’t help but wonder how each will affect his experience. We do know that our son is quite smart, even already having some pretty decent reading skills. He has known basics like his alphabet and counting since not too long after he learned to talk and he has even learned some simple math.

On the other hand, he also has some definite problems with listening and following directions, which are going to take some work to overcome. After his very first day of school, the teacher already noted that he wasn’t listening as well as he should and moved him to a desk closer to the front of the room. We’ve also recently learned that his eyesight is not very good. While he got his first set of eyeglasses yesterday, he is still nearly blind in one eye even with the lenses. Obviously, that is going to be a bit of a challenge to overcome and probably also explains why his motor skills haven’t been as strong as his intellectual talents.

Our son has been through 2 years of pre-school as well as a few months at a drop-off school-skills class, so we didn’t experience as much separation anxiety as some families do. Even when he first started pre-school, there really wasn’t any major problem when my wife left him for the first time, something that surprised us a bit since he had always had a really difficult time with babysitters. My wife, who is a stay-at-home mom, has probably had more of a difficult time with the adjustment than my son has.

The shift from pre-school to Kindergarten is still a big adjustment. His pre-school was only 4 days a week, 3-hours per day. The elementary school he is going to has a full day Kindergarten, which means 5 days a week, 6 1/2 hours per day. This includes lunch at school, which is also a pretty big change. The pre-school was a cooperative type, which meant that my wife stayed to assist with the class one day a week. It also had pretty much an open-door policy where parents were pretty free to stick around if there was something going on that they wanted to observe. Not surprisingly, Kindergarten has much more of a closed atmosphere.

We definitely do still intend to be very involved in our son’s school experience wherever we can. My wife has already made certain that the teacher and the parent’s organization are aware that she is available to volunteer as needed and we expect that there will be many opportunities. The class has 24 students and there are no teaching assistants, so the teacher did indicate that parents should have opportunities to stick around and assist in the classroom periodically.

While my work schedule limits my availability, I certainly hope to be able to take part whenever I can as well. I did take the day off of work this week so that I could go along to the parent orientation on Tuesday, which gave me the opportunity to meet his teacher and see the classroom. I expect to attend parent activities and meetings whenever my schedule allows. I also definitely plan to continue to spend lots of time working with my son directly to help reinforce and practice the lessons he is learning in school.

I was impressed by the teacher and the classroom during the orientation on Tuesday. The classroom immediately made a very good first impression due to the teacher’s decision to heavily feature “The Cat in the Hat” as a central theme to the decoration. That was one of the very first books that we bought for my son and we have read it (and its sequels) together numerous times over the years. My son’s reading skills have been improving rapidly and, just last weekend, I helped to guide my son through his first time reading “The Cat in the Hat” himself.

The teacher herself definitely seemed very kind and skilled to me, based on my first impression. She has quite a bit of teaching experience and seemed to have a good handle on how to work with kids this age. After the first 2 days, my son’s impression of her is very positive and he still seems excited about going back again tomorrow.

While it is not always easy to watch my child gain independence and move forward, he is also my greatest pride and the most important part of my wife’s and my lives. I look forward to continuing to share this adventure with my family!

Courtyard Marriott San Diego Mission Valley/Hotel Circle – Hotel Review

September 2, 2009 Jeffrey Graebner2 Comments

This past weekend, we did a trip to San Diego to take our son to Sea World for a couple days as an end-of-summer treat before the start of school. After researching rates and options at hotels in the area, I booked two nights at the Courtyard Marriott hotel located in the Hotel Circle area just a few miles south of Sea World.

Unfortunately, the experience was disappointing at best and we ended up changing hotels after the first night. I do want to emphasize that the problems we encountered were somewhat unusual and, to a degree, outside of the hotel’s control. We didn’t feel that the hotel management and staff handled the situation exceptionally well, though. I acknowledge that the hotel was generally reasonably nice, but our experience does leave it a very unlikely choice for us for future visits to the area or if anyone asked us for recommendations.

Whenever possible, we prefer to book hotel stays in 2-room suites, since we generally like having the extra space and, more importantly, because our son gets to sleep much easier and more quickly when he is in a separate room from my wife and me. After a long day at a theme park or doing other touristy things, my wife and I both tend to like to spend a little time reading or using our laptop computers to unwind before we go on to sleep, but our son doesn’t go to sleep easily unless the lights are all off and the environment is mostly distraction free.

I was able to find a rate of $139/night at the Marriott for a 1-bedroom, 2-room suite with a king bed in the bedroom and a pull-out sofa in the living room. This was an excellent rate for exactly the room type that typically works best for us. The offer was sweetened a bit more by the promise of a $20 Visa gift card to be given to us at check-in as a sort of rebate. The deal was only hampered a bit by the $14/day charge for parking, but it still overall worked out to a nice price. My research found that the hotel was pretty new and appeared to have decent amenities (as would be expected with a Marriott), so I went ahead and booked it.

We were taking advantage of a Sea World admission offer for a second-day free, so we went straight to the park on Friday afternoon, stayed until closing, and then headed over to check into the hotel afterward. This means that we arrived at the hotel around 10pm. We were all pretty tired after the drive to San Diego in the morning and 7-8 hours at the theme park. Of course, it was also pretty far past my son’s usual bedtime.

The Hotel Circle area is aptly named, essentially a split roadway (divided by the freeway) with a continuous series of hotels on each side. Essentially every major hotel brand is represented here, some with multiple properties (Marriott has a Residence Inn in the area in addition to the Courtyard). The Courtyard Marriott is a high-rise (10 stories) building pretty far down the street, but still pretty easy to get to and find.

Parking is all outdoors (no garage) and is not overly secured. They had access control gates at the entrance and exit, but they were not in use during our stay. There was only a very limited amount of parking in the front of the hotel and we did have to drive around a bit before we found a time-limited “registration only” space to use while I went inside to check us in. We also were delayed a little bit because the entrance road and “to registration” signs directed us into a loading/unloading area in front of the lobby that was only one car-width wide, causing a bit of a back up. More parking was available at the back of the hotel, although I don’t know how full it was as, after checking in, we did manage to grab a spot near the side entrance. We did notice that quite a few cars were parallel parked on the driveway on the side of the hotel, although those spaces were striped.

Check-in was fairly quick and the desk clerk was friendly. One minor glitch was that they had run out of the $20 Visa gift cards, but they wrote our information down and promised to mail it to us later (it hasn’t yet arrived at the time that I’m writing this). During check-in, he confirmed that we had a suite and indicated no problems or concerns about the room. Usually, I will go up and check the room at a hotel before getting our luggage, but it was late and we were tired so instead we immediately gathered all of our stuff after re-parking and headed up to the room.

Immediately after opening the door to the suite, we were immediately greeted by the unmistakable, very strong odor of cigarette smoke. At that point, my first thought was whether I had accidentally booked us a smoking room (unlikely since I’m very sensitive to cigarette odor and tend to be careful about that) and I quickly pulled up the confirmation email on my cell phone to double check. The email confirmed that, in fact, smoking was prohibited throughout the hotel. That surprised me a bit as most non-smoking hotels mention it at check-in and even have the guest sign a statement authorizing a cleaning fee if the policy was violated. Nothing had been mentioned when we checked in, though.

Walking into the living room area, we immediately noticed that a portable air purifier had been placed in the middle of the floor, obviously indicating that the odor had been noticed by the hotel staff earlier in the day. The odor wasn’t too bad in the bedroom area, but was very intense in the living room area, which is also the location of the pull-out sofa that our son would be sleeping on. We quickly realized that this wasn’t going to work and I headed back down to the registration desk to discuss the problem.

A different clerk than the one that checked us in was at the front desk and she didn’t seem overly concerned about the problem. She explained that the hotel was “sold out”, but that she would send some one from the maintenance office up to see if he could do anything. The maintenance man came up and immediately acknowledged that the problem was obvious and that the air purifier device showed that it was known. He said all he could really do is bring in some air freshener, but that he doubted it would accomplish anything. He then said he would go down to consult with management to see if there was anything they could do and send someone up.

At this point, another 10 minutes or so passed until we finally got a call from someone (I think the same woman I had spoken too at the front desk) offering to move us to a standard, 2-queen bed room. She said that they could drop the price down to $109/night (a $30 reduction), but that was really all she could do. A little research since then has shown that rate was almost certainly the regular price for that room. I asked for her to please send a manager up to the room and was told that the manager was currently “off duty”. At this point, I was tired, frustrated, and irritated at the prospect of being stuck with a room that was much less than we had wanted/expected on this vacation and I lost my temper a bit and insisted very strenuously that I be allowed to speak to a manager.

The manager (or at least someone saying he was a manager) did call us back a few minutes later. He still insisted he could not go below the $109 rate, but he upped the offer to a standard room with a king bed and a sofa bed (instead of two queen beds) and he also offered to comp parking, give us $40 in meal vouchers, and 5,000 Marriott reward points. This was a reasonably decent offer, essentially knocking another $54 off our out-of-pocket price for the night and we really didn’t have much of an alternative, so we went ahead and took it.

While the savings weren’t bad, the $109 rate for the night still seemed pretty high for a pretty small room that didn’t really seem much nicer than what you typically find at a Holiday Inn or similar class of hotel. Eliminating the parking fee was nice, although the hotel really shouldn’t be charging one to begin with considering that they have a completely outdoor, non-secured parking lot. As of this time, the 5,000 bonus points haven’t shown up in our rewards club balance shown online, although the regular points for the stay are there. It still wasn’t that much of a bonus as a single reward night starts at 7,500 points at their lowest end motels. Even most of their low-end Fairfield Inn locations are 10,000 points and the Courtyard Marriott where we were staying started at 15,000.

The meal vouchers were probably the best bonus given to us. We used them for breakfast the next morning and were able to get bacon and eggs for both my wife and me as well as a pastry for our son and bottled juices or water for each of us. We were a bit surprised that the hotel restaurant was counter service instead of full table service, though, with only a small number of tables that were shared with the business center. Initially, I thought the restaurant was just a coffee bar and even went up to the registration desk to ask for directions to the restaurant. The prices were pretty inflated, although probably typical for a hotel. For the $40 (including a $5 tip), we got a meal that was similar in quality and content to what you would pay around $20 for at a Denny’s or somewhere similar.

I was still a bit irritated that the manager didn’t seem overly apologetic and kept insisting that they had “done their best” to solve the problem before we arrived. Other than the one air purifier device, we really didn’t see much evidence that they had done much. For starters, when we arrived, the room was closed up tight and the air conditioner was turned off, which would have kept the air from circulating much. While we don’t really know exactly how much cleaning was done, there was none of the cleanser odor that might have suggested any kind of deep cleaning such as shampooing the carpet or furniture. Admittedly, they wouldn’t have known that we wouldn’t be there until 10pm and were probably trying to have the room ready by the 3pm check-in time, but it still seemed like they could have done a lot more than they did.

I do realize that the problem was ultimately primarily the fault of the guests that stayed in the room the night before. Looking at the hotel’s website, I see that they only have 8 suites and I do believe that the other 7 were almost certainly already occupied by that time on a Friday night. I do wonder a bit if they might have been able to find us a more suitable room at the nearby Residence Inn, though, or possibly even at one of the numerous non-Marriott hotels in the area. While we were waiting for the manager’s call-back, I even took out my laptop computer and started doing some quick research into availability at other area hotels, although we ended up having to make a decision before I had time to get very far with that.

Of course, this problem didn’t ruin our trip and we did at least have a reasonably clean, safe, and comfortable place to stay. Walking into the tiny standard room after seeing the much nicer two-room suite did dampen our spirits and we all did end up getting to sleep later than we had hoped (it was around midnight by the time we settled in) without really having any time to decompress. As is typical in standard rooms, getting our son to sleep was not very easy, adding to the frustration and fatigue.

Once we were settled in the new room, I did get out my laptop again and started a search for a better option for Saturday night. I ended up finding us a 2-room suite at the Embassy Suites in La Jolla (about 10 miles north of Sea World) for $143.10. After confirming with the front desk staff at the Marriott that there would be no fees charged for us checking out after just one night (no argument at all there), I booked that. We ended up very happy with that hotel, where the room was just about perfect for our needs and the amenities, including a very good included breakfast buffet, were all really great. We will definitely keep that hotel in mind for future San Diego trips and I really wish we had found it during our initial research.

CompuServe Memories

July 11, 2009 Jeffrey Graebner2 Comments

On June 30th, America Online finally shut down the original CompuServe Information Service, which they had purchased in 1997. While I haven’t really used the service for several years, this is still bittersweet news to me due to strong personal connections. CompuServe was my first exposure to the concept of online computing back in the 1980s and my first professional job in the early 1990s.

My first computer experience was with a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III that my father purchased in 1980 (when I was 10 years old). Around that same time, Radio Shack made a deal with CompuServe to package and promote their service. Under branding that Radio Shack called “Videotex”, they packaged CompuServe either with a dumb terminal or with terminal software sold for the TRS-80s. My father bought a 300-baud modem and the Videotex package for the Model III, giving us our first look at connected computing.

My exposure to the features of CompuServe during this time was really just a taste as the service came with a pretty high hourly fee for use. I mainly recall spending a little time watching over my father’s shoulder as he used it to access various news, weather, and information like that, although I recall that he generally preferred a competing service called The Source, which CompuServe eventually bought out and absorbed. I also recall having a couple rare opportunities to spend an hour playing some of CompuServe’s primitive early online games.

Due to the hourly fees, I never spent any time in discussion boards or chat, instead getting early exposure to these via privately-run Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) and, a few years later, with General Electric’s GEnie service, which was one of the first to offer discussion boards and a few other services at a fixed monthly fee instead of charging by the hour. CompuServe was actually one of the last services to drop the hourly charges, which probably played a big role in their eventual decline.

After I graduated from college in 1991 with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering, CompuServe was one of the many technology companies to which I applied. I ended up accepting a job with them as a junior engineer in their Entertainment Technology group, which focused on game products and the CB Simulator, which was their name for online chat. I worked there for around 4 1/2 years, before I decided to move to California to pursue other opportunities in mid-1996.

The CompuServe headquarters was a campus in an industrial park located in the Columbus, Ohio suburb of Upper Arlington. It consisted of two major buildings, the larger one (where I worked) housing the corporate business offices and the operations managing the consumer service. The other building mainly housed their very lucrative network services division. There was a nice employee cafeteria (The Oak Room), which was run by Marriot and an employee fitness center.
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The Oak Room had pretty decent food and I generally ate there a couple times a week. They had a selection of standard grill items (burgers, chicken strips, etc.) that were available every day as well as a featured entree. They would occasionally do prepared to order stir-fry or pasta that were immensely popular and would result in long lines during lunch hour. I’d typically eat there on days that the entree sounded particularly good or when my schedule made it tough to leave the office for lunch. When I did leave, there was a Wendy’s, a Pizza Hut, and a sandwich place across the street as well as numerous other restaurants that were a fairly easy drive. The Oak Room also served as a location for larger meetings and employee gatherings. I even remember just about everyone in the building gathering in there to watch the OJ Simpson verdict on a big-screen TV.

Fourth of July Memories

July 3, 2009 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

I’ve always really liked the 4th of July, a holiday that has always seemed particularly celebratory while still being generally more casual and lower pressure than most. I’ve always had a bit of a patriotic streak and enjoy the day of paying tribute to the United States. I also have a definite fondness for the marches and other patriotic tunes that dominate the holiday.

For the past several years, my family has been going to Disneyland on the 4th of July to see their special fireworks show. We have learned how best to manage the crowds on that very busy day, making it a pretty easy experience. We also get a hotel room close-by in order to avoid having to deal with the night-time traffic.

When I was growing up, more often than not we spent 4th of July at home instead of trying to go out to see a professional fireworks show or some other public event. Generally, we were pretty satisfied simply enjoying the day at home as a family. This would usually include watching the Boston Pops’ 4th of July concert on TV or other similar patriotic shows. We would often have a BBQ dinner at home. There were a few years that we did go out to municipal fireworks displays, though, so I did at least have that experience a few times as a kid.

The most memorable trip out to see a 4th of July fireworks show was in 1977. That summer, my father had just taken a new job that required our family to move from Florida to Flint, Michigan. For the first couple months, we had to find an alternative place to live while we were waiting for the house my family had purchased to be vacant and ready for us. We had a Starcraft pop-up style camper that we used on vacations, so we spent that time staying at the Holly Hills Campground (based on an online search, I think it is a KOA now) in nearby Holly, which was just a short distance outside of Flint.

On that 4th, we decided to drive into Flint for their big municipal fireworks show downtown, but it ended up being Mother Nature that put on the more memorable performance that night. There was a huge rainstorm and I honestly can’t remember for certain whether or not the fireworks display actually took place, although I think it did. The most memorable part was returning that evening to learn that a tornado had touched down in the campground while we were gone! We were lucky that the actual touchdown (and most of the damage) was on the opposite end from where our campsite was located, which meant that our camper was ok. It was definitely a bit of a fright and still is the closest call with a tornado that I ever experienced.

I don’t remember completely for certain, but I don’t think we ever went out to public events on the 4th of July in any of the other years that we lived in Flint, instead opting for celebration at home. In the late 70s and early 80s, Michigan had pretty loose restrictions on the sale of fireworks for home use, which meant that every supermarket had big display tables with a big selection of firecrackers, sparklers, roman candles, bottle rockets, and other similar items. My parents were appropriately nervous about these types of things, though, and would only allow us to get some sparklers, which we would only use with close supervision.

Many of the neighbors did buy and use the other kinds of home fireworks, which meant that there was always a sort of second-hand display that we were able to watch a bit on the evening of the 4th. On the 5th, the neighborhood streets would be very littered with the spent casings from many of the fireworks and firecrackers that had been set off the night before.

My best friend and I had a tradition, which we obviously never told our parents about (this post may end up as a confession…), walking through the neighborhood on the 5th examining the litter from the night before searching for accidentally discarded fireworks and firecrackers that had not yet been fired. Each year, we found and gathered up quite a bit of stuff that was still live. I remember one year we even found an unexploded cherry bomb, which was a particularly exciting find for a couple pre-teen boys. I don’t remember exactly what we did, but I remember that it was never much of a problem finding a spot outside of eye and earshot of parents in order to light off everything we found.

Regardless of whether I just stayed at home with family or went out to do something special for the holiday, my memories of the 4th of July are pretty much all positive. Here’s hoping for another great 4th of July holiday tomorrow. Happy Birthday, USA!

Why I Don’t Have a Palm Pre Yet

June 16, 2009 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

June 6th was the launch date for the Palm Pre, the heavily hyped new smartphone from Palm and Sprint. What I really want in a phone is something that matches the elegance and simplicity of the user interface on Apple’s iPhone, but still includes a physical keyboard and multitasking capabilities. The Pre appears to be a very close fit, almost certainly much better than the Windows-mobile based HTC Touch Pro that I bought last year.

I definitely tend to be an early-adopter on new gadgets, so it certainly wouldn’t have been surprising if I had run out to buy a Pre last weekend. In fact, I would have very much liked to have made that purchase. Unfortunately, I’m already a Sprint customer and, as I mentioned earlier, I purchased a new phone last year. Because of this, I am not currently eligible for upgrade pricing, which means that any phone purchased now would cost me considerably higher than the new or upgrade eligible customer pricing, which, of course, is the pricing that Sprint and Palm are advertising publicly.

I am, of course, under a 2-year contract with Sprint that was a necessary condition for the purchase of my last phone. I completely recognize the validity and legality of that contract and that it is the underlying reason why I am not eligible for upgrading without a price penalty. My purpose in this post is not to argue that my situation is somehow unfair or that I am being denied an entitlement. I never had any expectation of being able to upgrade early and I don’t believe that there is anything unethical, much less illegal, about the system.

What I do question pretty strongly is whether or not the current business model used by the cell phone industry is a correct one in today’s marketplace. Particularly since Apple has turned the smartphone into a much more mainstream product with the iPhone, the industry has entered a phase of extremely rapid growth and enhanced competition with frequent introduction of new models with desirable new features. I strongly question whether customers are going to continue to be willing to accept a system that requires a 2 year wait between upgrades.

I had initially started thinking about this as subject for a blog post after getting into a Twitter discussion of it during the day of the Pre launch. I got busy with other things and didn’t find time to start working on it until later. In the meantime, this became a very hot subject generating a lot of coverage both in blogs and the mainstream press after Apple announced the third-generation version of the iPhone and AT&T revealed that the lower pricing would not be available to current iPhone owners that are still under contract. This is a change from the approach taken with the last version of the iPhone, which was offered at the new-customer price to owners of the previous version, regardless of contract status.

The central idea behind current business model used by the cell phone industry is that the carriers subsidize a portion of the purchase price for the phone in exchange for the customer committing to a service contract, generally for 2 years. If the customer chooses to switch carriers before the contract is up, he/she is obligated to pay a fairly substantial fee to buy out the contract. Most carriers offer the customer the option of a smaller discount on an a new phone half way through the contract. After the contract expires, the customer is generally eligible to again get the same subsidy offered to a new subscriber.

The contract system eliminates a lot of the need for carriers to expend much effort in customer retention, outside of the discounted phones offered at the end of the contract. This likely saves the companies a lot of money, but is also almost certainly the biggest contributor to the industry’s reputation for poor customer service. I have found that no matter which of the big cell phone carriers is mentioned, it doesn’t take long for someone to start telling stories about their horrible experiences.

It is in the best interest of the cellular carriers for most phones to have non-subsidized prices that are prohibitively high for most people since, otherwise, it is a safe bet that most people would forgo the contract. This would make it much easier for customers to switch carriers at will and, thus, would greatly increase the cost and effort that the companies would have to expend towards retention. I have little doubt that this would dramatically improve the quality of the customer experience, but it might or might not have a negative impact on profitability.

The big question is whether or not the non-subsidized prices really reflect the true cost of a cell phone or if they are kept artificially inflated by the cell phone manufacturers as a result of the subsidy-based sales model. I admit that I have no direct knowledge, but my educated speculation is that the subsidized prices are probably more realistic. The non-subsidized prices for phones (especially smartphones) simply seem way out of proportion with the pricing for other portable electronics. In most cases, those prices are pretty close to what you would pay for a full-featured laptop computer and considerably higher than netbooks, stand-alone PDAs, or portable media players, any of which would seem more comparable technology.

The most obvious direct comparison would really be between the iPhone and the iPod Touch, which is basically an iPhone without the cellular radio or camera. The pricing information for the 16GB version of the new iPhone 3GS has indicated that it costs $199 fully-subsidized (the price widely advertised), $399 for customers 1-year into their 2-year contract, or $599 un-subsidized. The suggested retail price of the 16GB iPod Touch is $299 and it can be found in the $260-$275 range if you shop around. I can certainly see where the added features of the iPhone would justify a higher price, but does it really make sense that they would double it?

In all fairness, my instinct looking at those numbers is that the $399 price offered after 1-year is probably the most realistic one. While I suspect the price on the iPod Touch is also a bit inflated (it doesn’t really have direct competitors), it really does look like the $199 price probably brings in a pretty thin profit margin, if there is any at all. The same is probably true with the similarly priced Palm Pre, although it does also have somewhat lighter specs, including only 8GB of memory. Even if the subsidies do push the prices down below the actual cost of the phone, I can still see justification for why the carriers might want to subsidize even for existing customers still under contract in order to prolong their contract and help to ensure loyalty.

I think that they might want to look to the satellite TV business as a possible example. I’ve been a DirecTV customer for a number of years and they also use a system of contracts and subsidized equipment. The big difference from the cellular business, though, is that DirecTV lets current customers upgrade their equipment (such as going to a DVR or hi-definition) at the fully subsidized price no matter how far they are into a contract. The one catch is that doing so will reset their contractual start date to the date of the upgrade. This helps to accommodate any need that the customer might have to move up to something better or different, while also pushing further back the date at which he/she might be able to switch to a competitor.

I do imagine that the cellular industry would probably prefer to stick with the current fairly customer-unfriendly system for as long as possible, but I do seem some recent signs that they may very well be changing their approach. The recent publicity over AT&T’s prices for iPhone upgrades hasn’t been very good for them, even if they are pretty clearly within their rights. A fan base as loyal as the more vocal iPhone owners, particularly when they are so willing to spend more money to make sure they have the latest and greatest, really does need to be cultivated and protected. Policies that seem to directly target those loyal customers may not be in the company’s best interest, even if they appear to be the most financially prudent on the surface.

Another interesting development is Sprint’s recent introduction of the Sprint Premier loyalty program. Customers that have achieved high longevity (10 years or more) or have one of the higher-end service plans (priced over $69.99/month, a fairly common price point for a smartphone with both a voice and data plan) are automatically enrolled in that program. While the program offers a number of smaller benefits, the big one is that those customers are eligible for the fully-subsidized upgrade price at the end of the first year of a 2-year contract. While Sprint’s recent issues with customer retention probably made this more necessary for them, it still is a pretty clear acknowledgement that higher-end customers are increasingly unwilling to wait 2 years between upgrades.

Jay Leno’s Last Tonight Show

June 3, 2009 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

This last Friday, Jay Leno hosted his last The Tonight Show episode before his move to a 10pm Monday-Friday primetime variety show in the Fall. I watched the show and realized that it was the first time in several years that I had watched one of his shows all the way through, although I had seen an occasional segment or two when someone of interest was a guest on the show.

I have really never been a fan of Leno’s version of The Tonight Show, which came as both a surprise and a disappointment to me. I pretty regularly watched the show when he was the permanent guest host for Johnny Carson and usually enjoyed it quite a bit. In fact, I had felt that Carson had kind of started to phone in the show during his last few years and I frequently found Leno’s shows to be more engaging. Leno had also been a very frequent guest on Late Night With David Letterman and was consistently very funny during those shows.

I was going to college in Milwaukee during the late 1980s when Leno was most frequently guest-hosting for Carson. Twice during that time, Leno brought his touring stand-up comedy concert to town and I went to see him both times. I can’t really think of many, if any, other shows that have made me laugh harder and more consistently than those two shows. As a concert stand-up comic, Leno was (probably still is) absolutely hilarious. I resisted for quite a while buying a ticket for the second concert (which was about a year or so after the first), but my memory of how funny that first one had been eventually got the better of me. The second time was just as funny and I recall being pretty stunned at how little repetition there was between the two shows.

With all that, I was surprised that I never could warm up at all to Leno’s version of “The Tonight Show”. I watched the show quite a bit during its first year or so and have continued sampling it periodically over the years, but I have always found the show to be bland and generally not too funny. I recall liking him much better when guest-hosting for Carson, so much of the problem may come from his own shaping of the show’s style and format. While I found Leno to be both ingratiating and tremendously funny as a concert stand-up comedian, I generally found him fairly smarmy and even a bit irritating as a talk show host.

The interview segments that I’ve seen have been particularly weak, with Leno allowing way too much latitude for the guests to plug whatever project they are on to promote. He didn’t seem to be very effective at providing support to guests that were less than comfortable with the format, either. Last year, I watched his interview with Harrison Ford when he was on the show to promote the new Indiana Jones film. Ford is notoriously uncomfortable in interviews and has a real tendency to become almost painfully silly unless the interviewer works hard to steer the conversation. His interview with Leno was borderline embarrassing and a rather stark contrast compared to the segment Ford did with David Letterman the following week.

While I’m sure that Friday night’s final show wasn’t really a representative sample, I still didn’t really see much improvement. Leno’s monologue wasn’t bad (stand-up is obviously his true calling), although the material seemed a bit thin and Leno kind of over-sold it. The only interview segment was with Conan O’Brien, the new host of The Tonight Show. Not surprisingly, it was really more of a passing of the baton than a real interview. The musical guest was James Taylor, who was apparently a Leno favorite, but is not that dynamic a performer.

The result was fairly boring, leading me to think that he really needed to bring on very strong closing guests that would have left more of a lasting impression to help lead up to his new show in the fall. I could see a potential argument that this wasn’t really a true “farewell” show since Leno is really just moving to an earlier timeslot, but it still seems that this show was sure to get a bit more of an audience (the reports are that the ratings for Friday were double the average for the show) and it would have helped for this show to leave the viewers wanting more. I think back to David Letterman’s final NBC show where the guests were Tom Hanks and Bruce Springsteen (making his first appearance on the show), which felt much more like an event.

Leno closed the show with a fairly sweet segment at the end where he brought out all the children that had been born to Tonight Show staff members during his tenure as host. This was a nice ending, although naturally it would have had a lot more meaning for the staff than for the audience. The segment also seemed a tad rushed, without any time for Leno to directly interact with any of the kids. It also struck me as a little off that the very last part of the show was something that was directed more towards the staff and crew than the show’s audience. My sense is that this might have been a more effective segment for the show’s midpoint, preferably with a bit more actual participation by the kids, and that he would have been better off ending the show with a “see you later” speech that was a little more squarely directed at the studio and home audiences.

Other than the monologue, there was only one major comedy segment during Friday night’s show, which was a highlights reel from Leno’s recurring “Jaywalking” segment. I had heard references to this as Leno’s most popular comedy bit, but I don’t think I had ever seen one of these segments before. It is a “man-on-the-street” segment where Leno would go up to people and ask them fairly simple history or current events questions. The bit would then be edited together from incorrect responses, sometimes with Leno kind of trying to bait the respondents into either a correction or digging themselves deeper.

What struck me was that the segment not was pretty unfunny to me, but it was also surprisingly mean spirited. It definitely felt like Leno was asking the audience to laugh at the people and not with them. Despite the flaws with his show, I had always generally found Leno’s comedy to be pretty gentle, remaining fairly good natured even when going after political or celebrity targets. Certainly, he has long had a reputation for being a nice guy, particularly compared to David Letterman’s more acerbic approach. Even in the live concert performances I attended, Leno worked very clean (no profanity or significant scatological material) and his comedy was much more observational than confrontational. The “Jaywalking” bit seemed pretty out of character.

I should acknowledge that I have been a long time David Letterman fan, extending back to before I even had heard of Jay Leno. I initially discovered Letterman’s NBC show fairly early in its run and would watch it whenever my Junior High School schedule would allow. Once we got a VCR (during my sophomore year of high school), the show became a usual part of my after-school ritual. Throughout college, I watched the show as it aired most nights, helped by the fact that it came on 11:30 in Milwaukee. I don’t watch his show nearly as often today, but we do still have our DVR set to record it each night and occasionally pick and choose an episode to watch (often based on who the guests were) when time allows.

While I was never overly impressed with Leno’s version of the show, I did at least tune it in periodically before Letterman moved his show to the same timeslot over on CBS. If it weren’t competing with a show that I prefer by quite a bit, I suppose I might have continued to tune in a bit more. While I don’t think that Letterman is nearly as daring as he was during his early days and his show has probably fallen into way too much of a routine, I do also think he is the top master of this form of program at this time, having now attained a skill level that rivals Carson.

Despite my admiration for Letterman’s skills, I’ve never really been in agreement with those (possibly including Letterman himself) that felt that NBC made a mistake by giving the Tonight Show job to Leno instead. I think Letterman would likely have been overly constrained by the legacy of The Tonight Show, particularly by the likelihood that he would have succumbed to the pressure to do the show from Southern California instead of New York. I think he has been better served by creating his own franchise without being bound to maintain someone else’s tradition or do the show from a venue that isn’t as good a fit to his style.

I also have to acknowledge that the choice of Leno over Letterman was almost certainly the best thing for NBC. Unquestionably, there is a huge amount of subjectivity to one’s reaction to comedy and entertainment in general and there is a lot of indication that many disagree with my subjective opinion of Leno’s Tonight Show. The show has maintained pretty consistently good ratings during Leno’s tenure (after a bumpy first couple years) and it has usually had more viewers than Letterman’s show by a pretty wide margin. I honestly am not really sure why, but Leno’s show clearly has had quite a bit of mainstream appeal.

Despite being generally unimpressed with the show over the years, I still have very fond memories of those live shows that I saw and I guess I do still have something of a soft spot for Leno. That is why I wanted to watch his last show and I suspect I will at least give his new show a chance this fall. I’ve heard that it may shift more towards a comedy/variety format rather than the usual late night talk show approach, so maybe I’ll find this one to be a better fit for his talents. I actually hope that is the case.

The Challenges of Writing

May 16, 2009 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Anyone who follows this blog at all has certainly noticed that I am far from prolific. At my best, I’ve occasionally managed to write up 1-2 posts a week, although it also isn’t that unusual for me to sometimes go several weeks without posting anything. I love having a forum for sharing my thoughts, but I tend to struggle both with finding the time and the motivation to actually sit down and write something.

To address this subject honestly, I definitely have to start by admitting that I am a terrible procrastinator when it comes to writing. I’ve often said that I generally like writing, but it is probably more accurate to say that I like the idea or writing and the end result of having written. Motivating myself to sit down and actually write something has never been overly easy, regardless of whether it is something like a blog post that I choose on my own to write or if it is something assigned like a school paper or a work document. It is very common that the basic form and content of something that I intend to write will rattle around in my mind for quite a few days before I finally get around to sitting down and typing it.

I also can get pretty easily distracted while writing. In the past, particularly back when I was in school, the most likely distractions were from other people, television, phone calls, or that kind of thing. For that most part, that could usually be pretty easily managed in such a way that the temptations could be minimized. With most of my writing now done on Internet-connected computers, there is a lot of readily-available competition for my attention. Even when I find the time and motivation to sit down and start writing, it is awfully easy to get sidetracked by an incoming email or to be distracted by what I think might be a quick visit to Twitter or Facebook.

Reading discussion boards, RSS feeds, other blogs and general news/information sites do pretty often win out when I find a block of time where I could possibly do some writing on a blog post. This is particularly common on my lunch breaks during my work week. I have a small laptop computer (essentially an early version of what the press commonly calls a "netbook") that I usually take with me when heading off to a restaurant at lunch. Even when I have the intent of doing some writing during lunch, it isn’t unusual for me to spend more time just surfing the web. To be honest, writing isn’t really the most relaxing break during a busy day.

My Amazon Kindle 2 has also become a major competitor for my time, having pretty dramatically increased the amount of time that I am spending on reading for leisure. Particularly in the evenings after a full day at work and the kid has been put to bed, it is very tempting to just sprawl out on the sofa reading a book on the Kindle instead of sitting down at the computer to work on a blog post. I have also been opting to spend many of my recent work lunch hours with the Kindle instead of the laptop computer as well.

Brevity has never been one of my strengths as a writer. Although I generally received very good grades on written works in school and I have often received praise for documents at my jobs, the one common criticism that I do receive is that I can be too wordy. My blog posts do tend to be pretty long and it isn’t very often that I complete one in a single sitting. At any given time, it isn’t that unusual for me to have at least a couple unfinished posts in progress. Knowing this tendency, I always make sure to upload unfinished posts to the blog as a "draft" in order to make it possible for me to work on it from my desktop PC, laptop, or even from my cell phone whenever I find the time and motivation to do so. Possibly a bit appropriately, even this very post sat partially-written in the “drafts” folder for quite a while before I got around to finishing and publishing it.

I keep trying to come up with ways to switch to shorter, more frequent posts, but I’ve never had much luck with it. One obvious idea would be to basically just post whatever I can complete in a single writing session along with a "to be continued" tag. That approach doesn’t appeal to me that much because it limits my ability to revise. It isn’t that uncommon that I come back to a post after a day or two and rework portions I’ve already written, move text around or remove it, and/or add text at places other than the end. I don’t really like the idea of posting something before I’m at least reasonably happy with it.

I’ve also experimented with easily recurring ideas such as “week in review” posts. My problem with this is that I have a bit of a hard time actually coming up with anything interesting to say when I follow that approach. A number of years ago, I tried for a while to keep a personal journal. I pretty religiously forced myself to spend 15 minutes or so writing in it every night before going to bed. Initially, it went ok, but I eventually found that way too many of the entries were starting off with something akin to “Nothing much of interest happened today” and I eventually just abandoned the whole thing. Recurrent blog post subjects strike me as having the same basic problem and seem likely to go down the same path.

Finally, I think that one other major obstacle that I find difficult to overcome in this blog is simple fear of actually writing about certain topics. Politics immediately come to mind as a key subject that interests me quite a bit and generates some pretty strong opinions for me, but which I am reluctant to delve into much on this blog. Part of the reason is that I’m simply not sure that I have the time or motivation to become sufficiently well-informed to avoid sounding naive or, worse, citing things that are simply wrong. I also guess I’m a little worried about potentially offending friends or family members (my main readers) with opinions on controversial topics. I don’t avoid the topic entirely (there are a couple political posts in the archives for this site), but I don’t think it will ever become a staple of the site either.

I know that I am going to keep posting to the blog and that I’ll probably always keep trying to find ways to increase the publication frequency, but I also suspect it will always remain at least somewhat intermittent. I just hope that I can somehow manage to make up for the lack of quantity with at least some level of quality.

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