Manners #1: Be a good houseguest and host

I complain about a core group of things that irk me and I figured that I would write about them in attempt to let the bad vibes out and to hopefully give and learn some tips on manners.  To be clear, I’m not saying that I have good manners, and I’m not saying I don’t do things that annoy people, I’m just pointing out the things that piss me off.

The first on my list is overnight guests.  There are some key elements to being a good guest and there are definitely some key elements to being a guest that never gets invited back. On the flip side, I am also attempting to be a better host, so I am exploring what I can do better to have a pleasant experience with house guests as opposed to counting down the minutes until they depart.  Let me know if you agree, don’t agree, have additional suggestions.

Some things that make a good houseguest:
- Be very clear about arrival and departure times
- Ensure that the length of stay is appropriate for the familiarity you have with the hosts
- Do not expect the hosts to be travel guides or entertainment for your entire stay, take the initiative to plan activities.
- Offer to pay for at least one breakfast/lunch/dinner or make one of those meals.  It can be expensive to host someone, extra food, water electricity, etc.  Think about how much you would be paying for a hotel.
- Clean up after yourself and participate in keeping the house tidy, and don’t expect your hosts to be your cleaning service.  If you want that, get a hotel. Don’t leave garbage behind. Leave the area that you slept in tidy. Clean sheets or at the very least fold them.

Some things that make a good host:
- Have a house policy with a clear definition of a guest. This way there is no passive aggressive behavior when they don’t clean their own sheets or help load the dishwasher.
- Know your limits.  As Miss Manners states “never issue an invitation that you do not want to issue.” If you need a lot of space, then limit the amount of time a guest can stay.  For me, I have an extra room that is used as an office, and if a guest stays more than a weekend, I lose access to it and it starts to really bother me.
- Do not propose an open-ended visit.  Be clear about the length of stay and don’t let it go over.
- If a guest asks to stay longer and you don’t feel comfortable, you should talk to them about it and work with them on alternative accommodations.
- Be clear on how much time you can spend with your guests. Something I disagree on with Miss Manners is that a host needs to include a guest in all of their social activities.  I agree if their stay is for a weekend, but if it is an extended stay, I don’t think this should be necessary.  What is necessary is being very clear upfront if you are working and can’t vacation at the same time as your houseguests so they know if they are on their own.

Filed under: life, manners , host, houseguest, manners

My Mum’s response to Cat Workout on CNN…

My Mum sent me an email in response to the article I sent her:

Furry Pals Can Be Partners in Fitness
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/fat.cats.owners.exercise/index.html

Well, I’ve told everyone I know about my infamous daughter Cat Flexing.
It is amazing what kind of responses I get.
Some stare at me as if catatonic.
Some give me a pitying/ catastrophic kind of look.
Others act like I … or YOU are clearly from CatMandoo – or otherwise
“out there”/
Some are even a bit catty about the whole thing.
The more optimistic and health focussed individuals think this type of
exercise program might cat…ch on .
Some have asked for a catalogue of cat flexing exercises.
Despondent types think this type of thing might be cathartic. (None of my
Catholic friends, though).
The global concerned types are worried the trend might result in a
cataclysm of cats.
I wouldn’t cater to that kind of thinking if I were you, though. But if
it happened, I am sure you would open a cattery.

I have to say, however, that the funniest cat flexer is Sean. He was a
little catawampus, if you ask me, and almost reminded me of a cateran.
Nearly put me into cataplexy.

Filed under: life , catworkout, cnn

Some of my Microsoft Friend’s take on Bing vs. Google

Does Microsoft’s Bing have Google running scared?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10264417-75.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

There was some interesting commentary from some of my Microsoft buddies (names removed for anonymity) about this article and Bing vs. Google.

D:

This article would be true in only one case – if Live Search team somehow managed to beat Google on NDCG (normalized discounted cumulative gain – a measure of relevance). Historically they could not, particularly on longer queries. If they pulled this off, that would be quite an achievement, since LS algorithms are purely machine learned, and Google reportedly relies on hand tweaked algorithms. This could mean that GOOG is running out of relevance headroom with their approach, whereas Live could take full advantage of the Moore’s law and deploy more sophisticated ML algorithms over time.

That said, I doubt this is the case. Historically, Google has been cranking relevance up a notch every time YHOO or MSFT would deploy improved algorithms, just enough to beat them both by a narrow margin.

Looks like a slow news day at CNet.

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R:

Relevance is important and i’m sure the bing guys will keep making it better. but the “blue ocean strategy” microsoft adopted was to come at it from other interesting angles as well that google was oblivious about.. the user experience is SO much better with bing..

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D:

IMO the only big win that I can see is snippet expansion (this is why Bing is currently my default search engine). This, however, is something that would take Google maybe a couple of weeks to replicate if they wanted to.

Here’s why this is a great feature. The fundamental problem in search is that data labelers (i.e. the guys who label training / evaluation data) make a determination about relevance based on the content of the document, but customer satisfaction will mostly depend on the quality of the snippets, since that’s what the user perceives as the main relevance characteristic. Good snippets are hard to generate, since you don’t really want to go into the hairy (and AI complete, if you want to do it well) topic of document summarization. So what you end up having is good relevance and shitty customer sat, since the users can not determine if the page is relevant or not by looking at search results.

Bing’s new UI sidesteps the problem by providing more snippet text on hover, which is very smart. Of course, I’d prefer to have an intelligently generated snippet, but at this point I’ll take whatever I can get.

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R:
D: if you can be converted, then half the battle has been won already the others will be much easier to convert..

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D:
I’m actually fairly easy to “convert”, since I’ve seen it all, from Windows all the way to Linux and everywhere in between and oftentimes know it for a fact that the grass is _not_ greener on the other side of the fence.

Just don’t be worse than the competition, and I’ll use the product every time I can. Win 7, Office 2007, SQL 2008 (including Analysis Services), Exchange, Bing, Visual Studio, .NET Runtime and Framework – those are just a few Microsoft products that have my complete approval.

That said, I always was very much anti-Koolaid, and while I will be the first to praise folks for a superior product, Koolaid by itself has no effect on me whatsoever.

So don’t expect me to become a fan of Zune, WinMo or MSN (outside of Bing) anytime soon. A lot of work needs to be done there.

Outside of Microsoft this applies to Apple TV, Amazon Kindle and all other eBook readers, single-button mouse (though not to single or zero-button trackpad – those are convenient), iPod Shuffle, Java (and 90%+ of open-source Java frameworks), plastic MacBook, all smartphones other than iPhone and Pre, etc., etc.

Filed under: opinion , Bing, Google, Microsoft