Jbug Update 5/25

I posted this update to Kickstarter just now, but thought I’d archive it here. You never know with third-party systems how long they’ll be around, right?

It’s been a week since the last update and Memorial Day weekend is upon us. We’re not open yet! Bummer, but what can you do. Inspectors who said they would come around 4-5 days ago didn’t, and at this point everything that happens has dependencies that tie back to interval approvals from the inspectors. Based on where we are now, it looks like the first week of June (I’ll give that an 80% confidence rating). That means it’s time to schedule the grand opening party for a couple of weeks later! It will be on June 20, so anyone who was planning to come out for it should mark their calendars. And now, the update.

Since last week:

 

• Door handles/locks have been installed, and the fire inspector signed off on them.
• Electrician came yesterday and said that since the 2-door cooler and the kegerator I ordered use so little power (I went for Energy Star models, of course), it should be no problem to have them on the same circuit. Yay!
• Register stand from Tinkering Monkey has shipped.
• Bought a coffee brewer from a guy who upgraded to a faster machine. Found him through the guy who set up the espresso machine, and though it was an hour’s drive each way to pick it up, it saved us around $400.
• Fire marshal signed off on the handrails and the concrete pad at the bottom of the ramp.
• The painter is putting up additional steel around the hood per fire marshal instruction yesterday. The fire caulk is actually yellow. Should hopefully be finished today.
• Painter finished painting yesterday. I totally called it.
• Ordered a drop-in water-filling and ice chest station. ($700)
• Sold the chest freezers. Gave a really cheap deal to the person who came to look at just one of them. That got them out of the back room and it meant supporting a cool local business at the same time. It’s a mobile farm food truck!
• Ordered the cabinet for the water/ice/sink setup, but it will probably not be here for another 5-10 days. Will probably open without it and install on arrival if health inspector will allow.
• Ordered rolling cart for bus tubs/trash station, and a bunch of bus tubs.
• Shelves installed in back room. Ordered food storage containers to sit on them.
• Replaced exit sign batteries, only to find that one more has gone out. Back to Batteries Plus!
• Cleared out more stuff, washed more stuff, ordered more little stuff (like heat resistant spoonulas!)
• Obtained permit from City Hall to have outlets reconnected.

What’s coming this week:

• Electrician comes on Tuesday to make the outlets in the dining room live (laptop juice, yay). ($330)
• Install fire extinguishers.
• Finish fire caulking, replace last exit sign battery.
• Have fire inspector come back to do live safety inspection.
• Hook up ipad/square reader/cash drawer/receipt printer when Tinkering Monkey stand arrives.
• Sell or donate remaining old coolers in bar area.
• Get signoff from building inspector on the handrails and concrete pad at bottom of ramp.
• Paint touchups.
• Weekend effort to sell stuff, donations following week for anything still here.
• Buy or build tables and chairs/benches. Leaning toward build.
• Order a blender.
• Finish off counter.
• Scrape old decorative paint from windows.
• Re-do passthrough countertop bc painter painted over my special countertop surface, argh.
• Order trash/recycling/compost containers for bus station.
• Get art for walls.
• Order last round of pans.
• Order eco-friendly to-go supplies.
• Order a bunch of miscellaneous other stuff.
• Meet exterminator today.
• Health inspector visit today to check progress.
• Better Hometown Coordinator form City Hall visit today for same reason.
• Order food and drinks for opening.
• Place ad for employees, interview, hire.

It’s supposed to rain this weekend, but I’m thinking I’ll see if I can round up any of the locals who’ve offered to help to do a mini-work weekend. If I can get a couple of people with pickups, we could get lumber for tables and haul some stuff away for donations and/or trash. If I can get a couple of people with tools (and comfort using them) we can build two farm tables and seating benches to go with them. And a few people to help clean stuff, sell stuff, and generally get things ready.

Here’s hoping that this time next week we are inspection-ready, or have already passed.

Until next time!

 

Things I Bought Today

• $225 worth of stainless steel shelving units
• $500 worth of fire suppression service
• $4 worth of electrical blocking plates
• A $50 fire extinguisher
• $15 worth of air filters
• $7 worth of glass scraping tools
• Not-yet-known fees for electrical work

Giant Jitterbug To-Do List

Over the next week or two there’s a bunch of stuff to do. Off the top of my head, here’s a chunk of it.

To meet fire/live safety and building codes:

• Add additional piece of stainless steel between hood and wall/ceiling
• Fire caulk between steel and hood
• Service fire suppression system 5/8
• Repair fire suppression microswitch (electrician) 5/8
• Purchase additional fire extinguisher for kitchen 5/8
• Move dining room fire extinguisher to opposite corner
• Relocate exit sign (electrician) 5/8
• Get signoff on new handrails, replacement breakers
• Get hood cleaned 5/7
• Replace all door handles/locks
• Replace battery in other exit sign
• Test all bulbs in exit/outside lights
• Add fire retardant layer to counter paint
• Ditch outdoor cords with exposed plugs
• Pour 5′ square concrete “landing zone” at end of ramp

To meet health code:

• Have entire kitchen pressure-washed 5/7
• Clean coils of all coolers/freezers 5/7
• Get rid of unsuitable equipment (some just not commercially rated, some not performing to code)
• Buy behind-counter ice/sink/water equipment
• Scrub all pre-existing equipment with degreaser and then bleach
• Re-caulk floor moulding
• Steam clean/scrub grout in bathrooms, storage room
• Scrub all rooms/walls/surfaces
• Seal/paint counter cabinet with fancy/toxic non-porous chemicals (adiós, enviromentally-friendly milk paint) (Coats: 1 2 3)
• Find a compromise between health dept request for a locking door on food storage room and the fact that such a thing breaks fire code due to location (wish we’d known that before putting in the locking door as told) Put a bell on it! 5/8
• Replace dining room tables
• Replace pots, pans, utensils that are too worn or non-degreasable
• Massive caulking spree
• Paint all walls and ceilings
• Replace plastic shelving with stainless steel 5/8
• Purchase food storage containers
• Replace coffee machine (drip, not espresso)
• Additional covered trash cans in bathrooms specifically for “feminine hygiene waste” because the state of Georgia thinks menstrual blood and any paper or plastic products associated with such are hazardous waste, while urine and fecal matter are a-okay

Functional

• Purchase coffee and tea service items (steaming pitchers, demitasse cups, loose tea brewers, etc)
• Storage shelves 5/8
• Build or buy new tables/benches/chairs
• Get 2-3 comfy chairs for couch area
• Order bus tubs/cart, and trash/recycling/composting receptacles for self-clearing
• Order outdoor composter
• Fill iPod with music
• Get adapter for iPod to hook into existing speakers (or get better wireless ones)
• Order stand, cash drawer and receipt printer to go with iPad/Square reader (and roll eyes that total cost is about 5-10x a regular cash register from Office Depot)
• Order baking pans, utensils, pans, knives
• Order new worktable and shelves/cabinet for dishes/pots/etc
• Set up vendor accounts, place first orders
• Order to-go supplies
• Submit bus bench design
• Make new sign
• Get a desk and filing cabinet for back room

Aesthetic

• Replace chairs
• Coffee table
• Move cabinet by couches
• Art for walls
• Pick paint colors for areas other than front counter
• Paint everything
• Decorate

Airport Morning

Like so many mornings.

Update: this was supposed to be a photo added via iphone app. It didn’t post the image. Bug!

The Problem with Rescue Time

Last June I wrote a post outlining my typical day, with the post-end call to action to bring more balance into my life, specifically by not working so many hours. Back then, I was typically sleeping 4-5 hours per night, working 7 days a week (that was a very unhealthy 120 hours per week), and very rarely taking time out to spend time with family or friends.

I haven’t solved the problem — far from it — but it has gotten a little better. On average these days I work about 80 hours a week. I try to make sure that involves taking at least a little time off over the weekend to get outside away from the computer. Having my mom live nearby now makes this easier: 1) if she calls and asks me to do something with her, I feel guilty saying no, and 2) if I drive to the store I often stop to say hi since she lives across the street. So that forces me to get out a little more. Starting the WordPress meetup group in Savannah also creates a little enforced interaction, though it’s not exactly a break from work to spend 2 hours helping people learn to use WordPress. I also started using Rescue Time, and I try to force myself to stop working before I hit 80 hours. There’s a problem with measuring yourself with Rescue Time, though. Several problems, actually. Here’s the chart for me for the past week:

The first problem is not that big a deal. My job involves reading, commenting, and writing on a lot of blogs. WordPress.com hosts more than 100 private P2s for the company, and though I don’t track all of them, I’m in and out of quite a few. By default, Rescue Time thinks blogs are Very Distracting, so unless I go in and change the status on individual sites that are work-related, a lot of my work blog stuff gets inaccurately rated, hurting my efficiency rating.

The second problem is the thing that really bugs me. Mornings are really efficient for me. No one else is awake usually, since I start working at 6:30am right after I make Morgan’s lunch and send her off to school. My routine involves playing whatever TV downloaded the night before while I blast through the accumulated emails and P2 posts from work blogs (this is also the default for a chunk of my weekend work time). I get an email with every Trac comment/commit, every P2 post from the team blogs that I do follow, plus all the email I get from WordPress community members.

Trac and P2 emails don’t usually require my full attention to skim through, deleting the stuff that doesn’t require follow-up and saving the stuff that does. I spend an hour (or sometimes 2, depending on how busy the other side of the world was while I slept) doing this initial skim propped up in bed with my laptop while half-watching some show or other. Because I use a Mac, I have the handy ability to act on the mail and/or browser windows with two-finger scroll, even when that window is not in focus, just by hovering over an area of display. This means, for example, that I can make the Quicktime window be bigger by having it in focus/on top of the mail/browser chrome, so that my peripheral vision picks up more of the visual story while I power through the inbox, deleting away though it’s never brought into focus.

Rescue Time tracks the in focus window. So despite clearing though a hundred or two emails and reading through a few dozen P2 threads, Rescue Time thinks I’m just watching Very Distracting video, not doing any work.

This also hits me if I grab a sketchbook to draw some ideas for a UI or to make lists. If I’m doing that, I’ll often put pandora.com in focus so that if I don’t like a song I can skip it more quickly, or I’ll pull up one of those downloaded TV episodes so I can listen while I draw (I try to have ambient sound at least half the day, so I don’t go into hermit mode more than I already do).

Does it really matter that the tracking isn’t completely accurate or representative? No. Whether it thinks I’m 80% efficient or 60% or 30%, I know how much I get done in a day. And I still need to ratchet down the number of hours I work, and rather quickly if I’m going to get down to the equivalent of one full-time job before the Jitterbug opens. Still, I’m enough of a Type A that getting an email that downplays what I’ve done rankles just enough to matter. So I might stop using Rescue Time. Right after I get the weekly summary down to 50 hours per week or less.

Dear Mr. Pick

It says something about our personalities that when you had to draw weights, the barbell was lifted high overhead. My stick figure man’s barbell hovered just above his waist.

Save the Dolphins!

World’s smallest dolphin under threat from nets as species reduced to just 55 survivors | Mail Online.

At Tybee we have regular old bottlenose dolphins, and seeing them off the coast or in the river always makes my day. Seeing another type of dolphin be eliminated from the face of the planet due to poor fisheries management is very sad. Nets in general are just evil… we consume so much fish that the fishing industry needs them to be profitable, but even with adaptations to help prevent by-catch and accidental sea turtle or dolphin death, a lot of death occurs. I think it’s time I revisited my pescetarian ways and limit myself to wild line-caught fish.

My own personal habits aside, I hope the New Zealand government takes action to protect the few remaining Maui dolphins and/or engage with a marine wildlife organization for a long-term sustainability plan, probably including some type of breeding program. I fear that hope is in vain, though.

Gravatar Saves the Day!

I flew to Austin on Sunday. I was meeting Matt for tea on my way to the airport, and as a result I rushed out of the house without my usual pre-travel checks. When I got to the airport I discovered that I had neither my driver’s license nor my passport with me. Crap!

I thought this would mean I couldn’t fly, but as it turns out, there’s a list of things you can show that aren’t government-issued IDs to get through security with some additional screening. I showed them 3 credit cards and checks I had printed on my computer, but they really needed something with a photo on it so they could be confident I was me.

Hello, gravatar-included business cards! I’ve always been a big fan and proponent of putting gravatars in business cards (like Automattic does), because it provides a better post-event experience after connecting with people at WordCamps and other conferences. Who you are online gets more firmly connected to who you are in person, an makes it easier to remember conversations afterward. At least it does for me.

In this case the gravatar on my business card saved the day — and the SXSW WordPress Party, because if I’d had to drive home to get my ID, the chances of getting a new flight to Austin would have been pretty slim. So! The next time you’re having cards made, consider including your gravatar. It just might save you someday.

Poem for Kevin’s Birthday

My friend and co-worker Kevin Conboy‘s birthday was yesterday. I’ve known him since 2000. Since everyone still called me Jen. Since before I started dying my hair.

I posted this originally on a company blog. It is a terrible poem, but it hits the high points of our relationship. There is a factual error in the first line. When I wrote it I was thinking we met when I moved to Denver in 1999, but now that I think of it, I started at Spire in February 2000. The whitewater catchphrases at the end of each stanza, however, are 100% true.

Kevin

We met before the Y2k, you said
the cell phone didn’t like me and
we picked out a pinball machine.
Whitewater.

You yelled at me for my first blog that year,
“Center OR left align,” you steamed.
I went with left, obviously.
Good goin’, pardner!

The golden summer of Spire, that was it.
Lunch, ice cream, napster, rent, blue note,
and celebrity jeopardy.
Jackpot!

I left for Vermont with your mix CD:
Nosering Girl and Morrissey, yo.
Freelance, Ocean Navigator.
No way out!

We carried an iMac home from Brooklyn –
I still have that gorgeous machine!
Then thank you treats at Veniero’s.
Insanity Falls.

I thought you were sick of Wall Street data
So I said, “Matt, I have this friend…”
And there goes another birthday.
Ride the whirlpool!

P.S. Kevin is also backing the Jitterbug!

Presso Test

Clip from the test session at Perc. Will post description over on the buyjaneabakery blog, but saving video here for archival purposes.

Presso Demo

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And of course ,it would be awesome if you help fund the dream!