iconophobia

Yahoo and Microsoft disagreed over the valuation of the company, but that is not necessarily a show-stopped for a takeover.

Yahoo, however, went all-in.  Effectively, it appears as if they threatened to destroy the economics of the company rather than have it purchased.  It's a bit like taking yourself hostage in a stand-off.  There will be lots of post-game analysis of this one.

Tomorrow, though, the question on everyone's mind - especially the Board of Directors - will be, "What's a share of YHOO worth now?"

It was coming, but I had no idea the Real Time Event was so close.

Without warning it's suddenly no longer the past - it's the long now. You see, I've run out of archived television. In the past month my national strategic reserves of Lost, Weeds, and Battlestar Galactica have been depleted. When you consider at the turn of the year, the assets were at least a year of each of those, thats' a pretty big chunk o' watching that's been drained.

But now, the next fix is no longer a moment away, ready for me whenever I am. You see, in Real Time, you have to wait a week for the next episode. Or more! There was apparently some kind of "writers strike" thing that happened in the past that screwed things up somewhat. Who knew? Anyway, Real Time is for chumps. I haven't been beholden to a network schedule in over a year, and it's killing me. If I'd seen it coming, maybe I'd have paced myself. Or something. Start catching up on old episodes of Soap and Dallas, maybe.

Oh, wait, what's this? I still have some 24 Season 3 and Dr. Who! Oh thank god, I'm saved! Back to living in the past!

So Microsoft threw down a few bucks and is in the process of trying to buy Yahoo!. When you buy another company - particularly in your space - it's often called a take-over, so let's just work with that. Sometimes it's friendly, sometimes it's not. There is no reason for this one to be hostile, but there's no barrier to it.

You see, Yahoo!'s acceptance of this little transaction isn't required. At all. Although it's 12 wild years since Yahoo!'s IPO, and they have 500x more staff than back then, this is ultimately why companies need to avoid losing control of themselves through venture capital, IPO, and other stock issuances (they are all effectively the same, it's just the pools of new owners that vary).

All companies are only in the business of pleasing their shareholders, and as their shareholder base eventually dilutes people who have vested interests in the companies themselves the management team and corporate culture become amusing anachronisms that are tolerated until a better deal shows up.

This is unfortunate, because regardless of what search engine, IM, or webmail you prefer, Yahoo! has a strong internal identity that isn't going to take well to be sold off by its Wall Street overlords into Microserfdom. It's a betrayal: like the whole world saying, "We don't care about you, what you're doing, or what you're trying to achieve."

That by itself sucks enough, but heaped onto that the complete inability to resist, well, it's a blow nobody deserves.

Note to self: Do not sell self-determination

Here's how often you should take apart and service your Aeron chair:

Never. Ever.

I have one at home, partially to compensate for the crippler they have set me up with at work. It's used - off craigslist of course - and I was having problems with one of the arms not really wanting to move side-to-side.

The problem with a sample group of two is that you can't be quite sure which one is busted. Turns out, it was the other side. A flat piece of injection-molded plastic was mashed, and that meant it didn't do its little bit of magic quite right.

Understand that where I live, you can't turn left without hitting an Aeron. They're everywhere. Thank the dot-com boom or something. There's a billboard on the way in "Silicon Valley: Turning America's 401Ks into chairs." So it was quite a surprise to find no online information at all about servicing them. No parts, either. I just needed what would be a $5.00 part, and even that would be at grossly marked-up prices.

No dice. There's pretty much squat. And service-wise, this may be the only geek fetish item that doesn't have two dozen unboxings and disassemblies spread across a hundred odd fan sites. There's nothing. There's not even Aeron pr0n!

Undaunted, I proceed as usual in these circumstances: do nothing for a month or two.

Then, looking to leverage my success, Project Aeron was joined with Project Mold-Making For No Reason. Another month passes with similar results.

Until today:

The original part is on the left. RTV silicone meets Quick Cast. 24 hours later, I have a very nearly identical-looking part, with questionable physical properties. Strangely, it went without a hitch.

I wish I could say the same thing for the reassembly. In my class on product design, there are different focus areas, like DFM (Design for Manufacturing), DFE (Design for Environment), etc. These chairs were created with DFSYOIYTIA (Design for Screwing You Over If You Take It Apart).

I have met many products from that school of design. They usually involve a spring under tension or compression with a couple of degrees of freedom that are enabled as soon as you undo any part of it. This one has two.

There are things that should self-destruct when you try to work on them. Cryptographic machines. Atomic weapons. Waterbeds. But not chairs. Particularly, not expensive chairs that you might need to repair.

Yet there they were, the two magic springs, freed from the prison that had held them captive and useful for so many years. Those little bastards.

The internet has nothing on how to reassemble these.

Anyway, I could blab on about this for another couple hundred words, but long story short: You can get them back together. Attention internet: You can get them back together! The technique requires vice grips, a screwdriver, and a sailor's-worth of salty language.

x2 if you're doing both sides.

UPDATE:  After four hours or so in service, the replacement cast piece has shattered deep within the workings of the chair.  This is unfortunate, but not surprising.  What's even more unfortunate is that I will now be pursuing a broad survey of all of the casting materials available in an attempt to find the right one.  After all, I have that awesome mold now!

For the past forever, I've been using engineering paper. For everything.

Being, sometimes, an engineer, that's probably expected. Well, no more. Wait, I mean no more engineering paper. I'm still going to be an engineer. Sometimes.

Anyway, one page into using it, I'm moving on to dot grid. Not these guys, though, because they seem to have forgotten North America runs on 8.5×11″, hole-punchable paper. Also: wire bindings suck. They are sexy and luscious right up until something has to go into or come out of them. Then the suck comes out and dribbles all over your desk, making a mess.

Dot grid books aren't readily available(*) in the US, so it's pretty much roll-your own. I'm doing the design with PostScript. Even though it's the brainchild of Adobe (sort of) it's good for this type of work. When useful results are produced, you will be notified. This is my way of saying notice has been posted and that the expectation is you all will convert as well.

Roll-your-own also means I'm going to have to figure out a binding solution. Damnit. Do I have to do everything myself?

(*) "Readily available" means there is enough of a selection that some manufacturer will have stumbled across an actually useful and appropriate design. My bitching about the nearly complete disappointment the free market has brought us will be another time.