Amazon Fresh, It’s Just Not Working Out Between Us
I wanted to love Amazon Fresh. I really wanted to love it.
I figured that with Judah around, the best mix of value and convenience would be to buy everything we could at the Ballard Farmer's Market (which we pretty much do anyway), and get everything else we needed from Amazon Fresh, running out to other grocery stores only when unavoidable.
Sad to say, it didn't work out like that.
I'd presumed that Amazon Fresh had the same core value proposition as Amazon: enormous selection, good (if not predatory) prices, and a convenient online shopping experience. Sadly, Amazon Fresh ran 0 for 3 on that.
The selection was okay, but even excluding local products, not as extensive as the QFC in our neighborhood or Ballard Market. I couldn't get the same kinds of juice; our first-choice toilet paper was unavailable, and any reasonable sizes for our second choice were out of stock. I searched extensively, but I couldn't find anything I really wanted that wasn't available at the other stores in our neighborhood.
The prices were the same story: all right, but not any better than the grocery store. The prices might have seemed better if we bought truly bulk sizes, but in an apples-to-apples price comparison, Amazon possessed no advantage — and possibly a disadvantage once I added in delivery fees (for orders of less than $100).
If selection and prices weren't ideal, the convenience still might have been sufficient for me to become a fan. Unfortunately, the online shopping experience was terrible.
The search section, at the top of each page, contains a search box, and below that three lists: Aisles, Brands, and Show Only. There's a bug (at least in my experience on Google Chrome on a Mac) where, if I press the button to clear the search box, and start typing my new search in, the three lists reset. When the lists reset, anything I've typed in the search box is cleared.
For example, let's say I had searched for 'toilet paper' and that was in the search box. I press the little 'x' button to clear it, and start typing 'ice cream.' But about halfway through my typing, the aisles, brands, and show only boxes refresh — and I'm left with a search for 'ream'.
This is, needless to say, poor UI. Has the Amazon Fresh team considered copying the rest of the Amazon UI? It would be a significant improvement over what they have in place.
Even so, I might have put up with the site if not for the final insult: inconsistent, and frequently wrong, product information.
Laura is allergic to peanuts, and so tends to avoid granola bars, which frequently contain peanuts and peanut flour. But I have found several types of granola bars that don't, including the classic crunchy "oat and honey" flavors.
Looking at Amazon Fresh, you wouldn't know it. The oat and honey granola bars from Barbara's Bakery don't have any ingredients listed. The Nature Valley bars list a whole bunch of ingredients that aren't in this particular flavor of bar, including peanut flour.
With missing and/or untrustworthy ingredient lists, I consider using Amazon Fresh risky at best. Given the impossible UI, unimpressive prices and selection, and often long waits for delivery, I just can't see myself continuing to use Amazon Fresh for groceries.
Cracking the Sleep Code: Getting Judah to Sleep
One common challenge of early parenting is getting a child to sleep. Judah is no exception.
When he's crying, we can quiet him using Dr. Karp's "Cuddle Cure" described in The Happiest Baby on the Block: we swaddle him, hold him on his side, and jiggle him around while we shush him, and sometimes give him a finger to suck on. (Based on my experience, I thoroughly endorse Dr. Karp's book: it just works.)
The problem has been that, once he's calm and we put him to bed, it takes about two minutes for him to start screaming again. This wasn't a problem for Judah's first three or four days &emdash; he was fine until he worked his way out of the swaddle, but we'd re-swaddle him and he'd quiet down again — but all of a sudden the problem appeared as if out of nowhere.
As of two days ago, I think we nailed this problem: we'd switched from a traditional swaddle to putting him in a onesie and a SwaddleMe, this great velcro-sealed baby pouch that Judah can't wriggle out of.
Unfortunately, while Judah can't shimmy his arms out of the SwaddleMe, the fabric is much more stretchy. When I realized that the switch to the SwaddleMe coincided with our inability to get Judah to sleep, we swaddled him first in a normal swaddling cloth, and then used the SwaddleMe to keep him from being able to undo himself. (Several days later, we switched to a single larger flannel swaddling blanket that we can tuck more securely, as he seemed to be a bit warm from the multiple-layer solution.)
Using a "real" swaddle worked perfectly: now Judah will sleep through the night, even when we want to get him up for feeding. (That's a different problem, and another blog post... when we get an answer!)
Sleep Bank
Although Ezra's stillbirth two and a half years ago prevents me from counting chickens at this stage, Laura's impending due date in December has nudged me into a contemplative mood.
One object of contemplation is time. I'm told that my free time is due to take a nosedive come December. I already feel like I'm too short on time. Between a full-time job, my modest almost-weekly scuba diving (three or four hours when it happens), and standard issue home economics (money management, grocery shopping, cooking, and other household management), I have very little free time for projects (like blogging, and writing fiction) and a social life that I consider "important" but which are obviously secondary.
Hardly a day goes by where I don't marvel at someone else's ability to juggle a 50-60 hour a week job, creative projects, social relationships, and a media diet that far exceeds my own. Although I don't feel as though I'm wasting my time anywhere, I don't see how I can't have a minute to spare and others can accomplish so much more than I do.
I have identified two factors working against me: I truly need at least seven hours a night of sleep, if I'm to be mentally effective, and I tend to execute creative projects in time slots of 90 minutes or more. I imagine that most hypercreative busy people can use much shorter time slots, and operate on less sleep.
I'm reminded of several years ago, where many of my co-workers seemed to have endless money to go out, go to concerts, buy clothing, and generally consume broadly if not conspicuously. By contrast, I just didn't feel that I had the money to indulge in all of these things. Where was their money coming from? Sure, some of them were probably digging themselves deep holes of credit, but not all were. Later I realized that I was putting a full 10% of my salary into my 401K, and that perhaps in addition to credit, my colleagues weren't putting aside enough money for a rainy day.
Unfortunately, I'm not "banking" sleep, or if I am, I'm overtaken by inflation and bank fees.
Here's hoping that taking care of an infant will teach me how to be effective on less sleep and work in smaller time increments. (And here's hoping that all goes well enough that this is the problem I want to solve.)
First PNW scuba photos
Last week I finally took my camera on a dive up here in Seattle. You can find my photos here.
If I'm going to do any serious photography, I'll need better lights and more practice. But it was fun to get some photos of the sorts of things you see on a typical Seattle dive.
They like me, they really like me!
Newpages.com reviewed issue 6 of The Ampersand Review, in which a story of mine appeared.
About my story, the reviewer says:
Lasser has a phenomenal sense of poetic language and flow throughout his story, much like this wonderful opening paragraph. The sounds all relate and the reader can definitely hear them through this description.
One of the challenges of writing is the sense of shouting down into a well and hearing only my own voice come back. So here's another voice.
Why Management Can’t Be Replaced By Computers
I'm new at this management thing — I was promoted back in January — but I've figured out that it would be hard to program a computer to manage for the same reasons it's hard to program a computer to play Go:
- I have to spend a lot of time and energy figuring out what to pay attention to. If I simply look at the most recent change, or the most active places, I'll always be reacting, and thus always on the defensive. You can't win at Go if you're only reactive, not proactive.
- There's a frequent need to switch between close-in (tactical) and far-out (strategic) approaches. Ideally, I should be able to see both scopes simultaneously, but at best I can switch between them quickly. Each switch imposes a cost, however.
Of course, I'm still figuring out this manager thing. And I'm even worse at Go than I am at managing. But those are my observations so far.
New Fiction published: Every Girl on the Bus I’ve Ever Looked at the Wrong Way, I’m Sorry
My short story, "Every Girl on the Bus I've Ever Looked at the Wrong Way, I'm Sorry" has been published by the Ampersand Review.
You can read it online or, better yet, buy the magazine and keep a copy around to show your friends.
Grandpa Joe
My grandfather died today, after a six month struggle following a stroke — a struggle which, more often than not, he seemed to be winning.
I could write a lot here (and in fact I started to) about what happened, and why, and what it meant not only for him but in the greater scheme of things. Maybe I'll do that later.
Right now, I just want to say that he was my hero, and the man more than any other I try to emulate. He was an eternal optimist, a model of how to behave and how to treat other human beings even when you were in a position of relative strength, and how to gracefully appreciate your blessings, and share them with others.
He left the world in better shape than he found it, and spread joy along the way.
Welcome to Malcolm Gladwell’s America…
Where everyone has to work all the time, where poets and writers should write as much as they can, until they collapse, until their fingers bleed.
This should be obvious to everyone, but I somehow didn't notice until now that Gladwell's now-famous 10,000 hour rule is the Calvinist Work Ethic by another name: sure, putting in the time doesn't guarantee success, but not putting in the time is a sign of moral, and likely practical, failure.
My Grandfather is fond of saying that the optimists always win. I don't think that's true, but I agree that everybody who wins is an optimist for reasons that parallel the Anthropic Principle. Still, because everyone who wins is an optimist, it pays to not be a pessimist. And I don't have to believe in the 10,000 hour rule to decide that it's better to work hard than to goof off. But accepting the notion that nobody can goof off and be a success seems somehow joyless and, well, Calvinist.
The Task Manager of my Dreams (and how I get tasks done)
I've got a task management problem. It might be a bit different from most people's, which may be why I've looked at everything from OmniFocus to Things to TaskPaper and I can't find something that meets my needs.
What I need — and what I can't figure out to do in any of these other applications in a reasonable fashion — is a daily log of what I've accomplished, from which I can cherry-pick and summarize into monthly reports, and then again into annual reports.
I can do this in my current system, which has worked pretty well for three years now. I rely on VoodooPad to keep my to-do list. Every day I assemble tomorrow's to-do list on a page named with the next day's date. This consists of both uncompleted items from that day's to-do list, as well as scheduled calendar appointments.