Fashion Square Mall, Scottsdale,Arizona

I visited the new Microsoft store at the Fashion Square Mall in Scottsdale , Arizona this weekend. Fashion Square is very large, three level, upscale mall, thats polite for very pricy. It took some time to find the place as the directory had not been updated to reflect its location and there were no long crowds leading the way. There was one big banner hanging over the food court announcing the store opening. However, it provided no directions. Asking around at the various stores did ultimately get me to my destination. My very first impression upon entering was… Its Apple! A little shocking. In my flippant way, I asked the greater if this was an Apple store. Her reply was no, its Microsoft and we have more technology. I snapped a couple of pictures with my Blackberry and did a walk around. This is really a nice store. Lots of PC's on display. Seemed like there was a table for most major brands of laptops, e.g. Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. There was not much in the way of desktop systems. Noted a couple of Microsoft touch tables and a small gaming section. Only saw Microsoft software on display. There were no third party application or peripherals in view. Needed an external hard drive, but none for sale here.

Overall I found the experience pleasant. Did note, as expected, there were no bargains. My suspicion is this is really just a big advertisement opportunity for Microsoft. From my pictures you can see there were not many customers and saw no one leave with a new computer. Contrasting with Apple's store where they always seem crowded and you see a stream of customer leaving with new systems.

What a pain… need to edit a Microsoft Word 2007 form that was originally created by an individual who is no longer employed at my company. I can use Word but am a long way from being any kind of expert. So googled by questions and found I should save the dot document as a docx. Did that but could not edit because it was protected. Googled how to remove protection and came accross https://community.sgdotnet.org/blogs/kitkai/archive/2007/08/20/Remove-Document-Protection-against-Edit-in-Word-2007.aspx with the following that worked great:

1. Rename the document to zip format
2. Open it up in my favorite zip program
3. Edit settings.xml in Notepad
4. Look for "protection" in the xml file, and you will locate <w:documentProtection> element.
5. Remove all the attributes in it.
6. Update the zip file
7. Rename the document back to docx
8. Open it up in Word 2007, and you are able to edit the document…

Now I can edit .

The MySQL error “Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/mysql/mysql.sock’ “ fix is:

Create this directory if it does not exist…

sudo mkdir /var/mysql

Next make the following symbolic link…

sudo ln -s /private/tmp/mysql.sock /var/mysql/mysql.sock

#10. On Management

My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects.

And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.

#9. On Hiring

Recruiting is hard. It’s just finding the needles in the haystack. You can’t know enough in a one-hour interview.

So, in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they’re challenged? I ask everybody that: ‘Why are you here?’ The answers themselves are not what you’re looking for. It’s the meta-data.

#8. On Firing

We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place — the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.

#7. On a CEO succession Plan

I mean, some people say, ‘Oh, God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple.

My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.

#6. On Product Strategy

It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.

We just want to make great products. (I think he means “insanely great products!“)

#5. On Leadership

So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know – just explore things.

#4. On Evangelism

When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.

They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else. (this actually reiterates my oft-repeated mantra of “ubiquitous evangelism” in companies)

#3. On Focus

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

#2. On the User Experience

Our DNA is as a consumer company — for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simply.

#1. On Creativity

That happens more than you think, because this is not just engineering and science. There is art, too. Sometimes when you’re in the middle of one of these crises, you’re not sure you’re going to make it to the other end. But we’ve always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder.

I think the key thing is that we’re not all terrified at the same time. I mean, we do put our heart and soul into these things.

One More Thing…

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life.

Life is brief, and then you die, you know?

And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

Here is something to remember. Use the command “sudo apachectl -t” to detect problems in httpsd.conf. I had a problem where https://localhost would return an error “Safari can’t connect to the server…” and running this command reported “httpsd: Syntax error on line 488 of /private/etc/apache2/httpsd.conf: Could not open configuration file /Users/…/phpweb20/httpsd.conf: No such file or directory”. Commenting out the offending line in httpsd.conf solved the problem. Apparently in some previous coding work I modified httpsd.conf and later erased a referenced file. Another lesson relearned.

Another year is about to end and once again I ask where did the time go? Last January seems so close, not a distant 12 months in the past. I suspect the same will happen with 2009. It will start with big plans for change and end before we are ready. Something is happening to our world. I think time is speeding up. I can remember the good old days when a year was really a year. It was chock full of 12 full months. Not like today. Today the months are all smeared and run together in a streaking way. They zoom by to end in December with the same unanswered question. Where did the year go?