osunick

As the election is looming, there’s a proposition on the California ballot that’s getting a lot of attention.  Prop 8 is a proposed amendment to the California constitution that strictly defines marriage as between a man and a woman.  Clearly, there’s a lot of hysteria about this proposition but I think I can break down my “no on prop 8″  position.

So here’s my breakdown of what does and doesn’t change if Prop 8 fails and gay marriage continues to be legal in our great state of California.

What Changes:

• Same sex couples will be able to get legal marriage status in California
• Solemnizing authorities who wish to ordain same sex marriages will be allowed to do so
• Providing a legal framework for marriage encourages monogamous long term relationships, which (aside from the public health concerns) is good in terms of providing financially stable households.
• Gay couples win dignity by averting another “Jim Crow” separate-but-equal civil union situation
• Less fraud with partner benefits as California companies can use a state marriage license as proof of eligibility
• Potential economic benefits from offering a limited and in demand resources.  Gay weddings will be the new oil.

What doesn’t change

• Gay couples will continue to be able to adopt in California, but with less uncertainty around guardianship and greater incentives to build a stable household.
• Same sex couples will continue to have healthy, meaningful relationships and choose to live together as they wish.
• Churches will continue to be able to define marriage as they see fit

So for me, the rational argument is that marriage as defined by the state really is a civil union, with no pretext regarding romance between the actual parties.  It really is a declaration of sharing a single household for tax and legal purposes.  The reason why we can’t call it a civil union is because ’separate but equal’ has never worked out well in reality.  (see Jim Crow for examples)  Even today, there are completely chaste marriages between opposite sex partners because of the benefits that marriage confers.

I have yet to see a rational argument in favor of Prop 8.  I’m not going to argue with you based on faith, but if you’re going to convince me that I’m wrong, you have to present a rational, secular argument for saying “yes”.  A glib argument like “I want to be a Groom, not Partner A” just won’t cut it, nor does the straw man of ‘the intent of marriage is procreation, therefore only people who are capable of reproducing should be able to marry’.  Tell that to the 20% of 40-44 year old married couples who are childless.

Put another way- just like any proposition,  think hard about the impact on yourself and others when deciding your vote.  Even if gay marriage makes you uneasy, does its existence really impact you very much if at all?  On the flip side, people who are already in committed relationships, and their CHILDREN, will be able to enjoy the benefits and incentives that married couples enjoy today.

We launched.  It’s also my birthday, which is also awesome.  More later, but you can check out my Raptr Card here:

The engine in all its glory... clicky for a set

Audis have a reputation for stellar design and materials quality, but less of a good reputation for overall reliability.  I believe this is because of the German proclivity for relentless improvement.  Where a Japanese automaker might adopt an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality, the Germans are always thinking “ve haf a vay to improve ze haptic response of the window svitch” and as a result, are constantly reinventing basic components over and over again.

Regardless, the effort shows because when things work, they work amazingly well.  The flip side is that when they don’t, it’s because some basic part fails.  Regardless, we love our Audi A4 Avant and wouldn’t ever consider anything else.  Lots of other people love their Audis too, because there’s a huge online community.  Without Audiworld.com and Audizine.com, I’m sure our ownership experience would have included a couple annoying post-warranty repairs, but thanks to the helpful members of those forums, many disasters and inconveniences have been averted for a minimum of cost and time.

As our car broke the 65K mile barrier, it was time to think about doing the timing belt.  For those unfamiliar with the inner workings of an internal combustion engine, a timing belt is a toothed rubber belt that connects the top of an engine (the valves that let in air+fuel and let out exhaust) with the bottom (the pistons and crankshaft).  The belt has a finite life- and if it fails, fragile metal parts try to occupy the same space with a disastrous and expensive result.   Audi recommends the belt get replaced around the 75-85K mark, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Since an independent shop would charge around $1000 for the timing belt job, I decided to tackle this myself.  I put out a desperate call for help on the Audizine.com NorCal forum, and got a response from a helpful forum member.  For $250 he would do the t-belt if I provided the parts (another $250) and I’d even be able to help out!  The opportunity to have an expert show me how to do a complex maintenance operation was simply too good to pass up, so I drove the 60 miles to Pleasant Hill to do the job.

The job took 5 hours and without the help of ActiveMonkey (also named Nick), it would have been nigh impossible.  I was impressed with how well designed the car was, and how easy it was to take apart as quickly as it did.  I learned a few tricks for dealing with a timing belt- for instance, instead of rotating the engine to TDC, simply mark the old belt and gears with a sharpie, and transfer the marks to the exact same spots on the new belt.  This will ensure that the relationship between the various gears will not change, and no pesky rotating of engine parts with a wrench.

While we were in there, we changed some belts and replaced the water pump.  The car should be good now for another couple of years, and we got to check everything for leaks.  I actually think I could do the job myself now, though perhaps it is for the best that it won’t have to be done for another 70K miles…

Since we moved into our Eichler, we’ve had a love-hate relationship with the dual sliding garage doors.  Of course their unique design and style means that we’d never replace them, but getting out of the car during the rainy winter to pull a heavy door open meant that style had a cost.  Since the pine cones from our tree can dent cars, leaving things alone wasn’t an option.  Clearly, something had to be done.

We decided to do the garage door openers ourselves because no one wanted to attempt doing a job that would involve powering both doors.  There were a few obstacles endemic to all Eichlers, but nothing insurmountable.  The key is developing an attachment to the garage doors that takes the overlapping into account. This also means that you have to be extra careful to not operate the wrong door at the wrong time, as various parts will collide and possibly damage your setup.

The basic idea here is that we installed garage door openers in the front corners of our garage, with the rails and trolleys moving sideways and parallel to the path of the doors.  The rails themselves will be mounted to a piece of wood that spans the gap between beams.

We went with the cheapest garage door opener we could find, a Chamberlain from Lowes.  Because all we have to do is slide the door back and forth, a great deal of power isn’t needed.  If you’re feeling fancy, maybe a screw drive opener would be quieter, but there’s really no need to get anything more than the basics here.  The other you’ll need is a extension kit for your door.  A standard garage door opener is designed with 7 feet of travel.  Since the Eichler slider needs at least 7.5 feet to open fully, you’ll need this kit to ensure things open the entire way.  While you’re in the store, also pick up some hanger brackets for the garage door opener.  This resembles a long piece of flat steel, folded 90 degrees along its length and with lots of holes in it.

In addition to the garage door opener hardware, you will also need to measure the distance between the beams in the garage.  Get an 8×1 piece of pine that is high grade (without knots) and long enough to span the distance with a few inches to spare on both sides.  Mount this board with screws parallel to the door and centered on the beams, with the front edge about six inches away from the boards.  This distance doesn’t have to be exact, but we do need room for the garage door openers.  Here’s a picture of the board with both openers installed, so you can see what we did.

Buy four right angle brackets, Home Depot has some Strong-Tie A66 connectors which are the best I’ve seen so far.  Look in your lumber section near where the deck supplies are sold.  Also pick up some 1 inch lag screws with some washers, you’ll need 8 of them for the angle brackets and another 8 or so to mount the garage door opener hanger to the ceiling.  While you are picking up the angle brackets, get about 8 linear feet of 1×4 oak.

I’m going to assume that you or an electrician will install some grounded outlets on the ceiling boards within in the front corners of the garage.  This is a fairly straightforward job which shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.  You will want to ground your outlets- for us, the cold water pipe leading to the exterior hose faucet was an easy source of grounding.

The next step is to assemble the first garage door opener.  Start on the side of the garage with the outer door, which is the door that is closest to the front of the house.  This door should be on the side of the garage that has some space set back from the edge of the door.  This is important, because the bracket you will attach will require the garage door opener to sit back fairly far from the door.

Build a bracket like this, with the piece of oak attached to the angle brackets with lag screws.  I only used two lag screws even though there are holes for four, to allow for greater clearance for the bracket as it must pass above the other door when opening.  Also note that the bracket is attached just inboard of the hanging casters for the door.  This is critical as it will ensure that the bracket will not hit the other door’s casters as it opens.

Once this bracket is built and attached to the door, hang your garage door opener.  It should be fully assembled at this point so simply install the hang bracket in the ceiling of the garage and adjust it so that the opener is set back far enough to allow for the trolley to move back far enough to pull the door completely closed.  Attach the header bracket for your track to the pine board you attached between the beams.  The opener should be aligned so that the track is parallel to the door’s travel and as close as possible to the door itself.  Once the bracket is hung, assemble the arm and bracket for the trolley.

Connect the power and stand back as you enjoy seeing your garage door opener work.  If all goes well, the bracket you made should slide in the gap between the inner door and the track as the outer door moves open.  Of course, this also means that you should never try opening a door when the other door is open, as it may damage your door.   Be sure to set the force limiting settings to be as low as possible.  Also, the electric eye safety switch will not work, as the opener is set up in a ‘push to open, pull to close’ arrangement.  This means that when the door is closing, the opener ‘thinks’ it’s opening, and ignores the status of the electric eye.  I simply taped mine together.

The other door is much like the first, except we have to make a bracket that won’t interfere with the other door as it opens.  It looks like this:

You can see in this picture that the bracket is sightly different, and designed so that it will never interfere with the other door’s bracket.

Anyway, once you’re done you’ll be able to sit back and enjoy the satisfication of doing your own Eicher garage door openers.  Here’s a video to give you a preview of what you’ll have when you’re done!

Enjoy- and check out my Garage Door set on Flickr for more pics!

Even though I’m no longer on the team, I’ll always be a big, big fan of Delicious (with or without dots) and the team.  Seeing that thing launch last week with maximum fanfare and minimum drama was great to see, as that was something that I worked on for most of the last 18 months of my life as a product manager on Delicious.  My friend and fellow ex-Yahoo wrote an excellent post on the topic.

While the new design does take some getting used to, I’m a big fan. Here are some of my favorite features:

• Contextual search: you can now search any view on the site.  This is easier to do than describe- but as a quick example look at another person’s bookmarks.  Do a search, and you’ll see results from their bookmarks.  If you’re looking at one of their tags, then the results are from that tag on their bookmarks.  Same goes for their network page.  It’s incredibly flexible and great for finding bookmarks from your friends that were previously lost in the mists of the past.
• Deeper integration with the extension:  With the new Delicious Bookmarks extension for Firefox, the website detects if you have the extension installed and integrates seamlessly with the import settings page.  Simply go to ‘import bookmarks’ on your Settings page and we’ll take care of sending the data along for you- no more creating bookmark files and manually uploading them!
• Speed:  It’s just way faster than before.  I find myself browsing and searching Delicious a lot more because of the speed.  If you have the extension installed, you’ll notice that we added a handy search plugin for your Firefox and IE search bars.  Try it out!

Anyway, my heartfelt congratulations to the team, I’m pleased as punch that things turned out the way they did.

I got the PM gig at Yahoo! Answers because I was the top points-scorer during the internal alpha.  These days, my participation is limited, but I still want to answer your questions.  Email me a question at osunick@osunick.com and I’ll do my best to answer it!  Try to play to my strengths- questions about consumer electronics, cars, and home improvement are more likely to be answered satisfactorily than questions about table manners or ballroom dancing.

The ultimate irony for me is old technology that seems cutting edge.  Nothing epitomizes this more than X10, which was developed in the 1970’s as a way for people to remotely control lights and appliances in their homes.  Since then, the basics have remained the same.  There’s a wall module that can control up to 16 devices.  These devices are comprised of light switches and appliance modules.  The light switches simply replace your standard wall switch and have dimming capability.  The appliance modules plug between your appliance and the wall.  They come in a variety of capacities and designs.  These are controlled by a variety of remotes in all shapes and sizes- a wireless wall switch, a full remote with 16 buttons, and even a small key fob remote.

The big difference between today and the 1970’s is the availablity of programmable control modules.  You simply connect your computer to the control module and you can program macros and timers for any X10 device in your home.  For instance, I have a macro that lets me set all the living room lights to a level that is suitable for tv viewing, and another that turns off every light in the house (very handy for bedtime).  The timers are quite flexible too- not only can you set any device or macro to turn on or off at a set time- you can also program timers that are based on dusk/dawn settings.  For instance, I have a macro that turns on the front door light at dusk- and since there’s almanac data in the control module, the light turns on at a different time every day.

Finally, there are a variety of interesting add-ons like motion sensors that can turn devices on and off based on motion.  In my garage the openers are in the extreme corners of the garage.  This isn’t great for finding your way around the garage at night, so I have a motion sensor turning on the garage lights whenever there’s motion in the garage.  The openers are sufficient for triggering the sensors, so I always have light when I want it, and the sensor also takes care of turning off the lights after a couple of minutes.

Yes, replacing every switch in your house takes time, and X10 isn’t without issues.  Since the device signals travel through your house wiring, it may take some experimentation to find out which outlet in your house works best for the control module.  For instance, when we had the module in our bedroom, signals from the module wouldn’t reach the garage.  We found an inconspicuous outlet in the living room which works nicely.

The last issue is that the primary vendor of X10 devices is X10.com.  Visiting this site can make your eyes bleed- it is very well known as the purveyor of wireless cameras of dubious virtue… but rest assured that even non-voyeurs can find something of value here.  Any of the ActiveHome bundles will get you started- and if you have any questions feel free to ask!

Leaving a familar place is always difficult, especially when you know it’s coming.  Three weeks ago, I received an offer I couldn’t refuse.  I accepted the offer and gave my notice- and Friday the 20th was my last day at Yahoo! as a Senior Product Manager on del.icio.us.

It didn’t really hit me that I was leaving until the end of my last week, when I started doing late nights to encode all of my arcane del.icio.us knowledge into product twikis - online documents - so that my successors can hit the ground running. It’s hard to walk away from something that you spent so much time and energy doing, with people that you genuinely care about and respect.  I took lots of pictures of my old office.

As I took these photos, I realized that I was really walking through these buildings for perhaps the very last time. It felt like graduating from school, and the feelings of saying goodbye to people and being hyperaware of my surroundings as I mentally recorded my experiences were reminiscent of those days. This all sounds crazy- it’s only a job, right? After all, instead of paying to be there, I got paid.

Nonetheless, I still learned more than I ever did in school and made friends that were just as good. Yahoo! deserves all the credit for really giving me the chance to refactor my career and become a product manager working on exciting and game changing products. I really wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for my years there.

Now I’m at a new job, doing a new challenge with a combination of old friends and new colleagues, and I’m excited about my future.  I should be– I’ve left a lot behind, but just like a new college graduate, I feel like Yahoo! has imbued me with the experience to succeed.  So long Yahoo!, and thanks for all the fish.  I really hope for only the best for you, and I’ll be rooting for you from the outside.