Farewell Pullman!

Now that the dust has settled and the bins holding the contents of another college apartment are stacked throughout our house on this side of the state, I’ll say my official farewell to Pullman, WA. On May 4, 2013, our daughter Sarah graduated Summa Cum Laude (GPA over 3.9) from Washington State University with a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance.

Sarah Stark, WSU Class of 2013

Sarah followed in her brother’s footsteps and became a cougar in August 2009. Even though my husband John has been a professor at WSU since 1990, I had never visited the main campus in Pullman until we took Johnny, our oldest, to WSU while shopping for a college in the spring of 2006.

For seven years our two cougars migrated back and forth across the state, spending most of their time in the small college town named Pullman. They both put in a lot of class and practice hours in one particular campus building, Kimbrough, the music building.

Over the years I got in the WSU rhythm as well: buying books before fall semester, helping them pack up to return to college, sending them Puyallup fair scones, football season, dad’s weekend, finals, winter break, buying books for spring semester, spring break, mom’s weekend, finals and moving their stuff from dorms to apartments and back home.

Johnny and Sarah both knew that if I came to visit, it was mandatory that I get a milk shake at Ferdinand’s. If we didn’t get to Ferdinand’s while it was open, they figured out where else I could get my fix of the famous WSU creamery’s ice cream and a tin of Cougar Gold cheddar cheese. 

We had our favorite restaurants in Pullman: Tam’s or McDonald’s for breakfast, Black Cypress, South Fork, or Fireside Grill for dinner, and Rico’s for beer and popcorn.

While John met with his colleagues, I’d take the kids to Wal-Mart or Safeway and stock them up with groceries. Near Sarah’s apartment on College Hill, we knew where the best hunting was for parking spaces.We were there when the new Cub opened and missed Dupus Boomers when it closed. 

Mom's weekend 2011 at Dupus Boomers restaurant.

We had fun rolling some balls down the alley at Zeppos when Johnny was taking bowling. I slept in Stephenson dormitory at freshman orientation and one mom’s weekend, and we knew our best bet was to camp out in the kids’ apartments because hotel rooms were scarce during mom’s weekends and graduation.

Special thanks go to the WSU Health center. They took care of Johnny when he broke his wrist, and got the gravel out of Sarah’s palms when she fell one cold winter the day before her piano juries. Both of my cougars managed to dodge the swine flu outbreak of 2009, but I knew that the health center was there if they did. More thanks go out to the mechanics at Les Schwab who repaired Johnny’s Honda when his front wheel and bearing fell off in his apartment parking lot, and to the reputable shop that re-flashed the electrical system of Sarah’s Audi when her friend jumped her battery the wrong way. Thank you also to AAA for towing these cars for us—one time 72 miles from Othello to Ellensburg.

Although the scenery can be beautiful, I will not miss the five and a half hour drive across 300 miles of Washington, listening for reports on whether Snoqualmie pass was open or passing on two-lane Highway 26. We knew where the speed traps were along the way, and a short cut that bypassed Colfax. My heart always lifted when I spotted the spud shack that farmer Orman Johnson spent $5000 on to have special crimson siding cut to spell “Go Cougs” in letters so large we could see it for miles. It meant we were about an hour and a half out of Pullman.  

Moving Sarah back home was a piecemeal trek divided into three parts. On mom’s weekend in April John and I drove over in his truck. I would drive her car back home. After enjoying some mom’s weekend activities, we loaded the furniture that Sarah wasn’t passing on to friends (my childhood dresser and desk, etc.) into the back of his pickup, and crammed smaller things into the Audi.  

Just past the halfway point of Ellensburg, I noticed the road condition sign flashing. 

I was following John and saw that a semi had blocked his view of the sign. I couldn’t figure her radio out so I called Sarah and told her to get online to check the pass, then call John with the results. He called me and said that Sarah found out that the pass was closed. We pulled off at the next exit and consulted, deciding to double back to E-burg and get a hotel room.

We pulled into the Holiday Inn Express, and hustled inside to the front desk where the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The check-in clerk asked if I’d mind if she took another call. I told her only if she guaranteed us the next available room. She nodded agreement as she answered the phone.

The next call was from a sports team that needed eleven rooms because the pass was closed! We’d made it just before she switched the “No Vacancy” sign on! Sarah said that as she checked the pass conditions, they closed seven exits because of heavy snowfall and multiple accidents including a semi.

Sarah Stark and Dr. Keri McCarthy

Part two of the moving Sarah home odyssey was during graduation weekend, the first weekend in May. Friday night we were at a special dinner celebrating her graduation from the Honors College. She made a speech to honor Keri McCarthy, associate professor of music, who guided her through her Honors dissertation.

  

Saturday morning, while the “kids” slept in, John and I went to McDonald’s to pick up breakfast. As we left, the lady handed me the bagful of sausage biscuits and hash browns and said, “See you next time.” I’d held it together through the Honors college graduation, but those four words, “See you next time,” caught me off guard and made me unexpectedly tear up. There probably wasn’t going to be a next time. How had seven years gone by so fast?

Sarah with the class of 2013.

That afternoon we sat in Beasley Coliseum and watched Sarah shake President Floyd’s hand after they called her name, the culmination of four years of hard work. The Cougar Class of 2013 stood and sang their fight song while crimson and gray confetti and streamers rained down on them. Afterwards, we hiked all over campus to Sarah’s favorite spots to take pictures of her wearing the leis her Hawaii grandparents had sent.  

John, Sarah, and Laura Stark ouside Martin Stadium, WSU.

Johnny and Sarah spent their cougar cash eating lunch here.

This time Johnny had come with us. He enjoyed being in Pullman again, seeing his sister graduate, talking to music professors he’d had classes with, and visiting old haunts. He helped Sarah’s friends move furniture out of her apartment and into their vehicles.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that we wouldn’t be able to fit the rest of her apartment in our vehicles. It was going to take yet another trip. We loaded as much as we could, covered the full truck bed with a tarp and headed west. John would follow the three of us home in the Camry the next day after meetings with his department.

Part three: John and I returned two weekends later. Sarah couldn’t go because she was going to a wedding. Campus was empty other than a few stragglers like us still moving, so it was easy to park the truck close to her apartment.

I was confident that we could fit the last of it in the truck. I stayed up late Friday night packing. I was also confident that we’d be able to clean the apartment and leave by noon. That night we slept on air mattresses on the floor. I hadn’t brought a sleeping bag because I was confident that it would be too hot.

Well, it got down into the forties that night and I had left the windows open, so I didn’t sleep well. We almost couldn’t fit everything in the truck and called one of Sarah’s friends who was staying in Pullman to ask if we could leave some things with her. But after throwing even more away, and donating some more  to a charity, it did all fit. I changed my “confident” estimated departure time from noon to 2:00. We left the key to Sarah’s apartment on top of the defrosted refrigerator at 5:00 and closed the door to her Pullman apartment for the last time.

Sarah's WSU home for three years.

John tightens the tarp before we leave.

On our way out of town, exhausted physically and mentally, we stopped at McDonald’s to get a dipped cone for John and a hot fudge sundae for me as a little reward for all our hard moving work and for successfully getting two kids through college. We sat down in a booth at Mickey D’s and ate our ice cream.

      We were quiet driving through town for the last time. I remembered crying tears across the Palouse when we left each of our kids for their first time at college. This was a different feeling--a wistful finality.

Rolling hills of the Palouse

About ten miles out of town, I decided to text Sarah and Johnny and tell them we were on our way. I looked for my phone which was in my purse. But where was my purse? Panic set in. John was quizzing me, was it in the back seat? No, there was no room in the back seat, and even in the front of the cab, I had shoe horned myself in straddling some of Sarah’s stuff for the next five and a half hours. The only room left in that truck for my purse was on my lap and my purse was not on it.

John hung a u-turn, carefully so the over-the-top load wouldn’t shift, and went back to McDonald’s. I ran inside and checked the hook on the back of the bathroom stall door. No purse. I fast-walked to the booth we’d sat in. No purse. I went up to the counter and explained the situation to the clean cut, young man waiting to take orders. Before I could finish describing, “It’s turquoise leather . . .” he cut me off.

“Oh yeah. We’ve got it!” He ran into the back and came out with my purse. He said that he’d spotted it when he went to wipe the table we’d sat at.  

I thanked him and told him I was just so tired from moving my daughter. He nodded sympathetically. I walked back to the truck patting my purse triumphantly. John, ever the New Yorker, urged me to check the contents, but I already knew everything would be in it. After all, we were in Pullman.

Washington State University, Pullman, Washington

Laura Keolanui Stark smiled when she got an email reminding her of freshman orientation at WSU. She is helping Sarah sort through the bins to get ready to pursue a master’s degree in Musicology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Laura can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

The World We Live In

It was a dark and wintery night. We were watching TV when we heard a loud crash. Johnny was cleaning his room, so we just thought he’d knocked something over until he came out and asked if we’d “heard that?”

He went outside to investigate, and then returned to report that a car had jumped the curb, plowed over two of our neighbors’ plum trees, and fled leaving part of their front bumper behind.

John and Johnny went out and talked to our neighbors while they surveyed the damage. They noted that even though most of the previous week we’d been socked in with frozen fog, that particular night the road was not icy. 

We all speculated that the driver was a teenager in his parents’ car who was distracted by his friends, or texting, or worse yet, drinking. We shook our heads and grumbled that the driver hadn’t even bothered to stop. What a world we live in.

The police were called. They asked Johnny what he’d seen out of his bedroom window. He said that the car looked like a Camry. They cleaned up the scene. I don’t know who took custody of the bumper. 

The next morning we saw our neighbor digging out the remains of his two trees. Five trees of the original seven trees still stood tall in a row between the curb and the sidewalk. 

The neighbor and his wife are retired. When the rain stops and the days grow longer, they spend most of their time outside gardening and taking pride in their yard. I wondered if they’d try to replace the trees when spring arrived or come up with a different solution.

It’s been a few months since the trees were snapped off and flattened. The sun has come out. The weather has started warming up. Daffodils and tulips are blooming. Cherry trees look snowy. Lawns need to be mowed. The “tree neighbors” were out puttering in their yard. John stopped to talk to them when he was walking the dogs.

They told him the end of the tree story. One day a man had shown up at their house to talk about the trees. He apologized. His 17-year-old son was the one who had run the trees over.  When he lost control of the car and took out the trees, he panicked and went home. His father pointed out that he’d not only ruined the trees and damaged the car, he’d also left the scene of an accident. The father asked our neighbors if his son could come over to apologize and replace the trees.

The neighbors appreciated the father and son owning up to the son’s mistake. The young man showed up last weekend. He said he was sorry. He dug the holes and planted the new trees. He made things right.

Now every time I pass by those saplings, I am reminded that this world that we live in still has fathers in it that teach their sons to be responsible, and that there are teenagers who are learning important lessons on their way to becoming mature adults. 

There were no lawyers involved, no denials or outraged drama. This was a simple everyday thing, the type of thing that doesn’t make the news or reality TV shows. I doubt that the son will post it on his Facebook page. But this is a quiet, decent example of what makes this world that we live in a better place.

Laura Keolanui Stark is appreciating some new trees nearby. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

Outlook Not So Good

Last night I was ready to go to bed when I decided to quickly send someone an email from my Yahoo account, which I use for business. I needed to give them someone else’s email address so I went to my personal Hotmail account to look the address up. That took me four times longer and many more clicks than usual. Why? Because the Hotmail account that I’ve used since 1996 was dead and gone. It had been commandeered and replaced by Outlook.

For a few months every time I logged in, a popup would ask if I’d like to try Outlook. I skipped over it. No, I wouldn’t like to try it. I’ve already tried it at work and I find it cumbersome and frustrating. It is not intuitive. It is more trouble than it’s worth.

But, Microsoft wasn’t really asking if I wanted to change to Outlook. It was telling me that I was getting Outlook whether I wanted it or not. My answer didn’t matter. “No” doesn’t mean “no” to Microsoft.

The day after the invasion, I Googled “Outlook Hotmail switchover,” to research the situation. The results fell into three categories: business writers gushing praise for Outlook, coverage of the massive March Outlook outage, and disgruntled Hotmail users who want their old accounts back.

The business writers focused on how Outlook will be competitive with Gmail and Yahoo. They are giddy about Outlook’s capabilities to connect more easily to I-phones, send massive amounts of photos, etc. But their job is to talk up anything new, and to convince readers that new is automatically better.  They are not unbiased journalists. They are like movie reviewers, who rarely give any new technology less than four stars. I got the impression they had lifted the promotional copy directly from Microsoft press releases and pasted it into their articles.

Pay close attention to the doublespeak in this article: “Microsoft, it is worth noting, always gave Hotmail users the option to move to the new Outlook.com, but it will now actively prompt users to do so and also email them to remind them that they can switch.” Now Microsoft is “actively prompting users” sort of like how fascist dictators “actively prompt” citizens to get onboard with the new regime.

The second group of Google hits are articles about the Outlook outage in mid-March that was a result of overheated servers. The outage left Outlook.com and Hotmail users without access to their email for almost 16 hours. Whenever there are massive technology switchovers, there are glitches. The coverage of the outage was a little vague about overheated servers, and included the fact that Microsoft apologized.

The last group of Outlook/Hotmail hits is the one that I fall into—unhappy former Hotmail users. The discussion centers on why they hate Outlook. I’ve had to use Outlook for one of my jobs. It is not user friendly. It is not as intuitive as Hotmail was. I waste a lot of time trying to navigate around it.

Setting aside the whole debate over whether Outlook is better than Hotmail, or Gmail, or Yahoo, what I find disturbing is the way Microsoft handled the coercion, oops, the “conversion.” Outlook.com’s senior director, Dharmesh Mehta said, "We are trying to push people who have gotten lazy and comfortable with an email service that may not be all that great and help show them what email can really do for them."

So, because your customer is happy with your product, that customer is lazy and comfortable? When did insulting the customer become a good way to get them to try your new product? Maybe Mehta is not arrogant or patronizing. Despite the fact that I’ve never met Mehta, maybe he’s right and I am lazy. I don’t have the time or inclination to take tutorials to learn a whole new system that has features I won’t use—like the ability to send 100s of photos more easily. I don’t want to work hard at my email. I have other things to work hard at.

I have four email accounts: two Hotmail accounts on msn.com, one on Yahoo, and one on Gmail. By far, Hotmail was the one that I used the most. At 11:00 the other night when I discovered that Outlook had taken over my screen, did I jump at the chance to take the tutorial to learn the new system? Nope. Did I appreciate the new streamlined screen? Nope. I was angry that my toolbar was gone and I couldn’t find my contact list.

Was I impressed with the ads? No. I was frustrated that if I miscalculated slightly in sliding the bar down through my inbox, I was suddenly in the middle of an advertisement for a product I wasn’t interested in. When I went to the ad settings, there isn’t an option to block ads, only the self-assured option that assumes I want to add more preferences to what kinds of ads I like to see.

Here are some examples from the “Welcome” email from the Outlook team showing how counter-intuitive Outlook is to me. “To compose a new email, click "New". To add a recipient, click "To", or click the box just below it.”  Why does “New” mean compose a new email message? Couldn’t it mean you’ve just received a new email message? Or add a new contact? Why doesn’t it just say “compose?” Why does “To” mean add a new recipient? Wouldn’t “add contact” make more sense? Oh, they mean who I’m sending the email message “to.”

“To Print an email On the main menu bar, click the "..." symbol.” An ellipsis, or a series of dots usually indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence or whole section from the original text being quoted. Why do three dots mean “print” on Outlook? And why is that a better icon than a picture of a printer or the word “Print?” Why didn’t Microsoft stick to the icons they used in Hotmail, or in Word?

Maybe eventually I’d get used to Outlook, but is it worth the trouble? It’s easier for me to use my Yahoo and Gmail accounts which I already know how to use than to spend time out looking for my messages and contacts on Outlook. The fact that there are 37,900,000 links to sites with instructions on how to use the new Outlook email confirms that it is not intuitive, and tells me that a lot of people who already have Yahoo or Gmail accounts, like me, will probably just abandon Hotmail/Outlook.

Microsoft has spent $30 million and may go up to $90 million advertising Outlook. That’s throwing a whole lot of money to get people to try a FREE service, especially considering 350 million current users are being forced onto Outlook anyway. One of the articles about the switch said, “Microsoft is so confident it has the Internet’s best email service that it is about to spend at least $30 million to send its message across the U.S.” That doesn’t seem confident to me. Just because Outlook spends a lot of money to keep saying it is better, doesn’t mean it IS better.

Why didn’t they spend $30 million asking hotmail users what they liked about hotmail? Why didn’t they take some of that money and research which features Gmail and Yahoo users like and add those to Hotmail? They could have left the original Hotmail intact and named the new email site LavaMail or something clever to show people how much better it was. What does “Outlook” have to do with communicating or sending and receiving information?

Clicking the help button in my Outlook account I found this answer to “Why can’t I switch back to Hotmail?”

Thanks for being a loyal Hotmail customer. As part of the transition from Hotmail to Outlook.com—the next generation of free email from Microsoft—there is no longer an option to switch back.

Your Hotmail address and password, saved emails, contacts, calendars, and rules were automatically moved to your new Outlook.com inbox. You have the option to keep your @Hotmail address and/or get an @Outlook.com address.

We think Outlook.com builds on the great tools in Hotmail, and we hope you’ll agree. You get all the features you loved in Hotmail, like Sweep and one-click Unsubcribe, along with new features like archiving and a refreshed design. Outlook.com helps you see and do more from your inbox quickly. The streamlined interface shows more messages at a glance, and the new toolbar helps you complete everyday email tasks with fewer clicks.

For more information about the upgrade, including a video on how to zip through basic email tasks in Outlook.com, see My Hotmail account was upgraded to Outlook.com.

              

Mulling over why I was so angry at Microsoft’s attitude, I re-read the message from the Outlook team, and I keyed in on the words “customer” and “free.” Did I really have any right to be angry about a product that I wasn’t paying for? Probably not. We “loyal Hotmail customers” don’t have the leverage of threatening to take our money and spend it on someone else’s email service. And that explains why Microsoft can do whatever it pleases. 

The “customer” that they have to please is any company buying advertising on Outlook. So, even though email is such an integral part of people’s daily lives, the users are only indirectly figured into this equation. The more users Outlook has, the more they can charge for advertising space.

         So Outlook is similar to the three original TV networks: ABC, NBC, and CBS. Those three lost their clout because cable diluted the market, and since they were complacent due to the limited competition they were used to, they didn’t change quickly enough to keep their audiences. Outlook isn’t guilty of that mistake.

          While I understand Microsoft’s motivation, I still don’t like the way the change was handled. But this seems to be the new way that business in America handles transitions. Facebook regularly changes things, like adding Timeline, by going through a period of begging you to try something new, and then just forcing it on you whether you want it or not.

         It’s not just for-profit businesses using this new tactic. I attended many local school district meetings that proclaimed they wanted the public’s input into situations, but they had already made the decision about what we were discussing. The city I live in held a meeting for our neighborhood residents over installing traffic calming devices. Even though there were some people opposed to it, and even though they said there would be a vote on it, the next morning spray painted lines appeared on the road where the speed humps were being installed.

        What offends me is when businesses and government agencies act like they value your opinion, and are offering you a choice, when that’s not true at all. Why don’t they just be up front and announce that they’re upgrading, or trying something new, or downsizing, explain why, and tell us when it will happen? Why the song and dance? Why act like they care about our opinion when we’re really just numbers?

         Microsoft says that over one-third of Outlook.com’s 60 million active users have switched from Gmail. 306 million users have already chosen Gmail, and 293 million chose Yahoo, voluntarily. I couldn’t find any data on how much overlap there is to account for people like me with multiple email services. Time will tell how many will “migrate” to Outlook. 

My Magic 8-Ball predicts: Outlook Not So Good.

Laura Keolanui Stark is implementing her own email conversion. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.