This came in the mail.
AARP
Month: April 2014
Lyft
I finally signed up for Lyft earlier this month so I would have yet another transportation option available to me in San Francisco, especially when Uber is in a surge pricing period. They gave me some free credit to get started, so I decided to take a couple of free rides tonight before the credits expired.
Signing up was easy. I didn’t like having to log in with Facebook as apps can do nasty things with that, but I figured I would have heard by now if Lyft did anything spammy. The Facebook requirement did prevent me from signing up for Lyft quite a few times in the past, though.
Requesting my ride was also easy. Just like Uber, it picked up my location automatically, I could adjust it if necessary, it told how long it will take for a driver to arrive, and requesting a ride was as easy as tapping a button. The request UI is actually more intuitive than Uber’s with the big “Request Lyft” button.
One of the nice features that set Lyft apart from Uber is that after requesting a ride, I could enter my destination while the driver was en route. That helped to get things going a little faster once I got in the car, and it was also nice to be able to type it in myself rather than having a driver transcribe what I said into a GPS system. Like Uber, it doesn’t look like drivers are required to use any particular navigation app. The first driver used Apple Maps, which gave somewhat confusing directions at a complicated intersection, and the second driver tried to use Google Maps, but was unable to get that to work either. I’m all too aware that we (technology makers) still have a lot of work to do when it comes to making products less difficult to use.
For both rides, I sat in the front as is the custom with Lyft, but neither driver offered a fist bump, and neither vehicle was equipped with a pink mustache. From what I’ve heard from other riders, the quirky fist bumping stuff doesn’t really happen anymore, and I think that’s fine. The experience was basically the same as uberX; I would guess that they attract a similar set of drivers.
After the ride, I got confused by the app. I knew that Lyft had a tipping feature, but I was unable to quickly figure it out as I was walking into a restaurant, and accidentally skipped the tip completely on my first ride. To add a tip, you have to tap on the payment method and go to a second screen. If you simply rate the driver, it will not give the option to add a tip. I was able to tip the driver later by emailing Lyft support, which had a fast response time of six minutes at 10 P.M. on a Tuesday. Of course my overall feedback on this aspect is that there shouldn’t be any tipping at all. That’s what I love about Uber. I’m more than happy to pay the extra amount (I’m a 20% & round up to the nearest dollar tipper), but it should be in the standard rate. That way the drivers always know what to expect in terms of income, and the passengers don’t have to worry about being too cheap or giving away money unnecessarily.
Overall, it was not a bad experience. It’d be great if they could get rid of tipping (I’d accept a rate increase in exchange), and a fare estimator within the app would be nice as well. uberX is still my on-demand car service of choice due to its no tipping policy and higher availability, but Lyft is a decent alternative.
Spring cleaning
It’s hard to throw things away that for so many years I carefully saved as important. You never know when you’ll need to reinstall iPhoto 1.0.
Fooled
Today was a pretty good April Fools’ Day.
This morning, I received an email from my film professor who I had played a joke on nine years ago when I told him that I was quitting the film program to focus on pre-law. I haven’t spoken to him since graduation, and I don’t think we’ve even emailed, but today his one-line note was simply “I never forget.” That made me feel pretty good. I still have the voicemail that he left in 2005, and I don’t believe I’ve tried to play an April Fools’ Day joke on anyone since.
Tonight, my team got me. Someone from our team in Dublin is visiting, so we had decided that we were going to go out for dinner. As the workday ended, I asked where we were going. Knowing that I’m very particular (and some would say peculiar) about food, Eric told me that we’d be eating at a new Caribbean place that he had just discovered. I instantly got nervous. Trying new food is a scary thing for me. Of course the first thing that I wanted to know was if I would be able to find something to eat. I asked to see a menu. Eric informed me that the new location didn’t have a menu online yet, but the Palo Alto location did, and sent me a link. I started looking, trying to figure out what I would eat. I also asked why anyone would ever go to a restaurant that didn’t have its menu online. Why would one take that risk? I was told to check out Di Big Tings. Research indicated that there were few menu options that didn’t involve coconut, beans, or meat on bones—things that would cause me to avoid a dish. I looked at a bunch of photos of dishes and settled on Chicken Shrimp Pelau as a candidate for my dinner. When it was time to leave, I admitted to everyone, “I’m so nervous right now.” Eric offered to beam me the location of the restaurant, where we would all meet. I looked at the map, and started criticizing him for not linking directly to a place marker, and asked if the restaurant was even on Google Maps. He told me that they weren’t on Maps yet. This happens with new places, and I often add new restaurants to Google Maps via Map Maker. Before we left, I decided that we needed to add the restaurant to Google Maps. I fired up Map Maker, and asked where the restaurant was located. When Eric showed me on the map, I was very familiar with the location. It was right next to Sushi Tomi, one of my favorite places to get sushi. I thought it was strange that I hadn’t noticed the new restaurant there, as I had walked down that street just last night after eating at Sushi Tomi, but I could have easily ignored that building. Eric started to hesitate, and I got the sense that he might not know exactly where the restaurant was located. Not wanting to provide imprecise location data, I announced that I would add the restaurant to Maps after we ate. As we started to leave, and I forget exactly how this came up (maybe in the context of directions for our visitor), I mentioned that I had eaten at Sushi Tomi last night. Eric looked shocked and disappointed. I panicked, thinking that he had somehow expected to have been invited the night before, even though it was an impromptu dinner with the visitor after he asked for a recommendation of a sushi place after work. But then Eric told me that the joke was on me: the plan was to get me to the building next to Sushi Tomi, where there was no Caribbean restaurant that I needed to be worried about trying new food at, and then surprise me with a sushi dinner. I had no idea and was super-impressed. They really got me good, even down to how to pick a cuisine that was right in that zone where it was different enough to make me scared, but not scared so badly that I’d veto the option. Well-played. In the end, we decided that there’s nothing wrong with getting sushi two nights in a row, and headed to Sushi Tomi.
There were a lot of other good jokes on the Internet today that I’m about to catch up on, but here’s one that I did get to see: Google Translate on mobile Chrome translates English to Emoji.
Update at 12:40 AM on April 2: And my favorite surprise of the day… there’s an update on HomestarRunner.com, complete with a Webvan reference. I still make H*R references at work, and fewer and fewer people are able to understand me. Now, maybe things will change for the better. Props to the HR Wiki folks for keeping that going too.