The Passover Seder is fundamentally targeted at children. Children play a critical role and the story is told for their benefit. In my experience attending 43 years worth of Passover Seders, it has been rare that the story is told in a way that genuinely resonates with the kids at the table.

As a supplement to the Haggadah, I’ve written this short play to be put on by the children and the adults at the Seder when it’s time to tell the story. Costumes and props are encouraged. So is sharing.

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The Story of Passover by Hillel Cooperman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Earlier this year, my wife, Debra Weissman, decided to leave a great job at Microsoft to become a Vice President at Yahoo. She was going to work on a project that hadn’t shipped yet called Livestand. Yahoo has been in the news a lot over the last couple of years, and you could wonder why she would head from a great gig at Microsoft to go work for Yahoo. Two things sent her there… a great team of folks, and a product called Livestand.

My super-biased take… Livestand is a beautifully designed new magazine consumption experience for the iPad. Deb and her team have been working hard for the past few months to craft and polish this lovely piece of software, and yesterday they released version 1.0 to the public. In less than 24 hours it’s already the #2 free iPad app in Apple’s app store, and Apple is already featuring it as the iPad app of the week. WOW.

I spent the first hour just going through the tons of content partners and creating this deep “Personal Mix” of all the content I love to read. Already I prefer to read in Livestand than in all my usual haunts! I’ve used products like Flipboard, but Livestand is a fundamentally different animal. To me Flipboard feels like Netflix in terms of content quality, whereas Livestand feels like HBO GO. I’m recommending everyone download Livestand now and help Debbie’s team get it to #1.

I know there’s a great team down at Yahoo. I’ve worked with some of them myself, and they’re talented and creative folks. Luckily however, there’s no limited supply of credit. And given how great Livestand is already in its first release, Deb deserves a ton of credit for helping her team bring it out to the public. Deb, I’m super proud of you, and given the quality of your first version, I can’t wait to see how Livestand gets even better over time. (My only immediate request, please add more Lego blogs to the content directory. )

P.S. Deb, hope I didn’t embarrass you too much with this post.

Yes. This is a customer service rant, so skip it or fasten your seatbelts.

I recently booked a family trip to Orlando. My kids are just the right ages where the oldest will have a good time without being too angsty, and the youngest might actually remember the trip when she’s older. I booked flights on Alaska Airlines through Expedia. I’m regular and loyal customers of both companies. Both have upgraded me to some elevated class of customer… MVP on Alaska and Elite Plus on Expedia.

With plane tickets booked on the only non-stop flights between Seattle and Orlando I booked my non-refundable hotel and park tickets for the six day kidstravaganza.

Last night I got e-mail from Expedia telling me to call them urgently about a change in flights. I called. Basically, Alaska cancelled our flight home. For our “convenience” they rebooked us on a flight 10 hours later. I know, 10 extra hours in Orlando, what’s really the big deal? The big deal is that a big Jewish holiday comes 2 days later and I need that time to prep and cook. I whine to Expedia and they tell me there’s nothing they can do. I say, fine, reissue the ticket for the late day flight but we want to be in business class. No dice. Alaska says no.

Again. First world problems. I know.

But here’s the issue. I planned a non-refundable vacation around non-refundable tickets I bought from Alaska via Expedia. Alaska decided unilaterally to change the product they sold me. Expedia (who’s CEO read me a recorded message about how much he personally loves me and how all Expedia staff are there 24 hours a day to do whatever it takes to make me happy) is supposedly my agent in this transaction. Alaska never has to speak to me so they tell Expedia no. Expedia doesn’t own the tickets so they tell me their hands are tied because they can only do what Alaska let’s them.

Then the Expedia agent (who had to suffer through me ranting and complaining) says to me, well, you can get a refund. Can i get a refund for just the tickets coming home and then use the money to buy a ticket on Delta that’s not non-stop but still gets me home earlier and have you guys or Alaska pay the difference? No. “You can’t refund only the return leg and you’d have to pay the difference between the new ticket and the old ticket (even though it was cheaper when you first purchased the Alaska flight that’s now been cancelled.” (Oh yeah, if i get a refund, will you also call the Disney corporation and get them to refund me my trip as well?)

Ugh.

I run a small software startup. A few months ago we created a situation where in a very weird case a user could lose some of their data. It’s pretty much the third rail in the software business. Losing customer data is NOT OK. We had exactly one customer report that she was caught in this situation. In order to rescue her data we needed to get a hold of her iPad, but she was in Silicon Valley and we were up in Seattle. I offered to fly one of our engineers down to Silicon Valley to personally retrieve her data.

Did we have an extra couple of thousand dollars lying around to spend on an engineer for the day, flights, a rental car, etc.? Nope. But we were ready to do it. Our customer decided she’d rather send the iPad to Seattle with her husband on his next business trip.

Why does Alaska think that it’s ok to sell me a service, change a pretty important detail of the service, and then not offer to make things right?

Why does Expedia think that the only obligation they have as my agent in this transaction is to take a cut of the money I spend (and impotently listen to me complain)?

Now my choice is to either pony up several hundred more dollars to come home when I wanted to, or stay up all night making chicken soup. No matter what I choose, my loyalty to both of these companies is severely damaged.

Should alaska book me on a flight on another airline? I think so. Should they upgrade us to business class on the later flight? Might be difficult given how many people they pissed off. More importantly, should they have left the flight as is since they let me and others buy tickets assuming it would leave at a certain time? Yes. But ultimately, shit happens. I know this. Every customer knows this. What a customer wants to feel is that the company regrets the shit that happened and is willing to back that up with some shared pain. How about a $100 towards a future flight? Or some frequent flyer miles? Or anything other than an empty apology followed by, “that’s all we can do.”

Whoever is coming up with a way to disrupt airline travel, please hurry.

It’s been hot in Seattle. It was supposed to rain last night (it didn’t). But it sure felt like it was about to rain. For an hour or two the wind and clouds started going crazy. I got a shot from our balcony of the ruckus. Exciting.

I know that many politicians on both sides of the aisle are basically engaged in identical tactics, and are just that some are better able to hide their true motivations. However, I can’t help but feel that at this point, if the situation were reversed, Al Franken would have conceded the election. This behavior seems beyond the pale of traditional political tactics.

I hope this prolonged pain hurts Norm Coleman in the long run.

Why does it take a comedian to show journalists how to do their job? I think Jon Stewart just took over the mantle of best TV investigative journalist from Mike Wallace.

My theory is that the press thinks that calling someone a liar is rude. Rude it may be, but its also their job. I don’t care that they don’t have the time or resources to find out the truth. I’d rather they quit their jobs than pretend they were doing them.

Enjoy the pain.

When the people that hate you can’t spell, somehow they seem less threatening.

No idea if this is real or not. And in retrospect, if it is real, maybe it makes them scarier.

I collected these (and used to read them to their author in meetings in front of others just to mess with him). But Megan did a great job writing a post, so I’m just going to crib hers:

There was a manager at Microsoft who over the years many of my friends and I worked with and for.

He had a certain way with words.

His collected sayings were known as “The Pearls of Wisdom”.

Malapropisms? Blindingly obvious? Wise?

You decide.

• “I am the champion of perceived performance.”
• “We should be like Junkyard dogs on this one.”
• “You should underpromise, but don’t under-underpromise.” (I think he meant that we shouldn’t over-underpromise.)
• “Don’t be #2.”
• “It’s clear that we need to be clear.”
• “This is the dark part of the tunnel. The light is always getting closer. But it’s still dark.”
• “The people in this room are the glue and the grease.”
• “It’s a full round trip.” (As opposed to a partial roundtrip.)
• “He’s an infinite distance from getting promoted.”
• “You’ve got to let the pendulum swing up.”

Thoughts?

I will add that there’s one quote that was left off the list: after finding out he would have to share his dessert, and failing to intimidate his subordinates into letting him selfishly not share the one he received, he offered “I feel like I won the lottery and someone stole my ticket.” Megan claims this is not a pearl of wisdom but just a quote, or at best a “pearl of crabbiness”. I don’t really care either way, I just don’t want it to go undocumented.

and…

And while I highly doubt that Honda is actually involved, I would bet the videotapes are 100% real. The shots of the crowds are chilling.

Right on.