Originally posted by at Signals vs. Noise, this clip is too cool not to share. There's something enchanting about a little-known species, in this case, Grimpoteuthis bathynectes, dancing through the hydrothermal vents at the ocean floor.

Footage captured by a team of researchers at the University of Washington.

Presented a few months ago with a bachelor weekend, amigo Anthony and I headed for the Jemez Mountains for a few days of fishing. As a rank fly fishing beginner I was looking forward to another opportunity to improve. Learning to fly fish was a goal in 2009 and I accomplished it, I guess, as long as we can consider accomplishment to mean 1) acquiring a rig, 2) learning how to cast a fly line, and 3) catching one and only one trout. For the record, I do, and I did.

Anthony snapped a couple of pics. Hey, there I am. Probably tying on another fly after getting snagged in the encroaching vegation for the who knows how many-ith time. Fishing the small waters of northern New Mexico sometimes requires a hobbit like nimbleness and an aptitude in precision casting. I possess neither quality. Fortunately it doesn't diminish the good times one bit.

The mighty Rio Guadalupe begins at the confluence of the Rio de las Vacas and the Rio Cebolla, two smaller streams a little higher up. Not longer after it joins up with the main stem of the Jemez River. The water was cool and the many small trout that call this place home were hungry. We caught many throughout the weekend, most no bigger than the size of your hand.

Many thanks to my friend and guide for the weekend.

Shortly after graduating college, I subscribed to Netflix and, ever since, those little red envelopes have found their way into my mailbox. I believe that this represents the longest once-a-month relationship my credit card has had with anyone.

Netflix started out simply. In the beginning, Neflix offered only two choices: you could either pay $20.95 for 3 movies out at a time, or, you could rent movies from someone else. Since returning movies on time required a disproportionate amount of willpower, I signed up. And out of habit, satisfaction with the service, and a total lack of giving a shit, we've been happily tearing open red envelopes without thinking twice about it for nine years and counting. The service has improved substantially and it's now nearly three bucks cheaper. You can't complain about that.

In late April, we added a "Netflix-enabled" blu-ray player and our movie consumption habits stood ready to be reasonably altered forever: more movies, fewer discs. In this new future, movies would travel in tubes! But this new player and all of the streamy goodness it stood ready to deliver combined with Netflix's own proliferation of pricing plans presented me with a confused (albeit trivial) crossroads. I started to see old visions of unwatched discs sitting on the coffee table for months on end. Memories of traveling with discs from across the continent washed over my mind (I'll watch it on the next leg, I'd tell myself). Surely this three-at-a-time "deal" had been a ripoff! Or was it?

As I'm prone to do, I graphed. 

Since Netflix makes your entire rental and billing histories accessible, a dash of geekery can reveal quite a lot. First, I noticed that Netflix rentals can be pretty fucking pricey! But salvation came quickly. Volume creates value. Turn those discs around relatively quickly and you can beat the local video shop's price, all without ever getting off of your duff. All told, we've received 367 Netflix titles at an average price per rental of $5.65. Combining the inventory of titles, the overall availability of discs, and the unparalleled convenience of renting by mail and, for me: yeah, it's been worth it.

Long days means less time watching movies. I wonder if Netflix manages inventory differently in different seasons?

My life in movies. Click for big.

But you have to string it out over all the months to get into the good stuff. Some of it is obvious. It's easy to see that getting hooked by a TV show is a good way to merge your couch and your ass. But during the exercise I'm reminded that life has its own ebb and flow. The peaks and valleys in our rental history are quite full of stories. There's our apartment. And the wedding. Our first house. Trips. Our second house. Surgery. Grad school. Christmases. Strange that when life is plotted, I'm reminded that the most entertaining movie is my own.

So, I've reduced our plan down to two-at-a-time, and I've hardly watched anything since.

Over at The Momoro Hoax,* Phillip argues that most interns are worthless time sucks not worth the time or their meager compensation. In an effort to squeeze juice from these raisins, he suggests some time-saving techniques to improve productivity.

A sure fire way is that any time you have an issue that you want to discuss with your boss, make sure you come in with a question or explanation that only requires a yes/no answer or multiple choice selection from your boss. By the way, you’ll also end up finding when you do this that you grow as an asset to the company because you start putting your small actions in the context of the organization and understand why you do what you do.

First: I am so glad I was never one of Phillip's interns, and vice versa! My varied, frequent, and nebulous questions would have driven him to the breaking point. Nevermind that I kicked ass.

Phillip's suggestion for tweaking workplace communication in an environment in which work is clearly defined, speed is paramount, and you're surrounded by people with robust skillsets is reasonable enough to try. In fact, I don't see why he shouldn't expand the idea to include the entire development team, not just interns? If it's an effective tweak and it's needed, go for it. After all, it sounds like this boss sure is busy and shouldn't be bothered for much - he's got so much shit to do!

But that's my rub: when I have interns working with me, they become a big part of the shit I have to do. It is not a nuisance. They become one of the most important aspects of my work.

here's one intern every tech guy would hire, even if she asked a lot of questions - photo by coba (cc)Why? Because I am getting an incredible price on the opportunity to examine if this intern through my own unique, particular lens. If I want to see how they handle pressures, I can up the ante. If I want to see how quickly they can learn new things, I can assign something new. Or, if I'm like Phillip, maybe I want to test their independence. I can observe that continuously. When I'm interested in building for the future, this is a privilege!

Similarly, I'm paying this intern to examine my company as a place that she wants to be. The best way I can shape that experience is with my own behavior. Cultivating an environment in which she feels valued is of paramount importance. Finding opportunities to create meaningful work and accomplishments is big, too. Lastly, knowing how much I value an open, frequent line of communication with my boss, I would seek to always provide the same. With someone talented, I am laying the foundation of an important and mutually beneficial partnership.

As for the intern that sucks: so what? Three months and a couple G's set afire and we're all finished, vaya con dios, and so on. Perhaps this attitude is wasteful, a sign of corporate luxury; admittedly, a startup would be looking for a much more impactful contribution (which you might be able to get equally inexpensively elsewhere).** But, for talent development, the economics clearly work out in my company's favor. I've spent less than a couple of cheap computers to ensure that we don't invest a compounding amount of both time and money into someone who will be content to grind out decades of suck. But better still, I've had the opportunity to make a massive, positive impression on a kid that can make a massive, positive difference to our bottom line on an continuous basis. For these workhorses, when the employment offers come rolling in, mine has a better chance to float to the top of the stack.

I think Phillip's argument reduces simply to trying to maximize ROI, in this case by imploring interns to do more work instead of bothering the boss. He wants these raisins to hydrate and be juicy grapes, at the risk of potentially devouring them in the process. I contend that the level of juice that we can squeeze out these raisins or grapes over a summer is meaningful in just a singular way: I am interested only in growing vineyards. Can you help?

* Note that a much shorter version of this post would have appeared as a comment at Momoro, but since Mischa is a raging, comment-disabling autocrat, it winds up here.

** It should be pretty obvious that almost all decisions are much more significant in a tiny company looking to grow than a mature corporation.

If you are, like me, a "Borders Rewards" member then you are bombarded by waves of email coupons, mostly for things you do not want. Only every so often will they send something valuable, like a "40% off" coupon. Such a coupon typically reduces the price of any one item at Borders to the everyday purchase price at one of my favorite companies. Since I enjoy visits to bookstores and since I never exhaust my book list, a Borders store and good Borders Rewards coupons are supposed to create what you might call a "win-win."

Or so I thought.

A few weeks ago, the wiz and I found ourselves at ABQ Uptown, the shining local emblem of high-end retail and, intentionally or not, a modern day revival of Jim Crow in a typically diverse area code. Anyhow, there's a Borders! I'm a Borders Rewards member! In I go. After skimming through some cookbooks and some photo books, I consulted my wishlist at Amazon and then located Connected, which looked as good in person as it did on the web and thus my decision was made.

Oh goody.

Up at the counter I recited my phone number to the cashier as she brought up my member information.

"I'd like to use my 40% off coupon," I said.

"Do you have it with you?"

Umm... what? Of course I didn't; why would I print such a thing?

Thinking fast, but also thinking that it shouldn't have come to this: "No, but I can bring it up on my email." (some button pushing and finger swiping) "There it is!"

"Oh, sorry, our manager told us we can't accept coupons off of phones. But if you want, you can go next door to the Apple store, they'll let you print it, then bring it back here." At this point the adjacent cashier came to her defense with reinforcing opinions that this was a corporate dictum, that it really wasn't their fault, and so on. He was probably the manager.

After delivering some constructive criticism, I didn't purchase the book, and headed out. At the Apple Store, I asked one of the blue shirts if I could print out a Borders coupon. "Sure you can, the printer's right over there!" I thanked her and said that I actually didn't want to print it, that Borders had a chance to earn my business already and instead blew it, but I did ask how many people asked in a day for the printing privilege. She replied "every day, all day long."

Apple is simply clever top to bottom. By setting up a Borders coupon printer, they get a daily stream of new faces in the door. Borders, in stark contrast, insists on turning down customers at the point of sale to make sure that they head over to Apple. Color me baffled.

Slightly ironic, if only in an Alanis Morrissette kind of way, was that there I was buying a book entitled "Connected." If we swim in bits of data, then a corporation like Borders is submerged. They know who I am. They send me a gazillion emails. They know whether or not I've used my coupon, what I purchased with it, where I live, my swiss bank account number and the rest of it.  The physical coupon should be irrelevant. Yet they insist that a sheet of paper in my possession is more important than the cash I had laid on the counter. 

I guess I won't be surprised at all when the Borders CEO announces that they will be ceasing operations, citing overwhelming pressure from online retailers.

As for the book? I bought it. On my phone, I reloaded the Amazon app. Two clicks and delivered two days later, the transaction was complete.