Ikea: Shopping at the Apocalypse

It is the law that every Oregonian must, at some point, pay a visit to the new Portland Ikea store, so today we did our duty. It was one of the most monumentally unpleasant shopping experiences I've ever had. It was, in fact the Singularity of Unpleasant Shopping Experiences, the pinnacle and/or the nadir, the most painful hours I've ever spend inside a retail establishment, bar none.

First, the crowds. Oh. My. God. The above photo was taken in the parking lot. The first indication that we had penetrated the veil between the Earthly realm and Hell was the presence of orange-vested parking attendants guiding the desultory bumper-to-bumper traffic through the acres of parking lot like it was Jack Sparrow personal appearance day at Disneyland. Any store that requires parking attendants at 10:15 on a Sunday morning: not worth it.

As part of the four-abreast crowd snaking its way through the vestibule and into the store like cholesterol-laden blood through an artery after a Denny's Grand Slam, you're confronted with an immediate choice: go to the child abandonment area, where parents blithely leave their offspring to be trained as future Swedish furniture assemblers, while being entertained by Ikea blood sports (photo, right); take the Escalator to Showroom Hell; or proceed immediately to the warehouse, where, like the threatening boulders on the Mine Train Ride, desk sets weighing hundreds of pounds balance precariously on stacks of boxes, threatening to tumble the next time little Timmy rams into them with his greased-lightening Ikea cart, which his parents told him to go amuse himself with while they tried to decide between the blanched almond and off white futon cover for the spare bedroom.

We chose: Escalator to Hell.

"Showroom" is really a misnomer. First of all, if there was anything to show, it couldn't be seen due to the tens of thousands of slow-moving, hollow-eyed gawkers who either stood in the middle of the too-narrow aisle and gaped with the slack-jawed amazement of someone who had never seen actual furniture, or swarmed over the room displays like particularly voracious piranha. We moved through the maze of rooms with a slowness that made the parking lot seem like a NASCAR qualifying event. There may have been some nice things there. I'll never know.

Tumbling out of the showroom floor into the relatively unpopulated warehouse was liberating until you realized that the cloud-piercing stacks of boxes were meaningless containers unless you knew the item number you wanted, which you could only get by passing through the showroom, which was of course so crowded that actually seeing any particular item was impossible. But by God, we weren't going to leave empty handed, so we went to the aisle that the map suggested might contain office furniture, picked a box low to the floor, hoisted it into the cart, and got the hell out of there.

I'm pretty happy with my new computer desk.

Sibelius 5 vs. Finale 08, part 2

A few posts ago, I began to compare the two most recent iterations of the popular music notation packages, Sibelius and Finale. I got sidetracked by nostalgia and memories of the good old days of handwritten music and the copyist's art. As much as I enjoyed the act of hand copying music, it was also slow, frequently frustrating and inhibiting, and I would not want to return to those pre-digital days.

I don't wish to bore anyone with the easily researched history of notation software. Suffice it to say that at one time, Finale was the only game in town, the choice of composers and publishers everywhere, no matter how arcane or counterintuitive some of the aspects of it were. With a manual the size of a phone book (and equally engaging) and a learning curve as tall as K-2, to master Finale was a technological badge of honor. Then came Sibelius from the UK, with the premise that notation software should be intuitive, elegant, and simple. The war was on.

The end user has been both the winner and victim in this ongoing skirmish. Of course, the head-to-head competition has forced both companies to add features, tweak the interface, and refine their products. As a result, both Sibelius 5 and Finale 08 contain virtually the identical feature set, use the same sounds (Garritan Personal Orchestra) for playback, and while the chassis might be different, under the hood the engines both deliver roughly the same amount of power. Both applications do an admirable job of creating professional-looking notation, and both apps have nearly the identical ability to record and playback notated music. Both Sibelius and Finale offer supplemental programs aimed at educators and students.

So, what's the downside for consumers?

In an attempt to keep up in the notation arms race, both companies feel it necessary to release annual (in the case of Finale) or bi-annual (Sibelius) versions of their product. At an educator discount price of $100 or so, these upgrades are far too expensive and offer far too few new features to justify such a price. For example, the addition of a scroll view in Sibelius (which Finale always had) or dynamic parts (which came to Sibelius first) are really just interface tweaks. In the world of computer games, for example, these features would be added in the form of a free patch, or, if there was really a lot of new content, through an add-on pack (which often doubles the size and features of a game). Why not sell the core application and then offer yearly updates at $20, or allow the user to select which add-ons he or she needs? How many users really need the suite of classroom applications?

This neck-and-neck battle hurts the consumer in a couple of other ways. There is little cross-software compatibility. Finale has always had a playground bully-like attitude towards Sibelius and won't read Sibelius files; Sibelius will read (inconsistently, especially when there are version incompatibilities) Finale files. Finally, this feature-for-feature-matching contest prevents either company from truly innovating. Garritan sounds, while certainly better than general MIDI synth patches, are light-years away from the samples used by professional composers and producers.

In the end, both Sibelius 5 and Finale 08 are good products--not perfect ones--and choice will come down to aesthetic preference, brand loyalty, and perhaps the one or two features that make the software unique.

welcome, friend

I guess you could say I'm an "animal guy," and always have been. When I was a kid I had reptiles as pets and one of the coolest places in Southern California was the Hermosa Beach Reptile Farm. In those days, trade in exotic animals was unfortunately not well regulated and so in addition to a huge variety of snakes and lizards, you could run into a sloth or a slow loris for sale. Impractical and probably not at all pet material but interesting anyway. A little later--in college--I acquired a blue-front Amazon parrot and now, 30 years later, and the house is filled with dogs, cats, lizards, rats, and parrots large and small.

A couple of days ago this little guy--a black-billed magpie--landed outside our bedroom window and looked inside with a great deal of interest and curiosity. So, naturally, I went outside and offered him a tasty treat--a few superworms that I keep as bearded dragon food. This magpie--whom my wife named Oreo--has become friendlier and friendlier over the past few days, now following me around the yard and alighting on my hand and shoulder to eat. I can't help but wonder if he was partly hand-raised by people, he's so naturally tame and fearless. He's amazingly smart, too, taking extra worms and burying them in the yard for later consumption. He even uses twigs to tamp down the pile of camouflage.

We love our pets, but in all cases, we chose them. This magpie chose us--we were easy marks for food, no doubt--and that makes him sort of special. So, welcome, Oreo and hope you stick around for a while.