Tribal Pizza

Software Isn't Legos! It's IKEA Furniture.

As often happens in a startup, I found myself at IKEA yesterday.  We needed a place to put our coffee pot and microwave, which is the extent of the kitchen equipment that we have right now.  I picked up a Gehrfleugurfluggen chest that seemed to fit the bill and for $80 I was out the door. After I got back to the office and started putting it together, it struck me as a good analogy to software development -- far superior to the common "components are like Lego bricks" analogy that I read so frequently.

Let's start with the problems I see in the Lego analogy:

• With Legos, pieces fit together in a consistent fashion.  Outside of using Super Glue, they'll always connect the same way, even if you're building different designs.
• Legos are HIGHLY standardized.  Sure, you can add the space pieces and castle pieces and Star Wars pieces, but those are more like design elements than core components.  When the media trots out the analogy, they're talking about the standard little blocks.
• Hand 2 people identical sets of Legos and identical instructions and you'll get identical results.  Does that sound ANYTHING like software development to you?

Okay, here's why I think that IKEA furniture is a much more fitting analogy:

• They give you all the parts and instructions, but so many times you find yourself undoing what you just did in order to do it the right way.  The pieces may be backwards, upside down, or just plain wrong, yet they still seemed right at the time.
• IKEA pieces are familiar in style and function, but they can be wildly inconsistent.  While putting together the Gehrfleugurfluggen, I put the little cam wedgies in to hold the sides on and then they all fell out.  It turns out that there were 2 sizes of cam wedgies, one for sides and one for drawers.  They have you put the sides on first.  There were 4 side wedgies and 12 door wedgies which made the chance of grabbing the door wedgies much higher.  Not only that, but the side wedgies are bigger which meant that the door wedgies would "fit" in the side holes, further leading me down the false path.  Sound like software to you?
• Hand 2 people the same IKEA pieces with the same Wordless Workshop style instructions and you'll get 2 different pieces.  Assembler #1 will use all the nails to attach the back piece.  Assembler #2 will use about half the bag.  Assembler #1 will actually attach the little safety strap;  Assembler #2 . . . not so much.  Assembler #1 will finish in about half the time having put everything together correctly on the first attempt.  Assembler #2 will have scratches, dents, and loose pieces from having put things on backwards and then "fixing" it.

Having played with Legos, assembled IKEA furniture, and written software throughout my life I can attest to the latter analogy being much closer to the current state of development.  If you have a better analogy, feel free to post in the comments.

P.S. Assembler #1 uses emacs . . . Assembler #2 uses vi.

Web Site 1.2

Jay and I are trying to ease into the groove of weekly updates to the web site. Went a little rough this week, mainly because at the same time I am working on the web site I am serving as GC for the kitchen build out. We launched the 1.2 version of the web site today, this includes a series of bug fixes and enhancements. Several of the bugs were caught by those we know (it helps that we know lots of QA Engineers!) and some of the feature suggestions came from community feedback. Thanks!

Bug Fixes
1. Fixed the Privacy Link -- it wasn't working from all pages.
2. tribalpizza.com and *.tribalpizza.com now redirect to www.tribalpizza.com. This prevents a couple of problems -- folks were getting SSL warnings and our credit card component is only licensed to work on www.tribalpizza.com
3. Bad expiration dates for credit cards were causing a 500 error instead of simply letting the customer know what was wrong.
4. When a pizza design is not available the message you get is more clear that the Pizza Design is already owned by someone else.

Features Added
1. Reset Button added to the search page
2. Email addresses on the site are now mailto links
3. You can review your Referral Transactions to see how much MONEY you are making from referrals. w00t! First checks will roll out right around the first of the month!
4. Referral Graphics were added to make it easy for you to slap a nice graphic on your web site and have your friends sign up and automatically list you as a referral. Also, we slapped down our logo file so if you don't like the graphics we made you can make your own (and tell us how much cooler yours is than ours!)
Check it out !
5. Can send multiple referrals at one time by listing several email addresses at once.
6. Toppings are now sorted and grouped in the Pizza Design search page
7. All references to Pizza Design include their market (just Houston for now)
8. Added the Pizza Gallery where you can review what Pizza Designs others have and see their names and descriptions!

Ok. Here's whats currently on dish for next week! I think you'll like it -- the fun is just starting.

1. Charity Pizzas! Oh this is going to be good, we are going to hook up the support so those who are invited to get a charity pizza can redeem their credit. If you're not familiar with the concept check it out. If you have a good charity in mind let us know.
2. Spiffy up the blog. Jay is going to bring its design inline with the theme on the main site.
3. Add the ability for you to recommend cheese and sauce combinations that work well with your Pizza Design!
4. Oh yeah, now the fun begins. We are going to add a ranking system where the community to rate other people's Pizza Design based on name and description. So time to make sure you got good names and descriptions!
5. A whole bunch of back end reporting and automation stuff. Blah! Blah! Blah! not to interesting to you -- but it makes things work better, faster, cheaper. And yes, we can do metric to english conversions with no problem so landing this sucker should be no problem.

Find a bug? Got a groovy idea for a feature? Let us know. Either at questions@tribalpizza.com or if you want to share with others drop a comment. We are going to start running a weekly post on site changes.

The Tribal Pizza Survey By The Numbers

We started the Tribal Pizza survey in June with a goal of 100 responses.  After looking through the selections and comments, we've learned a lot.  Below is a look at some of the data, by the numbers.

Number of respondents in "our" age group: 55
Number of respondents in an age group younger than us: 13

Number of "Work at home" respondents: 11
Number of times I read "SAHM" under "other" before realizing it meant Stay At Home Mom: 5
Number of Stay at Home Mom respondents: 12

Number of "Dial-up" respondents: 0
Number of respondents who don't have an Internet connection at home and used someone else's for the survey: 3 (I guess going somewhere else is better than dial-up!)

Number of respondents who NEVER order pizza, yet will take a pizza survey: 2
Number of respondents who order pizza weekly: 15
Number of respondents who admit to ordering more than weekly: 0

Number of vegetarian respondents: 7

Number of respondents who hate our name: 2 (let's assume it's the 2 that never order pizza . . .)
Number of respondents who associate our name with cannibalism: 1
Number of respondents who over-thought the questions about our name: 7

Number of respondents who think our logo is ugly: 3 (2 who never order pizza and 1 cannibal?)
Number of respondents who don't think our logo is connected to our name (!): 1

Number of respondents who don't understand our concept: 2 (never order?)
Number of respondents who think it's too complicated: 1 (cannibal?)

Number of respondents who wouldn't participate at any price: 18
Number of respondents who said they wouldn't participate at any price and then purchased for $20: 1 (and counting)
Number of respondents who would participate for $50 due to a Ulysses S. Grant fetish: 1

Number of respondents who chose a Pizza Design credit instead of $10: 52

Thanks to everyone who participated (cannibal or otherwise), your feedback is incredibly valuable!

Home Sweet Home!

Well me moved out of our old office location and into the warehouse full-time. After a little bit of sprucing up (industrial cleaning of the bathroom, replacement of two less than satisfactory doors, and installation of a wall A/C unit from the age when Michael Jackson is considered a freak instead of a pop icon) the office spaces in the warehouse are pretty nice. We actually got it moved this weekend and Monday and have worked out of it a little bit for the last two days. Before, we were doing the commute from our respective houses to the office to the warehouse (when we need to coordinate construction related activities). Working out of one facility is much better. Plus this space is ours instead of a shared office building. Here are a couple of pictures of Home Sweet Home.

The strange white glow of the monitor on the right (that makes that picture look like there is a cutout) is actually my new 24" monitor pulsating with way more gamma rays than a human being should be exposed to. But, Jay convinced me that a little dose of radiation is good for the creative juices! And Jay is smart so...

The Birth of the Carputer

(click on images for larger version -- photos courtesy of Ecor Rouge Photography)

The Tribal Pizza concept started in mid-2003 with 4 words: "GPS to deliver pizza".  At the time I was Chief Technology Officer of DuClaw Brewing Company, the #36 brewery in the world, according to ratebeer.com.  I spent a lot of time writing software to manage restaurant operations and one day it occurred to me that pizza delivery could utilize more technology than any other type of restaurant.

Now it's 4 years later and Tribal Pizza lives.  The heart of our delivery platform is our site.  The brains is a computer that we call Pizza Box in each unit.  The arms and legs, however, are The Carputer.

The Carputer is responsible for the following tasks:

• Routing deliveries and giving turn-by-turn directions.
• Updating the vehicle's location and estimated time to delivery on the main site in near real-time
• Monitoring vehicle performance, such as MPG, driving characteristics, and maintenance needs
• Presenting special delivery instructions to the driver
• Rocking out with XM radio

The photo to the right shows the Carputer in assembled form during development.  You can see from the Blue Screen of Life that we're running Windows.  We use XP Embedded since we have a lot of .NET development experience.  The fingerprints on the screen attest to the fact that it's a touchscreen LCD. Most of the parts were purchased from mp3car.com.  The XM Universal Tuner in the front was purchased at Best Buy and the wiring and power supply used for development were purchased at Radio Shack.

As it stands, the Carputer boots, runs our custom .NET application, and receives GPS data.  In other words, it's alive but not particularly useful yet.  As we add functionality, we'll be posting not only what's been accomplished, but some code and downloadable components.  We keep telling ourselves that a lot of what we need should already exist, so we decided to give away some of the pieces, such as our .NET XM controller.   

To the right you can see all the parts that are going into the system and below is a close-up of the daughter-board that holds the hard drive.  If you're going to put a computer into a car, play it safe and use a laptop drive.  They're design to withstand more movement than your average desktop drive.

Any questions about the hows, whys, why-nots, etc. can either be posted in the comments or sent directly to me at jgrieves@tribalpizza.com. 

The Dirt Cheap Way To Outfit a Kitchen

One night when I was about eight I told my family that I wanted to make something for dessert.  We were watching TV in the basement and I went up to the kitchen and made éclairs.  I've been cooking ever since and over time I've developed a sizable collection of expensive pots, pans, knives, and utensils.

I'm now kicking myself because I could have had all this equipment for a fraction of what I paid.

About a month ago I started putting together the equipment list for the first Tribal Pizza commissary kitchen: A mixer the size of me, an oven that cost more than a year's rent in my first apartment, a 6-burner range that weighs 600 lbs.  This is the expensive side of commercial cooking. 

But then I started looking for pots, pans, and utensils and I discovered the dirt cheap side of kitchen gear.  The 4qt stock pot that I have at home cost me about $85.  I bought a 16qt stock pot from our supplier for $23.  How much do you think a heat resistant nylon spoon is at tarzhay or whatever-sonoma?  $2? $5?  I paid $8.88 -- for a dozen.  For the price of one nice cutting board at one of those stores I got 5 and they're color coded so I can avoid ever cutting veggies and meat on the same board.

Truth be told, when I was outfitting my home kitchens I probably wouldn't have gone through the trouble of seeking out restaurant supply houses.  But now, you don't have to because there are some great online sources.  So if you're a college student, recent graduate, or simply like cooking and don't want to spend a fortune, check out the sites below.  I'm only listing two since they're the only ones I've ordered from, but they both have great inventory and easy ordering:

Gala Source:  http://www.galasource.com/
A City Discount: http://www.acitydiscount.com/

If anyone reading this has experience with other sources, just post it in the comments!

They Like Us! They Really Like Us!

After launching the new site yesterday, we sent notifications to our friends who have taken our survey.  We are pretty stunned at the response so far: Pizza Designs are selling like mad and it's a real kick each time we get the email from our credit card processor that says "you've got sale!".

If you haven't created your Pizza Design yet, now is the time!

The New Web Site Liveth!

For those of you who have not noticed, we *finally* got the new web site up. w00t! Wow, what an ordeal. Well as I indicated we had to change providers mid-stream to get transactional MySQL support and our current provider (who shall remain nameless until we expatriate said provider) is less than helpful. Getting our SSL certificate working has been somewhat challenging to say the least.

The new site is up and running and can now process Pizza Design orders. We have sent emails to a small group of friends who took the survey and offered them their Pizza Design credits. The idea was to get some initial feedback and additional testing on the site. So far so good! I would really like to thank Robert Tanner who went above and beyond pounding on the site and finding problems and making suggestions. Also, a hearty thanks to Roger Knapp who purchased 10 yesterday! Jay and I can't wait to start selling some Pizzas and sending checks to our friends and families. For us, we hope a big part of our success is being able to share it with those we know.

We are going to push out emails to the rest of the participants in the survey who wanted Pizza Design credits today. From here on out, we are going to ease into a weekly feature/bug fix cycle for the site.

Enjoy the new site and if you have any feedback please feel free to share it with us!

MySQL, Hosting, and Transactions! Oh, My!

Well, after some careful analysis -- which boiled down MySQL has all the key features we need (including clustering) and doesn't cost 30,000k a server like MS SQL Server -- we decided to use MySQL as our database back end. Currently, this wouldn't really be an issue as we are using a hosting service. However, by years end we intend to move to a co-located facility and we will start scaling out the number of database servers as units come on line. Eventually, 30,000k a server would become very cost prohibitive.

So, we were off to the races... not so fast though... our hosting service did NOT provide a transactional engine for MySQL. MySQL has several different database engines and not ALL of them are transactional in nature. Well, without transactions it's *impossible* to offer a robust e-commerce platform. So, began the journey of finding a different hosting service. Strangely enough, hosting services that offer transactional support for MySQL are not that common.

We finally did find one, but, this introduced many other delays in moving and publishing the new web site. Its kind of become a running joke around here given all of the problems we ran into. Suffice to say, we are not that happy with our new hosting service (which shall remain nameless for now).

So, if you are going to use MySQL as your web sites back end watch out for this problem. Check with your hosting service before committing to use them.

Do you know of any good hosting services that support transactional engines for MySQL?

Passion

Passion is the fuel of life, it's something I have really been noodling a lot lately. With passion for anything you can express it to its full extent... And at the same time express yourself to the fullest extent. Look at anything that has been done GREAT, behind it is a person with a blinding passion who derives great meaning from that passion. I present you with a simple example. For me, this video is truly amazing, here is someone who took a passion -- in this case for High Voltage and turned it to something unbelievable. Tesla would be proud!

Find your passion, embrace it, nurture it. Passion is the glue that binds your life with meaning.

What are you passionate about?