I found what I believe is a hidden feature in the Wii controllers.

A while back I noticed that some of my controllers, when I turned them on, would only blink 3 of the 4 LEDs while trying to connect. “Weird,” I thought, “Maybe one of the LEDs is burned out.”

I ignored it until I spoke with support (about my green pixel problem), and the rep said it’s normal, but didn’t expand as to why.

Today I turned my Wiimote on and only two lights blinked. On a hunch, I hit the Home button and noticed the battery meter had only two bars – out of four.

So, apparently, when you boot up your controller, it will flash the battery life remaining. Neat. Wish I had been able to figure it out earlier.

As part of the NaNo experience, Alfonso and I have had a few meet-ups at local coffee shops. Alfonso is bad at picking shops as he typically picks ones that have 5 minutes remaining before they close, and they won’t even sell you any coffee or old bread.

Anyway, I’d been wanting to check out a local coffee shop opened by a fellow Googler (though I can’t say I know him, I think he works in another building). You can check out the astoundingly and surprisingly bad website here. Don’t expect hours of operation or even an exact address.

So, the gist of this cafe is that payment is on a voluntary basis. You go in, order whatever drinks or snacks (small sandwiches, FroYo, bagels, CostCo muffins, etc) and you receive them. There is no cash register. There is — off to the side — a small slot where you can put money, if you so choose. You can also give the barrista your card and just tell her whatever you want charged. Or pay online at the previously mentioned website via PayPal. (Wait: why doesn’t this dude accept Google Checkout?)

My supposition is that, because payment is voluntary, the median visitor ends up paying more than they would at a Starbucks, or what have you. This is, however, quite necessary to make up for the people that pay nothing. And by “people” I kind of mean “teenagers.”

They also have an Xbox 360 hooked up that you can go to town on, complete with several games. How do the games not get stolen? Nuclear technology.

You know that part of the Simpsons opening where Homer handles a nuclear rod inside a lucite case with some gloves? Well, Terra Bite has a 360 and a bunch of discs inside a similar case. You stick your hands through some holes in the case – too small to fit a CD through – and you can change out the games. I don’t know what keeps people from stealing the controllers, though. Hmmm.

Anyway, the cafe itself is pretty nice. It’s also convenient when you know you’ll be sitting there for two hours – you don’t have to go up and pay $2 each time you need a coffee refill, or feel like an incredibly delicious bagel. You can just settle up for whatever you feel like you owe at the end of the day. Or end of the week. Or just not pay.

Some strange events and such:

- At one point on our second day visiting Terra Bite, the owner came in. His demeanor kind of made me feel unwelcome there — Alfonso asked a good question (how do they handle sales tax) and through the entire 30 second conversation, the owner seemed to be bothered that he was forced to have it. And the entire time he was there — sitting out of sight on the other side of the cafe — I felt vaguely like I shouldn’t be there. Like I have broken into this dude’s house and was using his coffee maker, but he was too polite to ask me to leave, but not too polite to offer me biscuits. I’m not certain the entirety of this feeling is his fault though; I think it’s from the concept of the place. I hadn’t paid for anything I had taken (yet), so I felt like a freeloader, even though I fully intended to pay when I was done consuming his goods.

- Tatiana didn’t have any cash, so she felt like she could not get anything. This confused me. So I offered to pay, which she accepted. Me paying for her consisted of going with her to the counter, standing next to her while she ordered and got her drink, and then sitting back down. A couple hours later I put money into the little hopper. With new payment guidelines comes new and odd social situations that I don’t have the ability to understand.

- We went to eat afterwards, and felt slightly put out that restaurants were now telling us exactly what we had to pay. It seemed very presumptuous of them to do.

In all, I kind of like the concept. In some respects it heralds to the mom-and-pop kind of store; I could imagine in such a place, if you visited daily, they wouldn’t make you fork over $1.72 for coffee. You could probably just throw them a twenty every week and call it even. It’s a certain kind of convenience you rarely get.

PS I feel it is BS that this near-800 word essay does not count towards my horribly-low word count.

Any time I get a new electronic goody, I feel certain “firsts” for the device are very important to set the tone of my experience with said device.

With my new iPod Touch, the following seemed appropriate.

First website: jailbreakme.com
First song: CSS – Music is My Hot Hot Sex
First (possibly only?) over-the-air iTunes purchase: Spice Girls – Headlines [Added bonus – it’s iTunes Plus so it’s already an MP3. Score)
First video watched: Wes Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier
First game of blackjack played: I busted to a dealer blackjack

jimr became an active employee on Monday November 6, 2006 (365 days ago).

One year!

Exactly one year ago I was in Mountain View, sitting in the courtyard eating Wagyu steak from Charlies’ Cafe, watching to my left a scale-model T-Rex get assembled, and to my right, a bunch of engineers running through one of those inflatable obstacle course things.

It’s crazy. Seems like I’ve been here much longer, but also, like I’ve only been here a few months.

Oh and, of course, my non-solicit with Microsoft has expired and as such, I now can concentrate on recruiting everyone I enjoyed working with at Microsoft. Bwa-ha-ha-ha.

For a while now, my Wii has been displaying little green pixels every now and again while playing games (especially when playing Resident Evil 4). It was only a little annoying, but I finally got sick of it, so I called Nintendo for support.

Their first bonus point is that they were open on Saturday. The rep took my serial number, and asked what was wrong. I explained the problem and she asked if I was using Nintendo-official cables, I said yes, so she set up a repair. I said I was in Washington, and she asked, “Do you live within driving distance of Redmond,” and it just so happens I live in Redmond. She said instead of waiting for a repair, I can pop into the Nintendo repair center and get it fixed while I wait. Not only that, they’re open Saturdays, 9-6.

I jumped into the car, walked in (turns out it was about 2 blocks from my old Microsoft building), and the guy said they’d just swap me over to a new console. He went back to go do that, and I looked at some old-school Nintendo systems in a display case. They had most everything in there, though surprisingly none of the rare top-loading NES machines. They did have a ROB, though.

I also noticed a Wii set up, and it had Super Mario Galaxies in it, so I played that for about 5 minutes until my new Wii was ready. He handed me the new system, said I have a 1 year warranty on the new system already set up in my name, and sent me on my way. Took about 20 minutes including driving there and back.

Sure beats the 360 experience I had: they refused to fix my machine (it was before they extended the warranty to 3 years for the red-ring-of-death), so I had to swap it out at Costco. Plus I had to deal with their “helpful” automated debugger “Max” and useless India-based technical support who had me do everything “Max” did again. All this before telling me it’d be $179 to fix.

(According to the Invoice I got repair of a Wii is $75, though obviously my warranty covered that amount. That’s a fairly reasonable price – especially since you also get a new warranty to go along with your replacement system).

Kudos, Nintendo. I wish I knew how to buy your stock.