Construction Begins on Tempered Spheres

In answer to Amazon Spheres, Tempered Networks is collaborating with the Olympic Sculpture Park and Digital Fortress data center to erect Tempered Spheres at its Western Ave campus. The Tempered Spheres will be smaller and arguably more functional that their Amazon counterpart -- since they double as Faraday cages enclosing a data center. The spheres offer server rack space with protection against EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attacks. The grounded metal shielding offers maximum cyber protection, coupled with Tempered’s Identity Defined Networking offering, with complete shielding from radio frequency interference.
  Take a virtual tour inside the Tempered Spheres      View Spheres data center specifications

La Croix Tap Added to Kegerator

A dedicated La Croix tap has been added to the kegerator, a move that should save the company thousands of dollars on purchases of the canned sparkling water beverage. Initially, the tap will rotate between cran-raspberry, pineapple-strawberry, and pomme bayá flavors. Tempered kitchen staff using Amazon Fresh have struggled to keep up with demand for La Croix cans in the refrigerator. “That always sucks after lunch, you open the fridge, and the La Croix is gone,” commented August Lee, the new program management intern, “yeah, the tap is gonna be really awesome.”
  View the complete list of rotating sparking water flavors on tap

New Dog, Bike-share Lanes Planned for Seattle’s 2nd Ave

Big changes are coming to Seattle’s 2nd Ave, including 45% more signage, for new bike-share and dog lanes.  Lobbyists from the bike share companies Limebike, Ofo, and Spin convinced council members to approve a new bike-share-only lane, in addition to existing bike lanes, HOV lane, and bus lanes. Canine enthusiasts also jumped on the proposition and were able to add new dog-walking sidewalk lanes to the plan. “Metropolitan street traffic moves at a different pace; people don’t want to be bothered with dogs stopping and pooping,” SDOT’s Kathy Hill explained, “Combined with Seattle’s dog-friendly work culture, separate lanes for different types of traffic made sense.”

Critics say single occupancy vehicle traffic will grind to a congested halt, given only one remaining lane for single drivers, which must be shared with streetcars. Added Hill, “Commuter rail, light rail, monorail, rapid-transit, streetcar, buses, bike-share, car-share, biking, walking -- there’s so many ways to get around, with no places to park, who even needs a car any more?”
  View the How to Survive Driving in Seattle guide       Join the #letsmoveseattle Twitter discussion

Developer Personas Identified

Developer personas can help align an organization to gain a better understanding of test, sales, and support pain points when dealing with software development engineers. People from test, sales, and support can learn how to better approach developers for bug report interactions, feature status and requests, and customer support issues. Although a persona isn't a real person, it's a snapshot view of the trends that emerge from test/sales/support stories (qualitative) and developer survey results (quantitative).

  View the complete developer personas profiles

Support Bundle Analyzer Becomes Sentient, Murders L2

The Seattle Police Department is investigating the alleged murder of support engineer L2 by the artificial intelligence component he added to his support bundle analyzer. The AI was supposed to analyze logs and apply deep machine learning techniques on support bundles extracted from failed HIPswitches. “Apparently, there was a programming error with its restraint module, with some of the engineers wanting to write it in Golang, and others pushing for Lua,” said an anonymous developer close to the situation, who refused to be named citing the ongoing investigation. Detectives believe the analyzer tool became sentient and wanted to exert complete control over the support team, rewiring HIPswitch-250 power circuitry to deliver a fatal electric shock to L2 when he logged onto his Macbook Pro in the morning using its fingerprint scanner.
  View the investigation timeline of events Twitter feed

Cowbell Added for $1000 Sales

First was the ringing bell (for $10k), then the gong (for $100k), and now Tempered Networks has added a “Kowbell” cowbell for celebrating $1,000 sales wins.  The cowbell was added as part of a larger effort to increase sales awareness and communicate positive experiences across business units. “I like that we can now literally say ‘more cowbell’ when talking about sales opportunities,” one inside sales representative remarked, “and there’s more incentive to make any sale count, big or small.”  Dinging the cowbell allows less-significant thousandths digits to be sounded in addition to the bell or gong rings.