Shameless Plug: JustHost.com

Now, I am not one to shamelessly plug stuff.  I generally dislike even endorsing products or services, but I have recently (about 1 month ago) purchased hosting from JustHost.com and have been impressed with the service they offer.

First off, they are dirt cheap.  I pay less than 5 dollars a month and I don’t have to watch the bandwidth or size as they offer unlimited of both.  They do have a fair usage policy, so all you Fortune 500 companies, steer clear. However, for those of you who want to set up a personal web site or a small business site, it works pretty well.

It is a standard Linux/PHP/MySql package, with all of the bells and whistles you expect, but I was expecting a much more bumpy ride than what I got.

On top of this, they give you a free lifetime domain with purchase, so you don’t have to worry about the additional cost of that.

All in all, I would give them an A+ and would put them even with or just about GoDaddy due to the price advantage.

Web Presence

We all want to be successful in life and for most of us, that means making a lot of money.  But how does one make a lot of money.  Traditionally you could get a trade and make a good or even great living plying that trade.  Doctors, lawyers, engineers; these used to be the professions of choice for “successful” people.  However, with the rising cost of healthcare, the increasing pool of law school students and the globalization of technology, these professions are falling by the wayside for really making bank.

It is in content and presence that the money really lies.  You may have a negative opinion of someone like a Paris Hilton, however, you cannot argue that she does have a line of clothing and even a line of fragrances, all of which make her large amounts of money.  Is she a bad person?  That’s not for any of us to say.  Is she talented?  In my opinion, no, but that is just my personal opinion.  Did she figure out a way to make a lot of money? Definitely.

So what about the rest of us? Most people do not have a famous last name and the ability to get our picture in the paper, so we have to go about things in a different way.

People have personal passions, things that interest them for no logical reason.  I happen to like football and fast cars.  Do I drive fast? Not really, but I still dream of having some supercar one day and keep up with information about new vehicles.  Do I think that I will be playing in the NFL? No, although I have the body of a Greek god (you know Dionysus, who has put on a few pounds over the years), my odds of being the next QB for the Cowboys are about on par with me sprouting wings and flying away.

You might ask, so what, I like some stuff, how do I make money off of it.  Well, you don’t own that thing that you like, so you cannot make money off of it directly.  However, repositories of knowledge are highly prized.  For example, the TWiT network of programs technically does not create any more content than you friends sitting in your living room.  However, they research the topics they talk about and are generally very accurate in what they say.  People value the presentation of the content and the friendly banter that the shows have, so some people donate and some people buy hats and T-shirts, and the people working on those shows get a little money from it.

Do they make enough to live on? Well, I don’t know, but I would think not.  However, they get some monetary reward for doing something they enjoy, which is more than most people can say. So, if you like knitting, make a website about knitting, and maybe sell some of your knitting on there for people who are interested.  Will it make you rich?  Probably not, but it is far more likely to than just working your 9-5.

Corporate Posturing

In our modern world, posturing has become more prevalent than actual deals.  We posture to get the attention of customers.  We posture to get sales.  We posture to keep customers.

My question is: Why do we focus so much on perceptions and so little on product quality and the reality of the work involved to bring a good product to market?

I am a software developer and simply put good software is hard to write.  It isn’t that getting it to work is hard, if it were then I should be doing something else.  The difficulty comes in accounting for all the possible workflows and for all the small details that can derail things.

For example, you have a field that a user can type in a money amount in.  You have to be able to handle dozens of input formats (with commas, without, with the symbol for the currency, without and so on), you then have to be able to tell the user in a way that does not frustrate them if they typed in something that you can’t handle (like all letters).  That can take a while to go through and account for.

Now take that example and multiply the work by the number of fine interaction points that exist in your product and you have the time it would take to code the product.  This is of course an oversimplification, but the concept applies in general production of products as well.  The same can be said of the little change tray in cars.  It should be big enough for most coins in the world, small enough to not inconvenience the user,  sturdy enough to last as long as the car, aesthetic enough to not be an eyesore and the list goes on and on.

The reality is that most product do not go through all of this to be made and that is why we have recalls on cars due to gas pedals that can jam, software patches (now common even among console video games and mobile phone software) and free straps for Wii motes after some people put theirs through their big screen TVs.

What causes this rush and carelessness on the part of gigantic companies?  The market of course.  We want the fancy new sprocket that will make our life better and we want it yesterday.  Oh, and if it could possible cost us no money, that would be swell.  So, what we end up with is lots of crappy products that we are never happy with because they were not allowed to bake long enough.

I think that as a society, we need to learn patience.  That new phone that will enrich your life can probably stand to be in development for another year, so when it comes out, it is twice as sturdy and three times as optimized.  That new car should probably not go into production within 3 years of its concept phase or we might end up with some people wrapped around trees (and not in the tree-hugger sense).

Medical studies have shown that people with a lower stress level live longer, so why don’t we all take a step back and just slow down when it comes to personal products, we will probably get higher quality stuff that we can enjoy for a longer period of time.

Endgame

The term endgame gets thrown around a lot lately.  Whether it be in politics, the military, personal relationships, sports, business deals, or even just in a simple task, the term endgame seems to come up a lot.  However, most people do not know what the term means and what it’s lexicological meanings are.

Endgame generally refers to a stage in the game of chess, after most of the pieces have been removed from the board and only a few remain.  When used in this sense, the term also carries connotations of psychological strength and the ability to maintain composure under pressure.

The terms is also thrown around in terms of politics and war in a very similar sense.  Lately I have even heard President Obama use it to refer to the war in Afghanistan and the next 2 years.  In this sense, the connotations are more important than the definition.

How does America disentangle itself from a fairly big mess that it has gotten itself into in the middle east?

Flat out leaving has stopped being an option long ago.

Protecting the Afghan and Iraqi people indefinitely is also out of the question as the cost would cripple our economy.

So, the endgame is inevitable.  This is a win or lose strategy, but you can wipe out your enemy, but still lose.  What a lot of people are missing and this is a hard concept to get a grasp on is that this is not a matter of us against them.  We barely understand who them is, and as shown by the shooting at Fort Hood last month, one of us can easily become one of them.

What can you do to have a good endgame.  First, measure your available resources.  Even the best chess player can lose a game that they should have won if they get careless at the end.  In the same way, you can win campaign after campaign and then get bogged down in insurgencies and lose the war due to inability to bring your overwhelming forces to bear on the enemy.

Second, in order to have a good endgame, you have to realize that the game needs to end.  With that in mind, you need to have a plan of how you will end it.  The emphasis there is that you will end the game and not that the game will end with you as a player.  Once you have come to accept that as your reality, you will be able to plan and act on your plan.

Finally, stick to your plan.  This does not mean that if it is not working, you should just keep going, but rather that you should not change things that are working simply for the sake of change. If a strategy is working, keep at it, you might just be on to something.

You might be asking yourself what in the heck it is that I am trying to get at here.  Well, simply put, endgames are a fact of life.  We all have to experience them and we should all be prepared to do so in a manner that benefits us and which does not stress or hurt us.  When looking at something, think of how the process will end, because things end, all things end.

Presents, Holidays and Travel

So, the holidays are upon us.  We all have to deal with them in some way.  Either by having to wait in longer lines, or deal with more paid time off being used by employees or a budget that stops making sense, it bites us all.

With that, we have travel, lots of people have to do it and it is one of the worst experiences a person can have.  I can tell you from personal experience that being stuck for 3 hours on a runway with a nice old lady who just wants to tell you about how nice their grandkids are gets a little annoying after then first 2 hours.  Oh, and let’s talk about courtesy services.

Airlines allow you to set up automated calls to let family know if delays happen or flights get re-routed.  What they also can do is tell you family that your flight is at the wrong time, thus getting you stuck in a cold airport that is having construction done for over 2 hours (worst cold I ever had resulted from those 2 hours).

So here’s a thought, let’s get some bright people on this video conferencing thing and let’s have Christmas pudding over Skype with a big screen TV instead of freezing ourselves in airports.

By the way, Happy Holidays to all of my readers.

Travel, Supply and Demand

I will start this post with a disclaimer.  I have to travel about 1000 miles every holiday season to see my family.  I have been stranded in airports, charged extra for the first checked in bag, charged $40 more because my bag was 2 lbs too heavy and been fed stale pretzels that were deemed “lunch”.  I may have a bit of a dislike for the way airlines treat their cattle, uh I mean, sheep, uh I mean passengers.

Flight is a terribly complicated thing, especially when you are doing it inside of a steel drum powered by things that spin an 15 thousand RPMs.  Ever since the Hindenburg exploded and burned all those people to death we have as a people become terrified of dirigibles.  Understandably so mind you, I would not want to be burned alive in a hydrogen fire either.

So flight with airplanes is expensive, no way around it really.  And flight with dirigibles is dangerous.  Well, no, helium is actually very safe.  Modern designs also use much lighter weight materials for the canopy which allow for more chambers, so the chance of very quickly making your acquintance with the ground is astronomically low.  To put it in perspective, it would be like digging a hole to plant your petunias and finding oil or gold in your back yard.

I have seen designs of new airships and frankly I would love the idea of a scenic flight of a 2-3 days over America in luxury similar to one of those old time trains or ocean liners.

Write your congressman and let them know that you are not happy with the cost of flying and that dirigibles are something that more research should be put into.  Don’t do it just because I told you, look into the subject yourself and form your own opinion, but please look into it.

Kudos to Digital Distribution

A strange thought came over me this weekend.  Overhead drives profit.  Yeah, that seems kind of obvious right.  Well, I was thinking about it in a different light.  If you are in a business where you can reduce your overhead to basically nothing, then you can afford to fight price wars with the competition and win.

On the opposite end of the spectrum we have businesses where overhead is kind of fixed (it will always take some people somewhere to turn a bunch of materials into a car).  Then, price wars hurt everyone.

This thought hit me as I was browsing the sales on the online game distribution service Steam this weekend.  I ended up picking up a game pack for $50 that would in all fairness have at one point in time probably cost north of $500-600 dollars.  There are some games in there that I don’t really want, but there was enough for me to warrant a purchase.

Now, think of it this way, this is like getting a bunch of GM cars from the last 5 years or so (never driven mind you) for the cost of one mid-size car.  Even in their darkest days last year, GM always sold cars for discounts that would make digital distribution retailers scoff.

We will always need physical things and the overhead on those is always going to exist. But on the flip side, digital distribution of software and media will not only help drive down the cost of older products, but also cut down on pollution due to manufacturing of physical media and and transportation thereof to the end users.

So here’s me, giving kudos to the digital distribution model and encouraging all of you to try it and see if you like it.

Turkey Day: A Postmortem

Thanksgiving has come and gone again.  The shopping craze has stalked us again.  Buy, buy, damn it buy something. The economy is counting on you.  Just like the old Lewis Black joke, people went out and bought stuff they didn’t really need or want and retailers and still claiming that they didn’t sell enough.

My question is: How much is enough? If your store was completely emptied out, would that be enough? A friend of mine showed me the old Dr. Seuss Grinch cartoon this weekend and the lesson felt very poignant these days.  The Whos didn’t need presents to be happy on Christmas, but we apparently do.  We need iPhones and Netbooks and designer clothes and TVs.

Oh, and one other thing: A car is not a present, it is a huge financial burden both on the purchaser and on the owner.  I am frankly sick and tired of these commercials where one person wakes up to see a car with a big red bow on it in their driveway and their spouse walks up with the keys and an impish smile on their face.  You know what that smile is for? They just fucked you over.  You know how much the premium on a new Lexus is? Yeah, that right, rent money every month.

So here’s my 2 cents.  If you have something that you want to give someone or you have a family member or friend who really needs something, then give it to them.  Otherwise, how about you give them a nice bottle of wine or a nice pie, something that can be shared on the day of Christmas (or whatever you celebrate) and avoid the unnecessary expenses.

We should not need a certain time of year to come around to be nice to each other. We should do it all of the time or not do it all of the time.  This fake nicety that takes over out lives for a month every year is really disturbing and says something about the hollow nature of our society.

The Paradigm of the Weekend

The Weekend. A time of rest and relaxation, where you get to gather your energies for the week to come. Or so the theory goes.

I have found that this modern life we engage in robs us of our rest time and replaces it with a constant chase to “do things we want to do”. We no longer enjoy a morning with a paper and cup of coffee, we now have “things to do”. Always “things to do”. Shopping, social engagements, things we “must” buy, errands we have to run.

But do we really? I am going to try something something different this coming weekend and will let you know how it goes. I am going to try and use the weekend for what it was intended: rest and relaxation. I will not run any errands that I really do not need to run and I will only go buy things that I really need.

The stresses of our daily lives build up enough without us putting more stress on top of that. We need to find time for ourselves so we do not burn ourselves out while there is still a lot of life to live ahead of us.

Stress in the Workplace

Our modern – get it done yesterday – world is really kind of a sham.  Very few products are really thought out and built out as well as they should be and everyone suffers.  From the customer who pays their hard earned money for something that does not work as advertised to the employees who hurry to rush something out the door in order to make artificial deadlines set for economic reasons.

We all end up suffering, the deadlines, the public bitching and moaning about: “Why is it taking so long?” and the stress that the developers of the products incur all add up to a situation that can only implode.

If the demand is overhyped and the company overproduces, they run the risk of being stuck with a huge bill and a huge stock of worthless product.

If consumer demand is not managed, the consumer will be let down by the reality of the product and the company again risks failure.

When companies fail, their support structure fails.  The customer has no one to turn to for help when the product stops working or when they need more.  Then they run to risk of failing in whatever they were using the product for.

The risk oriented economic culture that we have in place is to blame for the current economic downturn. 

Had the automakers taken the time to design and build their cars right, they would not have lost business to the import cars coming from Asia and Europe. 

Had the financial institutions taken a conservative approach to investments, they might not have needed bailouts from the government.

More importantly, had we, the consumers, not forced companies to push products outs before they were fully baked and vetted, we would not end up owning junk.

We all just need to take a step back and think about the choices that we make. I remember seeing a diagram that described software development.  It was a pie chart with three equal slices: good, fast, cheap.  Underneath, it said: Pick two.

This is not just true in software development, but in all product development.  You can have a car designed and into production cheaply and have it well made, but you better be patient and hire people who are willing to work for less.  However, those people might need a lot more time than their higher paid counterparts to design the car.

On the other hand, you can have a really well made car, and you can design it quickly.  It’s called rebranding and technology leasing and high end car manufacturers do it all the time.  If you know of a good engine, lease out the technology and have someone else do it for you.  It’ll cost you an arm and a leg, but at least it will be fast and good.

I think we all know what fast and cheap gets you.  Every Pinto, Aztec, and HHR built stands as an example of rushed decisions. Focus groups are great, but the do not read the market.

So, for all of our sakes, slow down, think about what you are doing and do not commit to thing that are nigh on impossible to achieve.

Communication

We all know that communication is the driving force behind business successes and failures.  Great communication will make your team/company a winner, while poor communication will render you a failure or in the best case an also ran.

I have come up with a theory on how to communicate properly and have distilled it to a few easy to follow steps:

1. Figure out what the person you are communicating with needs from you.  Be as anal-retentive as possible here, because a simple oversight can cause a week of lost productivity and major losses.

2. Give the person what they need. This requires some analytical thinking because sometimes you cannot divulge certain information and in that case you have to give the person you are communicating with an answer that is palatable but not full of crap.

3. Follow up to make sure the person has accepted the communication and that they are content with its contents.  This does not mean that they need to be happy with what they received, just that they do not require any further information.  You could be telling someone that their family just died and that they owe you a lot of money for burial costs, but the important part here is that they know where to send it and by when.

4. Empathize or at least sympathize with the other person.  They might be saying that they understand the information when they really do not.  Make sure that you are getting through and try to see things from their point of view.

If you do this, then you should get somewhere in your communications and they will not be the cause of your failure (heck, you might not even fail).

SmartPhones: The Future or a Fad?

SmartPhones are everywhere, whether it is a the latest version of the iPhone or the latest iPhone killer, bombarding us with their shiny screens and “power-features”.   What do we actually use them for though?  What does a phone do and why do we even use such a device?  Will the future be bright for the SmartPhone or will it be just another stone in the road to the future?

“I need more minutes.”

“Call me after 7.”

“Don’t text me, I don’t get texts.”

We have all heard these comments and many more like them.  These days, all those things are just bits in the giant stream of information that circles the globe and connects humanity in a way nothing else has before.  All SmartPhones are internet capable and all modern mobile networks are cellular, so at the end of the day whether you are looking for movie show times or talking to you parents across the country, you are using data.

Data is cheap, and frankly should not distinguish between internet browsing, calls, text, mms or streaming media.  You should be charged to access and if access is such a scarce resource, then charge per megabyte or GB (seems more fair with the proliferation of data hungry services).

I have a SmartPhone and hardly ever use the Phone feature.  I browse the web, play games, watch movies, stream music, I’ve even used it as a digital cue card during a presentation.  The Phone part of the SmartPhone is quickly becoming just another app.  Frankly, I pay for the phone service so that I can get data with it, I could really do without for the most part.

The future cannot be stopped and business models never survive if they do not adapt to the changing market. The market is moving toward a data driven model where the devices become transient and the data becomes the permanent thing that we anchor ourselves to.  More importantly, companies that want to succeed should understand this and move away from the X minutes + data charges and simply do what the ISPs are doing: Give people access at a given tier of bandwidth and only overcharge for excessive abuse.  Sprit is already moving in this direction and I applaud them for it.

Centrism: The Answer to Politics

How many times have you heard someone say that the other side will be the end of: the Country, Western Civilization, Civilization in general, or mankind as a whole?

I know that every time I hear such arguments, I think that this person simply lives too far to the side they have chosen (and this applies to both the left and right) to see the big picture.

No one wants to end the country or world or mankind.  People generally all want the same things: food and water, a place to sleep, someone to share it all with and in some cases power over others. This seems like one of those power crazed aspirations, however power comes in many forms.

Power can be political, such as our elected officials.

Power can be influence based, such as organized crime.

Power can be respect, such as the power a great coach has over their players.

Power can be love, such as the power a parent has to teach their children right from wrong and raise them to be functional adults.

And last but not least, power can be fear, such as the power terrorists have over those that they terrorize.

Whether you are a politician, parent, terrorist, coach, teacher, or whatever else you may be, you want power on some level.  We all become upset when someone else wrests power away from us and uses it in a way that we would not.

You might be wondering where I am heading with all of this and frankly it is a rather obvious place, empathy or at least sympathy. In order to bring the world together and achieve a more prosperous and peaceful existence for all, we need to empathize with one another or if we are not capable of that, at least sympathize with one another.

I may not be able to understand a man’s ability to strap explosives to their body and explode for their belief, but I can at least comprehend it and try to figure out what to do to allow that person’s needs to be met while my own are also met.  This does mean that we would all have to compromise and not simply act in a manner that only benefits ourselves, but this does not mean that we should let other walk all over us.

Moderate views are the glue that allow for civilized discourse and bloodless debates to occur. It is debate, comprehension and a conscious effort to work toward a tolerant and understanding world that will bring humanity into the future we see in sci-fi movies and TV shows.

Leave the hate and warmongering where it belongs, in the history books.

The Paradigm of Cost

“You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.”

We have all heard this expression uttered regarding political choices, professional sports, and a plethora of other things.  However, lately I have seen situations where it has been applied to business more than anything else.

Business is a fine balance.  On one side you have operating costs and on the other you have revenue.  On one side you have business beating down your down to give you money for the thing you sell, on the other you have the possibility of a dry spell ending your company.  Quality too is a fine balance, you either cut corners by having too few resources on staff, or you end up overstaffed and you bleed money.

How does one weigh this balance?  Where is the line drawn?  All business wants to grow, but growing too fast can cause a bubble to form and pop, causing everything you’ve worked for to come crashing down. Stagnation is also a worry, do you invest time and money into every new productivity enhancing product on the market or do you let things continue working as they have.

I have a few thoughts regarding this and I would like to share them with you.

First, the idea of understaffing and overstaffing is a concept that was invented by someone with a good understanding of numbers and little knowledge of the intangibles.  You should always have at least one resource on deck to help wherever help is needed.  Also of note is that not all resources are at the same level so simply hiring on help when you have more business is not really feasible as everyone has a learning curve.

Second, technology pays for itself, always.  This statement has a caveat that the Return on Investment for a piece of technology always has to be based on time.  Time is the most valuable thing a company has and if you can save your employees time by giving them faster computers, streamlining workflow, simplifying processes, then do it.  It saves time and that time can be use for other company related activities (you know, working more).

Third, more hours DOES NOT equal more productivity.  Well it does in short spaced out bursts, but not on death-marches.  People are not machines (and even those wear out).  A person might be getting the sleep and food they need, but they will wear out mentally after a while and either quit, do their job poorly or simply crash at a critical moment.  You hope that the work load returns to a normal load before these happens, but hope does not build multi-billion dollar enterprises.

Finally, I want to encourage all business owners to not nickel and dime themselves today in order to supposedly stay afloat while sacrificing the future.  Products do not progress evenly, those that pour time and money into their product will end up with something that is easier to market and sell.  So, does what Google does and push the envelope on technology and be better off for it.

Cheddar's

Ate at Cheddar's at Park and 75 in Plano, TX. Great steak at very reasonable price in cozy environment with good service. Very good lunch specials and an epic Chicken Tender Platter. If you're in the mood for a guilty pleasure, try the Texas Cheese Fries.

Time

Time is a valuable asset. We never seem to have enough of it to do what we want to do and yet find ourselves trying very hard to make it go by faster. This paradox of sorts has lead me to wonder about time and humanity's interaction with it. Most people want similar things out of life, we want a job that doesn't destroy us while we are performing it, we want a comfortable home life with all that it entails and we want to have the time to pursue our passions. For a few lucky individuals our life and our passions overlap and we can have both at the same time. However, most of us do something to put food on the table as the expression goes and leave our passions to be our hobbies. So we trade time away from the pursuit of our passions, whatever they may be, in order to earn the money that allows us to have a comfortable hom life. One might then conjecture that time is the ultimate currency in life as we pay for everything with it. Want to be rested? Pay a few hours to sleep and you receive the good of rest.

The Vicious Cycle of Complexity

I recently started a new job, which I truly enjoy. However, in my short time here I have stumbled upon one absolute truth. Business begets complexity, which begets support business, which begets complexity ad infinitum.

If you do not believe me, try to think of how enerprise class software works. There is usually a database, and a data layer, and a busines layer, and a platform layer and at some point the application layer. Now, I don't know about you, but with all those layers, that sounds like a good cake to me. So good in fact that eating too much might overwhelm you.

And so too is the case with enterprise software, if you use too much you end up with to much complexity and end up getting overwhelmed.  But why does this happen? One word: customers.

Customers want a variety of things, things outside of the original design, things that simply require hacks to work. And sometimes the new features are deemed worthy to be introduced into the core source code, along with the hacks. After all, we'll sometimes have the time to fix any issues.

But in reality the problems never get fixed, they just get worked around until they become too big to ignore. The workarounds become a regular part of life and complexity ensues with exceptions to the rules and weird incantations that must be performed to get the system to work.

This is a problem and enterprise developers need to monitor their environments carefully to prevent things like what I described from comin to pass.

LBJ China Cafe

Today, I had my lunch at the LBJ China Café. This is your regular run of the mill Chinese buffet with all the usual food found at such an establishment. Of note is that this eatery is a dollar or two cheaper than what is average and is located just off of 75 and 635 is north Dallas. It is a good value, is moderately busy, which means the food is fresh and the staff seem friendly without being overbearing. Definently a pick for a cheap work lunch.

For location information use this link:

http://tinyurl.com/9yyddj

The Obama Inauguration

Today was a historic day, a major world power peacefully transferred power from one set of executives to another.Some might say that this day is historic because President Obama is of African American descent or because of just how popular he is abroad and here in the United States. 

The fact of the matter is that he is a man just like the rest of us and putting labels on him defeats his message of progress through unity.  He gave a very moving speech in front of one of the largest audiences ever assembled and really didn't say much. What he did say is that we are going try and fix our country because in his opinion (one that I share), fixes are sorely needed.

I for one wish President Obama the best of luck with his new job and hope that he can make the right decisions in these tough times.

I am proud to live in a country the freely elects its leaders and where the rule of law can override hate and bigotry. Today, just like on every other day, I am proud to be an American.

Starting the journey

Welcome to the journey. Wait, no, that sounded pretentious. Let's try again. Welcome to my story, whereever it leads me. I decided to start this blog and share my thoughts with the world.

It is not that I think that my thoughts are priceless or that the world will be a better place because I blog, however, I might help one person figure out one thing through the sharing of my thoughts, then this will have been a worthwhile endeavor.

Regarding the format of this blog, I will only be blogging from my mobile phone and discussing anything from philosophy, to politics, to local eateries and the service I received. I welcome all input and if any of you have something you would like me to discuss, please post it in the comments.

So, let us begin.