May 2005 Archives

Unlike Tampa, Reagan National Airport does not have free wireless access. Or any wireless access. Logan in Boston does have wireless, but it's $7.95 for 24-hours. Why anyone would need 24-hours in an airport is beside me. At least it's cheaper than wireless at SFO. So, I'm now hanging out in the baggage claim area of Logan, waiting for the 4:45 bus to New Hampshire, checking my mail and posting here. Oh, this glamerous lifestyle I am a leading.

I can't wait to get home. I miss my cats. I miss my sweetie (not necessarily in that order). I miss my own bed. I don't know how traveling salespeople do it - being on the road for months at a time. I think it would be better if you were with friends - like a band on tour. Then you'd be your own little traveling unit. But it's hard on your own.

It feels strange to be back in Boston. I haven't been here in 5 years. I don't know if it's just my imagination, but the people seem different. They don't look like folks in SF (or as my Aunt's new beau says "Frisco"). The houses are different; the landscape is different. I heard the accent as I was picking up my bag. There is definitely a part of me that misses New England. I wonder how living in Boston would be different now that I could afford to live in Cambridge or Brookline.

Oh well, I'm not moving back here anytime soon. I have too much trouble to get into in Berkeley.

Who would have thought that the Tampa airport would have free wireless access? Not me, that's for sure.

I'm switching gears from 4 days spent with my grandmother and aunt to being a consultant and working with clients again. I just hope I don't break into Italian during the stakeholder interviews. :)

I have a whole post of "Adventures with Nana" that I'm composing in my head, but no time to write it yet. In the mean time, I'll leave you with one of my Nana's favorite sayings:

"Holy Moses, King of the Jews.
He sold his wife for a pair of shoes.
When the shoes began to wear,
Holy Moses began to swear."

All week they are serving us lunch at the conference. So far it has been beef, chicken, and today was the fish dish. Each day I have to tell the waitstaff that I would like the vegetarian option, and then I have to wait for them to make it. Most times, everyone else at my table is not a veggie, but they have been very supportive. I've had them flag down the waiter and ask about my meal. I had one woman make sure that I got my dessert (even though I really didn't want it) even though everyone else had been served.

Well today, they served the fish dish - it was salmon filet- and I asked for my vegetarian dish. After everyone had been served, and I was sitting there quietly waiting, one of the women at the table leaned over and asked "So, is your cheeseburger on it's way?"

I wish that I had had snappy comeback for her, but I was so surprised that she was taking a dig at me. I muttered something about "no, the vegetarian dish, so maybe a veggie burger" and tried to laugh it off. But jeez. I felt like she was treating me as a child - obviously I my tastes weren't sophisticated enough to enjoy the salmon like the rest of them. What? Excuse me? Pardon me for not wanting to eat dead animals.

I tell you, some people's kids.

UPDATE 4:33 PM: I was just told that I am "too young to be senior at anything" when I handed someone my business card. What is wrong with these people? It was an older gentleman who made the comment, and I'm sure he thought he was being cute and trying to complementing me on my age/appearence, but jeez!

Yesterday I flew from San Jose, CA to Salt Lake City, UT to Orlando, FL. I'm here in the land of the Big Black Rat for the Wilshire Metadata Conference.

Flying cross country is always an adventure, especially for your digestive system. I'm not sure if the lack of food on airplanes these days is a good thing or not. I flew Delta out here, and they give you no food, except for some granola bars. Oh, and about a tablespoon of raisins (ok, they also give you Oreos and cheesewiz and crackers, but I didn't partake in the effort to save Points). Because I knew I wouldn't get any real food on the plane, I decided to get something to eat while I switched planes.

Somehow I found myself in line at Burger King. Why you ask? Because it was the only place in whole the Salt Lake City airport that had a veggie burger. The cashier was in training, so it took forever to get up to place my order. And of course, I had to order the one item on the menu that had never been ordered before, so he had no idea where to find the little key for it on the cash register. Oh, and I wanted it My Way, so no mayo. Or onions. Or tomato.

Finally he was able to ring me up and I thought I would quickly be on my way. But no. I also managed to completed stump the entire kitchen crew with my order. First, they couldn't find the veggie burgers in the freezer. They had to get the manager (who was helping the new cashier) to find them. Then they somehow burned the first burger in the microwave and had to ask the manager again how to do it. After about 10 minutes, I finally got my burger and salad. It actually wasn't that bad (it's just a Morningstar Farms patty). And I was able to keep well within my Points for the day. Yay.

So far the conference has been interesting. Though everyone is a lot more male, a lot more middle-aged, and a lot more geeky than I thought they would be. I guess the IA Summit really is a lot more unique than I think it is. Everyone who I've talked to and told what I do have been amazed that people actually do what I do. Yes, it really is a matter of same planet, different worlds.

What is cool though is these folks get it. They are really excited about metadata. No, I mean really excited. And I've been to librarian conferences before. Unfortunetaly, these folks aren't thinking about the end user. The one that actually has to use the data in the database. They don't seem to be thinking about interfaces and usability. They build these systems to help other members of IT. But they know how to do some really slick programming. And they know how to get buy in from executives. As in, getting the CIO to mandate that everyone follow the metatagging rules. Can you imagine a web marketing team being able to get that kind of support?

If we can just get these worlds to work together, imagine what we could do. I'm really looking forward to hearing about the other sessions and what people have done.

I'm surprised at the reaction to my post earlier today about Citgo, both here and on LJ. Granted, there have only been 2 comments, but both of them were very much against the idea, pointing out that it wouldn't work as intended, and still supports "the bad guys."

Ummm... okay. I guess I need to be a little less flip about the political comments I post here. I admit, I know very little about South American politics. I do not know what the state of human rights are in Venezuela, what the history of the leader is. I also do not understand how the oil industry works, how the sourcing is determined, or any of that. I did not do due diligence and research before I made the post.

I simply posted it because it seemed like a novel (meaning I hadn't heard of the idea before) way to do *something*. Yes, it still does not to stop the dependency upon foreign oil. Yes, it still helps the fat cats get fatter. Yes, it still doesn't address any number of issues that we as a society are facing by being an oil-driven culture.

But there is frustrating little that I can do as an individual to fight against those issues. Yes, I can drive my car less (which I do). I can get a hybird or electric car (which I will do when they make a station wagon model). Yes, I can compost, recycle, buy organic foods, use low-flow shower heads and more to reduce my personal footprint on the earth. I can't install solar power generators or a gray water tank since I don't own a home yet, but once I do, I plan to.

And yes, these are all little things that add up, especially when lots of people adopt those habits. But they are little things. And sometimes they don't feel like a lot.

As published on CommonDreams.org:

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela -- not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

That is so cool. Stick it to Bush where it hurts, eh? Unfortunately, I don't know of any Citgo stations near me, but I will certainly go out of my way to find them now.

And speaking of sticking it to Big Oil, did you bike to work today? Sadly, I didn't. But I did take public transportation (as I almost always do now), so at least I wasn't adding another car to the roads.

We live in an age where man has walked on the moon. We can cross whole continents in a matter of hours. They are stopping the freakin' speed of light in physics labs.

So tell me, please, why can't I get my fucking socks to stay up?

Just once I would like to wear a pair of non-sports socks that don't slide down my ankles and bunch up under my arch, all the while twisting so the heel part is on the top of my foot.

GAH!

I've never had my cats wear collars. I'm not exactly sure why. I guess I never felt the need, since they were always indoor-only cats. I think my very first cat, Markers, had a collar at one time. But she always took it off, so we gave up.

For some reason, I'm more concerned about the kids getting out of the house at the new place, than in past places. I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe it's because we live on a busier street, and not an apartment complex. I don't know.

But yesterday I stopped at Petco and I got them each their own collar. Complete with name tag. Freesia's is baby pink and Smudge's is a royal blue. They didn't have any cat-sized collars with rhinestones, so the Princess has to make due with pink.

They seem to have resigned themselves to the collars now, but it was quite humorous when I first put them on. Especially Smudge, but that should be no surprise. Oh, and the collars had bells on them at first (I got out the wirecutters and removed them before I went to bed last night).

Anyway, Smudge spent the first hour or so with his collar jumping up on his hind legs, trying to get at the bell. Which of course, made noise everytime he moved. He'd try to bite it and use his front legs to grab it, but he couldn't make his legs move the right way. Poor guy - he was so frustrated. But it was also really funny.

I love my cats.

I've decided that I'm not going to keep the New Me Blog updated anymore. Instead, I will be posting on this topic over on LiveJournal. This is mostly for privacy reasons, since I can restrict the posts to friends only. If you'd like, look me up over there. I'm cfox74.

I have sad news to report. Harold, the beloved beta fish, has passed on to the great ocean in the sky.

Harold was at least 3 years old, if not older. I'm not sure what the life expectancy of a beta fish is. I like to think that he had a good life. Apparently the move to Berkeley was too much for him though.

We will all miss you Harold.

I am in awe of the amount of hair that two long-haired felines and one long-haired human can loose. I have always lived with wall-to-wall carpeting. And apparently I have always underestimated the amount of hair that a carpet can indigest. Which is really a disgusting thought if you think about it.

Because now, well, I have hard wood floors. No carpet anywhere (well, except for the little throw rugs that Smudge plays with until they are a little mass in the corner of the room). And the hair, well, it doesn't disappear anywhere. It just sits there on the floor growing and growing. I tell you... I don't have dust bunnies in my living room, I have dust elephants!

Maybe I should consider shaving my head and shaving the cats too.

TV is evil.

I've spent the last 13 months without cable television and about 3-4 channels, depending upon the weather. Since I got such poor TV reception, I stopped watching that much TV. I pretty much only watched "That 70's Show" reruns from 7-8 while I ate dinner (mostly for the background noise). The rest of the evening I would spend reading or on the computer or whatever. I felt this was a Good Thing.

Kate was kind enough to give me her old TV, now that I've moved to Berkeley. I went to Radio Shaft the other day and bought a TV antenna for the new boob tube, since it didn't have one. I now get 8 stations clearly and another few that are fuzzy, but watchable. WOW! It also means that I now own 2 TVs, the new nice big one and my poor little 13-inch that I've had since my freshman year of college.

So, what is the point of all this rambling? I'm watching more TV again and reading less. I put the little TV in my bedroom, since, well, it still works, so why throw it out? It's kind of nice to turn it on (for the background noise, of course) when I come home and am getting ready for bed and such.

But it also means that I'm getting sucked into watching more TV. I came home at about 10 last night, just in time to watch CSI: New York. I used to be a complete Law & Order junkie, but I haven't seen it in 13 months since I can't get NBC on my antenna. Last night was the first night that I've seen CSI: New York. And while it's no Law and Order, it's good.

The bad is that meant that I was up until close to 11 waiting to see if they figured out who killed the guy in the car. I put the TV on sleep, and I don't remember it turning off, so I will never know if they caught the guy. But what bothers me more is that I was up late watching TV. I didn't read. I didn't go to sleep early. I was watching TV. Last night I stayed up watching how microorganisms produce sulfaric acid which is what creates limestone caves. Interesting, but...

GAH. I may really need to rethink this whole TV-in-the-bedroom thing.

I'm getting tired of my iPod play lists. They include a lot of my favorite songs, but hearing them over and over gets kind of boring. I've found that I just put my iPod on the "shuffle the whole damn thing" setting and then just fast forward all the Christmas and classical music that comes up.

I had an idea for making new playlists this morning on the train. Like I'm sure many of you had, I used to have boxes full of "mix tapes" that I used to play in my car during high school and college. Tapes that friends used to make for me or songs I'd record off the radio. That kind of thing. I should dig up those old tapes and mine them for playlists. I'd love to hear the "Yvonne List" or the "Jennifer B List" again. I loved those tapes.

It might be a bit of a search to find MP3s of all the songs on them (since the tape was often the only copy of the song that I had - I used them as a way to learn about new music). But I think it would be fun research effort. And a good way to freshen up my iPod.

E and I have decided to join Weight Watchers together. Both of us are unhappy with the way we feel and how we look. We're going to do the program online and go to meetings. There is a Thursday night meeting in Sunnyvale that we are going to go to. That way I can take the train down and we can go to our meeting together. This will also help with my feeling that we need to connect more during the week. And it will help make sure that we both keep going to the meetings. It should be good. We are also going to try to cook together on the weekends so we have healthy lunches and dinners through the week.

I'm feeling nervous about joining again though. I don't want to fail again. I know it's not a black and white, fail or win type of thing. Even if I just loose 10 pounds that is a big success and would be really good for me, health-wise.

I don't have the excuses that I've been using for the past 5 months anymore. I'm settled into the job. The divorce is history. I've moved, so the commute is now a managable length. I need to just do it (to coin a phrase). There's no reason why I should not be eating real meals. I just haven't been. I've been lazy.

Well, now is the time to change that. I know I will feel better if I do. Both physically and with the feeling that I am controlling food, not the other way around.

I don't need to unpack anything else. The important things have been found.

This morning as I was walking to the train, I sneaked some peaks at The Hive (aka the future Kingdom Hall). In addition to some obvious construction worker looking guys, there were a large number of everyday looking folks dressed in working clothes. They had tents set up with water and coffee and donuts and stuff.

And it occurred to me... I think they are going to build the church as a Habitat for Humanity type project. Meaning that everyone in the church helps to build the church.

That is really, really neat. No matter what I think of their practices and beliefs, that is a really cool way to do it. And I respect that a lot.

I had a knock on my door tonight and opened to find two well-dressed strangers. They said they were my new neighbors next door. Which confused me at first, because my neighbors next door are a) not really new, since they were here before me and b) as far as I can tell, white. Okay... this is strange...

They then handed me a piece of paper and said that the construction would be getting noisy over the next few days and they just wanted to let me know. Oh, they are the neighbors in the other direction. Wow, that's kind of nice. I thanked them and they went on their way.

When I closed the door I looked at the piece of paper that they had handed me. It says "Dear Neighbor, We will start construction of the new Berkeley Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses this Saturday..."

Oh my fucking god. I am living next to a nest of Jehovah's Witnesses. Between that, the rumble of the BART trains as they pass under my bedroom floor, the ants in the walls, and the honking of the freight trains from over by the highway, this place just keeps getting better and better. I'm not sure what to do about the Witnesses. Should I paint the doorway with sheep's blood? Draw a pentagram on the door? Leave copies of the Book of Mormon on my doorstep? What can one use for Witness repellent?

*rocks back and forth* 5-minute stroll. It's only a 5-minute stroll to the BART station. (And I'm only here for a year.) A 5-minute stroll. *rocks back and forth*

I am a homewrecker. Ever since I've moved into my new apartment, I have been cleaning cobwebs, squashing ants, and generally displacing all the creepy crawlies that had taken up residence there (the place had been empty for a month or more before I got there).

The biggest displacement so far has been Henry. Henry lived in the ceiling above my second bedroom. When I first moved in I could hear him scratching around in the ceiling. E insisted he was a rat. Maybe more than one rat. Personally, I found the idea of Giant Rats of NIMH with their glowing red eyes living above me too scary for a good night's sleep. I preferred to think that a raccoon or maybe a possum was making the noise.

Well, yesterday the landlord brought over an animal control specialist. They found an opening under the eaves that they plugged with wire. When I got home last night, I heard a terrible racket on the roof of the kitchen. I opened the back door to see what was going on, only to come face-to-face with Henry.

Henry is the biggest, fattest squirrel that I have seen outside of my mother's yard. And he was very, very angry. He sat on the fence flicking his tail and chattering at me. He spent the whole evening running along the roof, looking for a way into his home. Smudge found him outside the bedroom window on the padio gate, again flicking that tail and chattering away. This morning as I was showering I saw squirrel-butt swinging outside the little window as he tried to force his way between the rafters.

Poor Henry. He's very distressed about losing his home. I can't say I blame him. But I do think I will sleep better without hearing him scratch all night long.

The IA Summit Redux in San Francisco is set for Friday, May 6th at 12:30 pm

For those who attended the summit, come see the presentations you missed! And for those who couldn't make it to Montreal, here's your chance to see some great topics presented and catch up with other IA's in the area!

When: Friday, May 6th. Start time: 12:30
Where: Offices of Adaptive Path, 363 Brannan St., San Francisco, CA 94107
Who: You! and bring a friend who might be interested...

Thanks to our sponsors, who have provided a comfortable meeting space and lots of great munchies!

Adaptive Path http://www.adaptivepath.com/
Bolt | Peters http://www.boltpeters.com/
Clickability http://www.clickability.com/
Google User Experience Team http://google.com/intl/en/jobs/eng/ui.html
Research & User Testing, E*TRADE Financial

Presentations:

Brett Lider: Why Amazon is not Enough
Karl Mochel: Design Patterns in Enterprise UI Architectures
Erin Malone, et al: Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study
Sarah Rice: Developing a Faceted Classification
Peter Merholz: Content Genres - The Hidden Workhorse of Information Architecture
Jim Leftwich: The IA of Things: 20 Years of Lessons Learned
Janice Frazier: Leveraging Business Value: The ROI of User Experience
Harry Max, et al: Talking the Talk: Helping IAs Speak the Language of Business
Uday Gajendar: Designing the Enterprise Experience: How IA Advances UCD in Complex Environments
Lane Becker: Working With Content Management Systems...

ongoing - jrFisher: Poster - Interaction Design for Vocal User Interfaces

Organizers:

Sarah Rice, rice@seneb.com
Peter Merholz, peterme@peterme.com
Lane Becker, lane@adaptivepath.com
Brett Lider, blider@gmail.com