April 25
I love spring. The plants are turning green again and the flowers are blooming and everything is coming back to life again and the weather is tuning warm and the sun is out most of the time and I can bike around Ann Arbor.
I hate spring. My sinuses are constantly clogged and my nose is running and I hack and cough and sneeze and have blinding headaches and am miserable most of the time.
I have terribly springtime pollen allergies. Thank every deity that there is for Claritin and other assorted anti-histamines that help make it possible for me to breathe this time of the year.
Oh, and because I was out of the office in San Jose most of last week my in-box is completely overflowing with email and stuff to catch up on and stuff that I need to do. Completely out of control. Time to play catch up on all of that.
April 24
Home. Unpack. Laundry. Clean. Reassure Merlin that I have not totally abandoned her.
LAN party at John's!!! Lots and lots of various mods of Battlefield 1942. Why not celebrate getting home by spending alomst an entire day playing first person shooter games? Which I completely suck at - but that doesn't stop me from having lots of fun.
April 23
Gotta catch a plane. Back home to Ann Arbor.
April 22
Today was the big symposium. The whole reason that Tom and I can out to San Jose in the first place. I think that it went really well, myself. We got to demo the site to a lot of people and got a lot of very positive and excited feedback from the patients who turned out to the symposium. We didn't get a chance to run any formal user tests - the time and the format of the whole situation simply did not allow for that. So we were having people sit down in front of the site and telling them to just "look for information or a clinical trial that would be interesting to you" and then watching what they did, taking notes, and getting impressions and feedback from them. Sometimes we were able to get people to fill out demographic surveys and overall site evaluations, but it was more important to talk to people and get their impressions then it was to run a formal test with scripted tasks and everything.
One of the really great things of the symposium was meeting and talking to the patients. The reason why we are doing the site in the first place. It can be so easy to loose sight of the end user sometimes... so I am glad that I was able to do this. And I got to meet some really great people. From the 80 grandmother and professional portrait artist to the guy who had been diagnosed at 34 (a REALLY young age for this kind of disease) and was looking at spending more then half of his life with a horribly debilitating illness. It really makes me value my own health.....
After the symposium wound down Tom and I went to Palo Alto to have dinner and wander around Standord and relax a little bit.
April 21
So I am in California. And there is ethernet and wireless available here. Hoorah. It IS civilized here. So I can check my email, read my webcomics and update my blog.
The jet lag hit me a bit harder then I was expecting it to. Mostly it was the fact that we met the big client for an informal dinner last night at 7:00 after we got in. 7:00 actually being 10:00 EST. So I was pretty darn tired and I think that I made a less then stellar presentation of myself at the dinner. At least I don't think that I yawned too much.
It is, overall, pretty nice here. The air smells a little salty, there is different and exciting new vegetation to look at and it is nice and warm. The traffic is horrible. How can there be so many freeways and such bad traffic congestion?
[3:30 EST 6:30 CA time]
I am currently sitting in a conference room in the Parkinson's Institute and
wondering if the group that Tom and I are supposed to be presenting to has
forgotten all about me. If they have oh well. Can't say that we didn't try.
Actually all of today has been more or less of a flop. We spent the whole
day haging out at the Parkinson's Institute trying to interest patients in
doing quick user tests of the website. We didn't really have any takers. And
it was a little hard for me because I hate walking up to strangers and asking
them to do stuff that they don't expect... it is a shyness issue and the reason
that, for instance, sales, would be a super bad career choice for me. But
I digress.
I suppose that Tom didn't actually expect to be wildly successful in recruiting a lot of patients today for tests - that is what the symposium tomorrow is for, after all - but the real point of today was to make ourselves available, make the effort, put in the face time, network... whatever buzzword you want to use for it. Today was all prep work.
Still... it would have been nice to get to play tourist a little bit and see the sights. Not that there are too many sights in Sunnyvale to see. Lots of big buildings with big important company logos on them and lots of traffic. And San Francisco is about 50 miles away, so not too feasible to go there. Tom and I did go to the Apple company store (in Cupertino) yesterday and I got a tshirt. I guess that was my tourist bit for the trip...
[11pm CA time. Too damn late EST]
Rayhawke came up from LA to hang out this evening. Hell of a round trip for
a couple of hours of hanging out together. San Jose and the surrounding areas
are kind of odd, or at least they seem odd to me, because they seem to pretty
much close around nine in the evening. I always kind of had this image of
California being an all night party place. But I guess that is really more
of a NYC scene. Or so Rayhawke told me. It was really cool to see Rayhawke
again...especially since it has been about five years or so.
April 20
Gotta catch a plane.
April 18
Wet cold spring turned the corner into lovely warm spring pretty much overnight. Fencing has moved outside to the north campus belltower. Fencing outside is a nice fantasy in the winter. Fencing outside is very hot and sweaty and the sun in your eyes and sand in your shoes and grassstains on your knees. And you get tired a lot faster because of all of the above. I spent about as much time laying on my back in the grass as I did actually fencing. But it is all good.
And now... I desire ice cream. Or gelato. Either one would be good.
April 17
Saw "Kill Bill vol. 2" last night. It was a good conclusion to the set. My only comment is on the lack of decapitations. There were lots of them in the first movie and none at all in this one.
A good Saturday is a day where you blow off all of your responsibilities and hang out with a good friend. Erica was in town for the weekend, showed up at my apartment at about 2:00 and we proceeded to wander all over Ann Arbor for the rest of the day. Had coffee and gelato, went to Whizzywigs, browsed bookstores, did a little shopping, had dinner at Seva and then cruised through two parties.
Then after I finally got home, I fell asleep on the couch while watching "Iron Chef". I do that a lot...
April 15
I went to the doctor this morning to see about a relatively minor complaint. A minor complaint that I would probably ignore except that with my luck and timing it would have then turned into a Major Complaint right before I went out of town on Tuesday.
I walked out of the doctor's office with high blood pressure medication (note: I did not go in about my blood pressure) and appointments for two follow-up visits to monitor said high blood pressure. I also have a list of dietary do's and do not's with regard to high blood pressure - most of which I am following anyway (like less salt, less sodium, less red meat, etc...) but which obviously haven't done a thing for my blood pressure. I knew that I had high blood pressure. When I had my last physical last summer, I found out about it. But my doctor then (NOT the same doc I saw today) just sort of waved it off. She seemed pretty unconcerned so I took my cue from her attitude. Today, when the nurse noted my high blood pressure, the doc also gave me a blood pressure test to verify (actually, I got two additional tests... just to be sure it wasn't a fluke) asked about family history (high blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks on both sides of my family - classic Type A all the way) and gave me an EKG to make sure my heart was okay (it is) and declared that my blood pressure was WAY too high (142/100) and she wanted me to start on medication TODAY.
Wow. Big difference from the last doc. But let's think about that one for a second. The doc who gave me the brush off was in the Health Plus healthcare system, which is based around Flint. The doc today is in the UM hospital system, based (obviously) in Ann Arbor. Why am I not at all surprised that I am getting FAR better care and attention from a doctor in Ann Arbor?
Interesting note about my heart by the way... apparently I, like about 30% of the population, have an occasional extra beat. It is not bad, or harmful, or indicative of any problems down the road. It just is. I think it is kind of neat myself. Makes me feel kinda "special".
April 14
Day two of endless meetings with the ExecEd people at the business school. Day two of meeting pretty much everybody (other than the faculy) who runs ExecEd and learning what they do and what they do with the website and what complaints that have or have heard about said website and what they would like to be able to do with the upcoming new website.
*gasp for breath*
Actually, it is very cool and very interesting and informative. And just a little bit intimidating that not only are they looking to us to re-design their site, but that they are also doing a MAJOR overhaul of what they do and how they market what they do to the outside world... and they want us to help direct that. Flattering that they think us so capable. And, as I said, intimidating as well. Essentially they are scrapping the current site down to the bedrock and telling us that we have a clean slate to work on.
Strangers can be nice. After the meetings I had to go to the ATM (a branch of my bank is conveniently located on South U.) to get some money so I could retireve my car from the parking structure. The ATM had a little "no service available" message on the screen. So I went inside. And I tried to use my card to retrieve money from the teller. Turns out that all of the National City Bank servers were down, and unless I knew my account number (of course I don't have my account number memorized!) I was out of luck. After a little uneffectual begging and pleading I turned to leave. And a punky looking undergrad stopped me as I was on my way out the door, handed my a couple of bucks (turns out that was just the amount that I needed to pay my way out of the lot, BTW) and said "Here. I heard what you said. I have trouble getting the cask to get out of the pay lots arounf here sometimes too." and then walked off as I tried to stammer my thanks. (For those of you who are Megatokyo fans, it was like the sequence where Piro gives Kimiko his rail card. And I have just identified myself as a manga-loving geek there...)
Damn. Strangers can be nice for absolutly no reason and for no return at all. Every time my cynical self starts to believe that there is no good at all in the human race, something like this happens to change my mind.
A big thank you to the nameless kind stranger.
April 13
[10:30am]
I finally mailed in my taxes. A whole TWO DAYS before the deadline. Man, I am lazy. Though I might not have been quite so lazy if I was actually getting any sort of refund from the government, instead of owing them money. I odn't understand. My W2s ars implicity itself. There is just me - no spouse, no kids, no other dependents - just me. So I get the usual single deduction on my W2s. Problem is that none of my jobs took enough out in taxes for that single deduction. WTF? Ah well, I am not an accountent, so I don't bother to stress about it overmuch. And to give you an extra idea of what a lazy lazy person I am, I mailed my taxes out from work. See, I was out of stamps at home. And it was just a whole lot easier to raid the office manager's supplies then it would have been to stop by the post office on the way in.
[Yesterday]
All of the fabric came in for the costumes that the singers are making to wear at the Kindgom A&S Competition in May. Very gorgeous material. Bolts of raw silk in black and dark crimson, and a bolt of unbleached linen. Gorgeous. I wish my normal clothes were made out of material like this! But I don't sew. And I am paranoid about messing stuff up. So the thought of actually CUTTING this lovely and expensive fabric gives me the heebie-jeebies. What if I do it wrong and there isn't enough fabric for a second try?
[Easter Weekend Recap]
It went very well. A lot better then I had hoped, in fact. I already knew that my folks liked John, but it was nice that he got along with the rest of the relative parade as well. And he didn't even have to pretend to not be bored. (according to him)
Saturday we went down to Akron to see an exhibit of some fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as other books of hours and printed bibles throughout the centuries. Neat exhibit. A little heavy-handed on the preachy, but what do you expect from something like that on Easter weekend? Plus, Akron is edging down into the Bible Belt. The scroll fragments themselves were a bit underwhelming. They could have been blackened newspaper bits for all I could tell. No wonder UV scannng was needed to make out any text at all. But the books of hours and illuminations and other printed bibles were really cool. Some of the more outre examples included - the bible on microfilm (the size of a postage stamp, which went up to the moon with the first lunar landing), an Early American Missionary bible which was printed in a transliteration of Algonquin (I think - the exact Indian language eludes me at the moment), and a tri-lingual bible printed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Ane much more. Then it was back to Cleveland and the Art Museum where we oogled sixteenth century dueling blades and did the usual "Wow, I would sure like to have something like that".
And Sunday was the relative gauntlet. I think my relatives on my Mom's side like John better then they like me. John actually eats, and enjoys, all of the cabbage-based ethnic foods that I do not care for at all.
Good times.
April 9
This weekend is Easter and I am going home (partially to see my folks but mostly for the holiday food).
Right now I am siting at work counting the minutes until I can legitimatly cut out early without looking like too much of a slacker. And it is not like I am overloaded with work here... I have done what I can with what I have to work with on my projects. And getting anything else done at this point hinges on someone who is not even in the office today on taking care of some things that I asked him about. And when I called him at home at about 12:30 to ask him a question, I woke him up.
Right now I cannot ssh from one of our servers to another. And what this means is that the updates I have been working on for five different banking websites cannot be pushed live until the IP strings are fixed. Whenever I try to go to the live server and grab the updates from CVS, I get a pretty little error message saying that the connection is being aborted.
So I am debating whether or not there is any point at all to me staying at work for much longer.
April 8
So I am trying, again, to cut back on my caffiene intake. And one of the things I am trying is to only have coffee before noon. After noon all I can drink is tea. So far, this is not working too well. Yes, I am drinking tea right now, but it is green tea. Which has caffiene in it. And I am eating chocolate covered expresso beans. Which is completely invalidating my "less caffiene" efforts. Curse my weak will and my coffee/caffiene dependency!
I would write more about work, but really, there is not a heck of a lot to say about that right now. I am doing a lot of user testing and analysing the results and writing up reports and making recommendations based on those reports. None of which is terribly exciting. Unless I tell silly stories about what some of the users do. But I hesitate to do that for a couple of reasons... First, it may not seem as funny unless you (my dear reader) have a detailed understanding of what I am testing and why. (And I just don't feel like doing that much typing) And second, I don't want to make any of the users feel bad shold they stumble across this (unlikely). And third, I know that I have co-workers who are aware of this site, and I am not sure how kosher dishing the user testing dirt would be... so I will avoid that issue all together. To summarize. I have had some users who may have done or said things that I thought were silly. But I am not going to tell you about it. Nyah nyah.
I found a great quiz online for Firefly fans... http://fireflyfans.net/feature.asp?f=54
I came out as 88% Mal. Which is kind of odd as I have always thought of myself
as being closer in personality to Kaylee.
April 5
I hate Mondays. It started out with Grace leading a woman into my office at 9am and saying "Your user is here". To which my response was the oh-so-witty (and awake) response of "Uhhh... What user?". Surprise! A user I was not previously aware of. Ta-daaa! And the day just got busier from there. In all ways... a typical Monday.
Then after work I went over the Wacksmuths' so that Sarah's Mom and I could start to hash out plans for Sarah's bridal shower. And we made good progress. We have a date (May 30) and we have a list of potential sites (all of which have to be called to check for pricing and availability) and we will soon have a guest list, and as soon as I have a list I can start to call around town to find out costs for printing invites. Much progress was made. Huzzah. I am somewhat intimidated by my role as Maid of Honor here.....
And my bruises from fencing yesterday are really stiffening up, so I am looking forward to a nice soak in the tub in a little bit.
I had what Eliz termed a "21st Century Moment" the other day. I was walking down the street talking on my cell phone. I stopped at a light to wait to cross the street and saw Eliz on the other side of the street, talking on mer cell phone. (No, we were not talking to each other.) She waved. I waved. When the light turned we got to the same side of the street and promised to message each other on Orkut as soon as we got back to our respective computers. Heh heh. Such is modern life.
A good movie to see: Hellboy. John and I went to see it Saturday night. I loved it - it was just a lot of fun. All I wanted was cheesy entertainment... a good (but not necessarily a very "deep" or "artsy" movie by any means) movie based on a comic book character that I really like. And I was very satisfied. It was exactly what I expected out of it. There have been a lot of movies based on comics lately - some good, some not so good. I am glad that this was one of the good ones.