March 31
So what am I doing tonight after a long day at work testing and designing sites for other people? That's right... I am back at my computer and I am working on my own site. It has been suggested that I need a hobby. Well... this kind of is my hobby. One of them, anyway. So it was suggested that I join the new play-by-email game that Zach is going to start up in a couple of weeks. That's right.... yet another computer-based activity to take up my non-work free time. Though I will probably join. I am very vulnerable to peer pressure that way.
March 29
I brought the Nopjes Zout with me to gaming on Friday. Partly because John had been asking to try some of it (I had described it to him in detail and he was intrigued) and partly because I wanted to see how many other people I could con into trying some. Of the whole group only Douglas abstained from the zout. I think that David Carter's expression of horriffied disbelief was the best - it made me wish that I had thought to bring along a camera (though that might have tipped people off). Katy did this little jump and shiver...and she likes salty black licorice. And Eric and John managed with (mostly) straight faces. Eric even had a seconf piece of his own free will!
Then I had two bottles of Eric's very strong ginger beer over the course of the session and felt slightly ill as a result.
A good movie: "The Ladykillers" - a remake of a classic. John and I went to see it Saturday evening. It was wonderful. Very well done and very funny. Excellent acting. If you like classic movies (and their remakes) then this is a movie for you!
I brought the zout to fencing with me on Sunday as well. (It was truly a zout filled weekend!) Only DeForest, one of the new fencers (whose name eludes me at the moment) and one of the heavy fighters braved the zout. No memorable reactions this time, though. I think that the zout may prove to be very useful as a sort of a character test... and I also doubt that I (no matter how much help I manage to wrangle) will manage to finish the whole bag before it goes totally stale.
March 24
Okay, so Sarah suggested it and Josh concurred with her... the black text on the dark grey background just had to go. It was, the reported, just too darn hard to read. So I made some alterations. I kept the dark background (I like the dark ground - is that so very wrong?) but I lightened the text. And for your special reading pleasure, I even added a highlight feature so that when you (the user) mouse over the paragraphs of text, the highlight even more! Isn't this easy to read? I hope so.
Does my audience like this new style better then the previous one? How does my audience like the other color shifts? (Don't worry, I still have the old stylesheet around should I ever want to re-apply it...)
Other then this little bit of fun with my site, it has been a quiet evening.
March 23
You know that I am feeling a wee bit tired and burned out if I decide to skip FAKBN at Katy and Eric's so that I can vaccuum and do laundry and putter around my apartment. And after two solid weekends of being gone, simply puttering around my place is a pretty appealing activity.
And now... more candy!
Griotten. Soft, sweet, black licorice cubes that look like they were covered
with raw sugar.
Nationality: Holland. More Dutch candy. (Why do the Dutch have such good candy?)
Taste: These are the anti-matter version of Nopjes Zout. Sweet and good. And
not some form of candy punishment. No, these are not a candy to be feared...
De Bas Chocolatier: Chocolate Key Lime
Nationality: Unknown
Appearance: Um...they are green. Well, they are key limes I guess...
Taste: Good. Chocolaty. Kinda bland, though. I was expecting a lot more zing
from something that claimed a close relationship with a member of the citrus
familty.
March 22
Why does a stressful Monday always have to follow a relaxing weekend and just completely erase all of the benefits derived from that relaxations? It is one of the great mysteries of life.
This weekend was the semi-annual Depression Glass show in Cleveland. And I made the semi-annual pilgrimage to Cleveland to go to it with my Mom and Grandma. No huge disasters occurred this time - although Mom did knock a goblet off of a display table. To her credit it was an inexpensive goblet and she was trying to make sure that I did not drop a large and rather expensive bowl at the time. She and the dealer spent an amusing couple of minutes appologizing to each other - Mom was insisting on paying for the breakage and the dealer was insisting that it was his fault for overstocking the tables - before it was decided that Mom would pay the dealer what he had paid for the glass. And both of them were happy.
I got to meet some of the other people in my Grandma's Depression Glass club. All of whom were extremely excited to see a "young person" (someone under 30 - once again I was probably the youngest person there) who was interested in antique glass. One of them, Ethel, who is a fiesty 95, declared that she had "more stuff under her bed then most of these people" (ie. the dealers). Apparently she has a three story house, every inch of which is filled with Depression Glass.
I got some nice pieces, namely a cut-glass compote (radiant sunburst pattern) from the 1920s. I need a bigger apartment (or a house?) so I can get a nice display cabinet for my collection.
It was also my Dad's birthday this weekend, so on Saturday night my folks, my Grandma, and I went to a very nice restaurant in Little Italy. It is a good thing that I can't afford to eat out like that all of the time... the food was so rich and yummy....
And then home Sunday. The end of the second weekend in a row that I spent out of town.
Merlin missed me. Sure, she acted like she didn't care, but I could tell...
March 16
Weather: shitty. Snowed again, and I was just yesterday remarking that it was getting so nice that I would be able
to bike to the office soon.
Work: hectic. And it is not even a Monday!
Enough of that. On to something interesting.
While I was down in Dayton with Sarah she took me to this great grocery store called Jungle Jim's. Which feastures a lot of specialty and imported foods. Kind of like Whole Foods, only more warehouse-like, less pretentious, and way more variety. I have to admit that I went kind of nutty in the imported candy section. And now that I have tasted (most) of my purchases, I must rate the most entertaining - a la the most amusing site Bad Candy.com (for which I will always thank Josh for introducing me to)
Today's candies are all Dutch in origin.
First up we have Stroopie. Which are crispy, crunchy little waffle cookies that are seemingly held together by thick honey.
Verdict: Wonderful! I must buy these again!
Nopjes Zout. Double salted black licorice drops.
Ingredients: sugar, licorice extract, ammonium chloride. (Ammonium chloride?!?!)
Assessment: Tastes like pennance. Even if you love black licorice, which I do.
Conclusion: It will take me forever to finish these. I think one a day is the most I will be able to handle.
March 15
Whee! The books I ordered from Amazon arrived over the weekend! I know what I am going to be doing tonight. Mmmmmm.....books.....
What book am I? Answer the quiz questions and find out!
You're Prufrock and Other Observations!
by T.S. Eliot
Though you are very short and often overshadowed, your
voice is poetic
and lyrical. Dark and brooding, you see the world as a hopeless effort of
people trying
to impress other people. Though you make reference to almost everything,
you've really
heard enough about Michelangelo. You measure out your life with coffee
spoons.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
March 14
Yeah, getting out of Ann Arbor and forgetting my work for the weekend was nice. And it was nice to get to see Jonah again, even if it was only for a little bit. (Note to self: try to get out to see Jonah again) Not to mention spending the weekend with Sarah.
Argh. My friends are all scattered too much around the country. I wish that I could visit everyone. How did anyone ever manage to keep in touch before the intenet? Yeah, I know - letterwriting... but I have never been that great with writing letters. Email and IM are more my style. With letters, I always feel like I ought to write some long missive, and pepper it with sketches and photos and other little curiosities. So I find letters to usually be too involved and time consuming. I feel less...guilty...about sending off a short email or IM to say hi to someone. But I never felt quite right about sending short letters. I wonder why?
Never mind wondering how people kept in touch before the internet. How did people even manage to meet each other before the internet existed to mediate interpersonal relationships? I guess that people figured that since you can shop for just about everything else online, you might as well shop for friends and relationships there as well. Is this because the "regular" avenues for meeting people (through friends, school, sports, hobbies, etc) are not as accessible, or because people spend so much time working that they don't have time to meet people more conventionally and figure that they will just cut through all of the bullshit and order up what sounds the best? I dunno. I will leave that question for the philosophers. I just think it is interesting....
My latest internet related time sink is orkut.com - which is an online networking community. Tom got me started on it by inviting me to joing his network, so any amount of time that I waste on orkut, I feel free to blame on him. Heh heh. I think it is kind of fun to mess around with, but I am going to try not to take it too seriously. Or let it suck up too much of my free time.
March 13
Currently I am down in Dayton visiting Sarah. (But this won't go up until sometime tomorrow, when I get back to Ann Arbor.)
It is just damn nice to get out of Ann Arbor and totally away from all work for a couple of days. I don't even think I needed to take any time off for yesterday - I already had enough hours in. Heh. Kind of funny that. Anyway, this is almost like a working vacation, since I am helping Sarah with some of the wedding planning while I am here. I just today got (well, was measured for and ordered) my maid of honor dress. It is really pretty, a strapless, tea-length dress in claret. Very nice. Just way fancier then I am used to. But it is not too formal looking, so hopefully I will be able to wear it for other occasions then just the wedding. I still need to get some shoes though...
Right now Sarah is napping (shopping can be tiring!) and Mike is making dinner and I am typing away and there is a Red Wings game (versus Dallas) on TV, so life is good.
March 12
[9:30am]
An update on the betta who played dead.
He is actually dead this time. No faking.
March 10
Okay. My betta is freaking me out.
There is this Far Side comic - there are these two people sitting and reading newspapers, and one of them says to the other "I hate it when the goldfish does that, it creeps me out". Or something like that. Whicle the goldfish in question is floating upside down about a foot above the fishbowl. Note to self: look up this comic so I can properly reference it...
My betta is not quite that bad. But it does sleep (or whatever the fishie equivalent is) laying on the bottom of the tank. Or floating on its side at the top of the tank. It looks dead when it does this. And I go in with the little net to scoop it out and give it the traditional watery burial, and the fish wakes up and swims away as soon as I touch it. It just freaks me out. It looks dead when it does this.
March 8
[10:50pm]
Fish tank maintenance night.
Do I have a fish tank or an unusually watery
terrarium? Had to weed out the plants again due to rampant overgrowth. Pulled
out about half of them and trimmed the rest so that they were well below the
water line. Still have a lot (maybe too many) plants in there, but at least
I can see my fish again. Maybe I should ditch the live plants and go back to the safe, neon, plastic ones.
[10:30am]
First time for everything. I just had a user get up and walk out of a test. This has never happened to me before. About 30 seconds into the first task she up and said that she felt "uncomfortable" with me watching and timing and taking notes. Ummm... I'm sorry? How else do you want me to do this? Anyway, she got up and left. How do you help people to understand that we are not testing them... we are testing the site. Chris said that she probably left because she was afraid that she would look stupid...
Today was a particularily long day at work. One of those days where it feels like I do nothing but try to catch up to all of my work, only to find out that I have in fact fallen further behind. *sigh* I think that I will have to take some amount of work home with me tonight, which does not make me happy. At least it is the sort of mindless work that I can do while watching "Trading Spaces" and "While You Were Out" on TV. I have become addicted to home improvement shows. Possibly because I am sick of apartments and want to get a house.
Anyway... the weekend. Generally good, though the weather was far from ideal. I was hoping that it owuld contiune to be as warm as it was during the week (when I was at work and thus could not enjoy it) but instead it turned cold and rainy and then snowed. Friday night gaming was cool - as usual. David Carter is an awesome GM. Saturday I went in to work for a couple of hours. In the evening John and I rented "Lost in Translation", which was not quite what I had hoped it would be. It was good, but kind of plotless, and I don't think that it should have been Oscar quality. "Big Fish" (I loved this movie) was much better.
March 4
Staged a nice return to my book-obsessed roots last night. I guess hitting the library during lunch the other day inspired me. Got through a book and a half. Granted, they were short - for me. Neither was over 350 pages. And both are kind of light fare - murder mystery suspense thrillers. Pretty far afield from my last book kick, which was all forensic anthropology stuff. (And I highly recommend both "Stiff", "Dead Men Do Tell Tales", and "Death's Acre")
I will finish the half-book I still have left after singing practice tonight. Or maybe during lunch break today.
David Carter hates that I read so fast. Nyah-nyah. :)
March 3
[11am]
Ooooo.... gooey butter bars...
David had many left over from the Oscar party on Sunday when we went over last night to watch "Angel" and "Ultraviolet" (Which is a very fab British vampire miniseries. and I dig the fact that the last name of one of the actresses is "Harker").
Butter bars are great, all sweet and gooey and sticky, but you just don't want to know what goes into them. For your own peace of mind. Otherwise you might not enjoy them... I know that one of the components is butter (of course) and I think there is also something like a pound of confectioners sugar, and it kind of goes on in that vein for a while... suffice to say that I like them.
Anyway, today we will be experimenting with a day long updating scheme. (hence the time stamp above) Partially because I feel like it, and partially because I have a lot of user testing going on at work today, and users are always good for a few stories. So we will see how this goes.
[1:30]
Well, the first user had trouble finding the office... had to be talked in on her cell phone, but handled the prototype site all right. No interesting stories here... and I need to get ready for the next one in any case...
[4:00]
This user seemed surprised that we would test a site that was not done yet. Well... that is kind of the point of user testing, isn't it? To catch and fix the problems and clean up the confusing bits before the site is finished? Because it is cheaper in the long run to find and correct any problems up front rather then waiting around till after something is done when it will take a lot more effore to make any changes.... sorry for the evangelizing there, but that is just the way it goes when it comes to usability. All part of quality. Would you rather Ford found and fixed a faulty air bag now or ten months and a bunch of accidents from now? I realize that a badly designed web site isn't going to kill you, but it will make your web browsing a lot less fun.
One user still to go. I am tired. I am hungry. I want a cup of tea. Most of all I want to go home and curl up on the couch with a book for the rest of the evening. Not for another couple of hours, though...
[6:15]
Done. done for the day, anyway... I have tons more user testing the rest of the week. No really good stories today, but maybe another time.
I think that I will go to Seva for dinner. Yummy vegetarian goodness. And then home to a book, a fire, and my cat sitting on my lap...
March 2
So much for the old adage, "in like a lion, out like a lamb". This March is starting out pretty lamb-like. Currently it is beautifully sunny, about 50 degrees, and all of the ugly grey snow is melting away. This probably means that we are due for a blizzard this weekend... I walked to the library during lunch to return some books (and pick out some new ones of course) and it was so nice I almost didn't go back to the office.
Oscar Night recap: so everyone one knows that LOTR totally swept the Oscars, which is kind of neat. And it is nice that a sci-fi/fantasy movie won best picture for the first time ever. But there were a lot of other good movies in the running that should have gotten something. Like "Seabiscuit" and "Pirates of the Caribbean". And for the record, I think that Keisha Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider") should have won for best actress and Ben Kingsley ("House of Sand and Fog") should have won best actor. And LOTR didn't deserve all of the Oscars it won (best song? No way. And best score? Please... it was the same score for all three movies!). So there.
Since there is apparently a long standing tradition in my group of friends of betting on who will win what for the Oscars, I grabbed a golf pencil and a score sheet and selected my choices. I got the lowest score of everyone. Note to self: never get into betting on sports and steer clear of Vegas altogether.
(begin work-related rant here)
And a quick note on clients and user testing. Perhaps I am wrong in thinking this, but if someone is detailing to you (the client) a user testing report, it seems rather rude to interrupt them mid sentence and start ranting about how we are basing a site design "totally in a void, without any feedback". Hello? What do you think "user testing" is, if not feedback?! As the person who was giving the report and who was interrupted, I was rather pissed off. Just because you are a client does not exempt you from the basic rules of courtesy.
(end of rant)