Arbitrary Musings

Earlier last week I met with my new dietician; our goal is for me to eat particular food groups throughout the day so that I have the correct ratio of dairy, protein, fruits, vegetables, grains, and fats, all in 3 meals and 3 snacks. It sounds like a lot, but everything is in the right portion size. Before I went to the grocery store, I studied the list of protein sources, fat sources, etc. so that I knew what to purchase.

While I was in the fruit section of fresh produce, I spied upon a display of coconuts. Usually I’d pass by without even noticing, but that fact that it was on my list (2 Tbsp coconut = 1 fat serving) and had a sign which boasted “quick crack“, I thought I would give it a try.

The coconut was easy enough to drain. Once the liquid starting trickling out through one of the holes I had pierced, I simply had to hold it above my mouth and catch a few drops, pretending for a short moment that I was in a movie. The opening of the shell itself was much more difficult. I think the company that scored the coconuts for easy opening think of the term “quick” as relative compared to, say, the time it took for man to evolve from a one-celled organism to the homosapiens we are today. Although there was a distinct line where the coconut was already scored, I had to cut into it further with a knife to weaken the shell. I looked around for something to crack open the shell since my hammer was at work, currently being used to hang frames in my office. I was eventually able to crack it in two by whacking it with the back of a chef’s knife. It might have been easier with a cleaver as suggested, but I didn’t have one. I do love how they explicitly mention to use the backside of the cleaver. Of course, there was also the matter of cutting the meat out of the coconut. All in all, I know I spent at least 1 hour dealing with that one piece of fruit.

On the bright side, I didn’t sustain any injuries, such as getting my hand cut, being stabbed in the leg by reef coral, or knocking my own tooth out with an ice skate. I just wish I had a volleyball to talk to during the whole endeavor. Willllsoonnnn!

Another short post, this time about something I noticed on the way to work. As I was driving on the freeway, I noticed the black VW Beetle in the lane to my right, sporting a biodiesel bumper sticker. “Awesome”, I thought. Here’s someone who’s proud to show that she cares about our air and the environment as a whole.

Of course, this was somewhat negated by the fact that she was spewing cigarette smoke from her mouth while tapping ash out of her window. I guess everyone has trade-offs: less pollution of the environment, more pollution of your alveoli.

From a co-worker:

I would love to be a vegan. But I love eating meat!

And from my yoga instructor (while sitting in baddha konasana):

While keeping your feet together, slowly move your knees further apart. Now say ‘hello!’ to your groins!

Unlike the latest Mac ad, my Windows hard drive is quite sparse. I’m very cognizant of what I’m installing, where it’s going, and what version it is. Suffice it to say, no new programs get on it unless I plan to use it frequently and I can trust it.

This brings me to tonight’s tale. There’s been some less-than-subtle pressuring by my girlfriend to share the photos I took during our trip to Vancouver. However, I didn’t want to do it unless I did it right. Memory card readers are everywhere now: they can be found built into computers, monitors, and sold as cheap peripherals to attach to your Win/Mac/Linux box. I suspect that there’s a smaller and smaller population of users who still persist using the importing software that comes with digital cameras. (Coincidentally, I have a lot of qualitative data confirming this that was collected during my recent site visits to watch users in their homes).

Now, I always like to remain very much in control of what’s going on with files in my computer. Historically, I’ve used a wonderful third-party file utility in Windows to copy directories of pictures from the camera’s memory card to a local drive, then use another application to do lossless JPEG rotation and viewing, and yet another program for editing/touch-ups. It was great when I was the only one looking at the pictures. But now with everyone sharing albums on the Interweb, I wanted to use a single program to import, rotate, annotate, upload, and share pictures. I had already used Picasa for simple touch-ups and resizing, but had never used it for a much more complete scenario beginning with the insertion of a card into the computer to the sharing of those photos with friends and family. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I didn’t want to install any more software on my computer. My friend Ankur had recently shared a Picasa Web Album with me; upon further research, I was happy to hear I didn’t need anything other than Picasa itself to share. With Picasa already being used for particular tasks, why not play the role of Joe User and trust that one program could do all the work?

As you can gather from the title, the experience was delightful. Besides a few minor UI qualms that irk me mainly because of my background in design and usability, the flow through the process was smooth. Dialogs had the right amount of information. Commands were where I expected them. Performance was great. And the big question: would I use it next time? Without a doubt, yes.

Wait just one moment, I hear my employer calling. “What’s that? You’re reading this as I’m writing it? And you want me to use the what? The new ‘Windows Picture and Video Import’ in Windows Vista? No thanks, I like what I’m using. And your solution has too many words. While you’re at it, why don’t you read what Paul has to say about the importing tool? No, I don’t want more ‘wow’ in my life. Okay, bye.”

Sorry about that. Let’s recap: Picasa good. Girlfriend happy. No new programs. And a new blog post out of it too!

Let’s face it: many of us spend a lot of time on those social networking sites. And I’m willing to bet that most of you have accounts on more than one of them. By my last count, I’m on six different sites:

• For staying in touch with friends, I use Facebook (my favorite) and Myspace.
• To network with business colleagues, there’s LinkedIn.
• To keep current with events, we have Meetup and Upcoming.

Then there’s the multitude of other sites I’m not currently registered on: Friendster, Orkut, Yahoo 360, Live Spaces, and the list goes on…

Off topic: Notice I put Live Spaces last? The only people I know who use it are employees of Microsoft. I wouldn’t really call that “success”.

Back to the topic at hand. Simply put, there are way too many of these sites for anybody to visit daily, unless you’re unemployed, in college, etc. I’ve seen this type of thing before in other paradigms…

• Users can have several different IM accounts (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, etc.). Instead of having multiple programs at once, new chat clients came along that solved the problem, e.g. Adium (Mac OS X), Gaim (cross-platform), and Trillian (Windows).
• Who doesn’t have more than one e-mail account? Clients like Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform) can create a “global” Inbox to collect messages from all your accounts; when you write new messages, you can choose what account you’re writing from.

So, where’s the program or website to manage all the social networking sites? Couldn’t you imagine it?

• You’d have one area to read and write all “public” messages; these would map to your MySpace comments, your Facebook wall, etc.
• Another part of the program/site collects your private messages.
• Contacts could be grouped by service; you could create “meta-contacts” that represents the same person on multiple services.
• Etc.

Is this out there? Is someone creating this? Have I just lost a million dollar idea? By the way, if this service is out there, the would-be creator has not done a great job of promoting their innovation.

One of the perks of being at my current job is that I have a free membership to a very nice gym. When I lived in San Diego, the “gym” was usually the exercise center at an apartment complex or those that were on site at Qualcomm. I never had something to complain about (or perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t have a blog to do so).

There are a couple of digital scales in the men’s locker room at the gym which display your weight to within a tenth of a pound. Due to their location, a lot of members use them before entering or exiting the showers. Okay, that’s fine. However, I chuckle to myself every time I see someone deliberately take off their towel, drop it on the floor, and step onto the scale in their birthday suit.

Now, I know most men are more comfortable with their body image than I am, but do you really need to be showing your junk just to achieve an extra 0.1 lb of accuracy? Honestly, people, how much does that piece of cotton weigh? I’m almost tempted to put a sign up in front of the scales:

The towel you have dropped by your side weighs 0.1 lbs (dry) and 0.2 lbs (post-shower). As most of you are Microsoft engineers, you are more than capable of performing the subtraction in your head. Please keep the towel on, and thank you for sparing us the genitalia show.

Of course, it goes without saying that I don’t mind the towel-shedding in the women’s locker room…

While reading Dooce this evening, I noticed an interesting side ad which I decided to click on, thereby helping pay for Leta’s college tuition. Anyhow, the site in question let’s you create a t-shirt (though they’ve run out for the day) with an artistic depiction of your favorite drink from Harbucks…err, I mean Starbucks. You can also make wallpapers (though they should provide widescreen resolution sizes) and icons in two sizes.

The first thing I did was notify my girlfriend about the site; she humorously knows the acronyms of some of my preferred drinks, such as a GTSFVNFEHL (Grande triple sugar-free vanilla nonfat extra-hot latte). Of course, I’m more likely to use soy milk these days after a discussion with my nutritionist, but that’s besides the point.

After telling her about the fun to be had, I played around more with the near-endless possibilities of drinks that can be created. What impressed me more than anything else are the edge cases that either someone in UX or QA thought of. Here are some examples of creations that will pop-up a notification:

• Creating a half-decaf drink with 1 or 3 shots
• Choosing “room” and “no room” as two of your custom options
• Choosing “wet” and “dry” as two of your custom options
• Choosing “whipped cream” and “no whipped cream” as two of your custom options
• Selecting more than three custom options
• Creating a drink with at least 1 shot (in step 1), then selecting the hot chocolate as the type of drink (in step 5)
• and the list goes on…

However, there are some bizarre combinations you can create which don’t make any sense. For example, you can make an iced drink with “xtra-hot” as one of the options. Or, how about a “Grande iced xtra-hot iced black tea?” (Yes, iced appears twice). Your hot chocolate can also be made 1/2 decaf or fully decaffeinated. Of course, I realize that the application can’t be perfect, but it sure gives us something fun to play with!

If only I could order a t-shirt displaying a bizarro drink with the caption “corner case” underneath it…

So apparently there was some awards show that aired the other night which I paid absolutely no attention to. First off, like in most years prior to now, I didn’t know who was nominated. There have been exceptions to this; usually it’s during a year where a particular artist I’m fond of is nominated, then subsequently never wins the award. Here’s a bit of trivia for you: this has now happened 9 times since 1994. Can we please just give her one? Also, while we’re at it, can we toss another one to Danny for his wonderful scores? The man has been nominated 10 times, and only won once. Not to mention the Oscar and Emmy nominations…

Anyways, getting back to the main point. While on a break today, I decided to peruse the winners. Let me just say that I’m confused as to how artists are classified. For example, I can understand that Red Hot Chili Peppers would be Rock. But why is Gnarls Barkley competing (and winning) in Alternative? And Death Cab for Cutie is Pop? Also, of all the “fields” that the Grammys are awarded to, they don’t even televise half of the ones I’m actually interested in. (Of course, the irony is is that I’ve stopped watching, so I wouldn’t know if they aired in the first place). Categories like Folk (which Ani should receive more nominations in), Classical, Comedy, and Polka. Okay, kidding about polka. But usually what is nominated, what wins, and what the producers decide to show on the air are artists and songs that appeal to the masses, which is a population I don’t belong to. And in some way, I suppose I like that fact.

Ending on a positive note, congratulations to Lewis Black for winning Best Comedy Album, Adam Jones for Best Recording Package, and OK Go for Best Short Form Music Video. Who knew that setting up treadmills and moving around on them could win you a Grammy?

For those of you that know me, I’m not one to toot my own horn, pat myself on the back, etc. However, from time to time, I perform some act or have some thought that truly amazes me. Tonight was one of those nights.

Due to the cold, the drizzle, and the fact that I didn’t have my nice running jacket & cap on hand, I headed straight from the office to the gym. I didn’t feel much like lifting weights or doing crunches, but I needed a good run, and I felt the treadmill would suffice. I’m not sure if it was the strap I was wearing to help support my IT band, the gel I gulped down after 2.5 miles into the run, the simple desire to pass my maximum, or some combination of those factors, but I ended up running non-stop for just over 7 miles. In slightly over 1 hour. That was just over my goal of a 10k (or 6.2 miles). Once I hit the 10k mark, I thought, “Eh, let’s just go past it and hit 7.” And that I did.

I remember the days of running the mile in junior high school, when I would be out of breath, near the back of the group. I always imagined I’d be able to go the entire distance without slowing down to a walk. I guess it only took my body an extra 15 years or so to catch up to my dreams (and multiply it by 7).

Half-marathon, you’re not too far off! (Okay, maybe you’re a little over 6 miles off, but you know what I mean).

Maybe you missed it, but Bill Gates gave a webcast yesterday from New York, celebrating the general availability of Windows Vista and Office 2007. It’s available from here now.

After Bill gave the introduction, Mike Sievert, a corporate VP, gave a demo of some of the features in Windows Vista. I was only half-paying attention, enjoying the free cake, but there was something Mike said around 17:20 into the video that made me say to myself, “Umm, excuse me?” And I quote:

“What Uno for Windows Vista can do is something that games before have never been able to do, and that’s cross-platform play.”

This “never before” feature is the ability for Mike to play Uno on Windows Vista with his son, who’s playing it across the country on his Xbox 360. Now, I don’t blame Mike for giving the speech, but when they crafted this presentation, did any of the writers forget that Final Fantasy XI has been doing cross-platform play for nearly three years?! (Although the PC version was released in October of 2003, the PS2 version didn’t come out until March of 2004). And, for those critics who say, “Well, what about Xbox 360 cross-platform play?”, FFXI for Xbox360 came out in April of 2006. That’s three different platforms playing the same game.

So, this is for Microsoft, Apple, or any other company making such broad claims. Before you make such a general statement that something is the “first time” it has been done, please make sure it truly is the first time.