ft. lauderdale, take 2

Today, we're giving Ft. Lauderdale another try. We visited the alleged "Venice of the Americas", and were thoroughly not impressed. Not that it was trashy - just sort of empty and tacky. But, we'll see, maybe we just didn't go to the right parts.

Anyhoo, there's plenty more to talk about, which I will do later:
- Miami and South Beach
- watching X-men in the ghetto
- the wonderful weather that we're having ;)

hhhonda!

I'm gonna venture a guess and say that a Honda will win this year's Indy 500.

In fact, I'm willing to bet all my money on it.

Why am I so sure? Well, for one, Honda supplied every engine for the race this year.

Go Honda.

florida

I'm sitting in Palm Beach International, enjoying free wifi, fresh off my flight from Boston. Haven't gone outside yet, but it looks warm and sunny.

Now, there is something that I need to bring up. Kids + airplanes is just not a good combination. Seated all around me was a family with three toddlers. I can handle the screaming, the running around, but when the youngest started kicking me repeatedly, it was a bit too much. Surely, there can be some kind of a gag that they can put on kids? Or, better yet, throw them in a soundproof box in the back of the plane somewhere. Or, charge a nuisance tax, and split it between the people that have to sit next to the little monsters. Kind of like the whole... ah, what's that SI 503 term?

how soon do we forget

American media is great. It's like a bulldog with ADD - it might mess you up, but a shiny object can distract it long enough for you to escape.

Let's recall the 2004 presidential election, not just to say "any reasonable person has told you so", but anyhoo. When asked, "What is the most important issue facing US today?", both contenders answered, "nuclear prolifereation". Well, one might have said "nucular", but that's beside the point. They didn't say "illegal immigration", or "reproductive rights", or even "performance-enhancing drugs in baseball". It was definitely nuclear proliferation.

What do we have today? Iran is still being as belligerent as ever, the conveniently-forgotten North Korea is probably making last minute adjustments to their target maps, and what's on the news? Illegal immigration. Freaktastic.

rainbow power!

So we were having dinner with our good friend Daisk, and guess what's going outside? A rare natural phenomenon called a rainbow! Well, good thing I had my handy new camera ;)

casino

Something very exceptional happened last nite - I walked into a casino, and walked out with more money than I had before. That almost never happens. Well, to me, at least.

The Foxwoods casino still had the last laugh - Chris and Anne more than made up for my winnings. The house always wins, I guess!

Too bad we got back at 7AM - this should make Monday interesting, seeing how I have like 20 presentations scheduled, including one for the boss of my boss' boss (boss^3?)

Oh well. All I care about is that on Friday we're going on va-ca-tion!

why "I am Stan"?

If you didn't attend Tufts between 1999 and 2003, you may have wondered, where did the name of this blog come from? Well, I guess it's time to uncover the mystery.

Senior year, I lived with five other guys. It was like a multicultural Brady Bunch, minus the cleansiness. As you can imagine, our suite saw many visitors, female and otherwise.

Well, my housemates all had their approaches to impressing girls. Hakeem tried to look hard, even though everybody knew he was a softie inside. Daisuke resorted to his rocker appeal. Me, I didn't have to do much - I would just walk around as I normally would, shirtless. Girls swooned at the sight of my cut physique, and guys wanted to be me. Typical stuff, really.

It didn't my housemates long to come up with a name to describe my attitude. Every time I would reveal my rippling muscles, they muttered, "I AAAAM STAAANNN..."

Finally, for my birthday, they made me a Tshirt with my life motto on it. That was a great gift, and I still have it. Once in a while, I wear it to the gym (seeing how I am required to cover myself up), and girls still swoon. Perhaps I should add "... but I'm taken" on the back?

no mommy or bro

So my Mom and my brother left for Russia today. I don't know how my dad will survive for two weeks - the manly man that he is, he doesn't do well in the kitchen. Seeing that he doesn't order out either, chances are that he will proudly eat Raman once the fridge is cleaned out.

Anyhoo, my brother hasn't been back in 11 years. I hope he finds my grandparents well, and that my cousin's wedding goes off without a hitch.

If all the family stuff is taken care off, he can start on the extensive list of purchases that I prepared for him. Software is near the top of that list, but he better not come back without Russian vodka, either.

rain on Anne's parade

So after all the beautiful weekends that we've had, Boston University picked this one to have the graduation. It seems somebody upstairs didn't want people to celebrate anything, as the rain was going from torrential to recockulous. I didn't make it to the university-wide graduation for Anne, Susan's sister, because my brother and I were busy taking our parents to their first dim sum. In other words, in celebration of Mother's day, we fed our mother chicken feet:

Still, I made it in time to see Anne get an empty diploma wrapper in a ceremonious fashion. The proud parents then treated us to a very nice dinner (Chinese food encounter #2 for me).

P.S. The pictures above are taken with my new camera, Canon SD630. I liked my old Canon, code-named "Titanic" (long story), so let's see if this one holds up as well.

IE 7 beta

So I took the plunge and installed the IE 7 beta on my work computer today (seeing how I don't want to sacrifice my home computer just yet), and you know what? It has some neat features! IE finally jumps on the tabbed bandwagon, but it also lets you see thumbnails of all your tabs at the same time with one click. There's also a pretty useful dev. toolbar, and a surprsingly robust zoom feature.

I was gonna rave about it some more, but then the beta crashed on me - oh well, it's still made by Microsoft!

Word of warning: it installs over your existing Explorer. I guess once you go beta, you never go back to 6.

describe this

The person who designed an HP printer/copier combo and named the copy setting "Describe Original" should be shot in the face. I don't know what fuzzy logic one has to use to deduce that choosing that option will make the copier work.

thanks GMail... I think

GMail has definitely made my life better: I can get to my mail from any computer, I definitely appreciate the threading of messages, and I even successfully searched through my archived mail a couple of times. But, GMail took something away - the endless entertainment provided by spam.

Sure, a daily torrent of Viagra ads can be tiring, but an occasional letter from a former Nigerian prime minister can make you feel valued. The best messages are those where you see the spammer giving up on life: "Buy something. Ad jdh kakz. [link]"

Seriously though, whose public execution would draw a bigger crowd: Osama's, or that of a prolific spammer?

sunny day

So Sunny visited on a weekend that could not possibly be any more gorgeous. Last nite, we went out to Orleans, and what did 99.5% of the conversation revolve around? Stevens dating Anne, of course. So yeah, one of my good friends from high school is now dating Susan's younger sister. This is like a soap opera taking place before our very own eyes ;)

montreal report

OK, much time has passed since we came back from Montreal, so this is what I still remember:

- The conference was def. worth it. Main message: we're no longer just UI people, or usability people - we're "user experience" people. That means that we are directly responsible for everything that affects the user, from software performance to packaging. Oh yeah, and if you want to be good at your job, you better know what the developers are doing - if you want to work with them, you better jump right into the trenches.

- Montreal was fun but cold and rainy. Gotta love the bars and the restaurants, but as luck would have it, no trip to Super Sex this time. The Chinatown proved to be a-OK, with some nice dim sum to be had.

- It was nice to see Kathy S, Shibani, Lana, Jude & Serene, and everybody else. Those still in school sure made me glad to be out, and those working made me feel better by sharing that they are facing the same problems I am. All in all, the conference was just a big group therapy session.

- It's good to be a usability guru. I saw one, who will remain nameless, approach a young female with a bulletproof pick-up line, "Hi, have you read my latest book?"