jobs galore

My mailbox is being bombarded with job postings in greater and greater numbers - I guess the HCI field is hawt right now. Some postings, however, are a bit disconcerting, like the Interaction Designer position that requires a minimum of high school education plus a couple years of HTML/CSS... hmmm. Did I really need a Master's in the first place?

mfa

In preparation for being all wicked cultural in France, we've gone to MFA's Americans in Paris exhibit. An interesting collection, indeed, that did a great job of explaining what it was like to be an American painter learning the craft from the likes of Monet right before the turn of last century.

The best part of the exhibit is that when you're done, the only exit door leads you right into the gift shop. Oh well, they've gotta make their money somehow - it looks like MFA is adding another wing that looks totally sweet on pictures.

kudos, dictionary.com

It's about time - dictionary.com has finally revised their UI, and went from 2 out of 10 to 2.0. They still have pop-ups, some residual ugliness, and way too many ads, but hey, that's what you get for free. Their "Cite This Source" is totally sweet, by the way - wikipedia needs that.

Still, for my money, nothing beats UrbanDictionary.com.

Iran's next?

Remember that speech by Powell, with fancy satellite photos showing Iraq's WMD "factories"? Ah yes, how naive we were... well, now we have "mounting evidence" of Iran's involvement in Iraq. Clearly, we can't do sh#t in Iran without a draft.

Should I start shopping for comfy combat boots?

a small step...

FDA approved a morning-after pill, albeit only for those 18 and over... and apparently only for females - talk about gender discrimination :p

tagged!

Yup, I was tagged by Jude and Serene. Of course, being the creative mind that I am, I'll do the opposite of what's asked of me:

5 things NOT in my our refrigerator
1. empty space (everything is filled up by the veggies that Susan's mom gave us)
2. 12-pack of beer (doesn't fit; just a 6-pack to hold me over)
3. anything I can cook
4. order
5. cleanliness

5 things NOT in my closet
1. anything fashionable
2. shoes (sorry Jonas)
3. Susan's clothes (sorry Susan)
4. speedos
5. me

5 things NOT in my purse man-bag
1. weapons
2. contraband
3. exploding baby formula
4. iPod
5. business cards with my new title (gotta get on that)

5 things NOT in my car
1. front passenger seat
2. roof liner
3. glovebox
4. anything else that can weigh my baby down
5. flip-up LCD touchscreen (damn you, UPS guy!)

5 people I'm tagging:
1. Ma Sweets
2. Jay Kay
3. Daisexy (seriously, stop working Sundays and start bloggin')
4. Jen & Dave (the audience wants baby pictures)
5. God (c'mon old man, if you don't write, I'm gonna continue claiming you don't exist)

the headline we never saw: "Bush is a total tool"

The G8 Summit came and went, and I haven't heard much about what happened. Bear in mind, I try to stay informed, and watch news programs at least once a day. Unfortunately, these news tend to be of the local variety - so yes, I know all about kittens getting stuck in trees, and kooky pedophiles getting extradited from Bangkok... problem is, nothing important is usually mentioned.

Case in point - Bush made a complete ass of himself by implying something to the tune of "Russia should build democracy, kind of like what the US is doing in Iraq". Obviously, Putin quickly came back with "We certainly would not like to have the same of kind of democracy they have in Iraq, I'll tell you that quite honestly."

Question: could Bush be impeached for being a total retard?

gaseous experiment

So, to relieve our country's dependence on foreign oil, I staged a little experiment: for a one tank's worth of gas, I * tried* to drive conservatively. No gratuitous speeding, no revving past 4K - you know, trying to pretend like I drive a Corolla.

Usually, I get 300 miles on a tank. During my experiment, I got 350. Is the difference gonna be enough to get me to slow down? I doubt it. OPEC members, rejoice!

newsss

OK, so apparently Pisit's girlfriend is pregnant, which will make Pisit the first 120 father. Crazy. But hey, something tells me he'll make a better father than Gordon :)

In other news, Yongki definitely got married, or at least hired a whole bunch of Koreans to look happy in the background as he posed in his tux. Congrats in that regard as well.

WUD

Today was the first planning session for the '06 World Usability Day. Last year, apparently, we kicked total ass without realizing what we were doing. The Boston event was the most extensive and best attended WUD celebration in the world. Go us.

It seems that people really enjoyed our exhibit last year, and want us to repeat it. I dunno if I'm up for entertaining kids for 8 hours again, but we'll see.

This November, we'll bring back what worked last year, and have some new stuff, like eye tracking, iRobots, and Legos. The Museum of Science even asked us to prepare a permanent exhibit... we'll see what we can do, I guess!

down with the domain

Damn - my site, my blog, my email, everything was down because my domain registration expired without anybody notifying me. WTF. It took me 3 days of phonecalls to get it back up, and I still need to fax in multiple forms... what a pain.

In the meantime, I had my frisbee tournament, where we won 0 games in 6 hours. Sweet.

long time, no post

Work has been absolute hell lately - and by that I mean that I logged 46 hours this week. I'm trying to get in touch with Oracle user experience through my SI connection, Cari, so that I can give them a piece of my mind. Honestly, it seems like somebody just *forgot* to consult designers, user researchers, and usability folks when they were putting the Portal app together. WTF.

Anyhoo, my coworker pointed me to this URL, http://www.designcritique.net. Guess who runs it? Good ol' Tom Brink. I've been to the site before, but this time around I actually sat down to listen to a podcast, and yup, that's Tom all right.

NYCe weekend

Susan already wrote down everything there was to write down about our weekend. Suffice to say that our trip to NYC, made possible by the Chinatown bus, was awesome! We didn't have enough time to visit everybody we wanted to visit (saweee, Peetah and Daisuke!), or do what we wanted to do (sorry, Astoria Beer Gardens!) but anyhoo, it was good times. It was nice to see Heather and Eugene settle in a place of their own, and I could definitely relate to my brother's stories of having to move countless metric yards of clothes and makeup while knowing that only 0.005% of it will ever be used. Oh yeah, and apparently there was Heather's Rolodex, too. Ah the sacrifices of a relationship.

Same as every time I visit NYC, I'm glad to go, but even more glad to come back to our clean city with normal people, wide open spaces, and roads that you can actually drive (and park!) on. Boston, you're my home!