can't spell "new year" without NY

As usual, my travel plans were grand, ambitious, and foolproof. And, as often happens to be the case, they exploded in my face in all kinds of ways.

Roman graciously gave me a ride all the way into Brooklyn - we took a little longer than expected, but otherwise made it OK. As the next step, I was supposed to call my brother's girlfriend's brother, and retrieve the keys for Eugene's apartment.

Ed (Heather's brother) didn't pick up at first, but that just gave me a chance to wander around Brooklyn looking for the subway. I did manage to find it, but only by asking a passerby for help while standing directly across the street from the entrance (they should really mark those better!)

Then, a phone skirmish ensued, with me trying to talk to Eugene, Susan, Ed, Chris, and Matt all at the same time. Note to self: must learn how to switch between different calls on my phone without hanging up on everybody.

The best part was that the N train wasn't running in the Manhattan direction, so I had to take it all the way to Coney Island(!), and then all the way back. Ed was a good sport about it, but I was about two hours late.

I ultimately did manage to find my way to Chris and Anne's, where we watched the Patriots make history... 16-0, yessss!!!

all quiet on the xmas front

It’s Xmas eve, so 99% of my company took the day off. The resulting peace and quiet allowed me to think a little bit…

You know how tag clouds indicate the importance/usage of a term by making it larger? I personally think that’s a pretty good visual indicator, so I started thinking where else it could come in handy.

Browser bookmark folders tend to disintegrate into heaps of useless information (we actually picked that up during our last intracompany ethnographic study). The whole tagcloud-ish idea could be used here, even with the existing linear format – bookmarks that you use more often can grow subtly, so that they attract more attention when the folder is opened. Of course, I’m not convinced that a directory tree is the best way to store bookmarks either, but that’s what we have, given the lack of competitiveness in the browser market.

On a completely different tangent: within my company, we do an absolutely terrible job with action buttons. Positioning, order, and appearance are never the same from application to application. Here, too, we should indicate the preferred or expected action with a button that calls more attention to itself, possibly by using a larger font. I’m actually guilty of letting this one app go live with OK/Cancel buttons – “Cancel” was about twice as large as “OK”, just because the text string inside was longer. Of course, color is another decent (but not infallible) designator – but with that, you have to stay consistent. PayPal comes to mind as a habitual offender of the “consistency of action buttons” law; it’s actually amusing to see them struggle over the years, getting closer and closer to uniformity but never quite reaching it. But yeah, peaking behind the scenes, I understand how difficult it is to implement consistent interfaces, where one development team is so separate from another that they might not even be aware of each others’ existence. And it’s always the job of the UX guy to crawl across the no-man land and ask, “Hey guys, can you change your buttons?”

merry xmaschanukwanznewyear!

Ah what a great time of the year! I must say, if there was one good thing this Judeo-Christian thing gave us, it is this season. People conveniently forget about work and remember their friends and family, which is great.

Of course, as with just about anything inspired by religion, people tend to take it a little too far. I am seriously concerned about the safety of my brother and his girlfriend Heather, as well as Chris and Anne, who all decided to brave the mob at the mall today. Then again, maybe it's the mob mentality that keeps the yearly rituals alive - like the long lines of people returning merchandise the day after Xmas, and the well-meaning idiots that buy an annual gym membership just to show up during the month of January.

This brings me to my next point. It saddens me how fleeting our good intentions are sometimes. A lot of people are finally waking up to the fact that consumerism and lack of concern for nature are biting us in the ass in a major way. Yet come Xmas, those concerns are discarded in favor of wasting gallons of gas while looking for "just the right gift" that's supposed to package your feelings in gift wrap.

This year, Susan and I independently came up with the same idea - while we still want our families to have a great holiday, we are fighting back against a wasteful custom of buying gift paper that is discarded a second after the gift is opened. We're wrapping our gifts in newspaper, which we'll recycle later.

And you know what? Our boxes look very stylish... may I even say smart-looking?

Happy holidays, everybody!

juicy tidbit

An interesting piece of information that's completely skipped over by the media: Casey Aldridge, the dude that impregnated Britney Spears' little sister, works as a pipe-layer.

No, I kid you not.

He lays pipe for a living.

the more things change, the more 120s stay the same

Well, what can I say. Quite a reunion this weekend. Hakeem is still single, Gordon danced with a Japanese dude, Pisit was three hours late, and Jon couldn't even make it. Good to see that some things stay constant as years go by.

Because Daisk snapped pictures about every five seconds, we've got some qualiteeee ones here.

And for the record: I'd be oh so much happier if those Soulja Boy lyrics were never translated to me...

bye bye, miss american pie

I'd like to put a big red plastic X on the whole idea of America. We've had a good run, but this country is clearly going down the tubes. Just as the Romans got too fat and lazy to fight off the barbarians, so are we kneeling down in front of an enemy that we created ourselves. The enemy's name is consumerism.

When I saw this thing sold at a hardware store, I made a mental note to look for my passport, as the end may be closer then we think:

Yup, it's exactly what you think it is. A plastic snowball maker. Probably made in China, probably from oil extracted in the Middle East. Our place in the equation? To pay $15.99 for something that YOU SHOULD USE YOUR HANDS FOR!

hans & franz

When my Russian buddy Roman and I are working out, the onlookers may be reminded of a certain SNL skit... on Friday, that was particularly the case. Roman came up with the idea of doing 50 pull-ups (not all at once - we're not Ahhnolds). The first few sets were OK, but after the 3rd one or so my muscles started wondering what the hell was going on - and the number of reps dropped dramatically, until I could barely do one pull-up. The audience was treated to quite a sight, as I tried recreating "electrocution by hanging" a few times. Good stuff.

Then, on Saturday, Roman dragged me out to go cross-country skiing - which was really cool, if only I remembered how to ski properly. I must say though, that's a workout and a half right there.

Needless to say, my arms and back are feeling it today. At least I get to walk around with what Rob Stone called "ILS" - the Invisible Lats Syndrome ;p

'cmon, give us some respect

The fact that we're not contemplating impeachment over the latest Bush farce just goes to show how ridiculous things have become. I mean, we have a President who was either too dumb to digest the intelligence provided to him months ago, or he knowingly led the country on the path to war under false premises. Oh wait, we've been down this path already - and hey, nothing happened to the Administration the first time.

Fool me once, shame on me...

Then we have Rudy Giuliani running commercials that make the tenuous connection between the swearing-in of Ronald Reagan, and the release of American hostages from Iran. Ummm, yes, we need to thank Regan's leadership for events that were put in motion BEFORE he even became President... and if he got busy with Iran before he became President in an official capacity - well, than that's just plain illegal.

Anyhoo, it's time to follow in Oprah's footsteps, and declare this blog's full support for Barack Obama:

... 'cause we're so, so f'ed any other way.

strange gift

Susan has me open her mail, in case any bills come or what not. So the other day, she received a fairly sizable package from Marlboro. This surprised me, as I certainly didn't peg Sue as a smoker. Inside was a huge banner saying "Happy Birthday" (how did you know, Marlboro man??), and a roll that looked like a foot long cigar. To my disappointment, it turned out to be a roll-away checker board.

Bizarre.

i (heart) Oracle

As I may have mentioned, a good part of my workday is devoted to working on the Oracle portal, which we use as the centerpiece of our intranet. The wonderful features of that product fill my life with awe and wonder...

NOT.

None of us can believe that such a beastly piece of crap could ever be released by any company that cares about staying in business. Actually, I take that back. Oracle does care about us, because without us, the herds of "consultants" that come in to try to fix things that should work in the first place would have nothing to do.

Today was a particularly amusing day. We've dealt with a problem before, where reorganizing the portlet repository caused portlets to disappear while corrupting the portal along the way. We found a workaround - as we always do - and went on with our lives.

To put the problem in perspective, imagine that the portal is your computer. Out of the box, this computer would hide the shortcuts that you needed in crypric folders, so, naturally, you would create your own folders, and copy the shortcuts there. Note that you wouldn't do anything to the original folders, 'cause you know from previous experience that it may cause your computer to explode. Later on, as more shortcuts get added, you want to reorganize them, which requires deleting a few. In the Oracle world, your computer would then delete some of the applications that you came to rely upon, and lock up. Sweet.

So today, my coworker has found a support ticket in Oracle's bug database (that by now must consume many terabytes of space) which describes the exact problem that we've been having. Their solution?

"Don't perform this operation. However once it is done, all html content gets lost and one is not able to recover without going to backup."

I can just see an Oracle engineer walking along a riverbank when he'd see a kid fall into the icy water. I bet he would stop and yell out, "Do not fall into the river! However, if you do, you have no choice but to drown. When you do, the only recourse is for your family to have another kid."

welcome back strike

When I got back to the office, I found that all the toy animals from nearby offices have gathered on my table for a French-style strike:

Most of the toys are apparently protesting poor user interface practices, but the parrot in the back must've showed up late to the party - his sign reads "We demand crackers!"

What's even worse, there was a pretty serious riot nearby!

phew

I'm back.

Feels good to be home - even if home is covered in snow, and even if Sue couldn't come back with me. "Home" means no more walking, no more dealing with French, and no more fighting off Jonas' advances...

Just kidding about the last one, of course:

So where do I start?

In case you didn't believe my account of the homeless night in London, here's some visual evidence:

Things really went uphill from there. Susan and I had a great time, even if we walked almost everywhere in Paris. That turned out not to be such a bad thing, because we really got to experience the city: the glamour of Champs-Elysees, the hustle-bustle of Rue de Rivoli, and the changing face of Marais. Here's a cool pic that I snapped around Montmartre, close to where Susan lives:

We also got to see Sunny and Jing, which was really really cool - even if it was ironic that we had to travel for thousands of miles to see each other.

I do have to mention a few more things about Amsterdam, for the sake of completeness. I had to compare notes with Jonas, to make sure some things happened the way I remembered.

They did.

After the museums and other cultural institutions closed, Jonas and I had no choice but to visit the only tourist attraction that was still operating - the Red Light district. I wasn't sure what to expect, so I was in for a surprise. All over the narrow, canal-lined streets were glassed-in rooms with red neon backlights. In the windows stood all kinds of women - young, old, attractive and not so much so - in their lingerie. Any "interested" man could walk in, and immediately the red blinds would be drawn. What happens there is best left to imagination, but, according to Jonas (who was brave enough to conduct a purely journalistic investigation) prices start at 50 euro. Business was as brisk as the weather, and quite a few blinds were being shut - often with alarming frequency.

Of course, Jonas and I are respectable family men, so you ain't gonna see us behind no red blinds. Instead, we headed to a place that Jonas' trusty guide book suggested. What looked like a movie theater turned out to be a live sex show. Well, what can you do - we paid for entertainment, and we got it.

One act was called "The Dominatrix". A slightly older lady came out on stage, wearing black - as expected. She spun around with her whip a few times, and then proceeded to walk down the main isle. When she saw Jonas and I sitting next to each other, she asked, "Are you two together?" Maybe I protested a little too vigorously, 'cause she pulled me onto the stage. There, she put a dog collar on me, stuck a plastic bone in my mouth, and made me walk around on all fours. I could tell that I wasn't a big fan of this domination stuff.

Next, she decided to use her whip on my hindquarters. The crowd started yelling, "Harder!" As I found out later, Jonas led the choir. Bastard.

She did a few more stunts on me before letting me go back to my seat, where Jonas was dying of laughter. Oh well, at least I can now add "erotic entertainer" to my resume. Good times.