greasy pole

On Saturday, Sue and I went to St. Peter's fiesta in Gloucester. We may never have known about it, if it wasn't for our friend Monica. Apparently, Gloucester has a very tight-knit Italian community, with a lot of fishermen in their midst. St. Peter is the fisherman saint, so it only makes sense that they celebrate the dude.

By the time we showed up, the Greasy Pole run has been going on for a couple of hours. I kid you not, the event consists of a telephone pole greased up and suspended above water, with a series of townies trying to run across it and grab the flag at the end. People in the boats get the best view of the action, especially during high tide, when the audience can't get very close:

Nobody managed to grab the flag, so our friends gave up and went to grab some food - when it finally happened. Some guy tiptoed his way sideways and got the end before falling. According to Monica, the winner becomes a local hero. The rest of the participants are rewarded with bumps and bruises from falling on the pole in the most awkward of ways, and we rewarded ourselves with some nice seafood from a nearby restaurant. Gotta love tradition.

we don't mess around

Susan and I take our IKEA trips seriously. It's a bit of a hike for us, so when we go, we really make the most of it. This is what $1300+ of kitchen stuff looks like boxed and stuffed in the back of an Accord:

What are we doing with all of that? Ripping out the kitchen completely (or, rather, speeding up the process of natural decay), and totally redoing the layout - from tiling the floor to putting up new wallboard. That's a project and a half, all right.

three months

When you are looking at your car's engine suspended vertically by a single chain, all kinds of thoughts occur to you. One is, wow, mechanics have it tough. Then again, mechanics don't work in small garages, by themselves, and without a lift.

Another immediate thought is, how in the hell am I gonna flip this chunk of metal that weighs hundreds of pounds? But, when there is a will, there is a way. Dropping the engine repeatedly on an ever-increasing array of 2x4s, I managed to point the valve cover in the "up" direction. Good. Why was my engine standing on its side to begin with? I found that this made attaching the transmission infinitely easier. Then again, part of my problem was that I had the clutch plate facing the wrong way - and believe me, the transmission housing does not want to attach itself if you do that.

Taking a quick survey of my cut-up and permanently oil-stained fingers, miscellaneous bruises, and strained muscles, one might ask, was it worth spending three months doing something that a mechanic could do in a few days? I'd say, absolutely. Even if I manage to completely f up my car, the amount of stuff that I've learned couldn't have come any other way. And it wasn't all mechanical knowledge, either - take Susan's infinite patience with my project, for one. I'd start asking questions a long time ago ;)

nightly update

UPA had a dinner reception tonight - and the food was surprisingly good. My coworker and I sat at a table with some interesting people. There was a lady from Buffalo who spent a few minutes making a case for her city, claiming that "it wasn't all that bad". Her point was that it is virtually devoid of natural disasters, and the snow, when it comes, can be pushed into the lake Eire. Then she said something to the effect of "some people go away for school, if they're lucky", and quickly caught herself.

Next to her was a guy who looked like Frylock from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" (I know this, and I don't even watch the show). The funny part was that he was trying to pick up the girl from Buffalo. But anyhoo, all good things come to an end, so my coworker and I made our way back to the hotel. We must've walked one block too far to the north, since we found ourselves in the red light district - with many friendly bouncers offering us a peek inside the very shady clubs. Just the thing that you want in the middle of your business trip.

upa, day 2

I'm in the second day of the UPA conference in Baltimore. So far, so good. The quality of the session definitely varies, and they don't seem to be as academically-rock-proof as the ones at CHI, which could be a good thing... or, to put it another way, academics will not throw rocks at you if you don't have statistically significant numbers to back up every point that you're trying to make.

The coolest session I've gone to so far was a panel on the future of web analytics. The presenters did a great job in tracing the history of the field from where we were before (ah yes, odometer counters... I feel old when I say, "I remember those...") to today's technology. It's very clear that web analytics tools are not answering the "why" questions, and maybe they never will (unless you bring in a clever way to solicit just-in-time qualitative feedback). Still, the tools on the market today are progressing past the dashboard view of page hits/exit pages/demographics to recording behavior - and that's where the meat of the presentation was. The presenter showed off ClickTale, a tool that records users' mouse movements through simple javascript snippets injected into the page, and then plays them back by overlaying them over the actual pages.

As a way to observe users' actual behavior, this is clearly way cool. Of course, then you have to deduce what they were actually thinking - when they stopped moving the mouse, were they reading, or did they get up to go to the can? For what we do, there are two additional challenges: intranet data has some sensitivity, and shouldn't be recorded by a third party - and, a lot of our apps generate content that's unique to the user, so overlaying X/Y movements over static pages will not work. Surely, someone somewhere will crack that nut soon.

Last night after the conference, Jared Spool hosted a book launch party at a nearby restaurant. Intrigued by the promise of free food, my coworker and I headed over. The food was more of the appetizer variety, but we got to talk to some very interesting peeps. One guy, then working for JC Penny, got Jared to run his famous $1000 compelled shopping experiment. Another worked as a consultant with my group before I even started there, helping them come up with a set of intranet guidelines.

Afterwards, my coworker and I had to trek to our hotel with all of our luggage. We realized two things: one, our boss was attending a conference in a different location when she recommended this place as "just two blocks away", and two, it's definitely right on the ghetto boundary. But, the hotel itself is pretty decent, and it's paid for by the company, so I shouldn't really complain.

craig comes through once again

On Friday, Susan and I finally acquired some much-needed furniture for our place, including:
- nice sectional couch with pillows
- coffee table
- bed with matching night stands and a mattress
- computer desk
- ironing board

Total cost? $0. Susan is totally the Craigslist queen. As for me, besides the cost savings, I'm totally loving the fact that we're a) keeping perfectly nice things from being thrown away, and b) keeping the consumption of new materials down. Go us!

'tis the Truth!

My body is telling me, "Throttle down, big guy – you can’t run around like that all the time." Unfortunately, that wasn’t really a choice, as a dozen of my former housemates from the Truth house came down for the weekend. As a result, here I was co-hosting the retreat with Adam, while running a fever from a cold that seems to be mutating into flu. Awesome.

Susan and I learned that tour guides don’t have it easy at all – it’s next to impossible to show the city in any kind of a meaningful way to a mob of curious but opinionated people. Deciding on a place to eat took close to half an hour, but hey, it was great to see the old cohabitants. Thankfully, nobody has changed a bit: Marcin is just as quick with his wise-cracks as Luis with his beers. Speaking about beers, the Sam Adams tour was fun yet again!