Rachel and I are hosting our housewarming party in a few hours, and it's the biggest party either of us has ever had. From an evite of about 140 people we'll probably have about 100 guests, including most of my family, a whole lot of coworkers, and friends I've had for ages. It's like every part of my life is converging into our new house for one night only.

I read an article a few weeks ago (damn I wish Google Desktop Search worked with Firefox so I could google it and give you a link, but I just don't have enough context to find it on my own) about the 'successful New York party' and the importance of a diverse range of age, occupation, political views, and socioeconomic background. Tonight is probably the biggest gathering of people I know and cherish that I've ever seen, and should certainly warm our house.

Rachel's really smart. She clued in really early on how much has to go in to a good-sized shindig, and has been doing crazy amounts of work in getting all the ducks in a row -- damn those wandering ducks! -- and I hope I've been her able-bodied helper goose. Just in the last few days it's started settling in how this is as big a production as the move itself was. Now, each time someone IMs me or drops by my desk asking "So, are you ready for tonight?" I feel a little dumber at how long it took me to grasp what everyone else knows. I mean there's putting together a movie night for 10 of your friends when the biggest problem is where to order the pizza from, and then there's the kindo f party where we're just one small step down from having to find a band. And if I'd thought about getting that 50s bluegrassy + Theramin band we saw last year at an SFMOMA event, we probably would have. After all, an eclectic gathering needs eclectic music.

Anyhow, that's all I've time for right now. Tomorrow we get to continue the fun with a large contingent of the family going to the Cal-stanford game though, especially since Craig can't make it this year, we Cal fans are going to be seriously outnumbered. True we have the home-field advantage, but we'll be sitting inthe Stanford section. (I've never heard anyone yell "Take off that blue shirt!" before...)

That's it for now. Much to do... So much!

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No, really.

Real real real. Not "I have a friend who reads this guy's blog who claims to know for a fact" real. Not even "I read this guy's blog and he says it's not an April Fool's joke" real. Well, maybe for you, gentle reader, it's exactly that real, but for me it's "I came to work for Google and got handed a dream assignment to design the UI for a product that's going to change the world" real, and now I'm thrilled that my best kept secret was kept so well that even my close friends took the "it's gotta be a joke" path yesterday.

Nearly two months ago my Mom sent me an email, saying she read a piece in the newspaper speculating that Google was working on an email product.

"Really, Mom? That's interesting. It's funny how they press makes all kinds of speculations. First we're going IPO, then we're not, then we are, then we're waiting. We never said anything but the press likes to make stuff up."

Then I sent her email around to the team. Today several of them asked me if I'd come clean to my own Mom yet. I did. This morning. :-)

Where was I? Oh yeah. Free email, a gig of it. If you've been reading the paper or the blogs today, you've read about it, spun either as an April fools joke (though if it were only that it would be a pretty short-sighted jest: "Here's this great product! Ha-ha, fooled you!"), or a piece of ill-timed PR. In truth, as guessed by a few of the more circumspect bloggers, it was both and neither. A double-April-fools joke. Metapranking, if you will. Google-style fun with a big pot of gold at the end.

To me it's showing the world the wider viability of the Google aesthetic. Clean design, unobtrusive yet useful ads, a fast, powerful product that will literally change the way you "do email." Oh yeah, and a gig of space, too.

I'm reminded of a quote from Scott Adams:

"I say we should listen to the customers and give them what they want."

"What they want is better products for free."

Only here that kind of thinking isn't a Dilbert punchline.

Yay, Google.

(oh, and this screenshot, though cute, is totally fake)

Here are some real Gmail screenshots I took this afternoon. Link away!

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I love my workplace. It's so... intimate.

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As a graphic designer, I loved having a utility that would give me a magnifying glass and tell me the exact color of a given pixel, in RGB or hex. It was oh so very useful, but now I want more.

What I dream of, as do so many people who have to make pixel-perfect HTML, whether they know it or not, is a PixelSpy that tells me not just the color, but the rationale behind a pixel. I want to point at a pixel on a web page and tell me, layer by layer, what objects are there, with easy shortcuts to the cascaded style info for that object, with the ability to click on any one of those properties, like font size, color, or what have you, and show me the tree of cascading factors that made it end up at that value.

I want to be able to click on a 1-pixel border that shouldn't be there and instantly know what piece of code makes the browser think it should be there.

It would save hours. Like now.

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Google's letting me free my mind for a couple hours tomorrow at Matrix Revolutions. Following up on last Spring's company-wide jaunt to see Matrix Reloaded, the whole company's going to the movies tomorrow to get a glimpse at the 'real world'.

I love my job just as much for taking me to the movies as for the fact that my work s so fun that I look forward to returning to my desk.

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(From the category of 'turning stuff into other stuff')

Unpacking, I've come across a lot of stuff of questionable necessity. I like having business cards from my jobs at Dantz, USWeb/CKS, Yahoo, and my personal businesses, but how many do I really need? On one hand, a business card from a failed dotcom might be the best evidence of actual employment and job title, so I want to keep a handful, but do I really need 500?

Still, throwing them out seems wrong too...

Then the CardCube page comes across my desk. Following the instructions might not help me get rid of my cards, but at least I can have some fun with them. :-)

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Random question for the day: When you read the subject of the post, did you think 'content as in satisfied' or 'content as in stuff'?

Suffice to say, Google is as or more wonderful than everyone has led me to expect. Truly, the best job I could have in the entire world right now.

Still ramping up and crazy busy, but I can tell that I'll attain cruising altitude within another couple days. Before that I hope to tell y'all about the fabulous place I'm moving in to in a week and a half, and catch up with the rest of the thigns that have happened, and will happen, with my life!

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So in a half day I start my first day at Google. So much backblog stuff to write about: the road trip, my sister's birthday party at the Inn of the Seventh Ray, coming back home, apartment hunting (sooo excited now that I have a rental application in at a 2 bedroom townhouse in Mountain View that I'm highly enamored of), house painting at Karen and Crystal's brand new house (they got the keys Friday!) (Crystal just said, apropos of nothing, "We're not just talking about house. We're doing house!") They're incredibly excited, and so am I.

We painted two rooms today, and painted clouds in one of them. It's a fun place.

Okay, now off to dancing, then sleep, then Google, then to see a cottage in case the townhouse doesn't go through, then Plough (more dancing), then sleep, and repeat!

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Today Casady & Greene closed its doors forever.

Ten years ago, when I started programming for the Apple Newton PDA (can you believe that it was introduced ten years ago?) I looked for a publisher to partner with and, after several months, I found Casady & Greene. They published 'Reflex', my Newton productivity toolkit, and would have published 'Nexus', an amazing addition to the NewtonOS, if Apple hadn't closed the Newton down.

The folks at C&G are an amazing bunch. I'm really sorry to see that they've fallen on hard times. Still, hopefully the individuals that made the company what it was will go on to their own new adventures and find new joys.

Thank you, Casady & Greene!

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In my apartment this morning...

Ring... Ring.... (Actually, that's not true. This is the sound my phone makes.)

Just as it gets to the truly funky part, I get to the phone, carefully unplug it from the charger, check the caller ID (614? where's 614?), and even more carefully press in on the scroll wheel to pick up the call without accidentally scroll-clicking them to voicemail, which I manage to do fully a third of the time. "Hello?"

...pause... "So what kind of cheese do you like?"

It's a man's voice, which tells me almost nothing. I'm bad at recognizing voices over the phone, especially since I've been using the phone markedly less over the past several months, and moreover since my phone has a cruddy speaker, barely better than the loudspeakers on aircraft carriers that make anyone on the PA sound like a cross between God and Roz from Monsters Inc.

In short, I have no idea who I'm talking to, but this is familiar territory.

I immediately reply, "Actually, for the past few days I've been taken with this Amish Butter Cheese." Not only is this absolutely true, (and trust me, the cheese is great, and is remarkable as it's a Jack variant that you don't get tired of. I mean it. Rachel and I could have eaten a whole bar in one go, but we stopped ourselves), as I was saying, not only was this true, but I didn't even go on to elaborate on the Irish White Cheddar we'd found last month, or the Dutch Havarti we'd just broken in to last night, but is already a favorite.

Details such as these are reserved for the closest of friends, or at least people whose names I know... or who read my weblog, I suppose.

The guy paused. I think he thought he had me. Much like Ammy's collect call from love, my mystery telephonic compadre probably thought his opener was the punchline, and didn't expect a rejoinder. I could feel his brainwaves over the phone, thinking: Does this guy really like cheese that much? Is he a freak? ...a beat passes... "I was searching the web this week and I came across your resume. I'm uh, a recruiter for [a fortune 500 company] and we're looking for an interaction designer with a strong participatory design background..."

The funny bits were when he told me he'd wished he'd read my weblog earlier, since then he wouldn't have wasted a phone call on Micah, as he'd have known that Micah just accepted the eBay job. I made a short list in my head of people he might want to talk to, and before I could share it he told me the other people he had already contacted from my program, matching hit for hit. I told him I'm already signed on for Google, and we bantered a bit anyhow, talking about the Edsel, the dot-com bust and the revitalization, etc.

The other funny bit is that it's the fourth recruiter contact I've received in the last two days, after no such attention for the previous month. I've got no interest in anywhere else, as I've found my perfect place, but it's amusing nonetheless. I've considered taking my resume [PDF] down, but I've found it to be useful in a number of occasions having nothing to do with getting myself a job. Call it a formalized extended bio (which reminds me, my bio is terribly out of date. I've got to update that thing...) or call it a template that at least a dozen people I know have used when redesigning their own resumes, but having recruiters call still gives a little tingle, a little 'might have been' window into a parallel universe that I can feel spinning off when I tell them thanks but no thanks.

A few days ago I had this whole epiphany. Actually, it came over the course of several days, in a few quick moments, so I suppose it's more of a stuttered epiphany, if the definition of epiphany can be stretched enough to accommodate that. It's about work, joy, and the circus. I'll try and write about that next time.

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Congrats to my HCI classmate Micah, who today accepted a UI position at eBay, and is wasting no time in flying to Florida on Thursday to get to know his users at eBay Live: Orlando!

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So as most of you probably gathered by the oh-so-subtle hints, I've been offered a position at Google as a UI designer, and I happily accepted on the spot. While I would otherwise be in Seattle right now, interviewing at Amazon, I'm now snug in Pittsburgh, planning out the last 10 weeks of school, and the three weeks between the end of classes and my August 25th start date.

Talking to my dad on the phone, I realized the truth of the matter when I told him matter-of-factly "I couldn't think of a job I'd rather have right now." Seriously. Anywhere. Too cool.

This will be the fifth time I've moved from the academic world to the 'real world' but this time it feels very different. When I took leaves of absence from Berkeley, I always knew that I'd go back 'some day' and finish my bachelors degree, and I did. When I started at Yahoo I (and they) knew that I had deferred my CMU admission by a year, and would likely be leaving to pursue my masters degree when that year came to pass.

This is different, though. For a lifetime I've known what the next change was, and when. I've been aware of the limited time of the status quo, like I've been driving through a winding pass, where each change in direction was mirrored by a change in circumstance. School, work, school, work.

Today, though, I can see the last turn up ahead, and I know that around that bend lies a straight ribbon of highway, as far as the eye can see. I've never gone to work somewhere without knowing that it was a short-term (less than 3 years) gig. The idea of starting someplace with the anticipation (in both forms) of staying there for the long haul is novel to me, as it is to so many people who started their careers in the tech industry, where 2 years makes you 'old guard'.

The parallel of the open road metaphor and my long drive back in August hasn't been lost on me. I know there's a word for when you map a metaphor to a real-life experience to strengthen it, but I can't remember what it is. Druids call that kind of thing 'imitative magic', but I just think of it as the journey home, for good.

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Wow. The last episode of Buffy... And that wasn't even the biggest change in my life yesterday.

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Talking with so many people, one after the other, I get the illusion that I do a good job of expressing myself, relating enough about me that the pieces can be assembled into a full representative picture. Except of course they can't. While the slices I get out of asking questions of each interviewer can be assembled into a greater whole of the company, the slices that I serve up are digested by each interviewer, not reassembled into a Kevin mosaic.

I just hope (slipping headfirst into the metaphor) that each of the slices I serve up is filling on its own, and that each experience was good or great, and memorable. Brevity is the soul of more than wit, and expressing as much of myself as possible under brief constraints is a skill I have yet to master.

I'm not saying much right now. I'm still too close to everything, and I don't feel like sharing much until this turgid sea gives way to calm sailing. Still, I've a lot on my mind, when the very hope of a bouyant heart is the thing that weighs on it most.

Oh, and please no comments on this one, 'k? Thanks.

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Note to self: There are probably better posts to have at the top of your blog when you know that a potential employer will be checking out the site in preparation for a phone screen. Ah well. Too late now!

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I just had a phone conversation with someone who was accepted to both the HCII and SIMS programs, just as I was two years ago. He's agonizing over whether to leave Berkeley (where he owns his home) and move with his wife to Pittsburgh for a year, or study at Berkeley SIMS for two years.

I don't envy him his decision. I know how hard a decision it was for me. In fact, the relocatioon factor was probably in no small part responsible for my decision to defer from CMU for a year to work at Yahoo. I remember that a year later, when I again had to choose, this time between Yahoo and CMU, the fact that I'd have to move either way (the 50 mile commute from Berkeley to Sunnyvale was just too much) made the idea of moving to Pittsburgh a little bit easier.

In the end, what made my decision was the Hogwarts factor: HCII is the best place to learn HCI. SIMS excels at information systems, and would teach me perhaps 70% of what I wanted to learn in HCI, but the idea of being limited only by my own bandwidth was just too attractive.

It's really a kind of risk aversion: I worried about spending two years at SIMS and leaving thinking that I could have learned more about my own focus somewhere else. On the other hand, unless the HCII underdelivered, Carnegie Mellon offered me exactly what I was looking for, with people who shared my focus and passion.

Other pennyweights on the scale were the idea of spending a 'year abroad' in the East, to experience something other than 'California seasons' (and last Winter didn't disappoint on that cold front), and getting an advanced degree from a different school than my undergrad. Having TA'ed Marti Hearst's UI prototyping and evaluation class (after taking James Landay's version of the class) I felt that I already experienced the single SIMS class closest to my interest.

In the end, I just needed a big change. 12 years in a city can build up a lot of plaque, expecially when the reason for not leaving is fear of change. This last year is a yo-yo on a string. Ship out, gather experiences, and come back the wiser. All in all, (and I'm a little surprised) the experience has been gratifying in many of the ways I theorised when fretting about the decision to come out here. (By the way, the post I just linked to has become one of my all-time favorites; a real turning point.)

A year ago last January I was living in the middle and now I'm not. I'm headed down a certain path with a few forks to navigate, but I'm moving fast and with definite purpose.

Everything's just moving so fast. How fast? Next month I have two days of interviews with Google, I may be flying to Seattle to talk with Amazon, and there's still Yahoo and eBay to think seriously about.

I've never really had so many parts of my life change at the same time, as they will in August. I don't know when Rachel's leaving (neither does she), be it late May, after I go in August, or any time in between. I'm blessed to have found such a great person to share the second half of my year here with. Every time I carry something up the two flights of stairs to my apartment, I think about having to carry it back down in a few months, or daydream about hiring movers.

I'm starting to yearn for the open road again. The week with Ammy last August, gunning across the top of the country was amazing, and we're deciding between taking the Canadian high road or the deep South on the way back. I'm working on so many projects right now I have scant time to think, let alone dream, but the future is pretty well packed with options. We'll see how it all pans out.

And now I've taken this post down three or four different paths, with little cohesion. Funny how there's an inverse relation between the directedness of my life and the directedness of my writing. Well, I'm sure that's enough for now.

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I'm in Ft. Lauderdale now for the CHI2003 conference. I'm in all kinds of tizzies, mostly school and work related. Karen and I took 438 pictures during our time in LA and on the cruise, and I have about 48 really good ones that I'll be posting soon.

I took the redeye last night from LAX to land in Charlotte, NC this morning, where I met some of my fellow CMU folk and we flew the rest of the way to Florida.

right now I'm realizing that Ihve' had a chai and some dried mango and that's it for the last 20 hours, so I'm going to go find some yummy food and destress a little before tacking the mountain of homework I have to get through.

Oh, and great news on the job seeking fronts as well. Interviews abound, and possibilities coalesce...

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Written Tuesday evening. Didn't get to finding the links and posting until Thursday morning. Read the article. You'll understand...

I store up ambition for the weekend, just in time to be tackled by my ambivilance. I'd have a list of things to accoomplish in the coming fin de semana, but the lethargy of choice usually meant I'd stay home, getting ready to do things, and spending so much time making everything optimal to work (or getting stuck in front of the TV) that soon the clock ticked around the the fateful five o'clock, that time by which if I wasn't underway, I'd already feel defeated because 5 is close to 6 and coming up on 7, the time when things start getting dark, and the time when I'd get home on a workday, so if I didn't feel like making something of the evening after a day at work, how could I bring myself to do it now?

This clearly had to stop.

A lot of intropsection revealed the following interesting insights:

• I'm afraid of success. As long as I'm not giving my 100%, then I can't fail inside, because I could attribute the failure to my not giving my all. But, if I do give my all, and it turns out to not be enough, then it's not that I failed, but that I'm incapable of success.
• I likw creating things, and often feel a sense of loss, of time wasted, when I do things that don't have permenent, tangible end products. I used to be an avid gamer, but nowadays I think about the prospect of sitting home alone for a weekend and churning my way through Half-Life II or Diablo II, networked or otherwise, and think about how it's just another drug, wasting valuable time for little more than an increased ability to play that game. (Irony so thick you can lap it up.)
• I don't have a spontaneous social life. Nearly all my friends live between 8 and 70 miles away, and those who are closer are those with their own social circles and a dearth of free spontaneous time. If I want to see a movie, I plan it between four and twenty days in advance.
• How the above factors combine when it comes to meeting new people is an exercise left to the reader.

Clearly, a change was called for.

It wasn't always like this...

A good part of the problem was accursed Berkeley. Having a car in Berkeley means walking a lot, or working your travels around the ebb and flow of cars, Bereley's tidal urban detrius.

On weekdays, the meters start filling up around 9am, and by 10 spaces are scarce, with those vacated by residents going to work quickly filled by commuting students. Around 3pm the student exodus exceeds the inflow, and spaces start to appear until the wave inverts around 5:30 and residents start coming home. By 7pm spaces are scarce again, and won't free up until 10pm, when those visitng friends, drinking, or studying late start heading home, and the influx is low.

On weekends it's almost reversed. The spaces are empty until nearly 1pm, then they quickly fill, to stay packed until nearly midnight.

All this leads to windows: It's hard to do something during the day if you know you'll have to walk a half-mile home from the closest parking space (which you only know is the closest because you followed your regular parking circuit twice to find the 'edge' where spaces go from nil to plentiful). Instead, you plan activities not around the traffic that moves, but that that is supposed to stand still.

Time for a change...

So as I've mentioned before, the commute is a beast, a killer of time, a murderer of sleep, and while it gives me in tome to write introspective soliloquies like this one, those six hours a week are bought at the expense of a great many more.

The solution isn't a simple change. A paradigm shift would be abandoned nearly as abruptly as it starts. A lifestyle is a heavy boat, and trying to turn it 90 degrees in an instant would only succeed in tipping it over by the might of the momentum it carries.

There are the small things: Do laundry when you only have a load or two, not when you no longer have anything to wear.

Ditto for dishes.

Next comes weekends: Make plans. Give themes to weekends. Get excited. Home is the place you get to escape from on a weekend, not cocoon yourself inside while waitng for yourself to do the things you know you won't.

In the words of Gary Graves, a drama teacher of mine who, in spite of some questionable productions, was one of my better mentors, "make the bold choice." (Alternatively, you can take the words of Dark Angel's 'Original Cindy' when she admits, 'it's a large life.')

Skydiving is a good example. I didn't go out to Byron ten days ago out of defiance against a life half-lived, but as an opportunity to experience something new (the latter being a natural positive, the former merely a double-negative).

And the fun doesn't stop there. This last weekend's original plan was to take a kitesurfing lesson with my father. Though they were booked (and I'm going on my own this coming weekend), and our alternate foray into flying model planes had disasterous results, it was still a thing to do. Any weekend that I don't have to complain about the jesus freaks because I wasn't home for them to torment is a good weekend. The more I do this, the more it sinks in.

Well, I'm starting to approach Jack London Square, without even getting to the heart of what is likely the most rambling post I've written in months.

Tonight and tomorrow morning is Beltane (okay, so finishing and editing took a while. Today's Beltane). Celebrated as a pagan holiday representing the renewing of the annual cycle, it's the closest thing to a spiritual new year. Medieval (and earlier) druidic cultures witnessed Beltane as nature's fertility rite. It was the time when the god and goddess came together to start the seed of a new goddess. In proper imitative ritual, it's the time when young couples would by and by leave the celebration to wander into the woods and fields and make merry, either for their own fertility, or in the fields, to ensure the fertility of the coming crops.

This month I'm seeding my metaphoric fields, planting for the longer view. I'm changing the way I work, the way I play, and to some degree the way I think.

As always, I'll keep you posted over the next few weeks on the more tangible changes.

Have a great Beltane everyone!

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Today I get to have lunch with a face and a name.

Rather, I get to have two lunches.

For the first, I'm having lunch with George Chen, a name you probably don't recognize, but someone with a face you'll almost certainly recognize from somewhere. George, aka "The Internet Guy," is a web developer who, as it happens, went to a photo shoot some years ago, and ended up as the Internet's stock-photo poster boy. Like Wil Wheaton, it's sometimes hard to remember that there's a real person behind the 5meg TIFF files. And yes, I'll see if I can get a picture with him. Like Ernie says, he's the next Curtis!

Hot on the heels of lunch #1, A co-worker and I are lunching with Matt Haughey to chat about net stuff. If you don't recognize his name, you'll almost certainly recognize his creation. Oooh. Now I just have to finally meet Ev and my homage to-do list will be complete!

Throw into the mix a meeting from 10 to 11 and another from 11 to noon and my day is 2/3rds gone.

Add into the mix my odd commute today. I went to sleep late (that's always a fair guess when you see me post at 1:30 in the morning) (but at least I got to see West Wing, Friends, Will & Grace, and half of Enterprise) so I decided to splurge and try out the new later train leaving at 8:02 from Emeryville. I was a little late, but luckily I knew that the train was later (28 minutes), and to add to that I decided to pick it up in Hayward, to make for a faster trek home tonight. So it turns out I was the only person to get on the train at Hayward, and I walked into an absolutely silent car. Downstairs was empty, and upstairs there was only one fellow traveller. Almost spooky. Fire up the powerbook, iTunes, and the Supreme Beings of Leisure cd I was listening to in the car and it gets downright otherworldly.

Now I'm between Fremont and Santa Clara, it's 9:30, and considering that I'll probably have to catch lightrail from the station, I'll be lucky if I get to work by 10:20.

Double-buh.

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So, after a few weeks of eschewing the train and trying an earlier schedule, I've returned to the Amtrak way, at least 2 or 3 days a week, because though it takes longer, I've forgotten how much I enjoy the time I spend on the train, writing stories, blog entries, or just listening to music and looking out the window for inspiration. These are moments you don't get nursing the gas and brake for three hours a day.

For those curious on the traffic front (and knowledgeable about Bay Area freeways), I found out that the primary reason for the increased traffic is because they've closed down 237 between 680 and 880 while they finish the 237/880 interchange. This means that a lot of people who normally go 680-237-880/237 are now going 680-580-238-880 to 880/237 or 680-Mission-880 to 880/237. Phew! What that means in English is that a whole lot more cars are coming in to 880 South, right at the point when it narrows from 5 lanes to 3, which makes a gridlock that cascades back thirty miles, and isn't likely to get any better for at least a month or two. Amtrak and/or driving at 6am is my friend.

One other think I like about my train is that every day I pass within about 200 yards of Kisa and Emily as I pass through Hayward. I always wave, either literally or in my head, and try to picture what Kisa is doing right then. She's usually sleeping.

Wow: The conductor just came on and announced that starting next week they're adding another train to the schedule down to Santa Clara, so I can catch the 8:05 train out of Emeryville and get to Santa Clara around 9:15. Not something I'd do all the time, but it's a great alternative to driving when I miss the train, or absolutely need that extra hour. Now I just have to figure out how to get from the Santa Clara station to Yahoo!, considering the Y! shuttle will probably only meet the first train. Maybe it's time to get that motorcycle after all...

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I have the strangest feeling, of sorrow and regret, a feeling like I've wronged someone, only when I actively think about it I've no idea who or how.

Argh. It must be stress. Anyhow, I find myself again on the verge of getting five and a half hours of sleep (gee, that couldn't have anything to do with it, eh?) so maybe I'll do the smart thing and work more normal hours tomorrow, and let myself sleep in until 8.

Such a luxury.

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Well, it went reasonably well. Got home, bought a book, pried myself away from the computer for a good portion of the evening. Watched Gilmore Girls, was miffed when I realized that TiVo recorded Will and Grace instead of Angel on Monday, but that's my own fault. (Gotta have a nice sit-down with the season pass manager...) Took my shower in the evening (because I feel guilty that my shower has a window that's 5 feet from my neighbor's window, and if I shower in the mornings on this new schedule I wake him up at 5:30), got in be by 11:30 and went to sleep at midnight. (5 and a half hours of sleep is actually better than usual, though still less than I should make a habit of.)

Now I'm up, and I'll be outta here in 15 minutes. I wonder what time the cafe on the corner opens. Is it too early for Chai?

Oh yes, and the dreamhost database problems seem to be fixed now. I'm almost worried about going to check for the response to the venting email I sent to them after the site had been down for 5 hours with no response from my earlier support request...

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Hey! I left work at 4:10 today! I got home at 5:40! Woohoo! And the traffic on 880 was really bad from 84 to 94 (funny that, just the same as on the way there). Maybe I should leave (home and work) 20 minutes earlier. Anyhow, the sun is out, the day is bright, and I'm going to go take a book onto campus and go read for a while.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Oh yeah. No word back on my 50lbs of laundry... Well, that's for tomorrow.

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The net is at a standstill in some parts of the country, thanks to a new web server/email hybrid virus. I wonder if it's an act of cyberterrorism (well, all viruses are, though people don't useually mean them to be so debilitating, because what does a 16-year-old know of the difference between terror and mischief?)

Just thought I'd mention it, is all.

PS: Looks like I might get out of here on time today.

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Lots of traffic, especially between 92 and 84 on 880 South, thanks to a four-car accident that had just been cleared when I finally got to it. In at work at 7:35.

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Dressed, showered, and out the door at 6:07 am. Let's see how it goes this time. :-)

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I should be sleeping. This marks my final defeat for the day.

In the wake of a job that gives me precious little time of my own, I set out this morning to see, with everything arranged most favorably, if I could create a work schedule that would still give me some degree of personal time.

Despite all my efforts, I abjectly failed.

Okay, so I thought I would get to work at 7:30 this morning, and to do so (and to visit Em and Kisa) I stayed over at Em's house last night. Further changing my schedule, I took my shower before going to sleep, so I could be up and out and off to work early in the morning.

Morning came: so far so good. Left the house around 6:30, got in to work at about 7:15 (25 mile commute instead of 45). One of the first in the office, I actually got to relax. For the better part of the morning I was working on mocks and debugging my Powermac which inexplicably slows to crawl whenever I launch iTunes (v 1.1, running MacOS 9.1 on a dual 400Mhz G4 box) regardless of whether music is playing, or even if I quit the app. Every time this happens I have to restart, or suffer with a text editing experience much like typing over a 300 baud modem and a tendency to drop characters.

Ever resourceful in finding ways to increase personal time, I also brought laundry to work, to give our new laundry service a try. At $25 a bag it sounds like a good way to free up hours of my own day and a (relatively) reasonable price. The catch is we're supposed to pack laundry in their bags, but the first time you naturally don't have their bags, so you use your own. Mind you, my bag is huge, holding about 40 lbs of laundry.

Nevertheless, I was still set upon leaving at 4 to come home, only I forgot to let my manager know so come 3:15 I get a plateful of work that keeps me in until 6:45. At about 5:00 the laundry guy comes to my cube to pick up my laundry (nifty!) and he shows me what their 'regular bags' looks like. The site says their bags hold about 2-3 loads of laundry, but it looks more like 2-3 sinkfuls to me. The thing would barely hold a couple towels. Anyhow, I sent my bag off with him anyhow, though I really don't know why since I'll probably just get a call tomorrow asking for authorization for $150 to do my laundry (no thankyouverymuch) and I'll get my old dirty laundry back tomorrow or Wednesday and be right where I am now, only feeling like more of a humanitarian for participating in 'take your laundry to work TWICE day.'

Frustrated at that, and at being at work for nearly 12 hours on the day I was trying to prove that I can shape my destiny and make my life tenable, I finally finish up work at about 7:15 and decide, since my day is shot anyhow, to put a positive spin on it by bringing up from my trunk the parts to the POÄNG chair I bought on Friday and assembling it for my cube. I lug the four pieces (chair frame, ottoman frame, and two cushions) from the car to the cube, and take the boxes apart, only to discover that I got the wrong stain for the chair which, while it would look fine in my office, wouldn't match the one I have at home and, more to the point, wouldn't match the matching ottoman (truly a Will & Grace moment, yes).

Argh. Repack the chair, take it back to the trunk, drive home, stopping by IKEA 30 minutes before they close, making it out of there (god only knows why I happened to have the receipt in my wallet. I'm usually really bad about that) about 10 minutes after their 9pm closing.

Driving home I decide for one last stab at satisfaction and dropped by the Starry Plough for Monday Irish dancing and got to dance a four-hand reel for the first time in about 6 months, so that was good.

Parking, I just knew I'd get another ticket for expired registration tabs and, after grabbing a frozen dinner from the market and getting my mail, I notice my DMV registration has finally arrived, so I go back out to my car and put the sticker on, then come up to my apartment, about 28.5 hours after I last left it (or, to be more fair, 16 hours after I left for work).

Don't even get me started about missing Rosh Hashana tomorrow. Maybe it'll be something to atone for during next week's Yom Kippur.

Anyhow, I'm going to try again tomorrow, even if it means I only get five hours sleep tonight. Outta here by 6:00, at work before 7:30, leave work at 3:30 or 4 and get home around 5:30.

Well, at least that's the plan.

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So I've been participating in An Exquisite Corpse, completing my first slice last night, and getting my next 'assignment' this morning. The 'starter slice' intrigued me, and I was looking forward to working on it (if this makes no sense, visit the site and read about it. Basically someone makes a 450x200 graphic and gives the bottom 15 pixel slice to the next person on the list, and they build off it to make their own panel, and so on) as soon as I got off work.

Since there was an A's game starting at 7, and the stadium is on my way home, I thought it might be a good day to stay late, and miss the traffic. Anyhow, now it's nearly 10, the panel is done and sent, and I just finished watching the Java Appletted webcast (Oakland beat Texas 7-1. Woohoo!). It's a bit late to drive an hour home just to come back as soon as I wake up so I'm crashing at Rick & Ammy's tonight.

Anyhow, just checking in with that life stuff. I'll have to write about Fray 5 and last night's Blink 182 concert later... Hasta!

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Just wanted to give props to Ernie, who got laid off for the second time in 5 months yesterday. Here's hoping you find something new ASAP. It's also a testament to how many people care about him that his post yesterday on the subject already has 57 comments from wellwishers! Talk about 'blog as support structure'!

Seriously though, Ernie's really great and while I'm sad he's unemployed again, at least I get the feeling he wasn't in love with his job there (feeling, heck! read his blog! :-) ) Here's hoping Ernie finds a great job, and fast enough that he gets double-pay from severance and his new job!

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Someone wrote yesterday, asking me about the official relationship between Fury.com and Yahoo!, now that I'm designing interfaces for them. The simple answer is that Fury and Yahoo! are completely seperate entities. I work for Yahoo! during the day (and whenever else) and I write for my own blog (and associated projects) in my own time.

No doubt I'll put together an OAQ or FUAQ (or, as I've read said: QTAFA) list eventually but suffice it to say that I'm being very careful to keep both my employer and my readers happy.

Seeing Gaiman speak tonight was great. He really knows how to tell a story, as well as write one, and American Gods will now have a new voice attached to it when I get the chance to read it.

The new, and working, poll will be up soon. Meanwhile, I'm puting together one last sitelet before cleaning my web house (aoliza and randompixel) become my priorities again.

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So, in the theme of "If you want to do something right, do it yourself" or, in this case, with the help of a few friends.

So, without further ado, I present the 'Show Table Borders' bookmarklet v0.1.

It's only been tested in IE on the Mac, but you're more than welcome to tinker to get it to work wtih other platforms/browsers, but if you do, please let me know, so I can update the reference code here.

How to use:

1. Drag this link: Turn Tables to your favorites bar.
2. Navigate to a page that has tables.
3. Click the 'Turn Tables' link in the favorites bar

If it's working as it should, it will then iterate over the page you're looking at and set all the table borders to '1' so you can see them.

If you compose web pages with tables, especially if you do it by hand, you're thanking me right now... :-)

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I'm writing a fair bit, but I get home late, and don't transfer from my pilot, or I'm too tired to convert graphics for the blog. I promise this is a short-term thing, and I already have some possible solutions, but I won't leave you in the dark.

Things are great at Yahoo!. I'm having a lot of fun and I think I've found exactly the right place for me to be (and not just because some of the people there read this weblog!).

I'm working on two reviews for the blog, one of POE's album, Haunted, and a related review of her brother's book, "House of Leaves." It'll all make sense soon, but for the moment, I'm enraptured by both.

More soon, really soon.

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I'm so tired, and more than that, so tired of Netscape on my linux box choking in fear over simple well-formed HTML pages. It just crashed mid-post, so I'm reshaping my thoughts from the powerbook.

I'm now between my third and fourth days at Yahoo!. (note: The '!' is an integral part of Yahoo!'s brand identity, and should always be included as such. Thus, when someone inquires at your inclination to "Yahoo!?" it should be interpreted as a regular question, and not an interrobang (note to the note: an interrobang is actually "?!." (note to the note to the note: The period "." in the preceeding (preceeding) quote was grammatically correct, even there there is no period in an interrobang (n^4: except for the two periods within the ? and "!." (n^5: Argh. Forget it.)).) and so a "!?" would more accurately be termed a "bangogator.").) Did I mention I'm tired?

So, back on track: I only got about 3 hours of sleep Monday night, fretting about the new job starting on Tuesday. Tuesday night I played games at Ammy & Rick's, and didn't get home until around 10:30, got to sleep at midnight, got up at 5:30 (half hour before the alarm, but I was up, so it was no use). Last night I got 7 hours of sleep, but it was really hot and I had bad allergies so I tossed and snuffed all night. This morning it all caught up with me and I could barely stay awake most of the day. At least the meeting I most needed to be awake for was postponed.

Tonight I will sleep. Tonight I will sleep. Tonight I will sleep. Tonight I will sleep.

Work is great. These people really do know their stuff, and I think I'll fit right in. The best part is I haven't figured out yet whether they know just how rare they are. They probably do. Anyhow, it's just like summer camp where everyone's cool and they inspire each other to do great things.

Okay, now about blogging. I'm torn between getting a Blackberry and writing an email-blogging gateway, reactivating service on my Omnisky modem, or holding out for a ricochet modem for my laptop. The idea is that now that most of my non-work computer time will be in-transit (on the days I take Amtrak, anyhow) that I'd like to be able to blog from the train. Even more importantly, I'd love to be able to write a blog post whereever I am, whenever I have the thought. I leave myself voicemail messages on things to blog about when I'm driving in my car. I believe I have yet to actually blog one of them, and after about 6 weeks the saved message mysteriously disappears from my voicemail box.

So I've got that to figure out. I'm leaning towards the blackberry, which also has the cool bonus of being able to interact with Yahoo Instant Messager or (and possibly and) AIM (I may have to choose one or the other when I buy the service, in which case a server-based AIM<->YIM bridge may be another project to work on.). As for now, I barely had the initiative to sit down in front of the computer tonight to blog this. I'll write tomorrow morning about a cool sighting on the AOLiza front, but for now, I've got some catching up to do...

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Sleepy. I just got home about a half-hour ago (though that's more the result of having dinner and playing Cranium at Ammy's before driving back up to Berkeley.

Note to self: Driving 75 minutes to work going on 3 hours sleep for your first day orientation isn't the best way to start things off. On the upside, I got there 40 minutes early, so leaving home at 6:30am was probably a good move.

Tomorrow I'm taking Amtrak to work to see how that goes, now that it's not critical that I get there by 8:30 for Orientation.

Every Yahoo employee has a company and benefits orientation on the first Monday of their employ (or Tuesday if Tuesday is the first day of the work week). This week there were two new Yahoo! employees, me and Jee Park. Jee and I basically were hired for the same job, and she actually got in touch with me back in March when we were both interviewing, as her friend read about my interview on the blog, and told her. It was just a funny coincidence that we both had orientation on the same day, as she doesn't start for a few more weeks, (Stanford and its quarter system donchaknow).

I felt a little bad when they asked us to put our names in the hat and they raffled off a Yahoo!opoly board game. Names in hat: Two. Winner: Kevin.

The campus is great. Benefits are great, and the stock even took a graceful 10% dip today, just in time for my options strike price. Now it just needs to start climbing again. I just know it will.

Anyhow, I'll have more to write soon, specifically when I don't need to get to sleep and try to hold my own in the battle against Morpheus with a scant 6-hour tithe to appease it until I sleep once more.

In other news, the iPad story was mentioned on Macintouch today. It got about 1600 visitors to the site, several of whom stuck around to see what else was here. Fun stuff!

Oh, and I've already got a few blog entries planned for tomorrow. If I get started early enough I may be able to write one or both before I leave for the train tomorrow.

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Laundry, catching up on movies, cleaning, getting to sleep early.

Tomorrow I start at Yahoo! and, as I predicted, I don't know where the week has gone. So much to do, so little time (for resisting the urge to quote Willy Wonka, I will now quote the Rabbit) I'm late, I'm late!

Lots of interesting topics to talk about. One great thing about this job (and proof that I'm an optimist) is that I'll have an hour on the train each way each day to write up all the things I want to blog about, and work on projects. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I do some of my best thinking on trains. As for why, well, I'll save that for my first in-transit blog entry.

As for today, I'm off to see Shrek again, this time with Karen, as she was sick when we all went to see it.

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I'm just relaxing (procrastinating) on my last weekend before I start up at Yahoo on Tuesday. I had grandiose plans of stuff to do this past week. Okay, maybe not so grandiose, things like cleaning my office and doing laundry, but I stillspent most of the time relaxing, making up for lost sleep, seeing some movies, and writing really long articles.

Well, Tuesday's the big day. I have a small dilemma in that I'm supposed to be at my first day orientation at 8:30 on Tuesday, but the train/lightrail combo wouldn't get me there until about 8:45. To drive down and get there by 8:30 I'd have to leave absurdly early. Every time I've had to get to south bay around that time I've left myself a couple of hours and it's never been enough. I just know that if I leave my place at 6am I'll either end up getting there by 7:30 and have an hour to wait, or I'll still be a half-hour late.

Still, it'll be good practice to get to know just how bad traffic gets. It's just a tough call as to whether I'm better off being a certain 15 minutes late, or a wide open window where I'll more than likely not be late at all, but could be much later.

I know just how interesting my commuting connundrums are...

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Argh, busy week. I'm working on our first interactive prototype for my groups web project in UI Design class, I'm still working on AOLiza and Cameo updates, as well as changes to this very page, I have tons of reading to catch up on in my other classes (Cogsci, CogNeuro and Philosophy), not to mention something happening nearly every night this week, and the Gaskells Ball on Saturday. I have no idea what I'm going to wear.

To top it off I'm starting to make some serious grad school decisions and breaking ground on applications, and at the same time I'm arranging interviews at interactive companies, because I'm still undecided as to whether I should go back to my career (which I really enjoy) or head straight to grad school to get my HCI masters (which I would probably also enjoy).

And, of course, my TeleBears tade for Spring Class registration is on Thursday, so I have to get that figured out as well or I won't graduate in the Spring at all!

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Everyone's throwing up quasi-functional previews nowadays. Apple's doing it. So is ABCnews. Heck, even Jennicam is getting into the act. It makes me wish I had more behind the scenes to show... Well, I'm working on school and biz projects all day today, but Cameo's a constant weight in the back of my mind, and I really want to get it out to you folks, so time will tell. If I can't get it fully polished, I can always put up a preview...

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Well, it's three weeks in to the semester and it's time to start thinking about grad school applications again. I have my GRE scores. Now I need to get back to work getting recommendations and working on my statement of purpose.

I'm basically decided on applying to the Human-Computer Interaction masters programs at CMU and Stanford, both of which are excellent. Stanford would also mean staying local, but CMU would mean finishing in one year instead of two.

It's either go straight for my masters, or go back to work as an Information Architect after I graduate this Spring. Both paths have their appeal...

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Sifting through other 5K entries, I came across The Vocation Analyzer.

Natually I was dubious, but after answering a few question,s I know my place on this earth. Check it out:

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Career profile for Kevin:

You are a Human person who prefers to work in Pink places such as Soda Hall. Your affinity for Water, Crappy CPU, Runny nose and your Sniff skills make you well-suited to a career as a Donothing repair technician.

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Just as I thought.

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